Geezus. He had to go meet with the school principal this week about getting Quint enrolled for spring term, like a real fucking parent.
He couldn’t even text Carma because it was her turn. And yes, that was as juvenile as it sounded, but those were the rules that kept him from sending every meme and GIF that made him think of her—which would be at least once a day.
He paced through the reception area and into the manager’s office to snatch up a pile of envelopes from the desk his dad and Delon shared. Their latest receptionist showed no sign of grasping the software program that integrated every facet of the business, but he’d figured she could at least sort the damn mail.
Gil did it now, dropping payments into his stack to be reviewed, signed, then taken to the accounting firm downtown that did their bookkeeping. He wished yet again that they could outsource the receptionist, too. The position had turned into an ongoing headache since their old battle-ax, Mrs. Nordquist, had had the nerve to retire. And the company might have doubled in size over the last eight years, but the office had not. The fewer bodies that occupied the cramped space the better, especially when one of them was Gil’s.
He tried to warn the new hires, but they never seemed to grasp that keeping fifty drivers both busy and on schedule was the equivalent of having a dozen balls in the air at all times, any one of which was likely to burst into flames without warning—and Gil with it.
He tossed a fistful of junk mail into the trash and set a stack of others aside. His dad could deal with whatever the Chamber of Commerce wanted now, and the Rotary Club, and the Booster Club. Catalogs and sales flyers for tools and parts went into the in-box marked Shop for the foreman, Max. Gil started to flip a brochure that direction, then paused when he saw it was addressed to Delon. Six years after his brother had moved out of the apartment above the office, his personal mail still showed up here.
Gil’s hands went still when he turned it over and saw the bareback rider on the front, chaps flying as he spurred a horse that all but leapt off the page. The old longing crashed through him, as powerful as ever. Three years after the surgery that had finally set his hip right, his body felt as good as he had at twenty-one. Better, since he wasn’t fighting a hangover more often than not.
He ran his thumb over the bold, black font on the brochure. Diamond Cowboy Classic! Find your nearest qualifying event!
Always a glutton for punishment, Gil broke the seal and spread the flyer on the desk. Delon didn’t need it. As the reigning world champion, he was one of the five who’d gotten an engraved invitation directly into the Classic.
But it was the open-to-the-world qualifying events that made the Diamond Cowboy a huge draw for spectators and cowboys alike. Old and young, wannabes and current contenders—all they had to do was pony up a five-hundred-dollar entry fee for their shot at glory. The top four contestants from each of the regional elimination-style competitions would all meet in Amarillo for the nationally televised showdown.
David versus Goliath, rodeo-style.
When the dust settled, only one challenger and one headliner would remain. Two competitors. One ride. Winner takes home fifty grand and a diamond-studded horseshoe ring.
Who wasn’t a sucker for an underdog story? A chance to cheer on a steer-wrestling insurance agent from Oregon or a barrel-racing teenager from North Carolina?
But not this trucker from good old Earnest, Texas. Gil’s fingers creased the edges of the brochure as he fought off a stab of longing. Nowadays, he could slap the entry money down without blinking an eye. What he couldn’t afford was to screw up the near-miraculous work of an entire team of surgeons, or risk a return of the grinding pain that had kick-started his opioid addiction. The doctors might let him run and jump and bang around in the occasional pickup basketball game with his kid, but no one knew exactly how much abuse his reconstructed hip could take.
He could still play pretend, though.
He stuffed the brochure into his back pocket and strode back through the reception area and down a hall that led past a restroom and break room, into what had once constituted the entire shop area. The space was barely big enough to accommodate one semi tractor, minus a trailer. After they’d built on the first full-length truck bay, Gil and Delon had stripped out everything except the workbench along one wall, installed a kick-ass stereo system, and converted this to their gym.
Gil locked the door and set his phone on the narrow metal stairs that led up to an apartment that had been his father’s bachelor pad, Gil’s jumping-off spot for three breakneck years after high school, then Delon’s home for over a decade until he’d taken up residence at Tori’s place in Dumas.
