Authors: Jodi Thomas
He turned and buried his face against her throat, drinking in the feel and smell of her skin.
When she rested her cheek against his shoulder, he could feel her heart beat against his. Her words came out like a thought she let slip away. “If the moon really granted wishes in this place, I'd wish your heart wasn't so broken and mine wasn't so cold. Tonight, in the darkness, I can almost believe I'm worth loving.”
He kissed the top of her head, seeing her scars in the darkness as he'd never seen them in the light.
Then they shifted away and all he held was her hand in his.
“We'd better get back.” Her laugh seemed nervous now. “My sister's probably had us both declared dead.”
She clicked on the light and they moved along the passage. Just before they stepped out into moonlight, she turned. “Thank you for this. No matter what happens tomorrow, I'll hold this one moment close.”
“Anytime,” he answered, trying to understand what
had
happened. Nothing really, just a gentle kiss, but somehow he knew the truth. It was more. Far more.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lauren
March 27
L
AUREN
COULD
NOT
believe she'd let Tim talk her into coming to the Two Step Saloon on a Saturday night. Over the years half the times her father had been called out after midnight on weekends was because of trouble at the Two Step. It was a local place that didn't even post hours. The floors were sprinkled with sawdust and the whiskey was probably watered down. It was every bit as dingy as she thought it would be.
But Tim was convinced that every drunk and pothead in the county circled through the Two Step. People looking for a new high, others looking for a low to help them forget. He decided if the burlap man went anywhere in public, it would probably be here. So he talked her into coming home for the third weekend in a row saying she'd be his cover tonight.
“We'll do research. Ask around. Someone has to know the guy,” Tim had promised when he called.
When she still didn't want to go, he'd added that they'd only stay an hour. That should be long enough to find out a few facts.
Three hours later they were still hanging out in a place she didn't want to be. She might be legally old enough, but she told herself she was also far too smart to be bumping elbows with this crowd. If the people in this place had any brains before they came in, they'd drowned them in beer by now.
Lauren was beginning to question Tim's logic. He'd been ordering them fresh rounds of beer as soon as the bottles were half empty and didn't seem to be aware that he'd been the only one drinking since the first round. The first hour he'd made up stories about everyone who walked in, but either it had gotten too crowded or his brain had gotten too foggy to keep it up.
She'd tried feeding Tim, but the food was so spicy he'd downed a bottle in just a few gulps.
He'd stopped talking twenty minutes ago and seemed lost somewhere in his own mind, or what was left of it anyway.
She thought of calling her pop, but that would make her sound like a kid. In a few months she'd graduate from college. She was an adult.
Looking around the room, she realized she didn't fit in here. Not one of the groups would welcome her. She didn't blend with the ranchers, or the suits obviously celebrating a business success, or a group of women in scrubs who looked tired from working a twelve-hour shift. There were a few tables of couples her age. They looked years married and probably got a babysitter for their one night out. It was getting late: women in boots and short jean skirts were coming in to dance. They were made up, their hair curled high, and looked far too tan for March.
Lauren laughed. She was starting to look like the before picture. If she got any plainer she'd be in the Franklin sisters' category. Even if she had tried getting dressed up tonight, maybe put on a little makeup before she left home, no drunk was likely to dance with, much less try to pick up, the sheriff's daughter.
“I'm going to the ladies' room,” she mouthed and pointed.
Tim nodded. The second time his head went down, it stayed on his chest.
Lauren walked to the back of the bar, thinking she'd wake him up and somehow get him to his Jeep when she came back to the table. She'd seen him slide his keys into his jacket pocket, so all she had to do was retrieve them.
Great date tonight! They didn't even find a clue. Putting a drunk Hemingway to bed would be her only entertainment for the evening.
With the Two Step being the only bar for thirty miles, all kinds wandered in the place. She passed the growing crowd of cowboys and several businessmen near the bar. One tall man with black hair caught her eye. For a moment she thought it was Lucas Reyes, the upperclassman she'd fallen hard for in high school. They'd become friends just before he left for college. He'd given Lauren her first kiss, her first taste of passion. Half of her dreams had been of him, and the sad thing was, he didn't even know he'd broken her heart. She hadn't seen him since he finished law school. In that last year they were both on the same campus, he'd texted her once just to let her know all was well. He'd said he'd see her at Christmas but he hadn't come back to Crossroads that year, or the next. He was always working on a big case in Houston.
