She could guess what was going on. Nobody had told the boy not to be seen coming or going from the camp.
“Melinda?” Maddie’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie, making both of them jump. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
She kept her eyes on the boy. “Don’t you move,” she said under her breath. “I’m here—in the middle of nothing but grass.”
“Are you okay?” Maddie insisted.
Something in her tone made Melinda pause. Jamie’s eyes pleaded with her. “Fine. Everything’s fine.” She left it at that. “I got turned around on the way home. Any chance Rebel can find me?”
Maddie chuckled. “Yeah, he’s good at that. Give him a few minutes, okay?”
“Okay.” She stuffed the walkie-talkie back in the bag. “Listen, kid—here’s the deal. I don’t tell anyone I know where you go if you keep coming to the center. You miss more than three days and I come looking for you. Got it?” Never mind that she’d never find her way back to Nobody’s trailer in the woods. He didn’t need to know that.
He shot her a look that might have been intimidating on an older kid.
She just grinned at him. “Yeah, you don’t scare me. If Nobody wanted you to come to the center, you keep coming to the center. Got it?”
He twisted his mouth in displeasure. She took it as a ‘yes.’
“Second, from the center, you follow that road for about a mile until it hits …” Crap. Directions had never been her strong suit. “Until it hits the bigger road. Go right on that for three or four miles.” She could see the trip in her head, but she’d never seen a street sign. “Then take a left on the gravel road, follow that for about two miles, then right on the dirt drive. Rebel and Madeline live in the trailer at the top of the hill, okay? I live there, too. If something goes wrong, you come get us, okay?”
Jamie didn’t reply, but she could see him thinking through the directions in his head. He nodded this way and that before finally saying, “Okay.”
Oh, thank God he wasn’t going to fight her on that. “What about the horse?”
Jamie shot her a smary look. “Don’t worry about her.” Then he spun his horse around in a tight circle and took off.
She sighed as she watched him go.
What else could she do?
She turned her horse back in the direction that might have been toward the house and nudged her on to a slow walk. After about fifteen minutes of what felt like moving in place, she heard, “Melinda? You out here?” from somewhere off to her left.
“Rebel?” she yelled back. “Over here!”
As they got closer, she saw that Rebel wasn’t alone. He had another man on horseback with him. Whereas Rebel was wearing jeans and moccasins and a gray t-shirt—proving he did actually own shirts—this other man had on a denim work shirt and a black cowboy hat with an eagle feather tied to it. And a badge on his shirt pocket.
Oh, crap. Suddenly, she was thrilled Jamie had bailed on her. It was going to be hard enough to explain what she was doing out here in the middle of nowhere. But if she’d been with the boy, that would have made everything else more complicated.
As if it weren’t complicated enough.
“There you are.” Rebel’s tone made it sound like she was a little sister that had wandered off and gotten lost.
Which wasn’t that far from the truth. “Here I am.” She didn’t know what else to say. The whole reason that she’d had to get Nobody home was that the sheriff was coming. By the look of things, the sheriff was here. “Hi. Melinda Mitchell.”
“Tim Means,” he said in a business-like tone, his eyes searching the horizon. “There was an incident at the clinic last night.” His gaze snapped back to her. “Know anything about it?”
Melinda swallowed as she let her face fly into a surprised look. Years of sneaking out past curfew to go out with boys her parents most definitely did not approve of made lying easy. “What happened?” she gasped.
Rebel notched an eyebrow at her, as if her play-acting abilities were something of a shock.
“Somebody beat the hell out of some gangbangers,” the sheriff said, looking over her horse. “Would you know anything about that?”
Oh, crap—the horse. The horse she was currently sitting on without a saddle or a bridle. That wasn’t normal—well, maybe it was normal on the rez, but it was most certainly not normal for a white chick.
