Sunrise Crossing. Jodi Thomas

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       CHAPTER SIX

      Dallas in cadet-gray rain

      PARKER LOVED THE gallery after dark. The lights of a rainy Dallas surrounded her as they glowed through the forty-foot wall of glass that framed the building. Paintings seemed to float between the city and the rich, earthy reds of Saltillo tiles.

      Somehow the art seemed to come alive as shadows bordered each creation’s elegant grace. Her gallery was a still, unpolluted kind of paradise that always made Parker feel safe and comfortable.

      The possibility of dying couldn’t reach her here. She could push the prospect from her mind and just breathe.

      She took one last walk through her world. She almost had everything ready. Her staff believed she had a scouting trip in the planning stages but she was, for the first time in her life, running away to have an adventure. To paint. To live. To help a friend.

      For years, she’d been saying she’d take off when everything slowed down. She’d go to Crossroads, Texas, where she’d bought a farmhouse almost ten years ago. Her someday dream had always been to paint. She’d been driving from Dallas to Albuquerque one summer on the back roads and seen a For Sale sign hooked to a barbed-wire fence in the middle of nowhere.

      On a whim she’d turned off a road that was posted as private. The land, if it had ever been tamed, had gone back to nature. One edge dipped down into a canyon with rich earth shades that took her breath away. The other direction spread over rolling prairie spotted with wildflowers and clusters of trees surrounding small ponds. She remembered seeing the little two-story farmhouse peeking out from behind a huge oak planted at the bend in the lane leading up to the place.

      The old house was perfect. Small, with an unfinished attic that could serve as a studio. High ceilings with good light streaming in. Tall windows in the back with a canyon view. Heaven at the end of a private road. A painter’s hideaway. The rancher next door owned the small chunk of land and had said he needed money to pay taxes. She’d made an offer and he didn’t even bother to counter. Within hours she’d bought the place, hired a couple to clean once a month and headed back to the city.

      Her someday place would be waiting for her.

      A few years later, the rancher offered to lease the small field that bordered his place for a percentage of the profits. She said she would if he’d use the money to keep up her house and the road they shared. “Whatever you pay out, spend it on repairs and paint,” she’d said, knowing she had little time to even think about the farm. She was almost thirty and had had a business to build.

      “Will do, lady,” he’d said.

      A month later he’d called and asked what color she wanted the outside painted.

      “The color of the Texas sky in summer. And, cowboy—” she’d forgotten his name by then “—when you have enough in my balance to paint the inside, don’t bother to call me—just paint each room the color of a different flower that grows on my land.”

      “Will do,” he’d said again and had hung up without saying goodbye.

      But Parker knew the colors didn’t really matter. She’d probably go the rest of her life seeing the place only in her mind. It’d be blue, like the sky. One room would be the yellow of sunflowers, another the violet of morning glories or the scarlet in Indian paintbrush.

      The cowboy never called again, and the house slowly became more of an imaginary place in Parker’s thoughts than a reality.

      Until now. Maybe, with Tori visiting, Parker might actually start creating her own work. She smiled. With her luck, the cranky cowboy would be color-blind and she’d have to repaint the whole house before she even set up a canvas.

      The buzzer on the gallery’s main door pulled her from her thoughts. Parker moved close enough to hear the security guard, but stayed in the shadows.

      “I’ll need IDs,” she heard the guard yell through the glass. “Then I’ll see if Miss Lacey is available.”

      Two men in suits stepped forward and slapped what looked like very official badges on the glass.

      After talking to someone on the phone for a minute, the guard nodded at the suits, but didn’t open the door.

      Parker moved farther into the shadows as he hurried toward her.

      “Miss Lacey, two FBI agents want to talk to you. I can tell them you’ve already gone if you like.”

      “No. I’ll talk to them. Bring them to my office.” Parker smiled; she’d been expecting this. Tori had been gone for over a week, so it was about time they got around to asking questions. And if she wasn’t willing to answer them, she might raise their suspicion. Parker worked with easily a hundred artists, and Victoria Vilanie was only one. There was no reason to believe Parker had anything to do with or knew anything about her disappearance. But she had a feeling it was the press that really wanted answers.

      The guard nodded and turned to the door.

      She watched the two men moving toward her. One was taller, older. The other was beefy, like he’d overdone the workouts. Neither man even glanced at the art on either side of them.

      Ten minutes later, she’d answered all their standard questions. Yes, she’d met Victoria Vilanie in person once at a conference in LA, and she believed they might have been on the same plane back to Dallas. She got off then, but seemed to remember Victoria staying on the flight heading to Detroit. Yes, she knew how talented the woman was. No, she didn’t know if Tori was unstable. No, they were not friends. No, she didn’t know if the artist took drugs. Yes, she did keep Victoria’s number on file.

      She passed them the form that she asked all her artists to fill out. The younger man looked over it and handed the paper back. Obviously, she had nothing that they didn’t already have in their records.