A Man Without Love Read online

  A Man Without Love

  Beverly Bird

  To Mom and Dad—for the kid, the cat, the dog, the smoke and the missing glassware.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 1

  Catherine Landano was scared. Her instincts told her to keep moving, yet she hesitated near a telephone kiosk in the airport and wondered if she dared call her father.

  But what could she possibly say to him? Hi, Paddy. I’m going to New Mexico to finish what I started. Oh, and by the way, Victor tried to kill me, so I’m calling myself Lanie McDaniel now.

  She choked back a wild laugh. Paddy would just say, It’s a good name, Cat, but this time we’ll wait and see about your doctorin’. Paddy Callahan was a simple, no-nonsense man. He had never understood why she had quit her last year of medical school to marry Victor Landano, and he wouldn’t understand why she was running from him now.

  A Callahan never ran. But then again, to her knowledge, a Callahan had never been shot at before either.

  She backed away from the kiosk, combing her fingers self-consciously through her black hair. It was shoulder length now because Victor had always liked it long. It was a tangle of corkscrews too, because it had always been waterfall straight. She had paused in her flight across Connecticut to get a spiral perm and to cover its deep auburn with some dye, but hints of red glinted stubbornly through the black. She prayed it would be enough, because her eyes had proven too sensitive to tolerate the contact lenses that would have changed their vivid green to brown.

  Victor would recognize her anyway, but she didn’t think it would be Victor who came looking for her. He would send someone else, someone who had her picture, someone who had memorized her features.

  She fought the urge to look around the crowded gateway to see if anyone suspicious was watching her and fumbled in her purse for her ticket instead. Moments later, a flat, mechanical voice intoned a call for her row. She made her way down the long boarding tube, her skin itching as though a million eyes were upon her. She squeezed her way into a window seat beside a young man with a round face, her spine feeling unnaturally stiff.

  Finally the plane taxied and its nose lifted. Catherine felt a familiar sinking sensation in her tummy as they left the ground. She had never liked flying. Now she craved each breathless moment of ascension. It carried her closer and closer to safety.

  She wished again that she could have called Paddy, and regret lingered like a bad toothache. But in the end, she knew it was best if no one knew where she had gone.

  The plane reached full altitude. Though she would have thought it impossible, she put her head back against the seat and slept.

  They hit turbulence somewhere over the Midwest. It jarred Catherine awake, and she was embarrassed to realize that her head had dropped onto the shoulder of the passenger beside her.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, shifting her weight to the other side of her seat.

  “My pleasure,” the man answered. “Sincerely.”

  Her gaze snapped to him. The round-faced young man was gone. Her heart chugged in alarm, then she realized that man must have deplaned in Atlanta. This one was not the least bit threatening. She wasn’t sure what Victor’s thugs might look like, but she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be like that man. He was wholesome, in his mid-thirties, with friendly gray eyes and shaggy, vaguely brown hair.

  “Twilight Zone.” He laughed at her expression.

  “Something like that.” If only he knew.

  “You slept right through the layover and dinner, too. I hope you don’t mind, but I told them you didn’t want anything.”

  Catherine shrugged. Food was not one of her priorities at the moment.

  “So what takes you to Albuquerque?” the stranger persisted. “Do you live there, are you just visiting, or would you rather not get into a mindless conversation with someone you don’t know?”

  Catherine smiled in spite of herself, then she stiffened. She was going to have to learn to lie, she thought, then she realized it wasn’t necessary, at least not yet. This was a question she could answer honestly.

  “I’ve gotten an externship there.”

  “University Hospital, by any chance?”

  She was startled. She hadn’t thought he would even know what an externship was. Most people didn’t. During their third year, medical students chose an elective so they could study something that particularly interested them. It was a good system for both the facilities that offered the posts and the students. The facilities got inexpensive manpower and the students got experience in their area of interest. Med-school rotation was a sampling of every field. It didn’t necessarily provide in-depth experience in one’s specialty.

  Catherine cleared her throat and nodded. “I hope to be working with some of the staff there.”

  “Me, I hope.” He extended his hand awkwardly in their cramped space. “I’m Richard Moss. I’m a doctor at University, as well.”

  He waited for her to introduce herself. Catherine opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again. Now it was time to lie, and her mind went blank.

  “Lanie,” she gasped finally. Her grandmother’s name. “McDaniel.” Her mother’s maiden name. She had deliberately chosen ones that would be easy to remember, and she had almost forgotten them anyway.

  Still, he was looking at her oddly. She rushed to get him to talk about himself. “What do you do there?”

  “Epidemiology. Technically, I’m with the CDC, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. They’ve established a temporary post at University.”

  Her pulse quickened. “You’re there because of the Mystery Disease?” Catherine had read about it in the papers and had immediately made a few phone calls. Four years ago, epidemiology had been her chosen specialty. The Mystery Disease provided probably the only externship in her field that would accept her.