In four years, Quint would be old enough to have his own place. Geezus.
Gil rubbed at another heart spasm as he walked over to push Play on the ancient boom box and cranked up one of Delon’s heavy-metal mix CDs. The cardboard box he pulled from under the workbench had once held fuel filters but was now the final resting place of rodeo gear that had reached the end of its competitive life. Gil grabbed a rigging whose stiff rawhide handle had been mashed by a horse that had reared up and crushed it against the back of the steel chute. The bronc would have done the same to Delon if a buddy hadn’t yanked him out of harm’s way. Gil had pounded it back into good enough shape for his purposes. He cinched it onto the spur board—an ugly plywood contraption built to mimic the shape of a horse’s back and shoulders—all too aware of the irony of now being the brother on the receiving end of hand-me-downs.
As Gil pulled on one of the old gloves from the box, he glanced in the direction of the office. Normally he wouldn’t do this when there was anyone around to pity the poor has-been reliving his glory days, but Analise was busy, and the thumping of his feet would blend into the music.
He fetched an MP3 player from a drawer and plugged in the earbuds. When he’d worked his hand into the rigging, he cued up an audio clip he’d recorded from a televised rodeo performance. The announcers’ voices filled his head as they launched into the play-by-play for a section of bareback riding from last year’s Fiesta de los Vaqueros pro rodeo in Tucson.
As they rambled on about the first cowboy and the horse he was about to ride, Gil tucked his chin, lifted his free arm, and rocked onto his hip pockets to tuck his knees against the imaginary horse’s shoulders. The fluorescent lights faded and he was in Tucson again, his nostrils filled with the smell of horse, dust, and rosin, and his heart with fire. At the shouts that signaled the gate had opened, his heels snapped into the neck of the spur board, then rolled up, his knees jerking wide as his boots clicked the front edge of the rigging.
Again, and again, and again, his feet lashed out and dragged back, and he could practically feel the horse exploding beneath him, yanking on his arm and slamming his shoulders into its rump. Then the recorded eight-second whistle blew, the crowd roared, and Gil let his feet fall, breathing hard as he spiraled back to reality.
It was a pathetic substitute. A fantasy that inflicted as much pain as pleasure. But unlike so many of the things he’d had to give up, indulging in a taste of this one wouldn’t kill him.
It just felt like it sometimes.
Chapter 5
Near Amarillo—late March
In the spirit of what she’d christened The Quest, Carma had sworn off malls and soulless chain restaurants, but there was a world of difference between weathered charm and downright dingy. If she’d possessed a lick of sense—sixth or otherwise—she would have turned around and walked out of the café when she was greeted by a waitress with dirty cuticles and so much suppressed I hate my life rage that Carma felt obliged to offer her a smile and a sizeable tip instead.
Big mistake.
She’d felt the first pangs of nausea as she crossed the border from New Mexico to Texas. By the time she spotted the first exit to Amarillo, there was no denying the truth.
She was gonna puke.
Her stomach lurched and spit pooled in her mouth as she wheeled into a space in the parking lot of a sprawling truck stop. Another spasm racked her gut as she slid out of the driver’s seat, fumbling for the toggle switch to lock the doors before staggering into the bathroom and the first open stall, where she fell to her knees and was violently sick.
Some interminable amount of time later, a tentative voice asked, “Um, are you okay?”
Seriously? She was hugging a toilet in a public restroom. Hell no, she wasn’t okay. She raised a hand in a feeble just give me a minute gesture, then reached up to flush away the stench. When the next wave of nausea failed to materialize, she cautiously pushed back onto her butt, head flopping against the metal side of the stall.
A college-age girl in an employee uniform shirt watched, one hand clamped over her mouth and nose, as Carma pulled a length of toilet paper off the roll to wipe her face.
“Food poisoning,” Carma croaked.
