Tag Archives: Jeff Posey

Part 2 of Chapter 7 from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold, a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

Then Williams grabbed Reeves by the shirt and pulled his face close. “She carried your baby, didn’t she?”

Reeves shrugged. “She said so.”

“Then you want him dead as much as I do.”

Reeves didn’t care one way or the other. Truth be told, which he almost never did, he felt relief when he saw Pam lying dead. He’d only been with her because Williams offered him money to get her pregnant with a grandson, something Oley obviously wasn’t man enough to do. But things had gone awry when Pam said she wanted to be rid of Oley. Wanted to divorce him, but worried about her father’s reaction. Why Oley killed her mystified Reeves. Made more sense for her to kill him. But maybe Oley didn’t see any other way out. Trevor Williams was a man who liked to have control. For all Reeves knew, he had Oley by the balls as firmly as he had Reeves. He had no sympathy for either of them. They could all die as far as he cared. The only reason he put up with Williams was money. With only a fraction of Williams’s wealth, Reeves could live like a king.

“You do this for me,” said Williams, still clutching Reeves’s shirt, “before the police get to him. Make him pay. And I’ll…I’ll make you my heir. Like her son was supposed to be.” He pulled at Reeves’s shirt, his face that of a wild-eyed madman. “You hear me?”

Reeves nodded, leaning away.

Pam’s father released his shirt and raised his finger. “But only if you bring me his head. I want to see his face. Dead. You understand? My entire fortune for his head.”

His head. Reeves wondered how in the world he would transport Oley’s head to the crazy old man. In a plastic bag? No, a cooler would work better. With dry ice. But first, he had to find him. A job made difficult because he couldn’t stop thinking about inheriting the estate of Trevor Williams. That would make him one of the top ten richest men in Texas. Running his pipsqueak little marketing firm would never earn him that kind of payout, no matter how hard he worked. For the chance to step into the shoes of Trevor Williams, he would bring in the heads of a hundred men. Thousands. It’s what he wanted since childhood. He’d always been destined for riches.

Williams stood with his face screwed into pure pain and surveyed the room, Pam the centerpiece. “Make it look like Oley did it,” he said.

“Already does.”

“Then call the police.” Williams began to walk out.

“Wait,” Reeves said.

“What?”

“Your footprints.” He pointed down. Williams had stepped in blood and left tracks. “You have to stay and explain them to the police.”

Williams lost it and went on a tirade, cursing Tom Oley and the police and then finally calmed, breathing hard, and nodded. Reeves dialed 911. Detectives questioned them carefully. Reeves had the impression they didn’t fully believe his story. They seemed puzzled by the bookend in Pam’s dead hand. Had she tried to cave in Oley’s head with that, and he killed her with it instead? He didn’t really care. But it made some sense.

The next day, the unblinking eye of the press outside every door, Williams showed Reeves a will leaving everything to him. But with no signature. “His head, Reeves. Bring me his head. Then I’ll sign this.” He didn’t tell Reeves that the great Trevor Williams fortune had more debt than assets. His only hope of staying solvent lay in that deep well prospect Oley put together. With Oley out of the way, the operating majority of the deal fell back to Williams. Pam was supposed to have eliminated Oley. But the poor girl messed up and now he had to rely on the idiot Reeves.

After Reeves left, Williams thought about hiring another man to tail him. Erase that loose end after he took care of Oley. The phone rang, yet another problem with the deep well project. With Oley a suspect in Pam’s death and his disappearance, the investors were getting cold feet. If Williams couldn’t mollify them, he’d have to front up their share of cash, and he didn’t have it. He tried to talk them down, then consulted with his chief financial officer about squeezing more cash from his Dodge Financial holdings, his final option. His life had become hell.

Meanwhile, Reeves methodically went through his contacts, thousands of them, the result of years of partying and schmoozing. Asked people to look out for Tom Oley. Anyone who paid attention to the news knew why. He worked email and phone for sixteen hours a day. It had been his old straight-laced boring-as-hell college roommate who hit pay dirt.

Reeves walked to a whiteboard covered with last week’s marketing ideas that didn’t make it. He erased them and drew the crude outline of the United States. He dotted Dallas, Cincinnati, Atlanta, New York, Pagosa Springs, all the places Oley had been after the murder. Why Pagosa? Maybe because it didn’t make any sense. The best place to hide is where there’s no reason to look. The only way Reeves knew where Oley might be was the luck of the pilot.

Reeves flashed to Pam. The image of the bloody handprint on her back, the motion it must have taken for Oley to push her down hard enough to crack her skull on the corner of the coffee table, then the heavy bookend as the coup de grâce, placed to make her look like the attacker. Why? Oley had his own wealth, though Reeves knew Trevor Williams financed a lot, maybe even all, of Oley’s operations. But still. Would that have boxed Oley in enough to make him kill Pam rather than divorce her?

Reeves shook his head. Maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe it was the baby. Oley knew it wasn’t his. Maybe he even knew it belonged to Reeves.

He nodded his head. That’s it. In a fit of anger, the cuckolded husband slaughtered the cheating wife. Old story. With a good attorney, he might even find sympathy from a jury. But not from Reeves. He must be a hunter without mercy. He pressed his lips together and grinned. A head hunter.

Standing in his office, his fists clenched in front of him, the office manager walked by and gave him a quizzical look.

Reeves relaxed his arms. “Need to take some time off,” he said aloud and followed the office manager. Told her he would be out for a couple of weeks. Go into the mountains. Take it easy. She smiled and said that was the best idea he’d had in ages.

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

Part 1 of Chapter 7 from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold, a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

“Is that him?” the voice on the cell phone asked.

Reeves enlarged the photo on his computer. It could be. With no hair. Hard to be sure.

“What makes you think it’s him?” Reeves asked.

