“You think?” Maggie laughs and leans closer. Kiss me, Hank. Kiss me again.
“But I think we’re hitting our stride. And I’m sorry about that kiss. I shouldn’t have done that to Sheila or confused things between us. We’re friends now. For the first time. And I’m here for you, whatever you need.”
His words are like mule kicks, with twice the punch in half the package. Maggie straightens and pulls her hand away.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No. Thank you.” For cover, she points at the bow. “Can I give it a try?”
He stares at her, looking like she’s a puzzle piece he can’t quite fit in. “Sure.” He launches into an explanation of how to hold the bow, sight, and shoot.
Maggie nocks an arrow. “Carbon fiber?”
“The arrows? Yes.”
She lifts the bow and extends it in front of her with her left arm, then draws the bowstring with her right. She aims through the magnifying front sight. When she lets the arrow fly, it hits the target within inches of Hank’s shot. Louise makes an anguished cry that sounds like a human baby.
“Nice!”
Without acknowledging his comment, Maggie fires three more arrows, each one closer in, until on the fourth, she hits dead center. The focus and effort are a godsend. The heat inside her has cooled. Her pheromones are at bay. Louise is not as good. She cowers at Maggie’s feet, moaning. Maggie is perplexed. She’s heard of dogs scared of loud gunshots, but never arrows.
Hank has watched silently until then. “Okay, so you’re a hotshot. Where’d you learn?”
She shakes off the last of her funk. “Camp champion. Must be like riding a bicycle. But I’ve never hunted or shot a moving target.”
Hank holds out his hand for a turn. “You’re one sexy badass, woman.”
Just not sexy enough. Maggie relinquishes the bow.
Hank shoots, but his arrow pierces the target farther from the bull’s-eye than any of Maggie’s shots. He shakes his head. “I’m usually better at this.”
Her voice is dry. “I’ll bet that’s what you tell all the girls. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Seriously, besides worrying about you and feeling like an asshole, I got some bad news last night. I think it’s messing with my aim.” With the bow still in one hand, Hank bends and swipes a tall blade of brown grass. “You may have noticed there’s no love lost between us and Patrick Rhodes?” He chews on the stem.
Maggie nods. “Slightly.”
“Pretty ironic our biggest competitor on the rough stock circuit has the ranch next door.”
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
Hank picks up the quiver and bow and walks toward the targets, Maggie alongside. “Yes. And we found out that he underbid us on the contract for the National Finals Rodeo.”
“Which means what?”
Hank pulls an arrow out and returns it to the quiver. “Which means that for the first time in eight years, we won’t be the stock contractor for the National Finals Rodeo. Patrick will. It’s a really big deal, and he’s going to rub our noses in it.”
Maggie adds arrows to the quiver from each hand. “That sucks.”
“It does suck. And our horses are far better. He has some great bulls. I could have understood if they’d split the contract—I still think our bulls are better, overall, but I could have lived with him getting the bulls contract. But he lumped in his horses on his deal, and the NFR didn’t even give us a chance to match his bid.”
“Would you have matched?”
He sighs. Arrows loaded, he walks back toward Maggie’s cabin. “We couldn’t have. It’s too low. Sets a bad precedent that leads to unprofitability.”
Louise runs ahead of them, tail up, her relief at the cessation of the shooting session obvious.
“So he’ll put himself out of business.”
“One can only hope. If he keeps this up, someone is going to put him out of business for good, six feet under. I’d be happy with that honor myself.”
“Hank, can I ask you something?”
“You can ask. Whether I answer depends on what it is.”
“Patrick said your feud goes way, way back. He made it sound like something other than rough stock. And he said if I wanted to know what it was, I should ask you.” She almost adds the part about Patrick’s suggestion that she could charm it out of him, but she doesn’t want Hank focusing on the wrong issue.
“He did, did he?”
“Yes.”
“There’s your answer, then.”
“But you didn’t answer me.”
