LITMIR.BIZ

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now these Osage Hills, beloved resting place, of his ancestors, had become Susie’s resting place, as well. She had been out there all this time. All this time while he had been searching the world for her, she had been right out there on an island in a river…alone.

      He had sensed from the first, of course, that Susie would never come back. Had felt it in his body.

      Hunters, the reporter woman had said. He hadn’t even turned on the TV. And wouldn’t. He did not want to see what the jackals were saying about Susie, about him, about the one who had done this. That was for the city people in Tulsa to look at, to eat with their nightly meal, digesting someone else’s pain like so much junk food. Tears stung his eyes.

      The clouds gathered in radiant silence as the liquid orange Oklahoma sun touched down on the rim of the rolling hills. Nathan focused his burning eyes there, at that convergence of light on the far horizon.

      He tried not to think of the last time he had seen Susie, but her voice reverberated in his mind, anyway: “Nathan, I’m pregnant!” Those words would echo in him forever, like his own heartbeat. They had been the words he’d desperately wanted to hear, though he’d never admitted it, not to her, not even to himself.

      Their battle against infertility, the child they were finally going to have, none of it seemed real now. It seemed as if the only thing that remained from his former life was this land where he had grown up, these endless hills.

      He put his forehead to the glass and fought the rage, the tears, the self-pity. When his mind cooled and he raised his head, the clouds seemed brighter than any he had ever seen. The strange sight caused a sudden unease to pass over him. He looked around the room, cast in an amber glow, and the furniture—his grandfather’s furniture—looked the same as it always had, yet not the same at all.

      Grief, he knew by now, could have strange and unpredictable effects on a man’s mind. He turned his head slowly, looking back at the clouds, and they had altered again. Before his eyes they suddenly took shape above the setting sun as first one, then many faces formed. As he stared, this wall of faces stirred in him an unbidden anger, then sadness and finally a strange resolve. It seemed as if this vision had been trying to form for the past three years. He shook his head and blinked, then rubbed his eyes. When he looked again, the faces had vanished. Only ordinary clouds remained, following the sun to bed.

      He turned from the window and the room looked ordinary again, too. Like the same old place where the same evening sun had shone in the same way ever since he was a small boy.

      He stumbled to the wide leather couch facing the fireplace and sprawled on his back, suddenly stricken with a blinding headache.

      Which was where his cousin Robert found him.

      “Nathan!” Robert yelled as he crashed through the front door, then halted abruptly when he caught sight of the figure on the couch with one arm flung over his eyes.

      “Nathan,” Robert repeated more quietly, and Nathan heard his cousin’s boots clomp heavily as he crossed the hardwood floor. Nathan sensed Robert standing over him. “Are you all right? I came here as soon as I heard the television reports.”

      Nathan lowered his arm.

      Six and a half feet tall, thick-necked and thick-middled, with a tail of unkempt jet-black hair trailing down his back, Robert Hart looked like nothing so much as a sorrowful young bull, peering down at Nathan. He removed his well-worn baseball cap and held it in both hands. “They said they found her…her bones out there.” Robert inclined his head toward the massive window.

      Nathan sat up. “Damn the media—reporting it before I’ve been officially notified.”

      “So how’d you know?”

      “Long story. A reporter.” He braced his elbows on his knees and pressed steepled fingers to his lips. “What are the news reports saying?”

      Robert sat down next to him. “They said they made a provisional identification,” he answered quietly, “by her jewelry.”

      Nathan nodded. “The Claremont ring. I can imagine what Wanda and Fred are feeling.”

      Thinking about Susie’s mother and father tore at Nathan’s heart. He didn’t mention his own parents, although he suspected that Robert was picturing them now. Nathan wondered if his cousin was grateful, as he himself was, that Clare and Drew Biddle were not alive to witness this sorrow. Despite Robert’s hokey Indian ways, Nathan was suddenly thankful to have this particular man at his side for the ordeal ahead. Robert was a guy you could count on. The cousins were men of one accord, though they lived in different worlds, believed in different things.

      “Nathan, don’t you want to turn on the TV so you can see for yourself what they’re saying?” Robert offered.

      No, he did not. But to satisfy Robert, he said, “Okay. Put it on Channel Six.” He was, in fact, curious to know if Jamie Evans had used the footage of him. It would feel good to have some petty reason to get righteously angry right now.

      Robert got up and opened the doors of the massive armoire and pushed the buttons on a big-screen set. He returned with the remote and handed it to Nathan. A weatherman was talking, pointing at scrolling satellite images of clouds.

      “Switch to another channel,” Robert suggested. “Maybe one of the other stations has something about it.”

      “No. I want Channel Six.”

      “Why Six?”

      “Jamie Evans was out here today. She and her photographer. I told them not to use the tape they shot.”

      “Jamie Evans? That little blond reporter? She was out here on the ranch?”

      “If you’d get your head out of your Wordsworth and Shakespeare and step foot out of that rotting old cabin once in a while, you’d know these things, cousin. I spotted them up on the north plateau a little over an hour ago.”

      “And coming up at ten o’clock,” the news anchor was talking again, “complete details on the discovery of the body of missing oil heiress Susan Claremont Biddle. Jamie Evans has more on this late-breaking story. Jamie?”

      A stunning strong intelligent young face filled the screen. “Authorities aren’t telling us much right now, Nick, but apparently they have reason to believe the remains found by hunters this morning belong to Susan Claremont Biddle. Mrs. Biddle was the twenty-eight-year-old granddaughter of well-known Tulsa oilman Ross Claremont and the wife of Tulsa philanthropist Nathan Hart Biddle. Authorities are awaiting positive identification from dental records.”

      The blond woman holding the mike had a creamy complexion and amber-green eyes that caught fire when the studio lights reflected in their depths, then narrowed with reined-in emotion as she spoke. Her perfect full mouth, set in a square jaw, moved with precision over every word. She had the ideal media face, Nathan thought with detachment, a classic movie-star face. Sincere. Appealing. Unforgettable.

      “The remains were found by black-powder deer hunters who told authorities they thought they had stumbled on a deer scrape on a sandbar in the Arkansas River. But what they found was the victim’s shallow grave. The state medical examiner’s office has not released cause-of-death information, but we hope to have more details at ten, as well as a statement from Tulsa County District Attorney Trent Van Horn about the status of this shocking case.”

      Nathan hit the mute button and they watched the attractive young reporter mouthing her sign off.

      “She’s in the studio,” Nathan mumbled. “The footage I’m looking for was shot out here in the open. She said it was a teaser, so I guess we missed it. I’d like to know what she showed.”

      “What’s the deal with her?”

      “She’s an up-and-coming little reporter who’s been digging around ever since she came to town. She’s young, smart, ambitious. Hot after the sensational crime story that will boost her career.”

      “Your private investigator can probably

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