He must have been because he hadn't bothered to answer her text when she tried to reach him to wish him a Happy New Year, that year, or the next.
Lucas Reyes was still thick in her thoughts when she stepped from the ladies' room and began down the narrow hallway. The smell of beer and fried tortillas was thick in the smoky air. A few couples just beyond the back screen door were laughing as they shared a joint. She could hear the heartbeat of a bass beating out a song she didn't recognize. This wasn't her kind of place.
When a low voice with just a hint of an accent whispered her name, Lauren thought it was more in her mind than real. No one knew her here.
“Lauren,” a shadow in the hallway said again. “Is it really you?” The tall, lean, perfectly dressed dark-haired man materialized as if from a dream. Her one crush. Her one fantasy.
All the old feelings and memories rushed back as Lucas Reyes blocked her path. The memory of the way he'd saved her from falling when she'd been fifteen. The times they'd talked under the midnight stars as friends, barely touching, hearts afraid to open.
How she'd melted when he'd kissed her with passion one night on campus and then crushed her by apologizing. The way he'd drifted away like stardust in such tiny bits at a time that she couldn't remember the day or week he'd gone. No last kiss. No words of goodbye. He just wasn't in her life anymore.
Months had dragged on while she waited for a call that never came. Hope finally died, hardening her heart an ounce at a time.
She faced the handsome man who'd been the boy she'd first loved even though she'd never said the words. His midnight-black eyes seemed hard now. The lines in his face had lost the easy smile. A dark gray suit covered the lean body that had worn Western clothes so naturally years ago. For a moment she thought she was looking at a ghost; then she realized this was the now and her memories were only what had been.
“Lucas.” What did she say to the first and only boy she'd ever ached for? What could she say to the man who walked away from her life? He'd done it so gradually she hadn't even heard her heart break when he vanished.
Staring, she tried to remember the last time she'd seen him, heard his voice. A year. No, almost two. He'd called when he was still in law school saying that the semester was hell and they'd get together after he climbed out of all the work. He'd texted that he was going to intern in Houston at a law firm. She'd heard he skipped graduation so he could be in on his first trial. After that, she'd asked a few times about him when she came home. No one had heard from him.
He'd walked away from his life here. He'd walked away from her.
She took a step toward him, this ghost from her past. His hair was shorter now, making him look more than only a little over a year older than she. She wondered if he didn't wear it that way on purpose. He'd always seemed older than his years. Rushing to be grown in high school. Trying to run faster and faster through college.
When she stood close, no words came. Maybe it was that way for him, too.
How you been?
just didn't seem like enough to say and any answer would be too little.
Suddenly, all the loss and hurt she felt hardened into anger. She'd been just a kid to him. Just someone to leave behind.
Lauren, who'd never done anything impulsive in her entire life, placed her hand on Lucas's white shirt and pushed.
The back of his head tapped the wall, but he didn't react as she leaned against him and brushed her mouth over his.
The kiss started out as almost an assault, but quickly exploded with all the desire she'd never let out. He took her advance without retreat and the kiss turned to fire. She felt his breathing quicken as his chest moved against hers. She tasted whiskey on his breath, but she didn't back away. She'd wanted this for years. The passion he never let show. The need. The longing. This might be their last kiss, but she'd never forget it.
She felt him shudder when his last reserve broke. He lifted her off the floor and into his arms with so much power she couldn't breathe and didn't care. Digging her hands into his hair, she kissed him as if it were both of their last moments on earth.
Then, like a far away roar, people began moving toward them, bumping against them in the narrow hallway, giggling, making comments.
Lucas set her down and straightened, but his eyes never left hers. “Lauren,” he whispered so low only she could have heard it. “Lauren.”
She touched her fingertips to his lips as she stared up at him. The need to tell him to forget what just happened battled with her desire to beg for more.
Then, as the next wave of bodies passed them in the hallway, Lauren stepped away and darted into the crowd. His hand grabbed at her waist, but he was too late to hold her.
When she glanced back from the darkened bar, she saw him searching the crowd for her and for a moment she thought she saw his eyes. They seemed filled with hunger and hurt.
Lauren almost ran to the table where Tim still sat. She pulled his keys from his pocket and tugged him up. With his arm over her shoulder, she led him through the bar and out into the night. He didn't seem to have enough brain cells left even to ask where they were going.
Thirty minutes later she dropped him off at his house and walked along the shoreline to her home. She could still feel Lucas's chest pressing against her breasts, his warm breath on her throat, the taste of their kiss in her mouth.