The girl relaxed slightly. Not the bubonic plague, or a drunk who’d bottomed out in her restroom. “Do you need an ambulance or something?”
Wow. She must look as bad as she felt. Carma rolled her tongue around her mouth and grimaced. “Water.”
The girl scurried away and Carma closed her eyes, letting her thoughts swirl down a metaphorical drain. At the sound of footsteps scuffing on the tile, she hoisted her eyelids to accept a bottle of water. Carma didn’t try to drink, just rinsed and spat, rinsed and spat, until she’d gotten rid of the worst of the taste.
“Paper towels?” she asked.
The girl gave her a fistful. Carma wet them with what was left of the water and pressed them to her face, neck, and chest as the earth beneath her slowly solidified. Finally, her head cleared enough to attempt standing.
Whoa. Her vision swam and the empty water bottle went skidding across the floor as she threw out both hands to catch herself in the narrow stall. After several deep breaths, her thighs stopped feeling like she’d been Tasered, and she shuffled over to the sink with the truck-stop attendant hovering out of range of possible projectile vomit. So far Carma was just dizzy. Maybe she’d get lucky and this would be a one-time, purge-the-tainted-hamburger episode.
Several other women came and went, giving Carma a wide berth…with good reason. With her stringy, sweat-soaked hair and grotesquely smeared makeup, she looked more like a zombie than the time she’d actually played a decomposing extra in a horror movie.
She wasn’t showing up on Bing’s doorstep like this.
“Where’s the nearest motel?” she asked the attendant.
“Right down the street.”
Bed. Air-conditioning. Please God, yes. Carma dug a crumpled five-dollar bill out of her jeans to pay for the water. “Thank you for everything.”
The girl waved it off. “Customer courtesy.”
Outside, brilliant sunlight stabbed through Carma’s pupils and into her brain as she paused to orient herself. There. Her van. Sunglasses. She crawled behind the wheel, cranked the engine and the AC and reached for the purse she’d left on the passenger’s seat. Her hand encountered nothing but red velour. For several uncomprehending beats, she stared at the empty space. Then the impact of what she wasn’t seeing slammed into her.
Her wallet. Her phone. Her… Geezus, everything was in her purse.
She scrambled out of the van, panic momentarily overriding any lingering nausea. She jerked open the passenger’s door and didn’t find the purse wedged alongside the seat. Or under the seat. Or behind the seat. Shit. Shit. It was gone. But how? Then she recalled jabbing blindly at the electric button until she heard a click. She must’ve hit unlock instead of lock—and some asshole had taken immediate advantage.
Son of a bitch. She’d been robbed.
Oh God. What if… She hauled herself up and across the seat, sagging in relief when she saw the familiar flash of blue inside the cubbyhole on the dash. The hollow, crystal-lined stone wasn’t valuable to anyone but her, but it looked like it could be. Ditto for the feather dangling from the rearview mirror, her uncle Tony’s version of a Saint Christopher’s medal. Maybe even crooks knew better than to touch something blessed by tribal elders.
But her purse…
Her muzzy brain tried to wrap itself around what that meant. She could kiss close to a hundred dollars in cash goodbye. No credit cards. No checkbook. She would have to report this to the cops, for all the good it would do. The thief was probably miles away already. She had to notify her bank and her credit card company. Replace her driver’s license and her tribal ID.
She shuddered at the thought of a stranger pawing through her wallet, knowing her birthday, her height and weight and home address. If she hadn’t been sick before, she would be now. And her phone. At least it was password protected so they couldn’t go thumbing through her pictures, her emails, her contacts.
All the texts she’d exchanged with Gil.
A whole different kind of nausea punched her in the gut. She had to contact the company to lock and deactivate the phone ASAP. How much of the data, if anything, could they recover? And seriously, was a bunch of lost texts really her main concern right now?
Carma fished out the bedraggled five-dollar bill that, along with half a tank of gas, was now the sum total of her resources. So much for the motel. Looked like she was headed straight to Earnest after all.
