Desert Wives (9781615952267) by Betty Webb Page B

and Rebecca.” I sounded braver than I felt.
    He grunted. “Well, at least there’s one polygamist you don’t have to worry about up there. Captain Kryzinski brought Abel Corbett back in here this morning, demanding that we turn Rebecca over. That guy is really steamed at you.”
    â€œWhich guy? Kryzinski or Abel?”
    â€œBoth, I guess.” He sounded glum.
    â€œI don’t care how steamed they are just as long as Rebecca’s safe. And she is safe, right?”
    â€œOf course. And she’s going to stay that way, too.” He paused for a second, then added, “I went down to the jail this afternoon to see Esther. She’s doing about as well as can be expected. I tried to cheer her up but I don’t think it worked.”
    I thought for a moment. “How many trips to the jail does this make for you? Six? Seven?”
    He mumbled something I didn’t quite catch and my worries increased. Jimmy had a bad track record when it came to his love life. He always seemed to fall for felons. The very fact that he’d obviously taken a shine to Esther did not bode well for her innocence.
    I opened my mouth to lecture him, then thought better of it. Telling someone whom they should or should not love was about as profitable as telling the sun not to rise.
    â€œWatch yourself,” I just said, and left it at that.
    Mutual warning session duly accomplished, Jimmy filled me in on the day’s events. There had been another fire at South Mountain Tire Storage.
    â€œIt was just a shed this time. The tires didn’t go up, but I hear the folks from ATF are real antsy. They might be ready to make an arrest.”
    I wasn’t hopeful. Even if the feds arrested Miles Alder, his dad would probably bond him out. In Arizona even people suspected of mass murder were set free to walk the streets if they had enough money.
    â€œStay on it,” I said. “Firebugs always lose control at some point. Maybe we’ll catch this one before anybody gets hurt.”
    I started to ask if Dusty had called the office, but changed my mind. I had more important things to do than worry about my own love life.

Chapter 7
    â€œRemember, keep your eyes on the ground and never contradict a male,” my new “husband” warned me as his ’86 Chevy pickup trundled southeast along the private dirt road straddling the Utah/Arizona state line. The evening’s lengthening shadows made the creosote bushes sprinkled along the flat desert floor appear twice their size, almost monstrous.
    â€œI’ve been practicing,” I said, breathing deeply, trying to quell my panic.
    Since leaving West Wind Guest Ranch, we’d dropped enough in altitude to make all the difference between tree-bordered streams and an arid no-man’s land. The terrain alone helped explain why so few women escaped from Purity. Nothing other than miles of sand, rock, and creosote bushes stretched to the south. True, the blazing reds and oranges of the Vermillion Cliffs rising steep-sided on the north furnished some visual drama, but otherwise, the landscape resembled the surface of the moon. And it functioned little more hospitably. The Arizona Strip was an alien landscape governed by men who recognized no laws but their own. The polygamists had chosen their paradise carefully. Because of the area’s remote bleakness, tourists, whose curiosity might have proven problematic, never did more than pass quickly through.
    Now I had willingly entered this desolation again, but this time “married” to a man I had just met. What if Saul’s helpful demeanor had baser motives? After all, he’d told me the polygamists routinely used lies and manipulation to entice prospective brides. Had he followed suit with me? And would he, frustrated from years of an unhappy marriage, creep into my room tonight? I closed my eyes and counted backward from one hundred. It didn’t help.
    â€œLena, can you