Finally, in the silence of the abandoned deck, she stopped long enough to think.
She'd come face-to-face with raw need for another tonight. Not a slow warming of her body or a longing for more, but red hot, all-out passion. If they'd been alone she had no doubt they would have made love. Who knows how far they would have gone in the hallway if they'd had longer. She'd dated several guys in college, but Lucas's kiss was far above anything she had imagined.
For the first time in her life, Lauren had lost control and she didn't like it.
Barely saying good-night to her pop, she walked to her room. Tomorrow she'd go back to school. Maybe with time she'd be able to make sense of what had happened.
Lauren lay down in the darkness of her room, knowing sleep was a million miles away.
Her phone blinked. Lucas was calling. Only what could she say?
Ten minutes later, it silently blinked again. Then again and again.
Lauren reached across the bed and turned it off. She couldn't talk to Lucas until she figured out what to say.
Shrugging, she decided that might take more than one lifetime. She might as well start believing in reincarnation.
The old dead guy's tattoo came to mind.
Surrender to the Void.
Lauren smiled. She didn't plan on surrendering at all. If anything, she was the aggressor, and if Lucas crossed her path again, she might just attack again.
She felt half drunk with her sudden boldness.
Giggling, she thought of sending him a text. If he didn't want to be attacked, maybe he should consider buying a gun and getting a concealed carry license because one of these days she would find him.
Sweet, shy, brainy Lauren had just discovered she had a wild side.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Thatcher
March 27
M
OVING
THROUGH
THE
weeds that always seemed to grow along trails everyone who lived in the Breaks called the back roads, Thatcher listened. Anyone out this time of night needed to spot another person or animal before they spotted him.
“Stay close to me,” he whispered to Tim O'Grady.
“I'm your shadow,” Tim answered, his voice higher than usual.
Tim had talked Thatcher into taking him where outsiders never go in the Breaks. Thatcher didn't think it was a good idea, but Tim told him it could help the sheriff solve the case of the body in the canyon.
Plus, he'd added that he needed the exercise, as if taking a chance at being shot would be good for him.
Tim seemed convinced that the body found wrapped in burlap and the shooting of the wild mustangs were related.
Thatcher didn't see how, other than they were both done by idiots. And there were a lot of idiots who hid out in the Breaks, so maybe the college boy was right.
Moving now among the midnight shadows, Thatcher used his ears far more than his eyes. He also carried his old .22 rifle. The strap had long ago worn out and he'd replaced it with rope, but the aim was still true. When he hunted at night, he taped a flashlight to it, but tonight he only carried it for protection.
Tim carried no protection. Maybe he thought he could talk his way out of anything?
Thatcher didn't want to even think about what kind of trouble they'd be in if they got caught tonight.
For the past week, Thatcher had been hanging out at the sheriff's office. It was far more educational than fifth or sixth period.
He'd been traveling around with Tim O'Grady looking for clues as to who killed the burlap man almost every Saturday morning since Tim went to work for Brigman.
No one had turned in a missing person report. Hell, no one even claimed to know the guy with
Surrender to the Void
tattooed on his arm. But when he'd asked a few neighbors, they'd shifted their gaze for a second before they answered.
They were lying. Thatcher felt it all the way to his toes.
He had a feeling the dead guy was one of the crazies that lived off County Road 111. The same general address as his own home. There were at least twenty broken-down mobile homes tucked into rocky crevices that had no address or even a road going near them. Add to that the cabins and dugouts built along the tree lines, and you got maybe forty or fifty nuts living out in no-man's-land that the sheriff couldn't even find.
If the sheriff showed up out here, every cabin and mobile home would be abandoned before Brigman could turn off his engine and climb the path to any front door.
Thatcher's mom, Sunny Jones, had been raised out here by two pot-smoking hippies she'd said were her grandparents. She told him once that they came out with friends to start a pot business, but their profits went up in smoke. Neither remembered where their son, Sunny's father, lived. They just said that their son came home once to drop off Thatcher's mother. She was just a baby then and he'd said to tell her that her parents were dead if she ever asked about them.
Sunny Jones ran off at fifteen and when she came back home pregnant and alone three years later, she had to haul the bones of her grandparents out of their cabin before she could start living there. She didn't have any deed to the place, but if no one had claimed it while she was gone between fifteen and eighteen, she figured it was hers.
No one knew or cared how her grandparents died, and she didn't care about her parents since they dumped her and never came back.