“You asked if you could ask me a question. I said you could, but whether I’d answer it depended on the question.”
Hank’s answer is the beginning of a headache for Maggie. “Oh.”
Hank stops by the gate to the tape fence around Maggie’s yard. “Well, I’m getting back to work. Are we good?”
Maggie thinks of her plans earlier to move to Sheridan, rent a hotel room and car. Hank’s apology makes it seem like a whole lot of trouble for nothing. “We are. Except for one thing.”
A look of something almost like fear flashes across Hank’s face. “What is it?”
“Can I borrow a vehicle to drive into Buffalo? I have to give a statement at the police station. And I may have a few other things to do over the next few days.”
Hank relaxes. What had he thought I was going to say? “I’ll commandeer you something to drive. We’ve got Mom’s old Tahoe. I should have thought of it earlier. You can drive it until you get yours back. If you’ll come to lunch, I’ll give you the keys.”
“That old battle-ax hates me.”
“Who, my mother?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“Sure you did. And it’s okay. But she doesn’t hate you. She acts like that to everyone now. I wish you’d met her before Alzheimer’s. She’s a different person inside.”
His words stir something in her. Memories of her own dad. She pushes them away but not before a thought jolts her. Her dad’s health precipitated her retirement from music. Hank’s dad’s health did the same to him, minus the rehab stints. And now his mother has Alzheimer’s. It must be so hard for him. “If you say so.”
“Anyway, I’ll have a surprise at lunch.”
“What?”
“Hence the use of the word surprise.”
Maggie has had far too many surprises this week, none of them good. But still, when she opens her mouth, what comes out is “See you there.”
Twenty
Maggie returns to the cabin, cursing under her breath. A lunch surprise. And she fell for it. She has to immunize herself from Hank. Before, her solution was cocaine. Lately, her alcohol consumption is way up, and it had already been over the recommended daily allowance. Mindless sex hadn’t worked too well for her either. Exhibit number one: Chet Moore. And she’s not the yoga, meditation, or random-acts-of-kindness type. She opens the cabin door, lost in thought.
The back door slams shut.
“Hey,” Maggie yells.
She freezes, but only for a split second. Then she runs for the rifle, grabs it, and sprints to the back door. It’s closed, but unlocked. She searches her memory. Had she left it locked? Surely she had, as paranoid as she’s been after the belt buckle went missing. She looks around the cabin. At first, nothing appears out of place. Then she sees her guitar case. It’s unlatched. She opens it.
Her precious Martin is there, and she cries out in relief. See? I just left the door unlocked. The wind opened it. Then when I opened the front door, the change in pressure slammed the back door. She lifts her guitar to hold it close, and that’s when she notices the peace sign strap is missing.
“Son of a bitch!”
Someone has touched her baby. They’ve taken her belt buckle and her peace strap, and stolen her inner peace along with them. She hears a bark from the front porch. Louise had gotten trapped outside. She lets the dog in and consents to a flurry of
face kisses.
“Come on, girl.”
Together they walk out the back door. I’m an idiot. Why hadn’t she done this in the first place? She might have caught a glimpse of whoever made off with her strap. She scans the landscape. The pasture where she and Hank had been shooting. The forest beyond. Pastures on either side. Horses in one. Cattle in another.
But no humans.
She searches the ground for footprints. There’s no trace, except an unlocked back door, unlatched guitar case, and missing strap. She lifts her gaze, concentrating on the near view. The yard is bare of bushes, but her eyes arrest on the tape fence protecting the grass from loose livestock and other hooved creatures. The tape is sagging. She follows it to the right, then to the left. One of the white plastic fence posts is misplaced. It’s not stuck in the ground, and it’s side by side with the next post, hanging slanted from the tape itself.
Odd. Had the post been like that before? She hadn’t done a fence check. Besides, what would a pulled-up post have to do with anything?
And then she gets it.