  Richard was nodding. “So we’re colleagues, after a fashion.”

  Not quite, Catherine thought. “Actually, I’m at a clinic on the Indian reservation.”

  “The Navajo Res? The clinic outside Shiprock?”

  She nodded cautiously.

  “I’d heard they had a hard time filling that post.”

  They did. “I guess you heard wrong.”

  His eyes measured her. It irked her to realize that he probably thought her grades were below average, which they hadn’t been. Or that her back was to the wall...which it was. Richard looked away first.

  “So what do you think of our Mystery Disease?” he asked finally.

  She didn’t know enough about it yet, only what she had read in the papers. The disease had surfaced in the spring among young, healthy people in the Four Corners area of New Mexico. Most had died within hours. The newspaper articles had been written for laymen and sensationalism; what specific physiological data Catherine needed she was going to have to gather by the seat of her pants.

  No time like the present, she decided.

  “Another immunity virus?” she suggested, fishing.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s transmissible via human contact.”

  “What then?”

  “The Navajo will tell you it’s a wolfman.”

  “A what?”

  “A witch. Th
ey think someone got ticked off and put a hex on his enemies. Personally, I’m more inclined to go with an environmental factor. Have you ever been out here before, to the Res?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then you’re in for a shock. Poverty and squalor are rampant.”

  She was surprised. She’d done what homework she could since securing the post, since deciding she was going to have to disappear for a while. “I thought the Navajo were the wealthiest tribe in the country,” she ventured.

  Richard was full of information. “The tribal entity, maybe,” he explained. “But not many of the individuals are. Truth to tell, I try to avoid working in the field as much as possible. The people live in trailers in the best areas, in hogans in the more traditional conclaves.”

  “Hogans,” she repeated slowly.

  “Mud houses.”

  “Mud?”

  He had the grace to look abashed at his harsh analysis. “Well, logs and some sort of adobe. Thatched roofs, round, one room. Just like the last two hundred years never happened. The sheep and the goats and the chickens wander wherever they please, often right indoors. It’s no wonder disease runs amok.”

  “Does it?” she asked curiously.

  Again, he flushed. He had the kind of complexion that made it easy. “Alcoholism does. STDs are healthy. And now this.”

  “Alcoholism is a problem on a lot of reservations.” She remembered that from med school.

  “But only the Navajo seem to have respiratory bugs that kill them.”

  Catherine nodded slowly. Suddenly, she was tired of Richard Moss’s cheerfully dismal opinions. He seemed so...disdainful of the people he had been sent to help. She turned to the window and looked out into the pitch darkness of night at thirty-thousand feet.

  “We’re almost there,” he persisted. “That should be Santa Fe right over there. Albuquerque can’t be far behind.”

  There was a very distant, very faint glow far off the right wing. The rest of the ground was as black as the sky.

  What had she let herself in for?

  She reminded herself that she hadn’t had much in the way of choices. All of the best externships would go to this year’s graduating classes. Only the most desolate, desperate posts were interested in a woman who had quit one elective away from her degree, four years ago at that.

  Besides, even the wind could get lost in all that darkness, she thought. Surely she would be safe here.

  Richard kept on, and Catherine dragged her attention back to him. “We should be landing at about nine-thirty,” he said. “Can I interest you in a drink or something to replace the dinner you missed? I can fill you in on the rest of what you’ll be facing out here.”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to tarnish her own impressions with any more of his opinions, but she was very sure she didn’t want him to buy her anything. She shook her head politely.

  It was going to be a long time before she would trust anyone to buy her anything again. But that was okay because this time she fully intended to take care of herself on her own terms.

  * * *

  Catherine drove as far as Gallup despite the lateness of the hour. She was curious to see the reservation in spite of—or maybe because of—Richard Moss’s warnings. She spent the night in a cheap motel and was up at dawn to pull on jeans and a T-shirt and strap sandals onto her feet. If what Richard had said was accurate, she wasn’t going to be overdressed.

  She stopped for take-out coffee at a diner, then she spread her map and her contact’s directions on the hood of the rental car. The Indian Health Service hadn’t been able to offer much in the way of amenities, but they had supplied the car. She had not checked in at the car rental counter in the airport, but at the booth in the parking lot. The man there had a set of keys waiting for her, and the tired brown Ford had been parked away from the others, behind a chain-link fence, like an outcast.

  There was no breeze. The sky was still and gray blue, the sun only just beginning to nudge gentle warmth into the day. In a moment, Catherine forgot the map and gazed out at the desert beyond the highway.

  It was scrubby and endless. The spare grass grew in patches, red sand showing between the clumps. She sorted through her memory for details of what she had read about this country and decided the larger bushes were mesquite and greasewood. The smaller, pale green, spiky plants were probably rabbitbrush. She looked down at the map again, but something drew her gaze back.

