The Relatives by Christina Dodd Read Free Book Online Page B

room, spent the night, and now here she was, heart pounding as she pulled into an isolated picnic area. She backed the Cherokee into a parking spot hidden by brush and trees. She grabbed a bottle of water, her waist pack, and her drawing pad, and climbed out. She followed a trail that wound through the trees, looking for the one spot she wished, believed, hoped, would reignite her vision.
    In less than a mile, the forest ended and a wide, green meadow opened its arms to her, and she recognized this place. This, far more than the ranch, was home. Here her father had taught her to camp, to hike, to hunt. Of all her early life, those were the moments she treasured.
    Taylor climbed up on one of the smooth, massive black basalt boulders abandoned by the glaciers. To her left and her right, as far as she could see, forbidding and majestic pinnacles pierced the pale blue of the August sky. To capture the grandeur of the Sawtooth Mountains required bold-hued oil paints done on a large canvas by a master.
    All they had was her.
    But she was here, and she longed to pay tribute to the forces of the earth.
    Opening her sketch pad, she took up her charcoal pencil and gave her soul over to the vista before her.
    When she had finished, she pulled back and studied her achievement.
    In high school, her art teacher had told her anyone could draw a mountain, but a true artist depicted the soul of the mountain and gave the viewer a sense of glorious austerity or forbidding heights or searing cold. A true artist created not art, but feelings: longing, terror, love. Most of all, Taylor’s art teacher warned her against making mountains look like ice cream cones.
    Taylor could state with great assurance the mountains she had sketched did not look like ice cream cones.
    They looked like ingrown toenails.
    She rifled through her sketch pad, looking at each and every one of her drawings. How had she reduced the imperious majesty and eternal grandeur of the western mountains to such a disgusting human condition? She had dreamed of and planned for this, imagined her artistic talent would blossom in the place so long cherished in her childhood memories. Instead, she was a failure, such a failure that she was almost relieved when she heard a car bouncing along the washboard gravel road behind her. She shut her drawing tablet, slid off the rock, and headed into a stand of pines.
    Not that she needed to hide. She had as much right to be here as anyone. But she was a woman alone. The car probably contained a rancher or some tourists, but wild game attracted out-of-season hunters, old gold claims dotted the creeks, and longtime residents carried guns. Up here, it was better to be safe than sorry.
    When a black Mercedes came around the bend, hitting every rut as if it was a personal challenge, she grinned.
    Rich tourists. She knew the type, city folks who could not believe that every road in America wasn’t paved for their convenience. She wondered how far they would go before the washboards defeated them, or before they destroyed their car’s oil pan on a protruding rock.
    They passed out of sight behind a boulder as big as a house, where the road cut through the meadow, and there the sound of the engine cut out.
    Probably they had a picnic lunch. They’d dine and head back …
    She glanced at her watch. Two-thirty. Pretty soon, she needed to return to her rental Cherokee, too. It was a good two-plus-hours drive back to town. But first …… she started walking deeper into the woods, looking for something less imposing to sketch. A tree, maybe. Or a bug.
    On the road, two doors slammed.
    One man spoke, coldly, clearly: “Get him out of the trunk.”

 
    CHAPTER TWO
    Taylor stopped.
    Him? Out of the trunk?
    She didn’t like this guy’s tone. She didn’t like his words.
    Who, or what, was in the trunk?
    “Do you think this is far enough?” The other man sounded itchy, nervous.
    She started walking again. None of her business ……
    “How the