If someone ran out through the backyard, they had to go under the fence to escape. Which meant lifting it, in a rush. The tape is strung through notches in the posts. She remembers Andy showing her how the posts can move freely along the tape. Now she can visualize a man with an arm over his head, tape in his hand. The post is jerked out of the ground and sliding down the raised tape, coming to rest when it hits the next post in line.
Shit, shit, shit. Someone had run out the door, right as she was coming in the house, and he’d left under the tape, right here, while she was checking her guitar.
She examines the grass. There are no footprints, but could there be depressions from footsteps? She’s no tracker. She glides her hand over the grass. It seems crushed to her.
“What are you doing?”
She startles, whirls. Gene is standing inside the back door.
“Why are you in my cabin?”
He holds his hands up. “I knocked. No one answered. I hollered in—you weren’t here, but the back door was open. I came to see if you wanted me to saddle Lily for you. It’s a pretty day for a ride.”
Maggie drops her shoulders, which had risen up her neck. “Sorry. Someone just ran out the back door of the cabin. I’m missing a few things. I’m jumpy.”
“What do you mean?” Gene is by her side in a few quick strides.
She tells him about the belt, the guitar strap, and the slamming door, and shows him the fence post.
“Did you tell Hank?”
“No.”
“Maggie May, you should have told one of us.”
“I was hoping I was wrong, when it was just the buckle. That I’d misplaced it. But I wasn’t. Someone is coming in and stealing my things.”
He clomps around, but wide of the path she suspects the intruder used to flee, his eyes trained on the grass. He ducks under the tape and keeps walking. She tents her eyes and watches him.
“There’s definitely been someone here. Boot prints.” He points at the ground. Native grasses, rock, and sagebrush grow beyond the yard, with visible patches of dirt occasionally.
“That could have been any of you guys. Everyone in this country wears boots.”
“Not like these. Come here, but be careful. Don’t mess up the trail.”
She joins him, staring at a print in the dirt. Gene takes a close-up picture with his phone.
“That’s a tactical-boot print.”
“What’s a tactical boot?”
“See the tread at the forefoot? And no square heel print?”
“Yeah.”
“Everyone here wears cowboy boots, because we ride all the time. Our prints would have smooth forefoots, and you’d see a differential heel. These are more like hiking boots. Or work boots.”
Maggie nods. “I see it.”
“Whoever it is wears a wide boot. Maybe a ten or so. We need to call the cops.”
“I have an appointment this afternoon to give a statement. I can report it then.” She wants further involvement with them like she wants a hole in her head, but this shit is getting scary.
“I heard. Sorry.”
She cuts her eyes away. Of course he has. Everyone knows about her rendezvous with Chet now. And those that don’t know her are speculating, like the old-timer at the Wagon Box Inn. Did she do it? Hell, even the people that know her are probably wondering. It’s exactly what she hadn’t wanted to happen.
Gene’s voice is gentle, sympathetic even. “But the Buffalo cops don’t cover us. We’re under the jurisdiction of the Sheridan County Sheriff’s Department out here. In Sheridan.”
“Great.”
“They’re not bad.”
She rubs her temple. She officially has a whopper headache. “It’s a belt buckle. And a guitar strap. They’ll laugh at me.”
“It’s a break-in.”
“The door wasn’t locked.”
“It doesn’t matter. Besides, aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“The break-in and theft at your store in Texas.”
Maggie scowls. And the sabotage, but she doesn’t bring it up. “How’d you know about that?”
“Michele. Do you think they could be related?”
Michele. Best friends don’t rely on fresh-out-of-the-box stepbrothers to update best friends on their significant life events, like murdered hookups, cop visits, truck sabotage, and break-ins. Not if they want to stay best friends, which Maggie does. Michele’s the only best girlfriend she’s ever had. Hell, only best friend of either—any?—gender. She’s got to call her. And Junior, dammit, because if there’s even the slimmest of chances these events fourteen hundred miles apart are linked, he needs to know. “If they are, I don’t see how.”
