St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die
the present, not the past.
A stranger opened the back door in answer to Dan’s knock. The way the man moved and measured Dan told him that this was one of the unobtrusive bodyguards who kept the nutcases away from the governor of New Mexico. Just part of the price of being a public figure.
“I’m Dan Duran,” he said. “Miss Winifred is expecting me.”
“I’m new around here,” the man said, “so if you don’t mind, I’d like to see some photo ID.”
The bodyguard’s soft Georgia accent didn’t fool Dan; he could show ID or he could stand outside until he froze solid. And if he wanted to make an argument out of it, there was another bodyguard just inside the door, watching.
“No problem,” Dan said easily. He pulled out his wallet and showed his driver’s license.
The guard compared Dan’s face to the one on the license, nodded, and stepped aside. “Come in out of the cold. The cook left some coffee if you’re interested.”
The combination of no-nonsense bodyguard and Southwest hospitality with a southern accent almost made Dan smile. “Thanks, but I want to catch Miss Winifred before she goes to bed. I hear she’s feeling a little under the weather.”
“You know the way?”
“Is she with her sister?”
“Yes.”
“Then I know the way.”
Dan went through a kitchen that could have been in a medium-size restaurant. The ranch had always been a popular place to host contributors, supporters, reporters, fellow politicians, and anyone being wooed for money or votes. The place went from nearly deserted to overflowing with little warning. Folks in town could always tell by the helicopter traffic when there was something going on at the Senator’s—now the governor’s—ranch.
Tonight the kitchen looked like it hadn’t been used for much more than coffee and a light dinner for the family. Dan wondered if Carly had been included, or if she’d settled for a snack scrounged from the bottom of her big purse.
Sooner or later she’ll get the message that no one but Winifred wants her here.
He hoped it would be sooner, before anyone got angry enough to hurt the pretty woman with light in her eyes and laughter in her voice.
Though it had been years since Dan had been inside the ranch house, he hadn’t forgotten the turns and hallways and doors separating the kitchen from Miss Winifred’s suite. He didn’t meet anyone along the way. Melissa and Pete had probably already retired to their apartment. The maids had gone home. During the summer, the hired hands lived in the bunkhouse or in one of the house trailers tucked back in the trees along a curve of the hill. In winter, the buildings were empty.
When Dan had been younger, he’d spent the summer tending sheep and cattle on the ranch and learning to hunt with the Snead brothers. They’d been barely a decade older than he was, yet they’d been great teachers. Like their mother and grandfather, they were “wolfers,” hunters hired to keep predatory animals in check. Even as an adult, Jim managed to scratch out a living in the high country. Blaine had ended up in prison for armed robbery.
Long ago, far away. But, damn, those men could shoot.
At least, Dan had thought it was long ago and far away until he’d seen tracks on Castillo Ridge yesterday. A man’s tracks, and a dog’s. He couldn’t be certain who else had hiked several miles to watch from afar while the Senator was buried, but Dan knew that only someone with Jim Snead’s skill as a stalker could have gotten within fifty yards of Dan and not given himself away. Since Jim was the best man on the stalk in northern New Mexico, it figured that he was the one who left the tracks.
Wonder why he didn’t say hello.
Wonder why he was there, period.
Maybe that’s why he didn’t show himself. He didn’t want to answer questions.
Dan knocked lightly on the wide double doors that had been put in to accommodate a hospital bed. In the warm months, Winifred rolled her sister outside. If it made any difference to the patient, only Sylvia knew.
“Who is it?”
“The curandera’s son.”
The door opened slowly. Winifred’s black eyes looked Dan over. “Heard you were back. And busted up.”
“A little accident, that’s all.”
She made a sound that said she didn’t believe him, but she stepped aside. “Well, come on in.”
The heat of the room brought sweat out across Dan’s back. His glance went around the room, missing nothing, including a surprised Carly
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