The old folks could have died from bad drugs or asphyxiation from a faulty heater. As far as Thatcher knew, folks rarely bothered with a funeral out here. After she dumped the bones, his mom started common-law marrying and divorcing every few years, but she never did drugs. Whiskey and religion were her addictions. Now and then, she'd pick up a man who'd do some work around the place.
They lived in the middle of the Breaks, so Thatcher figured that made them middle class. The closer to the highway folks lived, the better off they seemed to be. They had electricity and running water. Near the back, it was mostly outhouses and wood stoves.
The squatters way back were lower class, he decided. Some claimed to be wanted men. A few simply hated people or thought the world was about to end and figured this pothole in Texas would be the last place the zombies would look.
Thatcher knew most of the folks who lived off Road 111 by sight. They were his people in a way. He understood them.
He couldn't take Tim or the sheriff all the way back, but if they were careful, he could show Tim this place. The nuts and drunks got together every week to swap poisons and lies. They called it the Saturday night prayer meeting.
Tonight, with the sheriff asking questions about the horses being shot, everyone in the Breaks would be there with a theory about what had happened. No kids were allowed, but Thatcher had his own private entrance.
Tim bumped into him as they started climbing a rise almost making Thatcher yell out.
“Be careful.” Thatcher cut all the cuss words he wanted to say. “We're close.”
“Right,” Tim answered.
Thatcher leaned close. “When we get there do exactly what I do. No talking from here on. Don't ask questions, understand?”
Tim whispered, “Yes,” then slapped his hand over his mouth.
Thatcher rolled his eyes back figuring they had maybe a fifty-fifty chance of getting back to Tim's Jeep alive.
As they neared a dilapidated old barn used to store junk cars, Thatcher slid into the weeds, vanishing like a horned toad in the sand.
Tim followed.
They crawled low and silent until they reached the back of a barn. Years of runoff had washed away the ground beneath one corner of the structure. Thatcher slid under. Tim followed one second later.
They were inside. In the dim light Thatcher touched his lips, silently telling Tim to not make a sound. If they lay on their bellies, no one would see them in the dark corner.
The men were already there, moving around like ants on a mound. They were trading pot for homemade liquor or cigarettes, and talking. If you could cut humankind up as if it was one big carcass, most people would consider these folks the slop left from the butchering.
Spreading out flat on his belly, Thatcher propped his chin on his hands and listened as the shadows of more men moved inside the aging barn. He knew it could be hours before he heard anything worth remembering, but if anyone knew anything about the dead man in the canyon or the men who shot the horses, someone was bound to mention it.
Tim took a while to settle.
Bull, the self-appointed leader who fit his name, stood up on a box that acted as a platform. Thatcher knew the big man had hard liquor in the thermos he held. “We got some talking to do, boys,” Bull said, calling the meeting to order.
Folks stopped talking when Bull cleared his throat a few times. “There's someone poking around and the last thing we need out here is a lawman within smelling distance.”
Several men swore about how they hated strangers. One even mentioned a redheaded kid asking about a dead man. Another voice from the back said he wondered if redheads had redder blood than most people do.
Tim glanced at Thatcher and he saw fear in the college boy's eyes even in the dim light.
“We don't know nothing about anybody,” Bull bellowed. “They need to leave us alone.”
“We know they were describing old Hubcap.” A voice sounded from somewhere in the group. “Not likely to be another old man with those tats.”
Bull nodded. “Anyone know where the old guy lived?”
“Somewhere far back,” one said.
Stretch, a tall ex-marine with a scar across his face, added, “This is something that needs to be settled here. I say we post guards to watch the main road. I don't want nobody writing my name down on a report.”
Willie's hard laugh shot through the air. “You just don't want any of your wives to find you, Stretch.”
“Damn straight,” Stretch answered. “I sort of married one every time I came home on leave. After a few years I was safer being deployed than staying in the States.”
“I know how you feel,” Willie answered.
Thatcher shook his head slightly. Willie was a good guy for the most part, but lying was habit for the crippled up ex-con.
“We all have our reasons for wanting to live out here in peace.” Bull drew the group back to the point of the meeting.
Everyone nodded, but no one volunteered to serve as lookout.
“What about the mustangs that were shot?” Willie interrupted. He was a rabbit of a man who hopped from one topic to the other even on a normal nightâand tonight didn't seem normal. There was an electricity in the air, as if a storm was coming in. Thatcher wondered if the others could feel it, too.
