Page 9 of Salvation
Anna looked from her cousin to the man and the baby then back again. Wow, Sarah had a baby. And wow, Sarah had Soren, the man she’d loved for so many years. Which was great, but why did they both look so stricken?
“Sure,” Anna managed. The air practically crackled with tension, and she backed away. “No problem. I’ll just…um, wait in the park.”
There was a park just across the street and down the block, a swath of green in the midst of a parched western landscape.
Sarah caught her by the arm and gave her a quick hug before letting her go. “I’m so sorry. I’ll catch up in a minute.”
“No problem.” Well, obviously there wassomeproblem, but the main thing was that Sarah was alive. And not only alive, but a mom.
Anna headed to the park, reeling inside. Had Sarah been in Arizona the whole time?
She looked around. It was a town right out of an old Western movie, full of boxy buildings with false fronts. Towering elms shaded the park, and Anna half expected the rattling sound coming down the street to be that of a covered wagon. It turned out to be just a dusty pickup piled high with bags of feed, but that fit, too. A bronze statue of a horse and rider stood at the head of the park, looking ready to bolt into the hills. They were so lifelike and full of energy she looked twice. An imposing stone building took up the center of the park, surrounded by a sea of green dappled with golden light.
The saloon she’d bumped into Sarah at wasn’t the only old-fashioned place in town. There was a whole row of bars and stores, including a barbershop with a striped pole. Flags hung from lampposts — American flags alternating with the starburst flag of Arizona — all rippling gently in the breeze. At street level, the air barely stirred, but there was still a fresh, mountain feel to each breath she gulped, thanks to the surrounding hills thick with a forest of pines.
If it hadn’t been so strikingly pretty, Anna might not have registered the town at all. Her mind was too busy with the thought of her cousin.
Sarah. Alive,one part of her brain repeated time after time.
All that blue. That bright, bright blue,another part whispered.
She didn’t try to make sense of it all. She just walked and let snippets of emotion zip through her head.
Sarah. Baby. Soren.
And blue. That incredible blue.
It was lunchtime, and the park was dotted with people. Some in skirts or suits, others in cowboy hats. Walking on autopilot, she sat down at the end of a bench and stared into the distance.
If Sarah was alive, why hadn’t she been in contact? Could it be that Sarah didn’t want the world to know?
Anna looked around. Maybe she was just paranoid. Maybe there was a perfectly good explanation for all this — one Sarah would share just as soon as she sorted out whatever problem had cropped up.
She closed her eyes and tilted her head up toward the sky. Maybe that was the blue her mind was obsessing about. If she cracked her eyelids open just a bit, she could see patches of it through the trees.
A car backfired somewhere down the street, and she whipped her head around. The leaves rustled, and she took a deep breath, trying to settle her nerves. She’d just driven two-thirds of the way across the country. She’d just found her cousin. She could finally calm down, right?
But there was something making her jumpy. Something that wouldn’t let her soak in the peace radiated by the trees.
She’d been vaguely aware of the man sitting at the far end of the bench when she sat down, but she only glanced over now. He was hunched over, his head hidden by his knees. Not so much in a drank-too-much-yesterday position — more like a quarterback after a play gone wrong. He barely moved except for his left boot drilling into the earth, grinding pebbles into dust. The plain gray T-shirt he wore stretched across his broad back, and his hands clutched at his hair.
Apparently, her cousin wasn’t the only one having a rough day.
“Are you okay?” she ventured, relieved to pull her thoughts out of the seething cauldron of her mind.
The man didn’t move, which ought to have been her signal to leave him alone. Even when she tore her gaze away from the thick lines of muscle bunched under the shirt, something pulled her back, and almost without realizing it, she scooted closer along the bench.
“Hey,” she said softly, leaning out to catch his gaze.
His hair was short and sandy brown. Almost golden brown, in fact, like the leaves overhead. It was just long enough to give his fingers something to hang on to. Mussed, too, as if he’d worked through the night and hadn’t gotten around to checking how it looked. And his hands — man, they were the size of bear paws. Big and clenched tight, like he didn’t want to relax in case it meant losing his mind.
It made her ache just to see a man as anguished as that, and without thinking, she laid a hand on his shoulder. Which would have been asking for trouble if he’d been one of the down-and-out types who ghosted through public parks. But he was too young for that, too clean. He smelled of the woods, not alcohol, and the slump of his shoulders said he’d just received terrible news. A friend killed in a car accident, perhaps? A buddy killed far away in a senseless war?
“Are you okay?” she repeated.
His shoulder was round with muscle, and her hand just about slipped off. Then he looked up, and her breath caught.
It was the guy who’d nearly bowled her over at the saloon door. The one with incredible blue eyes. She’d barely gotten to process them before, but she was swimming in them now. They pulled her gaze in and wouldn’t let go.
