Chance of a Lifetime (35 page)

When he finished, a roar shook the rafters and Beau smiled at one table, letting them know that he’d played just for them. Miss Tomlinson was smiling as she clapped and Rick stood up to shout with the others.

“Way to go,” Border whispered.

In the stillness between the applause and Beau striking another chord, one shot rang out across the dance floor.

Then there was silence for a fraction of a second while everyone in the room sucked in air at the same time.

The second shot was almost drowned out by the noise as it registered on the crowd that a gun had just been fired. Even Beau knew what gunfire sounded like, but he hesitated, not knowing what to do.

Border pushed him to the floor of the cage. Beau saw Trace Adams fly out of the booth and push Rick backward. He also saw the man with the librarian swing her under his wing like some giant bird of prey.

Another shot pinged off the tin ceiling.

For one heartbeat, all was silent once more, and then people started screaming and running. Beau pulled the plug to the stage lights, and the cage went dark. He and Border lay flat as they watched the place go crazy.

“This is what I call excitement,” Border yelled. “If we don’t get shot, that is. I’ve never been in a gunfight.”

“We’re not in it, we’re witnesses.” Beau figured for once the corner was probably the safest place to be. With the lights out, no one in the room could see them.

“What? We’re witnesses?” Border swore. “You know
what they do with witnesses. If the bad guys win, we’re dead.”

“I don’t see anybody shooting and the only one with a gun is Harley standing on the bar.”

Border turned his head and yelled, “Harley, get off the bar. What do you think you are, a target?”

“Shut up, Border,” Harley yelled over all the noise. “You boys stay down. Nobody fires a gun in my place. I won’t stand for it.” He raised his voice and his shotgun. “Come on out, you bastard, so I can shoot you. You want to hear gunfire? Well, it’ll be the last thing you hear.”

Beau looked over at the booth. Rick was still standing, and the woman in leather had pulled a gun and looked like she was on guard. The man with Emily Tomlinson was still covering her with his arm, but blood was spreading out over the sleeve of his shirt just below the elbow. Everyone else in the room seemed to be running around in circles, screaming. Boots on the wooden dance floor sounded like a hundred head of cattle crossing.

About the time the crowd cleared, the sheriff and two deputies came in, guns drawn.

“Man,” Border whispered. “This is the OK Corral. But where are the bad guys?” Whoever had done the shooting must have rushed out with the crowd.

The noise from before made the sudden silence seem deafening. Beau watched as Harley stood, his shotgun on ready as the sheriff and her deputies spread out. They found a woman under one of the tables. She kept crying as she hurried out saying she had to come back for her new purse. One of the deputies woke a drunk up and told him it was closing time. He’d missed the excitement completely.

“All clear here,” one deputy yelled from the hallway leading to the bathrooms.

“All clear here,” echoed the other from the kitchen entrance.

“Flip on all the lights, Harley,” the sheriff ordered.

To Beau’s shock, real light that didn’t twinkle, blink, or rotate came on. He’d always thought the place was a dump,
but in the bright light it was worse. Stains from who knew what on the walls. Rips in the booth padding. Dead flies along the back ledges. Walls he’d thought were painted tan now showed themselves as raw boards that must have been nailed together by drunks.

Beau stood, forcing himself not to look too closely at the floor he’d just been lying on.

“All clear,” Alex said. “Did anyone see the shooter?”

No one spoke.

“Beau, you and Border all right?” she asked.

“Yeah, we took cover,” Border answered as if this were a nightly happening and they knew the drill. “Can we come out of this cage?”

“Come on out. The bar’s closed for the night.” She looked at her deputies. “Go see if anyone outside is sober enough to have seen anything like someone holding a gun or maybe from what direction the shots were fired.”

She walked over to the booth. “Everyone all right?”

Beau noticed the big guy still had his arm around Emily. He whispered something to her, then kissed her on the head. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t just some man talking to the librarian. She mattered to him, and obviously from the way she cuddled into him, he mattered to her too.