“Body language and voice,” said the man, a private pilot who flew rich Wall Street clients around in a Cessna Citation he doted on like an only child. He’d been at a bar in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, when he thought he saw Tom Oley, shaved clean as an egg. He took a picture and sent it to Reeves, his old college roommate. “I’ve met him, remember? The party?”

What constituted “the party” to the pilot meant “a party” to Reeves. He had no idea which party the pilot meant. Didn’t really care. Reeves tolerated him only because it was cool to know a pilot for the rich and not so famous.

“How long are you there for?” asked Reeves.

“A week. But could be longer. Or shorter. You know how these people are, especially this one I got now. Rich-bastard stock market day trader, which is a class of weird sons-a-bitches let me tell you. But this guy’s gotta be the weirdest. Arrogant as God and looks like trailer trash. Hangs out with a bunch of ugly mugs with stupid nicknames, like he broke ’em out of prison or something. Scares the hell outta me to get off the ground with these people in the back.”

Reeves didn’t care if the pilot hauled around angels of the Lord or Satan himself. But he sure wanted to find Tom Oley. He imagined the face of Pam’s father when he saw that bloody handprint on the back of her nightshirt. It could have gone either way for Reeves at that moment. Fortunately, it had gone right, and he would not squander his opportunity.

“See if you can find out anything about him,” Reeves told the pilot. “The name he’s using. Where he’s staying.”

“I might can do that.”

Reeves muttered his thanks and closed the call.

He leaned back in his office chair. If this turned out to be Oley, what would he do? Call in help? Handle it himself? He shook his head and sighed. No, he didn’t trust anyone else. He had more brains and drive than anybody he could find to hire, but not the right skills. That had its own risks. He shook his head again, unhappy with his lack of good choices.

His mind played again walking into Pam’s house after she didn’t answer the door. He saw the scene and froze. So much blood, Pam’s hair matted in it, her face ruined, ribbons of red spatter from the corner of the coffee table. A pair of empty shoes beside her body.

Reeves rarely examined his own emotions. Disliked emotion. Took pride in his lack of it. He didn’t rush to Pam’s side and try to resuscitate her. Too late for that. And it would disturb the evidence. Crime-scene investigators would want everything pristine. He stood listening for anyone else in the house. Maybe the murderer was still in the house, left his shoes and went upstairs to clean and change. He crept up the carpeted steps, careful to walk on the outside edges in case they held evidence he couldn’t see. But the place was empty. Oley had escaped. Killed Pam and ran, the gutless bastard. Reeves hated him from the moment he met him. Such the pet of Trevor Williams. He hoped the police found him and put him on death row. Reeves would gladly testify against him.

From the top of the stairs he looked at the scene, the normal everyday living room frozen in time with the imprint of murder. He pulled his cell phone to call 911, but changed his mind and dialed Williams instead.

When Williams saw the body of his only child, he reacted strangely. Said nothing, clenched his fists, his face reddened. “Oley,” he said.

“Looks like it.”

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

Chapter 6 from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold, a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

At dinner, Elby and Garvin sat at their table on JJ’s back porch, quiet with each other, talked out, the river rushing past with an occasional deep dollop and clunk of shifting stones.

“That fried codfish they had here sure was good,” said Garvin.

“They don’t have it anymore.”

“They don’t have that elk steak, either. What the hell’s going on with this place?”

“Just order anything. We’re not here for food, anyway. We’re here to see this psychopath you’ve hooked us up with.” She cringed at her own word choice. Settle down, she told herself. Be civil like you promised. She gently bit the tip of her tongue.

“We’re about to spend a week or so looking for Anasazi signs. That makes me hungry. I’m getting the pork chops. And a Caesar salad. And calamari for appetizer—but I’m going to tell them not to overcook ’em. Those little squid bodies cook real fast….”

A shaved-headed man walked to the table and stared at them.

Elby turned and her mouth opened. “Oh. My. God.” She punched Uncle Marsh on the forearm and pointed. “Please don’t tell me that’s Baxter.”

Garvin turned and looked. “Yep. That’s Baxter. Baxter, this is Elby, my niece.”

“We’ve met,” said Baxter.

Garvin looked back and forth between them. “I can see that.” He looked at Elby “How’d that happen?”

“Friday night. When I went out. I told you. To listen to the bluegrass band.”

Garvin continued to look back and forth. “Maybe I should’ve gone with you. Looks like you two needed a referee.”

“Well, you didn’t. I had a nice little…chat…with this man here about family secrets, though he never told me his name.”

“You never told me yours, either,” said Baxter.

“You didn’t ask.”

“And you didn’t drink your shot of tequila.” Baxter flashed at her, but forced himself to soften it with a grin. And relax his body. As long as she didn’t cock her arm like she would throw another drink at him.

“Sometimes there are better uses for tequila than drinking it,” she said.

“Now I’ve got to stop you there,” said Garvin. “There is no better use for tequila than drinking it unless it’s that bottom-shelf stuff.”

“I agree,” said Baxter. “But your niece here seems to like to use it to end conversations.” He kept his grin, unsure of what the girl might do.

“I don’t know what you two are talking about,” said Garvin.

“We’re just a little surprised to see each other,” said Baxter. “I’m sure we’ll be able to fix that problem when you and I leave—just the two of us—on our trip.”

“Yeah, well…,” started Garvin.

“Oh, that’s fine with me,” said Elby. “I didn’t plan to actually go with you. No, what I’m doing is taking my own trip up there, and keeping an eye on you. This is the last uncle I’ve got. I don’t want him to go on a wild-goose chase without me. Gold fever is a life-threatening disease.”

“See, I told you we didn’t…,” said Garvin.

“Wait. Wait.” Baxter held up a hand and Garvin stopped talking. Elby and Baxter locked eyes. “I don’t mind. You can come along. I’ve got a family secret to unlock. I told you that much already. And I like Professor Garvin. He reminds me of my grandfather. So I understand why you’re worried.” She would be nothing but trouble. But he could sense that resisting her only made her more determined.

