The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(23)

Higher and higher she swung till she was almost parallel to the sky. She looked tiny and fragile next to the craggy old chestnut. If she lost her seat and flew off, if the rope broke, she could break a bone, or worse. But she wasn’t thinking about disaster. She had a sure reservoir of courage.

“She doesn’t get that from me,” I murmured.

Olin and his wife traded a long look, and suddenly I could see myself through their eyes. They had to be wondering what kind of refugees had landed in their laps.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said. “I’ve been so confused the past few . . . days?”

Just how long had I been in that room upstairs? They weren’t volunteering a timeline.

Jessie patted my arm. “You stay just as long as you need to. Laurel hasn’t said much. But from what she has, well, when a woman takes it on herself to grab her child and run off from her own husband, like as not there’s a reason behind it.”

I stared at my coffee cup. Such people couldn’t begin to understand what Laurel and I were running from. What could be hard on our heels even now.

Jessie had said Laurel told them her father had given us trouble on the road. Had he? I had no memory of it.

And just where was Jim? If only I could pinpoint him on a map . . .

“How far are we from Wheeler?” I asked.

“Head about three miles to the highway, just over the hills,” said Olin, indicating the breaks to the north. “Then cut west a good thirty miles and you’ll hit Wheeler right enough.”

“So close,” I murmured.

From the looks of this lush valley, I would’ve thought we were much farther from town than that. Where were the red mesas? The high desert? This place looked more like Colorado than western New Mexico.

And thirty miles out meant we were likely still in McGill County and the sheriff’s jurisdiction. It would be only a matter of time before Jim tracked us here.

“Has anyone been around?” I asked. “Looking for me?”

“Not a one,” Olin replied promptly, as if waiting for the question.

I hesitated, not sure what I could expect from these people.

What was it Bernadette had said? People are ready to help, if only they’re asked. Even so, these two people were strangers to me. And I to them. How can you know who to trust?

I couldn’t take a leap of faith like that.

But I might manage a small step.

“What Laurel said is true,” I ventured. “We can’t go back. We can’t. If anyone should come asking around—even someone official—they can’t know we’re here. Please.”

“I wouldn’t fret. We ain’t seen no one official in . . . how long?” Olin glanced at his wife, who shrugged. “We ain’t county, you see, nor reservation. Hardly on any maps anymore.”

I knew there were pockets of land leased from the federal government by homesteaders and entrepreneurs. One family east of Wheeler had leased a large tract and put up a store, a post office and an apartment compound for teachers at the nearby Indian boarding school. Decades later, they still had the land under contract.

Still, I doubted such land could be outside any sort of law enforcement.

“Morro must have police officers,” I said.

“Oh, honey,” said Jessie, “we haven’t had need of a lawman in a long, long while.”

“Ain’t nothin’ here we can’t handle,” Olin said.

Not yet, anyway. They couldn’t possibly handle Jim, or see through the snake-oil charm of a sociopath when nearly everyone in Wheeler had failed for so long.

I was torn. If I tried to find out how we got here, that would lead Jim straight to us. Even reaching out to Terri was a risk—when Laurel and I didn’t arrive on that plane, she would have tried to find out why. That would mean calling Bernadette, if Terri had a number for her, which was unlikely.

No, most likely it would have meant contacting Jim.

The only thing I wanted at that moment was to hide out. To lay low until I got my strength back, and my bearings. Figure out the next move for Laurel and me. Something that wouldn’t land us back in that tin-roofed house, or worse.

“Listen, if anyone should come ’round . . .” I hesitated. My voice sounded thin and childlike to my own ears.

Olin leaned in again, and this time his eyes were piercing, with no hint of humor. He laid his rough hand over mine, and his touch was warm. The warmth spread up my arm like an infusion.