The biker chick with Matheson was pacing off the room as if looking for clues. She was the only one in the room who had not holstered her weapon. She handled it with the ease of a warrior long used to holding iron.

Alex leaned across the booth and said as calmly as if she were simply passing time, “I hate to tell you this again, Tannon, but you’re bleeding.”

He looked down at his arm. Blood was dripping off his shirt at the elbow. “I was worried about Emily. It’s just a scratch.”

Alex grinned. “It’s evidence. We’re on our way to the hospital.”

Emily looked so white Beau thought she might pass out. If she did, the only injured person in the room would probably be the one who’d insist on carrying her out. He talked
softly to her as Alex wrapped his arm with one of the bar towels.

The big guy, someone said his name was Tannon Parker, helped Emily out of the booth. “Breathe, Emily, breathe. It’s all over and I’m not hurt bad. Honest, it doesn’t even hurt.”

She looked up at him with those big eyes Beau had always thought were her best feature. “Your arm was across me. If you hadn’t covered me, the bullet might have hit me. Tannon, you saved my life.”

Her words were so simple, but the meaning flooded the room. Until that moment, it had all been about the excitement. Her words made it real. Someone could have been killed!

Alex faced Rick. “I know you think this is your stalker, but we don’t know that. It might have been an argument between drunks or a husband and wife fighting.”

“He was here, probably waiting for me to come to him. He was here.” Rick studied the room as if the shadow of someone trying to kill him might still be there. “I sensed him. The shooter was trying to kill me and I don’t even know why. Each time he gets a little more determined, his efforts are more dangerous. It won’t take long before one of us runs out of luck.”

Harley yelled, “He could have been after me. I pissed off half the crowd tonight when I ran out of wings. Hell, he could have been after Border Biggs. The kid misses every other note he plays. Maybe there was a true music lover in here tonight who couldn’t take anymore.”

“Me?” Border paled beneath all his tattoos.

Beau shook his head, surprised at how calm he was after his first shoot-out. “Well, at least I know he wasn’t after me. I’m just an innocent bystander in the dangerous midnight crowd where bullets fly and blood spills.”

Harley glared at him. “You’re starting to talk like a country-western song, kid. Why don’t you go back to stuttering?”

Alex motioned Tannon and Emily toward the door. “I’ll
want all of you in my office tomorrow morning to give statements. Harley, lock the place up. I’ll send a man to go over everything tomorrow, but I don’t think we’ll discover any clues.” She glanced at Rick’s friend. “You agree, Marshal?”

“I’m afraid you’re right.” The biker girl shook her head. “There are a dozen places he could have hidden and fired from and every one of them will have layers of fingerprints. We’ll be lucky to find a shell casing.”

“We’ll look tomorrow.” Alex took charge. “Right now, get Rick back to the B&B. I’ll call you from the hospital if we dig a bullet out.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Tannon complained as he followed the sheriff toward the door.

Just before everyone left, Border asked, “What do we do?”

Rick smiled. “I’ve had threats and attempts on my life for no reason, and the band looks confused. How about you boys come on home with me? We’ll rob Martha Q’s refrigerator. Nothing works up an appetite like being shot at.”

They didn’t wait to be asked twice. By the time Rick was on the porch, both of them were trailing inches behind. A deputy met them at the steps and walked with them to Rick’s car. Beau couldn’t help but wonder what good he’d be if the shooter were hiding somewhere in the dark parking lot. Phil Gentry seemed nice enough, but he didn’t look like the type who’d take a bullet for a lawyer much less a country-western singer.

As soon as Beau climbed in the backseat, he scrunched down, removing his head from any target line.

Border, on the other hand, leaned forward. If a bullet flew from any direction it had a good chance at hitting him, but Border had questions and he didn’t plan to wait for an answer. “Did I hear the sheriff call you a marshal?” he asked the girl with Rick.