Elby narrowed her eyes and waited for the vile response sure to come out of her mouth. Between her father and two or three others she allowed to get close enough, she learned to treat men like poisonous snakes. Yet, she felt a sudden warming in her heart. This man she wanted to hate compared Uncle Marsh to his grandfather. “So what would you do,” she asked, “if your grandfather took off with a stranger into the mountains searching for a fairy tale treasure?”

Baxter nodded his head. “Follow him.”

Elby smiled and he felt like he emerged from under a cloud and a ray of sunshine struck him. No, he thought, imagining a cartoon character, Wile E. Coyote, skidding to a stop. Must resist at all costs. Especially if she’s going up into the high country with them. This woman will be nothing but trouble.

“Ah, okay, good then,” said Garvin. “Sit down here, Baxter, and let’s eat. I’m starving.”

“I’m not really hungry,” he lied. He wanted to get away. Think about how to keep from losing his mind to this girl. Concentrate on gold and the authorities that chased him and his dead wife. He couldn’t have anything to do with a woman now. Had to cover himself in steel. “And I’ve got lots of packing to do, all that new stuff. I’ll see you in the morning. Five o’clock.” He looked at Elby, nodded to her, then turned away.

“I can’t believe that’s your Baxter guy.”

“What is it with you two? And where’s that waitress?”

“I’m not hungry either.” She stood, wanting to walk and think.

Garvin looked up at her. “Am I the only one who has the sense to eat a decent meal before we….”

“Are you taking your truck?”

“What? Oh. Yeah, he’s parking his in our garage and we’re taking my truck up. Leaving at five-thirty. You know how I like to get an early….”

“I’ll take my own car.”

“Why do you always do that?”

“It’s good to have two cars at the trailhead.”

“Because of that one time.”

“Twice,” she said.

“That time with the battery doesn’t count.”

“But three flat tires do?”

“They shouldn’t have gone out like that. I didn’t run over anything. I don’t know what happened.”

“I’m going back to the house. Enjoy your pig meat.” She walked away.

Garvin shook his head and worried about the girl. Not so much because of Baxter anymore. Elby was tough beyond measure, and that made him proud. But deep inside, she was still broken. In spite of his best efforts, he hadn’t been able to heal her deep places. He didn’t know how. She didn’t either, obviously. But sooner or later she had to do something to unbreak herself. When she did, he didn’t know what would happen.

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

Chapter 5 from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold, a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

All afternoon, Elby thought about the change in Uncle Marsh. Or her perception of a change. They’d never had riches within their reach before, and maybe that disrupted things. Like a drug you don’t want overtly, but secretly crave. A normal human reaction to a pile of gold within reach of the imagination.

She even found herself daydreaming about it as she took a long walk before dinner. Before meeting this mysterious Baxter. She had to get away from Uncle Marsh and settle her thoughts. But instead of disciplined thinking, her mind whirled with the power a windfall of gold and money could bring. An image flashed in her mind. An old Victorian mansion with a sign out front: “Elby’s Safe House.”

What the hell did that mean? Safe from what? Her mind filled the house with children. The kind of children whose faces grew taut in worry when they should have been relaxed in innocence, who smiled and laughed and played, but only on the outside, their insides always full of hurt and burn. The kind of child she had been before Uncle Marsh took her in. Before he let her into his own version of a safe house.

At the top of Reservoir Hill where she walked, she found herself in tears. Why? Had she so easily succumbed to gold fever? Was it as easy as that to lose yourself in impossible dreams? But the image of that house full of children seared her heart. It erupted full-blown and spontaneous as if her subconscious had been constructing it for ages. It felt like one of her creative moments back when she worked her art. She used to collect things from the forest and combine them with torn fabric and paper, rough string and fiber, and put them together with a spare and judicious application of paint. Like one might collect broken and torn children and make them into something beautiful and interesting on the outside, and healed just enough on the inside to tolerate being alive.

Shortly after moving to Pagosa with Uncle Marsh, she found a heart-shaped rock broken nearly down the middle. On a board, she painted a hazy brown background fading to black at the top, squeezed a gob of red paint onto it, and then turned it on its side until the red ran down in a drip. After it dried, she glued the broken heart onto the red glob. The image of it haunted her so much she hid it, but she saw it in her mind at times. It kept her awake at night off and on for years.

Elby felt as torn and broken as the bleeding heart-shaped rock, her two selves (were there only two?) in full skirmish, even outright war at times. The graceful, self-assured veneer she grudgingly built and polished under the persistent and protective eye of Uncle Marsh versus the angry, raw interior that didn’t trust men and never would. She didn’t want to be hateful with men most of the time. It just came out that way when she opened her mouth, when she opened the crack of her heart and the blood flowed.

The academic in her forced a calm, disciplined internal debate as she walked the trails on Reservoir Hill. Intellectually, Elby knew how exciting finding a new genuine Anasazi marker outside its known range would be for Uncle Marsh. She used to get that feeling of being on the trail of something new and important in her literary research before she lost her drive. She remembered the energy that kept her up eighteen hours a day for weeks digging through the old records of remote European churches and museums looking for those lost and forgotten nuggets, the intellectual equivalent of hidden gold.

Much younger, before her parents died, she’d sensed that joy of academic pursuit in Uncle Marsh before he retired. Before he took Elby in. The stark contrast between him and his sister, her mother, and her father.

It’s possible—no, more than that, it’s probable—that the gold didn’t light up Uncle Marsh as much as the idea of finding that Anasazi symbol did. She sighed. She wanted that to be the reason he seemed so animated. It seemed more pure somehow than the rabid pursuit of gold.

Her father, he wouldn’t care a thing for something as esoteric as an undiscovered Anasazi glyph. In the pursuit of easy money, he would have gleefully destroyed such a thing to get his claws on what he wanted, all he really cared about, in spite of his thin coat of religion and holiness.

