Page 46 of Wind Called

“Let me go into the kitchen to find something to write with. The hazards of being in a house that isn’t yours.”

She chuckled slightly, and Marc had to admit she was playing it pretty cool. Based on what she’d just said, it would be impossible to know for sure whether she was at the ranch…or over at his vacation rental.

Then she headed into the kitchen, where he knew for a fact there were a couple of pens in the “everything” drawer near the fridge. He followed a pace or two behind, then hurried over to the drawer so he could extract one of the pens in question, along with a small notepad.

Bellamy shot him a grateful smile as he set them down on the countertop for her, then picked up the pen.

“Okay, I’m ready.” Another of those pauses while Levi spoke, and she responded, “Clint Greaves. Got it.”

Mr. Greaves, Marc assumed, was the vortex specialist. What else could he be with a name like that?

“And he’s expecting my call?” Bellamy asked next. A few seconds of silence as she listened to Levi’s answer, and then she said, “Okay, we’ll call him right away. Thanks.” She touched her finger to the screen to end the call and looked over at Marc. “Well, he found our guy. Or at least, he found someone he thinks can help us.”

“Then I guess we should get in contact,” he replied, even though he figured that was what she already planned to do next.

“On it,” she said, then opened the keypad on her phone so she could type in the number she’d written down a moment earlier. “Mr. Greaves? Hi, I’m Bellamy McAllister and — ”

She stopped there as though she’d been cut off. Her mouth pursed, but it seemed she was making herself listen to the person on the other end even though she didn’t appear to be too happy about being interrupted.

“Okay,” she said at length. “We’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

And she ended the call and looked over at Marc.

“He wants to meet us at Crescent Moon Ranch,” she told him, and he found himself frowning.

“Where’s that?”

“Down by Red Rock Crossing,” she replied. “It’s a park owned by the Forest Service. Kind of popular, so I’m surprised Mr. Greaves wants to meet there. I would have assumed he’d have something more private in mind.”

“And there’s a vortex at this Crescent Moon Ranch?”

She shrugged. “I think I might have seen one on the map your grandmother showed us at her house, but I can’t remember for sure — I was looking more in the Secret Mountain wilderness area. Anyway, we need to get going, because it’s going to take us at least ten minutes to drive over there.”

That seemed to decide things. Bellamy hurried into the bedroom and grabbed her purse so she could stow her phone inside, and then they both went into the garage and climbed into his truck before heading over to their meeting place. Since Marc didn’t know exactly where he was going, he just told the nav, “Crescent Moon Ranch, Sedona,” and the vehicle headed out of the neighborhood where his Airbnb was located and down to the main drag without any hesitation.

As Bellamy had warned him, their drive took most of the fifteen minutes she’d promised on the phone, mainly because the second half of the trip wound through an area with houses on large parcels of land where the speed limit dropped to only twenty miles an hour. Eventually, though, he saw the signs directing them to Crescent Moon Ranch and Red Rock Crossing, so he took control of the truck and guided it the rest of the way.

Or rather, most of the way, since they had to stop at a ranger shack on the way in and pay fifteen bucks for the privilege of going into the park.

“Did Mr. Greaves warn you about the fee?” Marc asked with a grin as they pulled away from the shack and into the parking lot proper.

“No,” Bellamy replied, looking somewhat annoyed. “He sort of left out that part. But I’ll pay you back.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

She lifted an eyebrow, and he chuckled.

“Okay, you can buy me a drink after we’re done messing around with the vortexes.”

Now she cracked a little bit of a smile, telling him she probably wasn’t quite as irritated as she was pretending to be.

Or maybe she was just really looking forward to that drink.

“It’s a deal.”

A few cars were parked here and there, not too many, which wasn’t that much of a surprise, considering it was a Tuesday afternoon and late enough in the day that it was too hot to go hiking unless you planned to walk in the creek for a good part of your journey and stay cool that way. At the far end of the lot was a Jeep Wrangler probably older than Marc, with a tall, thin man standing near the driver-side door.

“You think that’s him?” Bellamy murmured.

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