A few men Thatcher could make out in the dim light commented that they didn't care about the mustangs or who shot them. One added that the sheriff had more important things to do than look for horse killers.
Everyone seemed to have an opinion on worthless horses and fools who'd waste bullets on shooting them. Now and then, in winter, a herd of mustangs made it down this far south. They were hard to handle and likely to go back to the wild as soon as they downed a fence.
Bull, mostly thanks to his size, stood and took charge one more time. “We all know who shot the horses and it weren't the drunks the sheriff caught. Those who did the killing are the only family not here tonight and they are not our problem. The trouble that can destroy us is the dead man found in the canyon. If the law traces him back to here, we're all in trouble.”
Someone in front said that the sheriff wouldn't trace the body here. No one seemed to agree with him.
Bull shook his head. “He's from here. The tats prove it. But there's half a dozen old guys living way back and I'm thinking none of us knows any of their real names.”
Thatcher fought the urge to agree with the scared man. Trouble was coming. Thatcher's mother told him once that Bull was the smartest man who lived out here, but being the brightest among rocks didn't keep you from still being dull as dirt.
“Maybe we should have us an investigation,” Potter said, surprising everyone. He never talked, but everyone stayed friendly with him because his was one of the few places that got mail delivered. His farm faced Road 111. Anyone who had to have something delivered always used his address.
Potter minded his own business and never gossiped, and as far as anyone knew, he always held the mail in his garage until someone dropped by asking about it. “If the sheriff comes to anyone's door, it'll probably be mine,” Potter added. “I'm closest to the main road. We start there and check on everyone out here. We need to find the answers.”
Thatcher wanted to yell
Amen
. First, Potter had an idea, and second, it was a good one. It just proved that some people weren't as dumb as they looked.
Bull took over passing out assignments. “The sheriff might have a death wish if he comes in here poking around, but we can check out what's going on. We'll divide up the area and check every cabin, trailer and tent. Someone's got to be missing or know the tattooed man's real name. Surely it's not Hubcab on his birth certificate.” Bull puffed up. “Once we find out something I'll let the sheriff know and tell him there is no need in him looking any further.”
One of the men up front by the fire whined that if he knocked on doors he'd feel like a damned census taker.
Stretch laughed. “I had one knock on my door and ask if I was married. I wiggled my eyebrows at her and told her I wasn't, but if she was willing I wouldn't mind trying it out for a few nights. She took off running for her car. Didn't even stop when she dropped her pen.”
Everyone laughed.
Stretch shrugged. “Closest I ever came to marrying in Texas. I still got the pen.”
Thatcher shifted until he could see most of the faces. It had taken him an hour, but he'd just figured out who was missing from the crowd.
The Dulapse brothers. Cajuns who came to live here about ten years ago. They chopped down trees along the canyon rim for firewood in the fall and sold it on county roads. Mesquite trees, not worth anything, and mostly a bother to all, drew a good price as wood for smoking beef. Some of the best restaurants in Austin and Dallas bragged about mesquite-smoked steaks.
“We got what we wanted.”
“What did we get, O'Grady? No facts. No proof. Only a nickname that we'd already heard to help us ID the dead guy and two brothers guilty of horse shooting by reason of being absent from the meeting.”
“I got more than that,” Tim said as they walked away. “I got some great characters. I swear these people don't live in my world. Bull and Stretch are straight out of a novel. In fact if I could think of a plot, I'd put them in as main characters.”
They walked in silence until Thatcher passed his house. He pointed further down the road where they'd hid Tim's Jeep in the brush. “Why don't you make notes, Tim, while I pick up a few things at my place and then you can drive me over to the Lone Heart. Charley's probably wondering where I am.”
“You living there?” Tim asked.
“No, just visiting.”
He turned around and doubled back with Tim still walking and talking.
When Thatcher made it back to his home, the place was so dark only someone familiar with the path would even try to find it. He opened the unlocked door and turned on the light. Thatcher was surprised the electricity still worked. His mom had been gone long enough to have missed paying at least one bill, but he knew from experience that the power company didn't bother coming this far out until she missed at least three.
He circled around the place. There was no food or money left. Nothing worth stealing. Maybe if he tried not to use any electricity, the power company would forget about him. His mom had left a dozen times before. He knew the signs she'd be gone a while. She'd always buy a dozen cans of soups or beans and leave a twenty under the plastic flowerpot on the table.