She needed to stall for time. If this were Columbus, she’d just start flirting. She was good at it. Never underestimate the power of her boobs. But this was the rez and she hadn’t gotten all the rules down yet. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Nothing fatal.” Tim’s voice trailed off, as if he weren’t sure about that last one. “I think they were going to trash the child care center. You’re in charge of the center, right?”
“Oh my gosh, is everything okay there?” She nudged Star’s sides with her heels. If she had to go check on her building, she could get out of this conversation.
“Ms. Mitchell,” Tim said in the kind of voice that no smart person ever walked away from, “where have you been all morning?”
She looked back at him and this time, she noticed the gun strapped to his leg. Tim Means was a nice-looking guy—solidly built, probably about six feet tall, with a look that could be considered imposing—if one hadn’t just spent a day in the company of Nobody Bodine.
Okay, time to play the dippy white woman card. “I was camping,” she said in a gushing kind of way. “I can’t believe how much space there is out here, you know? Without cars or lights? I mean, I didn’t even see, like, a plane fly overhead?” Suddenly, every statement ended on an up note, as if the world were a question.
She flashed him a big smile and leaned forward just enough that her breasts shifted. “It’s just so beautiful out here, you know? Maddie and Rebel have been great, but I thought we could all use a little … personal time.” She raised one eyebrow to emphasize her point.
It worked. The sheriff wasn’t so green that he blushed at the suggestion of sex—both the solo and the duo kinds—but he suddenly was staring at the hills again. “Did you see anyone while you were … camping?” The last word kind of stuck in his throat.
“No—isn’t that amazing? I mean, a person could get lost out here, you know? Well,” she added with a giggle, “I guess I sort of did. Which is why Rebel had to come get me.”
Rebel gave her the side eye. Dial it back a notch, he seemed to be saying.
Men. “I need to get back and check on the center,” she said, trying to strike the balance between flirty and concerned. “But thank you so much for telling me what’s happened. I’ll make sure I’m not there alone.”
The sheriff nodded. “I’ve assigned a deputy to keep an eye on the place—Jack. Even if you don’t see him, he’s there. I don’t want there to be any reprisals.” He tipped his hat to her. “Ma’am,” he said as he urged his horse forward—and away from the direction she and Jamie had ridden.
She thought. There was a lot of grass.
“Ready?” Rebel asked, turning around and setting his horse at a walk toward what she hoped was home. She needed a shower and some food. Star fell into step with Rebel’s horse.
They rode in silence for a while before Rebel twisted in the saddle and scanned the horizon. “How is he?”
“Stubborn,” she replied, unable to stop from rolling her eyes. “But okay, I think. I’m not a medical professional, you know.”
“Trust me, I know.”
There it was again, that teasing tone that made her feel like his little sister. “Yeah, well, I got him into a chair and got him water and changed his bandage. Then he fell asleep.”
She waited for the questions—where did he live, what was it like—as well as questions she didn’t have answers for. But Rebel didn’t ask them.
“Who’s Jack, the deputy?”
Rebel let out a pretty heavy sigh. “He’s a tracker. Usually works for a rancher on the other side of the rez. Best hunter I’ve ever met.
Tim only asks for his help when he really needs it.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “So is he going to protect the clinic or …”
Or wait for Nobody.
Rebel didn’t have an answer for that.
Chapter Ten
The sheriff may have said that the deputy named Jack wouldn’t always be visible, but it was hard to miss a guy sitting in a rusted out Ford pick-up on the edge of the parking lot late Monday afternoon.
Yes, she felt a little safer with a deputy on-site. According to Rebel, the ringleader of the gang had been taken to Rapid City to get his arm put back together, but he’d already been released. Rebel didn’t seem too worried that the guy would come back to the center anytime soon, but then, Rebel hadn’t seen the guy drive a knife into Nobody’s side.
Where was Nobody? The rest of the weekend had passed with no word from him or from Jamie. Melinda had kept her promise and not mentioned the boy. Madeline had assured her that it was perfectly normal for Nobody to disappear for days or weeks on end—against medical advice, she stressed—and then show up as if nothing had ever happened.