And yet she felt what he must have felt. That same pull of how much better a sudden fortune could make life, not just for yourself, but for others. She shook her head. How arrogant. How full of ego. How reprehensible.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to relive the time when Uncle Marsh found that new Anasazi petroglyph at Chimney Rock. He told the story dozens of times, giving it more texture and exaggeration every time. But he never drifted from the root storyline. Elby leaned against the rough bark of a tree and imagined it.

During his third year of guiding tours at the Chimney Rock Archaeological Area, he started understanding the alignments with the sun and planets and stars. He began standing for hours at certain locations, watching the shadows move.

One day while giving a tour and explaining the shifting shadows, he stopped talking, seized by a sudden realization. As he told it, he grasped how an Anasazi skywatcher would see that very place. He spotted a series of low cliffs on a foothill far away and pronounced that there would be a spiral sun marker there. The retired archaeologist for the area happened to be within hearing and stepped in, shut Uncle Marsh down right in front of the tour group. Said they’d scoured the area, including those cliffs, and there were no pictographs of any kind in that direction.

Without a word, Uncle Marsh set off and hiked to the cliffs, found the dim remains of a solar spiral, took pictures, and hiked back in time to show them to a few members of the original tour group. One happened to have a daughter who worked at The New York Times, and Marshall Garvin became a local hero, the man who could interpret the sun like the Anasazi.

She remembered how energized he had been from all the attention. That’s what he wants, she told herself. More than gold. She decided to go softer on him. If there’s another Anasazi marker up there, she could certainly see how it would draw him. Give him another shot at being the hero, the savant of ancient rock art.

That gave her all the more reason to want to go along on his trip with this Baxter fellow. She had hiked these mountains since she arrived as a pre-teen, always at the heels of Uncle Marsh until she learned to out-walk him. Since the beginning, he tried to walk hard and long enough to make her drop off, but she never succumbed. She felt it as a point of pride. As they both aged, it had reversed. Garvin now refused to fall off her heel, and she liked to push him, make the old man work. It had become a game, one they hadn’t played in years.

She walked back home feeling better but still whirling, her inside-outside selves still merry-go-rounding on the swivel-point of possibilities a treasure of gold would bring. She would try, she promised herself, to be civil to this Baxter. To hear him out. To help Uncle Marsh become the rock art hero again.

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

Chapter 4, Part 1, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold, a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

Elby sat at the café waiting for Uncle Marsh. Each time the front door jingled she looked up, but only tourists came through. No locals. She wrapped her hands around a warm mug of coffee and people-watched out the picture window. A sullen teenage girl walked with her hands in her pockets behind her parents. Elby smiled and remembered her first time coming to Pagosa.

After her parents died in the wreck, Uncle Marsh left his university job and promptly moved here with Elby. She hated it and did everything she could to make life miserable for him. She ran away and hid in the woods all night. Tried hanging out with Hispanic guys who blared Mexican music from their car speakers. She saved her money and bought push-up bras with short-shorts and high-heel shoes. Her parents would have died if they hadn’t already been dead.

But Uncle Marsh did things in an infuriatingly different way. After the overnight runaway, he bought her a better parka so, he said, she would be warmer next time. When she began wearing outrageous teen fashion, he found catalogs of even more outrageous clothes and told her to buy what she wanted. She quickly spent $150, then tired of the whole thing and went back to blue jeans.

One time she threatened to get a tattoo, so he asked around and found the best tattoo artist at a shop in Farmington. Elby called Uncle Marsh’s bluff and rode all the way there with him, stood in line, watched a girl get started on a tattoo, and then freaked out and changed her mind. She wanted to scream because Uncle Marsh didn’t say a word. Until they drove back past Chimney Rock and then he started talking and wouldn’t shut up. He had just become a tour guide there, and he loved making up and telling Anasazi stories.

That had been almost twenty years ago. She realized he hadn’t told any Anasazi stories lately. He’d become more quiet and tired. And depressed? Had he become a sad old man?

After her rebellion, she settled down and made peace with Uncle Marsh, became friends. Because he always treated her like an equal, she came out of childhood with relative ease, considering what had happened to her. She developed a layer of grace over a heart of anger and uncertainty. Uncle Marsh had done as much as he could.

When she saw his lanky frame coming up the river walk toward the
café, she smiled. How could a man who walks with exuberance like that be depressed? She sometimes tried to categorize her feelings for Uncle Marsh, but he sprawled over several: beloved grandfather, best friend, crazy old man, infuriating psychologist, Zen master, professor. The perfect man? Hardly. He’d never married. Never seriously been involved with a woman (or a man, she thought with a tiny involuntary snort of laughter), which made him all the more alluring in her mind. Kind of a neuter, like herself. If she could find a younger version of Uncle Marsh, she would take his arm and hold on.

“There you are,” said Uncle Marsh.

Elby beamed at him.

Marshall Garvin signaled the waitress for coffee, but she already had it in hand, coming toward him.

“Elby’s a cup ahead of you,” said the waitress with a wide smile for Uncle Marsh.

“Well then, you drink slow and I’ll drink fast,” he said to Elby. “And you don’t let the well run dry, young woman,” he said to the waitress with a wink.

“Oh, I know all about you heavy afternoon drinkers,” the waitress said with a laugh.

Elby made a “yikes!” face. The waitress’s husband was one of the town’s most notorious drunks (and a taxidermist, which Elby found not only disgusting, but possibly immoral).

“Got news,” Marshall said when the waitress left.

Elby focused her attention on him, her hands still wrapped around her warm mug.

“New fellow in town. Baxter. Know that name?”

Elby wrinkled her forehead. She said it sounded familiar.

“Old-timers recognize it in a snap. Anyway, this fellow’s great-great-granddaddy was one of the founders of this town. Jedediah Aberdene Baxter.” Garvin took a few gulps of coffee, compared his level with Elby’s, and gulped some more. “Dammit! That’s too hot to drink fast.” He puffed through his mouth. Elby shook her head at him. “That’s why I never married me a woman like that waitress there. Not even thoughtful enough to let it cool a bit before serving it to a man. If this were a McDonald’s, I’d sue.”