“Deputy U.S. Marshal Trace Adams at your service.”

Border started bouncing on the seat like he weighed fifty, not two hundred and fifty, pounds. “That must be an exciting job. You been shot at before?”

“Yes,” Trace answered as she drove. “A few weeks before I came here.”

“I bet that was so exciting,” Border said. “What happened? That is, if you can tell me. I bet it was wild.”

In a bland tone, as if she were talking to a child, she answered, “My team walked into a trap at an old warehouse we thought was empty. We were caught in cross-fire. Everyone died except me. I walked away without a scratch.”

No one in the car said a word until they were inside the bed-and-breakfast. Even then when they ate from plastic leftover cartons, no one mentioned anything about a shooting, past or present.

A
FTER THE BAND LEFT
M
ARTHA
Q’
S PLACE,
R
ICK WASN’T
surprised to find Trace in the dark drawing room studying the movements beyond the window. He could tell by her stance that she was on guard, watching, protecting, even though the doors were locked and the security system was on.

“You all right?” he asked as he moved to her side.

“I’m thinking when he comes again, he’ll hit somewhere quiet, someplace where you’re alone and he’ll have no distractions. Tonight wasn’t planned out. He probably saw us come in and went out to his car or truck for the gun. He wasn’t thinking about the people, only you.” She watched one of the sheriff’s cruisers pass slowly in front of the house. “He knows he made a mistake tonight. His next hit will be planned. When he comes again, he’ll be better prepared.”

“Don’t you mean ‘if’ he comes again? Maybe tonight’s failure will turn him off and he’ll give up.”

“You’re dreaming, Matheson.”

He leaned very near her ear. “If I were,” he whispered, “you’d be naked.”

She pushed away. “Get serious. Whoever’s out there isn’t stopping until you’re dead. He proved that tonight by risking firing at you in a crowd. He’s insane, and each attempt drives him a little farther over the edge.”

Rick leaned against the frame of the window. The night was so still it could have been a Thomas Kinkade painting just beyond the porch. “I’ve been around guns all my life and I’m guessing you have too. What are the chances of someone firing three shots in a crowded bar and
not
hitting anyone?”

“He hit Tannon Parker.”

“I heard the third bullet ricochet off the roof. I think that hit was an accident. The shooter was aiming at the roof.”

She moved closer, keeping her voice low. “So you’re saying the gunfire was meant to frighten you, not kill you?”

He nodded very slowly as if letting the idea sink in.

“What about the car through the diner window? I was there. It was no accident.”

“Yeah, but we were the only ones there. Think about it, Trace. I was sitting facing the direction the car came from. I would have had to be asleep not to see it coming.”

Trace thought for a moment, then nodded. “So you think someone is
not
trying to kill you, that they just want to scare you to death.”

Rick bumped his shoulder against hers. “I think whoever is out there is trying to scare me into changing my behavior. All I can’t figure out is what they want me to do or not do. Maybe my moving out of town would make them happy. If I had a case, I’d think they’d want me to abandon it and run. If I were dating anyone they’d be sending a message for me to get lost.”

“So, since you’re not dating and you don’t have any clients except the Peterses, the only choice left is
get out of town.
”

“You offering to take me in?”

She laughed. “I can’t even keep a plant alive. You could always consider the possibility that someone just picked
your name out of the phone book or the school annual. Maybe it’s not you but just a random target he’s selected.”

Rick moved his hand along her back. “Nope, it’s personal. He picked me. I just don’t know why, but the guy had to have studied my habits.” Rick leaned in close and touched his body to hers. “How about kissing me like you did before we went into the bar?”

She started to answer, but his mouth covered hers and they were both lost. He loved the feel of her against him, and he knew she felt the same way. She’d be gone in a few days and he’d either be dead or moving on with his life, but either way Rick knew he’d be missing her all the way to cell memory level.