“Who cleans the Clinic when he’s gone?” Melinda wanted to know. She was counting on him showing up for his job, at the very least.
“If it’s not clean when Clarence gets in the next morning, he wipes everything down,” was the non-committal answer.
So here she was, waiting. There were only three kids left—and Jamie hadn’t shown up, either. If Nobody wasn’t going to put in an appearance—which, given the deputy who was probably authorized to shoot upon sight, seemed unlikely—the least the kid could do was give her an update on his condition. All she could do was pray that Nobody was still alive while she swept up.
Tuesday was much the same. She spent the day in a crap-tacular mood. If that boy didn’t show up, she was going to have to track him down. But where? His house? That seemed like a tremendously bad idea, even by her standards. She didn’t want someone who beat his wife and kid to know who she was. However, despite her bluff to the boy, she held no illusions that she could retrace the way out to Nobody’s place.
So she was stuck, waiting. And waiting, as Wednesday passed. Star was still at Rebel and Madeline’s, munching grass without a care in the world, and Jack the Tracker was still spending his evenings watching the center.
Frustrated, she went up to his truck and knocked on the window. Jack was a wiry guy with a sharp hooked nose that matched his sharp chin. He rolled down the window and shot her a grin. “Yes, Ms. Mitchell?”
“Hi, how’s it going?”
Chuckling, Jack made a show of looking out the windshield. “Quiet, I’d have to say.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You mean, another one?”
Smartass. “Yeah. Are you waiting on Nobody?”
A little of the cockiness faded from his grin. “Maybe.”
“What are you going to do when you see him?”
Jack the Tracker cranked his head from side to side, thinking. “First off, I won’t see him unless he wants to be seen. Second off, I won’t arrest him if I don’t see him do anything stupid. The sheriff’s got it out for him, but I don’t have a problem with him as long as he’s on one side of the rez and I’m on the other. Besides, it’s not like Dwayne’s gonna press charges—not when Tim’s looking for him, too.”
Jack gave her a look that might have been worry. She got the distinct feeling that what he wasn’t saying was that Dwayne was going to handle this his own way. This did not make her feel any better. “But if Dwayne comes back, you’ll arrest him, right?”
“Yup. He’s got outstanding warrants.”
Yeah, not exactly comforting. “Thanks, Jack.”
Thursday, however, brought Jamie to the clinic. She gave him the meanest look she had—which was still only half as mean as Madeline’s—as she hissed, “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick!”
To which he shrugged. She was so frustrated that she wanted to shake him. She didn’t of course, but she wanted to, by God. “Is he okay?”
The look he gave her this time was … different. If she didn’t know better, she’d say the boy looked jealous. Instead of answering her, he handed her a little slip of paper that had been folded approximately thirty-seven times. Well, really, about four, but still—who folded paper like that?
The answer was Nobody, of course. She unfolded the paper, trying not to grin like a schoolgirl who’d just gotten her first mash note. “I’m okay,” it said in stiff, all-caps letters.
And that was it. So much for the theory that a man who didn’t talk much might, you know, actually write things down.
Still, he’d sent her a message. And beyond that, he wasn’t dead. She looked up at Jamie, who was acting like she’d taken the last piece of cake for dessert. “Thank you.”
He nodded just as the twins got into a fight over a toy.
She sighed. Nobody would have to wait. But not for much longer, she hoped.
*
The ride was hard. That was the difference between getting shot in the shoulder and stabbed in the gut. Shoulders only hurt if you needed to use your arm, but a stomach wound was gonna pull no matter how you moved.
Still, it’d been a week since the fight. Nobody felt bad that he hadn’t been able to make it into work. That meant that Dr. Mitchell was going to give him one of those looks of hers and do some scolding.
But he had a feeling that he needed to steer clear of the clinic for a while—the kind of feeling that he’d learned not to ignore. Might be that the sheriff had it staked out. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, he decided. There’d be someone around to make sure Melinda wasn’t on her own.