Elby smiled and chuckled at his old-crotchety-man routine. She learned long ago his favored form of humor involved parody and sarcasm, delivered in a dry white-trash accent.

“So what about this Baxter fellow?” she prompted.

“Says there’s an Anasazi rock art symbol up beyond Fourmile. I told him he’s crazy. Nothing has ever been documented up there. But he says he’s got a journal from this Jedediah Aberdene Baxter that says so, though he wouldn’t show it to me.”

“He came to our house?”

“Yesterday right after lunch. You were out. Melba at the association pointed him to me. He went up to Chimney Rock looking for a rock art expert.”

“Melba said you’re a rock art expert?” She liked to tease him.

“Well I am and you know it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

Garvin shifted his eyes around the room. “Had to think on it.” What he had to think on was how to keep Elby from wanting to tag along. He hadn’t come up with any good argument except that he didn’t trust Baxter.

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

Chapter 3, Part 2, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold, a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

“And if this secret thing you’ve found is accurate, or maybe if I can help you decode it—no, if I can help you find this thing on a cliff you’re looking for, will it lead you to your cache of gold?”

Baxter chewed a tiny string of flesh inside his cheek, then released it. He let the air out of his lungs. “Something like that,” he said, worried Garvin already knew too much.

“Hmmmph,” said Garvin. “Let’s go outside. Gold hunting makes me want fresh air.” He went to the sliding-glass door that led to a covered deck with a view to snow-capped mountains north and east. The early afternoon sun shined warm, but a chill clung to the shade. Garvin sat in an over-stuffed outdoor chair that moved on springs, and he began rocking.

“All right, then. Spit it out. What is it you want from me?”

Baxter felt like pacing, but decided that would be too much like an anxious caged animal. He most certainly was not that, and would never become one. He sat in a chair that matched Garvin’s and bounced back and forth more than he wanted. “There’s a marker,” he said. “I think you can help me find it.”

“What kind of marker?”

“I have a drawing of it. From my great-great-grandfather. And directions on how to find it. I’ll show you once we have an agreement.”

“What’s it look like? The marker.” Garvin wanted to see how much he could squeeze out of Baxter. But more than that, he wanted to know more about this marker. Sounded interesting. Something down toward New Mexico, he assumed.

Baxter said nothing. Stared ahead. Didn’t look at Garvin. If he told him what it looked like, he could search for it on his own. Get other people to help him look. They might find it. For his purposes of hiding, it might work as well. Maybe better. But it had become more. The gold. Hidden treasure. His family’s hidden treasure. He wanted it. In payment for what happened to him, what the last Baxter patriarch had done to him. Besides, his grandfather wanted him to find the journal, which means he wanted him to look for the treasure or gold or whatever it was.

“First, the agreement. Then I’ll show you.”

So he’ll divulge nothing, thought Garvin. He shrugged. “Say I help you find a stash of gold somewhere. What then?”

“Ten percent,” offered Baxter, willing to go to a quarter. Negotiation took him back to familiar business ground. He’d been good at it.

“Seventy-five,” Garvin countered. He didn’t give a damn about any split. But he wouldn’t be beat in a negotiation. When he played poker, which he enjoyed, he liked to bluff extravagantly, often without even looking at his cards. On rare occasions, he’d taken some big pots that way. His opponents never knew what to make of him, and he liked that.

Baxter stopped rocking. “Why do you think your help is worth that much?” He didn’t want to make a counter-offer just yet.

“Without me, you’ve got a worthless clue.”

“It rightfully belongs to my family.”

“It rightfully belongs to whoever finds it.”

Baxter didn’t know how to play this. Garvin seemed to have the upper hand. Had nothing to lose. Baxter, on the other hand, wanted the cover of the chase and to find the treasure. Two things to lose. He figured he had one trump card to play. He didn’t want to play it just yet, though. It needed a little more setup.

“What’s fair, then?” asked Baxter.

“Half.”

“Or nothing?”

“Or nothing.”

He hated losing half. Didn’t know if he would agree to that or not. “If we shake on it, does that constitute a binding agreement to you?” asked Baxter. He suspected the answer. Garvin was probably the kind of man whose word meant more to him than a legally binding document.

“Hell yes. Before I moved to this little paradise here, I spent my entire life in Texas. A handshake is a signed contract.”

“You won’t tell anybody what we’re up to?”

Garvin paused and cocked his head to the side. “We’re not up to anything yet. And if we come to some kind of understanding, it might be useful to tell a few folks. We might need a little help.”

“I’d rather you not tell anyone anything.” Is that true? A frenzy of people looking for some fabled long-lost gold might actually help him hide better. But it had stopped being about that. He could hide without the ruse of a gold rush in his family name. It had become more about his birthright. Whatever his great-great-grandfather had hidden, he wanted. And that made him want to keep his quest secret.

“They’ll figure it out anyway,” said Garvin. “Guy named Baxter stomping around up in the wilderness, looking for something. Me with you. People know what I do. That’s how you found me. They’ll figure it out before we even utter a word.”

“Not if they don’t know the guy you’re stomping around with up there is a Baxter. I’ve kept that quiet. You’re the only one who knows.”

Hmmm, Garvin thought. This boy is a shrewd one. He seemed to think this Baxter’s gold story had truth in it. And maybe it did. What would half of the Baxter treasure be? The legend, if he remembered it right, said as much as two mules could carry. What would that be? Four or five hundred pounds of gold? If Baxter truly believed a family treasure that big was hidden somewhere up there, he wouldn’t so easily part with half. Would he?

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

Chapter 3, Part 1, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold, a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

Marshall Garvin had his hands in dishwater when the doorbell rang. He took a dish towel as he went to the front door.

“Professor Garvin?”

“You the fellow on the phone?”

“Yes, sir.”