* * *
Gil had had full custody of his child for slightly less than a month, and he still didn’t have a clue what was going on inside the kid’s head. Quint lounged in the extra chair in the dispatcher’s office while Gil stared at a slip of paper informing him that his son was academically ineligible to participate in the upcoming track meet.
“How can you be failing PE?” he asked.
“Only for the week. I was tardy last Thursday and Friday, and I forgot my gym clothes on Monday so I got a zero.” Quint shrugged, supremely unconcerned by his grade or his father’s potential displeasure. “I’m still getting used to not having Mom to get me up and make sure I have all my stuff.”
Quint’s nonchalance only ratcheted up Gil’s anxiety. Could this be a subconscious cry for attention? God knows Gil didn’t micromanage the boy like his mother had, but Krista hadn’t been trying to keep dozens of trucks moving despite Mother Nature’s far-flung wrath. Wildfires in California, an offshore tropical storm pushing torrential rain and flooding into the Gulf States, and a freaking snowstorm all the way across the upper half of the country, turning highways to skating rinks and closing mountain passes in Washington, Idaho…and Montana.
After lunch he’d paused to text Carma a meme of a cowboy riding through snow so deep his horse was completely buried, titled Spring in Montana. She still hadn’t answered. She always answered. Was she tired of their game? Moving on with some other…
Gil dragged his attention back to the boy who wouldn’t get to show off for his new, intensely curious hometown crowd. A string of private clinics and a constant whirl of school and regional leagues had developed Quint’s natural athletic ability to the point Gil had argued that he was a kid, for Christ’s sake, not an Olympic hopeful.
To which Krista had replied, “You never know.”
Only if it was what Quint wanted, and at the moment his give-a-shit level seemed pretty damn low. Was the competition here so soft he didn’t consider it worth his time? But he’d cared enough to beat Sam Carruthers in the runoff for who got the coveted anchor leg on the 1600-meter relay. According to thirdhand reports, Sam hadn’t taken the loss well. No one had heard whatever he’d said before storming off. Quint had declined to comment. Even Beni was being cagey, and Delon’s son had not inherited his father’s tact.
What could some teenaged brat have said that they didn’t want Gil to hear? When pressed, all Quint would say was that Sam was fried because he was used to being the best athlete in his class, but he’d have to get over it.
/> Quint did not lack confidence.
Gil tossed the note onto his desk. How was he supposed to deal with this? Sympathy? Tough love? Ignore it and let the boys work it out, the way Merle Sanchez had always done? The hell if Gil knew. He was the dad who’d been there every other weekend and a month in the summer. Who let his kid stay up too late and play too many video games. He’d never had to worry about gym clothes or homework or juvenile feuds, and none of the drama seemed to bother Quint much.
Or, as the son of parents who’d never been able to resist a chance to take a swipe at each other, Quint was just really good at playing it cool.
Gil closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. The realization that he now had full responsibility for a half-grown boy stopped his heart about eight times a day.
“If you’re having trouble getting up and off to school on your own, I can come back to the house to check on you.” And walk away from the multiple fires Gil was generally trying to stomp out at that time of the morning.
“It’ll be fine,” Quint said. “I just need to turn my alarm up.”
Gil hesitated. Was he was supposed to prove he cared by putting Quint ahead of work, or give his almost-a-man child another chance to show he could handle the responsibility? And why wasn’t there an app for this shit? Gil sighed as his computer beeped with an urgent notification from yet another driver whose route was either on fire, underwater, or buried in snow.
“Okay. But I’m calling the school to make sure they tell me the next time you’re tardy.” His cell phone rang, adding to the chorus of electronic nagging. “Go on out and sweep the truck bays for Max.”
“Can I grab a snack first?”
Pita chips. Hummus. Those green peapod things. What self-respecting teenager called that a snack? “Yeah. But no video games for the rest of the week,” he added, belatedly realizing there should be some kind of consequences.
Relentless in Texas Page 4