But it meant he couldn’t do his job and he couldn’t watch Melinda. At least, not at the clinic.
But at Rebel’s? Yeah, he could tough it out for the ride in and see if she was doing okay.
He took the long way, looping back through the hills and over the White Sandy river before coming up to Rebel’s house from the south. Took a lot longer, but if the law was watching Rebel’s house and Nobody got caught, he didn’t want anyone to guess where his place was.
He left Red about half a mile away and went slow, paying attention to the world around him. Nothing felt off, so that was good. He hoped to find Jamie at the fire, sitting next to Melinda. Maybe she was helping him with his reading. Even as the image assembled itself in his mind, he wondered why the thought had occurred to him.
He’d sent the boy home—a thing he hated doing. Every time he did, he worried that this would be the time he didn’t get there to stop Lou Kills Deer. But he couldn’t keep the boy, especially now that the law was looking for him. Again.
By the time he got to the house, it was probably past midnight. Rebel would sit up at night if he thought he needed to, but Nobody was surprised to see that it wasn’t Rebel sitting next to the fire. Instead, it was a woman with fire hair sitting cross-legged with one hand on her chin, a far-away look in her eyes as she stared at the flames.
Melinda. A weird thing happened in his chest—a tightness he’d thought was a pulled muscle released. Suddenly, he could breathe without pain.
He waited in the shadows to see if anyone else was lurking around, but outside the crackling of the fire, the night was quiet.
He wanted to go to her, but he didn’t know how. Rebel had always said he was welcome to sit at the fire, but Rebel wasn’t around. Probably inside, sleeping with his wife in his arms.
Like Melinda had been in Nobody’s arms back at the camp, her body pressed against his, his arm around her waist. Like lovers.
No, not like lovers. Just because she’d helped him out in a tight spot did not mean he got to think like that.
She hadn’t noticed he was there yet. Or she was forcibly ignoring him. That thought made him nervous. Was she? Why would she do that? For a man who didn’t want people to see him, suddenly not being seen made him nervous. Maybe there was a lawman staking out the house. He’d
been so anxious to get here after the long ride that he hadn’t done a very good check. Nobody didn’t have friends. The list of people who might be lying in wait for him started with the sheriff and went on for several pages.
See what thinking about a woman got him? Careless. Stupid. If he got caught, he deserved it.
He left the glow of the fire behind and did a couple of wide circles around the house and the hill it rested on. Nothing. No sign of tracks in the grass or dirt, nothing in the trees, no one hiding in the barn.
Finally satisfied—and his side throbbing—he worked his way back up to the house again. The light seemed dimmer and a shot of panic caught him off guard. What if she’d gone to bed while he was checking?
No, no—that was fine. He didn’t need to see her again. She was fine. That was all he needed.
Except it wasn’t. He just didn’t realize how much he needed until he could see her form next to the dying embers. He needed something more.
He hadn’t even stepped into the clearing when she looked up at him. Anyone else wouldn’t have known he was there, but she knew. “Did everything check out?” she asked in a quiet voice.
She’d known he was here. Maybe not when he’d first gotten here, but she’d realized he was around and waited for him.
He stepped out. The light from the fire was negligible and the house was dark. There wasn’t much moon, but the stars were bright enough for him to see every detail about her.
What was left of the firelight caught the colors of her hair as she smiled a wide, open smile at him. She was sitting on a blanket, her skirt fanned out around her. “I’ve been waiting on you, Mr. Bodine.”
He whipped his hat off his head. “Sorry to have kept you waiting. I was making sure.”
She accepted this. “I was worried about you.”
He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to this. People didn’t worry about him. At least, they didn’t worry that he was all right. More than likely, they worried that he was around and up to no good.
She looked up at him, her eyes shining in the low light. “Come,” she said, patting the blanket next to her. “Have a seat.”
Nobody (Men of the White Sandy) (Volume 3) Page 13