Garvin pushed the door wide and beckoned the man inside. He tried not to pass snap judgments on people, but, of course, did. Especially when a shaved-headed stranger arrived in a beat-to-crap blue GM pickup truck at his house wearing no hat. Lots of men went hatless in Pagosa, he noticed, but he judged them fools for exposing their heads to the unfiltered high-altitude sunlight. This man he ushered into his house was therefore a fool.

“Just finishing up my lunch dishes,” Garvin said. “You stand there and talk while I wash, then I’ll get us something to drink and we can sit out back.” He plunged his hands into the dishwater.

“Well, I want to ask you a few questions about rock formations, cliffs and rock art and such around here, and Melba up at Chimney Rock said I should talk to you. She gave me your number.”

“I’ll have to talk to her about that. Keep going.” Garvin scrubbed a soup bowl.

“Well, my name is Baxter….”

“Full name?”

“Uh, Jedediah Aberdene Baxter.”

“Never heard the name Aberdene before. You go by Jed, I imagine. I sure as hell would.”

“Just Baxter.”

Garvin nodded and laughed. “Me too. Just Garvin. None of that professor/doctor crap.” He finished the last dish and drained the sudsy water. “I’m making tea for me. Some kind of herbal crap that’s supposed to be good for my innards. My niece makes me drink it. You want that or water? Or a beer.” Garvin stood and looked at Baxter foot to head for the first time. Not a tall guy. Couple of inches shy of six feet. Four inches shorter than Garvin. He liked being tall. Most people naturally deferred to tall people. Garvin accepted their deference as divine right.

“Water,” Baxter said. “Don’t bother with ice.”

“I usually don’t.” Garvin turned on the gas jets beneath a teapot. He noticed Baxter stood with legs apart, hands hanging loose. Like a fighter waiting for first contact. Nervous energy. Suspiciously wary. “Why the cliff fetish?” Garvin asked.

Baxter smiled and did a double-take flicker of his eyes. Garvin liked that. Kept people off balance, even if only by surprising word choices. He figured he did folks a favor. Made them more aware of being alive.

“I’m looking for something on a cliff, and I thought you might know where it is.” Baxter felt the animalistic need to crouch in Garvin’s presence. Keep his balance. Be ready to move. As if Garvin were a threat. But how could he be? Grey-haired guy in his sixties or early seventies. Tall. Looked strong. Face darkened by sun. Exactly what you would expect of a man who used to run geological expeditions and now studied Anasazi rock art. Garvin radiated a sense of power. But even so, Baxter knew he could best the man in any fair fight. No reason to be afraid. Not yet.

“Have to do with your family gold?” asked Garvin.

Baxter took a step back as if from a blow. His eyes widened. His nostrils flared. How did he know?

“Oh, hell, everybody around here knows the story of Baxter’s gold,” said Garvin with a chuckle. “Even had some treasure-hunters come through a time or two, though it’s been a couple decades since the last ones. But you’re the first Baxter I know of coming back to look for it.”

Of course, Baxter thought. Of course he would know. The history museum freely told the story. People would know. Especially people like Garvin.

“Did you ever have to sign a non-disclosure agreement at the university?” asked Baxter.

Now it was Garvin’s turn to step back from an unexpected comment. He usually saw where people were going. But he didn’t see this.

“Maybe.”

“But you had agreements, maybe between people sharing research secrets.”

Garvin nodded. “Yeah. So.”

“I need an agreement with you.”

The tea kettle started whistling. Garvin used it to give him time to think. Agreements had to be negotiated. Baxter would have to tell him what he wanted in order to negotiate it. He made his tea, and as he stirred, he thought about what Baxter must have worth keeping secret.

“You found a clue, didn’t you? Something from the family attic. The bottom of an old trunk.” Garvin laughed. “The source of all family secrets! And you think it means something. That it?”

Baxter felt off-balance, pushed back again. The old man’s brain still ticked, no doubt about that.

“Well, maybe. But I can’t tell you without an agreement.”

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

Chapter 2, Part 3, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold, a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

From across the room Elby knew they must look like high school friends meeting after a long time apart, unsure of each other but attentive. Such a tenuous relationship it could break forever without anyone noticing. And she had every intention of getting up at any moment and doing just that. Break it. End it before it started. She knew the ending before the beginning even happened. Men wanted one thing and one thing only, and she had no interest at all in that.

But she didn’t pull herself away. She could have, but she felt a desire to stay. To talk to this man. Her whole life, she had so little interest in men she accepted herself as a sort of neuter. But this guy had a frequency about him that lit her up. Kept her glued to her seat. Preposterous, she told herself. She knew nothing of the man.

Elizabeth—a.k.a. Elby—Elder stood at an uncomfortable crossroad in her life. At thirty-two and teaching basic literature to undergraduates at Fort Lewis College in Durango, she had lost her way. She stopped reading for pleasure, hadn’t taken a long hike in the mountains for a couple years, and hadn’t done any art projects for even longer. The world felt grey and uninteresting to her.

Her uncle, the one who started calling her Elby as a baby, suggested she volunteer as a tour guide for a summer, like he did, and plant a garden, like he did. At a deep level, she knew those were his ways of avoiding the same kind of depression she allowed herself to experience. At a deeper level, she knew her uncle represented a family-male influence that Elby could barely tolerate. Her father taught her that lesson. But her uncle saved her. After her parents died in a car wreck, he took early retirement and moved Elby to Pagosa Springs. He was a good family-male who, for the most part, knew where he should not step and did not step there.

Now, with this stranger at the bar, every time she thought she could dismiss him, he became more interesting. Family secret, he said. Lost treasure. She had the former, but not the latter.

“Ahh, and you’re off for the chase,” she said. “With lots of big horses and big guns. Hunt the family secret down and kill it. Bring it back. Carry it around like a trophy.” She mimed carrying a slab of meat on her shoulder. Where did this flamboyance come from? It felt good. Maybe she’d had too much to drink.