Gene shakes his head, lips in a line. “You’ve got a big red target on your forehead, Maggie. I’d call the sheriff if I were you.”
“You’re not me.”
“Suit yourself. But if you don’t, I have to. And I have to tell Hank.”
“Fine. I’ll call.”
“When?”
“On my way to Buffalo.”
“Good. I’ll tell Hank at dinner.”
“You’re pushy.”
He grins. “I care about your safety.”
She holds up the rifle she’s been carrying around with her. “I have this, and Louise. But it would be nice to have a key so I could lock up.”
“I can get you that. And I’ll talk to Hank. We could move you up to the house with him and his mom.”
She bobs her head. “Or not.”
Gene doesn’t laugh. “About that.”
“About what?”
“You and Hank.”
Maggie tenses, doesn’t look at him. Stares at the cabin, thinks about bolting.
As if reading her mind, Gene walks to the back door. “Me and Hank have been together longer than most married couples. I knew him before and I knew him after you left him with nothing but a scrap of paper in Cheyenne. When he hurt his head at the next rodeo. When his father took sick and died. When we struggled to get this business off the ground. When his mother slipped away and became a different person. When he saw you had destroyed yourself and it nearly killed him. Honestly, for a long time I thought he was going to follow you off the deep end.”
Maggie can’t help it. She meets his gaze, her eyes searching for any exaggeration in his words.
“He tried to contact you, you know.”
She closes the ground between them and grabs Gene’s elbow, all pretense dropped. “What? Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Pride, I guess. He got escorted out of one of your shows in Denver by bouncers when he tried to go backstage. Cussed out by your agent. And turned away from your rehab clinic because he wasn’t family.”
“He would have told me.”
Gene enters the cabin and checks the doorknob. Now he’s the one avoiding eye contact. “Ask him.”
A tear slips down
Maggie’s cheek. “I didn’t know.”
Gene walks to the front door and examines that knob, too. “He said he sent letters to the only address he could find back then.”
She mulls that one over until the answer comes to her. “My publicist. But I didn’t get them.”
Gene walks from window to window, making sure they’re locked. “Now, how was he supposed to know that? He just finally gave up. It was a bad time for him, and he had to get it together.”
“Oh God.” Maggie scrubs the tears away. Hank could walk up at any moment. She doesn’t want him to see her like this.
“And when he found you again in Texas? That’s probably the happiest I’ve ever seen him, by the way. Happier than when he met you, even though you were meaner than a snake.” He smiles at her. “But then Hank’s always liked a little mean, in bulls and in women.”
“I—”
He holds up a hand. “And the worst day? When you sent him back to Wyoming without you last spring. Because he knew then exactly what he’d lost.”
Maggie’s voice escalates. “But he hasn’t lost it. I was scared. I’m here now. Ready for a second chance.”
He holds up one finger, then two, then a third. “Higher mathematics tells me this would be a third chance.”
She groans. “If he just hadn’t hooked up with the Sunday school teacher, we’d be together now. She’s a child, Gene. He’s dating a child.”
“What’d you expect—he’d sit around pining for you? Waste the rest of his life turning down women who weren’t you, again? You hurt him. Twice.”
“He hurt me!” Maggie drops her face.
Gene shakes his head. “Well now, holding on to that must make it all better.”
She knows she hasn’t given Hank enough credit, hasn’t believed in him enough, and the realization rocks her. She doesn’t deserve a third chance.
Maggie doesn’t watch Gene walk out, just lies down on the bed and cries softly, until a cold, wet nose pushes against her face.
There’s a rapping sound on the screen doorframe.
She yelps.
“The offer still stands on saddling Lily, although I don’t imagine you feel up to it now.”
“I sure don’t want to hang out here.” She wipes her tears and stands. Riding Lily sounds Zen. Or as close as she can get to it, with her life like a swarm of mosquitos in a bug zapper.
Live Wire (Maggie #1) Page 14