  It was the immensity, she realized. Even here, on the outskirts of a city, there was such a feeling of space and sky. It should have made her feel vulnerable and exposed, but it didn’t. She felt as small and insignificant as a needle in a haystack.

  She swiped the map up again and got into the car. She left the interstate and turned north on U.S. Route 666, following her contact’s directions. Then some clouds started coming in, appearing first over a butte that jutted up starkly from the horizon. She had read that in this region they often hovered over the peaks, then dissipated without moving on. She kept an eye on them, curious, and they moved.

  So much for that theory.

  They were blue black and ominous looking, and just before she reached the road where she was supposed to turn off they opened up on her. The downpour was sudden and without apology. Rain drummed against metal and sheeted down the windows, and the wipers groaned.

  The scar at her side began to put up a mild ache, as though even from this distance Victor was mocking her efforts. Catherine pulled over, pressed a hand against it, and looked at the map again. She thought she should have kept going straight to get to Shiprock, but Shadow—her contact—had told her to come this way.

  She took her foot off the brake and coasted forward again. She went only a couple of miles before the asphalt gave way and the car lurched down onto a slick unpaved road. The back end slewed dangerously, and she fought with the wheel.

  No, this couldn’t be right.

  She hit the brakes again. Her scar throbbed badly now, responding to the dampness. She bit her lip and decided to go on another four or five miles. If she didn’t find some sort of town by then, she would turn around and go the other way.

  She put her foot to the gas again. The wheels beneath her spun and whined.

  “No. Oh, no.”

  She pushed against the door and scrambled out into the downpour. The tires of the Ford were mired inches deep in red mud.

  What now? Push it? Impossible. Even if she somehow possessed the strength to do it, there was no one to guide the wheel and nowhere to go.

  The rain kept coming down hard. Catherine was beginning to feel overwhelmed.

  Suddenly the drone of another engine came to her. She whipped around to look up the road. A four-wheel-drive of unknown vintage bucked through the mud coming toward her. She waved it down, pushing away the sudden, absurd thought that Victor had followed her, that he had somehow lured her down this isolated road to finish the job.

  The vehicle—a Land Rover, she saw when it got closer—slid to a stop. A man got out and came toward her, seemingly impervious to the rain.

  “Help you?” he asked laconically.

  “Uh...yes. I’m looking for Shadow Bedonie. Do you know her?” What were the odds of that? she wondered. She felt foolish, but to her amazement he nodded.

  She waited expectantly for him to go on, but he only studied her, then her car, with a look of critical impatience.

  “Can you tell me how to find her?” she asked.

  “Not in that.”

  “How, then?”

  “Guess you’d have to slog through the mud on foot.”

  Frustration made her head pound. “Can’t you please give me a straight answer?”

  “Thought I had.”

  He stepped back toward the Land Rover.

  “Wait!”

  He didn’t look back at her, but he stopped. Her frustration nose-dived, trembling on the edge of panic. If he left her here, what would she do? She looked around at the barren country through the rain.
It could be days before another vehicle came along.

  “Please,” she tried again. “I have to find Shadow Bedonie.”

  Her voice sounded strangled and pitiful, even to her own ears. The man seemed to consider her desperation, then he turned back to her and waved a hand toward his truck.

  “I can give you a lift across the wash, but your car’s not going anywhere until tomorrow.”

  She couldn’t imagine why she would want to go over a wash, or even what one was, but she opted to trust him. She wasn’t sure she had a choice.

  Catherine pushed through the mud to the Rover. It took her two hard tries to get into the passenger seat while he stood behind her and watched. Her sandals slipped wetly off the panel and she dropped down into the muck again, red ooze welling up over her ankles.

  “This going to take long?”

  She heaved herself up one more time. Sarcastic, arrogant bastard, she thought. “Thank you,” she snapped. Sarcastic or not, he was her only hope at the moment.

  He went around and got behind the wheel, turning it. The Rover careened neatly around. He had not been long on conversation in the rain; now his silence seemed deafening. She looked across at him out of the corner of her eye.

  In the downpour, he had seemed of indiscriminate age. Now she put him at about thirty-five. Sun wrinkles touched the corners of his eyes. His hair was long enough to cover his collar, curly and black as midnight water. Navajo? she wondered. One of her would-be patients? He needed a shave and he smelled of smoke and the wet leather of a comfortable, well-worn jacket. But other than that he was...attractive.

  His eyes—what she could see of them—were dark, as well. He would have been handsome, if his jaw weren’t so hard. Yet his mouth looked soft enough to nuzzle babies.

  She ran her eyes down his body and put him at about six foot two. He was solid, yet he gave the impression of being lightning fast.

  And she was out of her mind.

  “You said it would be possible for me to move my car tomorrow?” She wasn’t sure why she was so concerned. It wasn’t hers. Still, it belonged to someone, and she felt responsible for it.

  “The sun’ll bake the mud hard by then.”