Baxter couldn’t tell if she made fun of him or if this was her style of humor. He decided to play along. “Yeah, me heap big bwana man.”

She laughed and took a quick swig of beer. “Ah, that’s rich. Offensive dumbass white-boy slang for two cultures on different continents mixed into a single comment that proves the intractable stupidity of men. Bravo.” That’s it, she thought. That’s her bitter self she knew so well. She told herself not to attack this guy merely for being male. That’s my hang-up. Keep that to self.

“You don’t like men, do you, bwana woman?”

She pressed her lips together and used willpower alone to force them into a weak smile. “Not usually.”

“Why not? Tell me lies, tell me truth, just make it interesting.”

She smiled again, genuinely this time. How could this man do that to her? Men didn’t make her smile. They made her smolder in anger. In fact, this one, she lectured herself, must be playing her. Just acting interested to get her into the sack. What all men wanted. That thought melted her smile.

“Oh, just your usual lost virtues,” she said. “A very nasty, very dark, very deep family secret. But unfortunately, not a shred of lost treasure.” She wanted to bite his head off. But maybe not until after he got his hands on her. The intrusive thought offended her, surprised her. Where had that come from? She never, ever wanted a man’s hands on her again. Push that thought away, away, she told herself. Away.

Baxter finished the last of his tequila—Mr. Tequila, he thought with an inner flash smile—and began drinking the Guinness, finally warmed to the right temperature. He smacked his lips. The thick beer felt good coating his mouth. He needed to push away from this woman. He couldn’t afford entanglement, no matter how useful she might be. He would find someone else to help him. Not this girl. She would trip him up. He’d lose his camouflage. Worse, get distracted from his goal. Whatever that was. His mind fluttered a moment in indecision. Then he remembered. Hide. Find the family treasure. In that order. He breathed deeply.

“Seems we’re at an impasse,” he said. “Grounded on the rocks of our own family secrets. In celebration of that, you should drink your tequila.”

“Sometimes you sound like a hick and sometimes like a professor of literature or something,” she said, trying to keep her self-protective anger smoldering.

“I am a hick, but I’m not a professor of literature.” He took another long pull of the beer. Part of his disengagement strategy: drink fast.

She laughed in spite of herself. Dammit if she didn’t like the conversational ability of this guy. “Well, I am a professor of literature and I’m thinking about becoming a hick.”

“Are you really?”

She nodded.

“So, what’s your favorite story from literature?” he asked. Bells went off in his head. Klaxon sounds. He asked for a story in direct contradiction of his decision to disengage.

She looked at him while reaching back into her brain. Which story should she cite? The answer appeared in her head as suddenly as the old artistic insights she used to have and she brightened and sat up straight. “Arabian Nights,” she said.

“Ah, yes. One of my favorites, too. Keeping a herd of women around until they no longer please you, and then put them to death. I can see why you like it.”

Bastard, she thought. But she thought it admiringly. She liked how sharply he turned it.

“No,” she said, “not that part. What I liked were all the eunuchs that guarded the women. Seems the highest and best use of men to me.”

Ouch, he thought. Skewered along with all of mankind. He swigged deeply from his beer. Two more swallows, then he would be gone. But he couldn’t shut his bloody mouth. He wanted a parting shot for this woman. This man-hater. If she weren’t a woman, he would punch her, a quick jab.

“Ah. You know, I think I’ve finally figured out your type.”

“My type,” she said. She did not like being a type. Her entire being sank into a sour place. She prepared herself to finally put this man where she wanted him, as worthless as all men, a dog turd on the sidewalk of life.

“You’re only attracted to emasculated men. Ones who don’t probe you. Who don’t want to get inside.” His tongue turned acid. A jab with the mouth.

She snapped. It even felt like a snap to her. Or maybe a whoosh, like an ignited pile of gasoline-soaked rags. She grabbed her tequila glass and threw the liquid into his face. She stood, knocking over her chair. People at nearby tables looked. She burned inside and her ears roared, making her deaf. She so wanted a snappy, pain-inducing comment, but nothing came to her and she merely glared at him, then stomped away.

Baxter reacted slowly. Licked his lips. Blinked his eyes. Tequila leaked in and burned them. They watered. He closed his eyelids, patted the table until he found a napkin and wiped his face.

“Waste of good tequila,” he said loud enough to satisfy the onlookers, most of whom laughed and nodded and turned back to their lives. All but one man, who raised his cell phone and casually took a photo of Baxter.

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

Chapter 2, Part 2, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold, a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

“So,” she asked, “you normally drink a lot or are you celebrating?”

“Celebrating,” he said. He had to be careful. The rules of hiding were simple and clear: Camouflage and keep quiet.

“Just another Friday night?” she asked.

They sat. He smiled, feeling warm from the tequila and full from the burger. He thought of his grandfather. Fishing from the back yard. Reeling one in all the way to the lawn.

“Oh, much bigger than that,” he said.

“Well, tell me the truth or tell me a lie, but make it interesting.”

He smiled, liking her immediately. “Buy you another beer?”

Her eyes sparkled. They were black, her eyebrows perfectly arched over them. She rested her chin on her hand, studying him. The panic fluttered back. He hadn’t checked the post office or the television lately. His picture wasn’t out there, was it? But again, he calmed himself. Of course not. She’s just a girl, man.

“Sure,” she said. “But don’t you be thinking it’ll buy you any favors.”

He grinned. She’d brought up and dismissed the elephant in the room: sex. That meant, he decided, she wanted it. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman. Years. His trophy wife, younger by eighteen years, cut him off shortly after their wedding night. He never understood the woman. Or why he married her. Her father introduced them, and he knew she did it more for him than Baxter. He motioned for the waitress, who took his order for two more shots of tequila and a Coors Light.

“So what are you celebrating so big, Mr. Tequila?”

Whoa! He liked that. Mr. Tequila. Why didn’t he think of that? He could become something with a name like that. He chuckled.

