Rustler's Moon. Jodi Thomas
and written on the note... If he’d just hold her once more so she could feel safe...
But the world was silent, making her feel more alone than she had been in her entire life. A shy girl, an only child, a solitary person who liked to work by herself. And now she was utterly and probably forever alone.
She looked down at her father’s grave. “Good night, dear one. May the angels watch over you. Goodbye, Dad.”
Walking away, she knew she’d never return to this garden of stone and dying flowers. Her father wasn’t here. He was with her mother now.
* * *
THE SUN WAS LOW when she finally drove back to her parents’ little house near the water. All the lights were on and for a second she thought her father was home.
Slowly, she walked to the front door. Maybe her aunt had come back?
Glass crunched beneath Angela’s shoes. The door’s small window had been shattered.
Her heart hammering in her chest, she pulled out her cell phone, dialed 911, then backed away to her car and locked the doors until the police arrived. Room by room they searched the small house. Drawers were open. Contents scattered on the floor. Cabinets were all swept clean, the floor a mess of broken dishes.
The search revealed nothing had been taken, not even the cash hidden in the bathroom cabinet or her laptop.
The police told her it was likely just kids, but Angela knew it was something more.
She locked the house up and tried to relax enough to sleep, but the words from the note and the events of recent days haunted her. Her father’s office vandalized...a break-in at her home, so soon after her father’s mugging...it couldn’t be a coincidence. Somehow, her father had been in danger. Angela knew then what she had to do. She had to run.
* * *
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, she made a trip to the bank and cashed out her account, bought cat food and plastic boxes. By midnight, she was packed. Her mother’s quilts, her father’s fishing equipment, her grandmother’s pots and one very ugly cat named Doc Holliday.
Run. Vanish. Disappear. The words kept beating through her brain in a steady rhythm.
She still had far more questions than answers, but the break-in had convinced her that her father was right. Something was wrong. Maybe she was letting her imagination run away with her to think that her father’s death might not have been simply a heart attack brought on by a random mugging, but she believed in her core that she was in danger, and that she had to take action.
With a letter describing a job at a small museum in Texas tucked away in her black raincoat and fifty thousand dollars in cash, Angela Harold walked away from what she’d always thought of as her home.
It was time to take her father’s advice. She would disappear.
Crossroads, Texas
October
Angela
DRIED WEEDS SCRATCHED against Angela Harold’s bare legs as she walked the neglected grounds behind the Ransom Canyon Museum near Crossroads, Texas. Rumbling gray clouds spotted the sky above. Wind raged as though trying to push her back to the East Coast. She decided any rain might blow all the way to Oklahoma before it could land on Texas soil. But the weather didn’t matter. She had made it here. She’d done exactly what her father told her. She’d vanished.
Angela had meant to stop long enough to clean up before she took her first look at the museum, but she could not wait. So, in sandals, shorts and a tank top, she explored the land behind the boarded-up building on the edge of Ransom Canyon.
When she’d talked to the board president, Staten Kirkland, five days ago, he’d sounded excited. They’d had to close the museum when the last curator left and in six months she’d been the only one to call about the job opening. Before the phone call ended Kirkland offered her a three-month trial if she could answer one question.
Angela thought it would be about her experience or her education, but it was pure Texas folk history.
“What or who was the Yellow Rose of Texas?” the man on the phone asked in his pure Texas twang.
She laughed. “The woman who entertained Santa Anna before the Battle of San Jacinto. The battle that won Texas independence.” She’d always loved that story, which often got left out of history books.
“We’ll be waiting for you, Mrs. Jones.”
He hung up before she had time to tell him that her name wasn’t Jones. In a moment of paranoia, she’d used a false name when she’d bought a laptop and phone. Then again on the application, figuring she’d be just one of hundreds who applied. Now, if he checked her transcripts or references, she’d have to make up another lie. That would be easier than finding some guy named Jones, marrying him and dragging him along to Texas with her.
Angela had driven a hundred miles before she decided she would tell Kirkland that she used Jones because she had been engaged but he left her at the altar. Kirkland would feel sorry for her, but that was better than killing off her imaginary husband.
She’d straighten it all out Monday. She’d even practice just how she’d say it.
Monday, she’d dress in a suit and accept the position as curator for the three-month trial period, but today simply exploring the place would be enough. After days in the car she needed to stretch her legs and breathe in the clean air. She’d dreamed of being in Texas for years. A wild country—untamed, open, free. Something she’d never felt before, but she planned to now. For the first time, she was free to make her own future.
The grounds behind the museum had been left natural, just as it must have looked a hundred and fifty years ago when settlers came to this top square of Texas.
Since the day she’d read there was an opening here for a curator, Angela learned everything she could about this area. The history was interesting, but the people who founded this frontier town fascinated her. They were hearty. Stubborn. Independent. Honest. All things she’d never been. But the first settlers were also broken, desperate and lost. Somehow they’d managed to work together to build, not just ranches and a town, but a future.
Now she had to do the same with no family or friends to help her.
She didn’t know if she belonged here. She fainted at the sight of blood. Gave in at the first sign of disagreement.
That left honest. She didn’t want to even think about how dishonest she was. She’d lied to get the job as curator of this closed museum.
Standing near the edge of a canyon that dropped a hundred feet straight down, she let the sun’s dying rays warm her face. Everything about her had to change. She had to make it so. She had to start over.
Somewhere along the road between Florida and here, she’d come to the conclusion that her father’s death wasn’t an accident. Maybe he knew something about the company or his brother. Maybe he’d overheard trouble moving in. Why else would he have told her to run? If her life weren’t in danger, why would it be so important that she vanish?
Maybe he’d been planning to disappear with her, only time ran out for him. But he had left her prepared. He’d put money in her account. He’d even suggested that she tell no one about this job in Texas.
The old trailer he bought and hid in the garage fit into the plan. Last month, he’d had her car fit with the hitch. She’d told him she had no need to pull a trailer, but he’d said that if he ever needed the trailer, he didn’t want to use it on the company car he drove. Only, she’d been the one who needed the trailer. She’d done what he’d told her to do in the note and now she had to somehow blend in here in Texas.
Taking the curator job was the first step. This time her title didn’t have “assistant”