Page 78 of Red Boar's Baby

Diana unlocked his phone and didn’t remark on what they both knew, that this was her birthdate. Instead she opened the text app. There was an absolute sea of texts from his aunts: a picture of Em covered in mashed potatoes, a picture of Em not covered in mashed potatoes, Em asleep on a blanket ...

“It looks like Em’s doing fine with your family,” she said, suppressing a smile. There were also a lot ofQuinn, answer your phoneandCeCe, are you all right?that she tried to skim over, looking for anything important. “You have some texts from Caine. Do you want to read them?”

“Read ‘em to me.”

“You’re sure?”

“No secrets,” he said with a quick smile that implied,No secrets between us again. Not ever again.“If it’s about the case, it affects you too.”

“Okay, well—there’s one from a half hour ago, probably while we were shopping, asking if you’re at the ranch. Then a few minutes later he says Delgado is heading out to the ranch soon because there’s something you need to see.”

“Huh. Tell him we’re on the way there too, and we’ll see her when she gets there. And ask him if he can tell me what this very important ‘something’ is.”

Diana typed the message. The answer came back a minute later. “He says you need to see it to believe it.”

Costa sighed. “Typical Caine. I’m not gonna worry about it now.”

She was going to put the phone away, but she had noticed something in one of the text chains that she couldn’t resist tapping to confirm. Then she laughed. “Is this me? Do you really have me in your phone as Acme No. 1?”

Costa looked abruptly embarrassed. “Uh, I forgot about that.”

“Why on Earth?”

“Because—looking at your name made me—” He swallowed. “It was easier to keep things how we wanted it, that is, fake, if I didn’t have to look at your name every time you called me.”

“Oh,” Diana whispered. Thinking of how she reacted to seeing Costa’s name in her texts, she could understand perfectly. She relocked the phone and put it down on her thigh. “But why Acme No. 1? Is that like in the Road Runner cartoons with the coyote?”

“Yeah.” Costa flashed her a quick grin. “I don’t know why it made me think of you. I guess you out flying your helicopter around in the desert made me think of the canyons from those cartoons. Is that ridiculous?”

“Yes,” Diana told him. She curled her hand around the phone. Then, on impulse, she reached out and laid her other hand on his thigh, letting it rest there. “But it’s also sweet. I like it. I do hope my helicopters have always been a little more effective than Wile E. Coyote’s devices, though.”

He put his hand over hers, warm and comforting. “They’ve got a much better operator at the controls.”

* * *

The familiar landscape of the hills and canyons around the ranch seemed to rise up and welcome Costa home, folding him into its rumpled, rocky embrace. It felt as if nothing bad could happen to him here.

He knew that was false; a lot of bad things had happened here. His parents’ deaths. Diana leaving ...

But most of the bad had been elsewhere. Marco dying. All of the crime and ugliness that he dealt with every day. The ranch was a refuge, and he hoped on some deep level that Diana thought of it that way, too.

The thing he had come to realize, though, was that he never wanted it to be a trap for her. He remembered Diana’s mother, a thin, unhappy woman who had disliked her ranch life and had died young from heavy smoking and drinking. At the time, Costa couldn’t understand Diana’s fears of ending up like her mother. He had seen Diana as too strong, too brave, too self-determined to ever let other people run roughshod over her dreams.

Now he understood much better. In his work with the SCB, he had seen too many women—and many men, too—trapped by life choices, by family obligations, or simply by rural poverty. He saw all too well what Diana had feared would happen to her (a too-young marriage, all her dreams stolen out of her hands). He would love to say he would never have done that to her, but how could he be sure? They had both been terribly young. Neither of them had the life experience to truly understand what they were signing up for, or what they were giving up.

By walking away, Diana had probably done the best possible thing for both of them.

And now .... He glanced sideways at Diana’s profile as she looked out the window, relaxed and calm to an extent that amazed him after all she’d been through. Her hand still rested on his thigh, with his own covering it.

Now they were older, maybe not wiser, but certainly more experienced.

We know who we are. We know what we want.

And he wanted Diana. He had never stopped wanting her. All these years, he’d bounced off a series of short-term relationships and never quite understood why he couldn’t find the long-term love he was looking for, and finally gave up on it—what he had wanted, what he had been looking for, was her. He couldn’t find it because he hadn’t been looking in the right place.

Now he knew. He would have waited a hundred years for her.

In the end, he’d only had to wait twenty.

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