“Oh, some things about my family fell into place today. Seems the bastards weren’t as poor as they made out.” Shut up! he told himself. But he grinned. Felt euphoric. Make it interesting. That’s what she said.

She smiled and he felt it in his chest. Damn, he hated that. Someone wiggling into his heart. Especially so quickly. Even his wife, his dead wife, never did that. She only wiggled out. Already this woman made him feel exposed, compromised. He thought he could play her like a suave man on the prowl, have some laughs, maybe even get lucky, but he realized he couldn’t. He’d never been that kind of man, even as Tom Oley. From afar, he might imagine it. But in the flesh, close up, her looking into his eyes, leaning toward him, she seemed both desirable and radioactive. He leaned back. What the hell was going on? He didn’t want anything like this. The tequila made him brave. But in reality, he was a fragile coward in his new-old identity.

“So are you going to hire a lawyer and legal them out of it? Or is your way a different way?” She put the fresh Coors Light to her lips and swallowed. Baxter watched her throat, unsure what to do, to think.

“Here, this stuff will wash that awful taste out of your mouth,” Baxter said, sliding a shot glass to her.

She took it and played with it but didn’t raise it to her lips. “I don’t think people who lawyer-up celebrate with tequila,” she said.

“What are you, a liquor psychologist?”

She laughed. The first time. He smiled and felt it again. Not the tequila. That other thing. That pang. Longing spiked with fear. It spooked him. Made his heart race and his breath shallow. If she knew about him…but she couldn’t. She can’t. She won’t. But that was only part of what jacked up his heart rate.

“Land?” she asked. “Cattle? Money?”

He grinned, masking his panic. He couldn’t possibly tell her anything. But she had asked him to make it interesting. He breathed deeply and swallowed. Calm yourself, he said. Just play with her. Don’t reel her in. Just practice the cast.

“Oh, just your usual lost treasure,” he said. “An old family secret.” His mind had started turning, logic coming back. This girl must be local. Yeah. A conduit to the community—he liked the sound of the alliteration in his tequila-addled head. He might need that. She could help him find a guide, someone who knew the backcountry. He sipped the tequila and leaned forward, smiling his best smile.

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.

Chapter 2, Part 1, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold, a novel by Jeff Posey. Read from the beginning here.

Available in paperback and ebook.

Two nights later, a Friday, he celebrated. He found a clue in the history museum that put the JAB journal into a new light. The first Baxter in southern Colorado, his great-great-grandfather, made a fortune in gold. Not by digging for it, but by mysterious means—had the man been a thief? A gambler? A loan shark? However he’d done it, he made a pile, mostly in Silverton, then as a founding father of Pagosa Springs he lived well in that house on Hermosa Street, but not filthy rich.

For decades, people speculated about what happened to his money and made up stories about it. Some even searched for it. A legend grew, then died about the same time as Baxter’s grandfather. The journal, cryptic though it was, seemed to confirm that the original JAB had hidden a treasure somewhere near a cliff. The man must have stashed it away before he morphed into a respectable man of Pagosa. Or maybe the temptation was too much for him and he had to get it away from his immediate grasp.

Regardless of the old man’s intent, it could serve Baxter now. If the authorities were still looking for him, and he had no reason to believe they would stop, it gave him an effective cover. There’s no better way to hide than in the wilderness searching for lost gold. Especially when he had every right to it. But he would need a little help. A guide. Someone who would recognize the landmarks mentioned in the journal. The two lakes, one above the other, and the Indian mark on the cliff. Surely someone around here would know where to start looking based on that. He didn’t expect it to be easy. It had stumped his grandfather.

He walked to a bar up on the main drag not far from the old Baxter house. A bluegrass band played. Seemed out of place. Hillbilly music in the Rocky Mountains. But they were good. He sat at a table for two and ordered a burger, fries, Guinness on tap, and two shots of Patron añejo tequila. He watched people. That’s what he wanted. Stop feeling hunted and just be a normal man with a normal tequila buzz watching normal people.

With the first sip of tequila still warming his mouth, he saw her. Not a top-flight beauty by the usual standards, but she struck him. Dark, wavy hair draped to the middle of her back. She tied it halfway with a single strand of orange yarn. Thirty, maybe, he guessed. Legs hidden in loose blue jeans. Narrow waist that swelled nicely both up and down. A bit too broad in the beam. Front teeth a little too prominent. Wide mouth and dark eyebrows. She stood and moved alone to the music, swaying back and forth, holding a Coors Light loosely by its long neck.

He made up stories about her as he nursed his tequila, letting his beer warm from the too-cold most American places poured it. School teacher. Maybe even assistant principle. Hiked a lot. Did some kind of art. Pottery, he decided. Busted up with her boyfriend a year ago. Hadn’t found a good man since. Just starting again to be ready for a little love.

She looked at him, seemingly by accident, and he nodded, raised his glass. She halfheartedly raised her longneck in his direction and then turned her attention back to the band.

He watched her, though he tried to hide it by glancing at the musicians, swinging around to inspect the rest of the crowd, picking at his remaining fries. The alcohol softened him. He longed for a little companionship.

When the band stopped and the quiet crushed the place, she turned and scanned the room. Baxter stood and indicated the empty chair at his table.

“Care to join me? Take a load off for a few minutes?”

Lame, he thought. The suave he’d had as Tom Oley left him, and he was back to not-good-enough Baxter, damn his old aunt.

“You don’t live here,” she said, as if that rendered him unworthy.

“Not anymore,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes, accentuating the crow’s feet at the corners. Her teeth made her upper lip overhang the lower by half its width.

“You used to?” she asked.

“Long time ago.”

“And now you’re back.”

“For a while, anyway.”

She came to his table and inspected it before she sat: the beer, two tequila shot glasses, remnants of the burger and fries. He had a jolt of panic that she might be a forensic psychologist somehow reading him, tracing him back to the scene of the crime, seeing through him. But he forced away the paranoia. No way. She’s just a girl, man. Settle down.

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.