On the other hand, she wasn’t glad that Loretta might be walking into a trap, as Mitch had just pointed out. And she certainly wasn’t glad that the man she loved still faced a murder charge.
“Which way?” he asked as they came to an intersection.
Straight ahead, a traffic jam blocked the road, and there was no sign of the silver car in either direction. Kate had the impression—so fleeting it might almost have been a momentary blurring of her contact lens—that she’d glimpsed a vehicle turning right, and said so.
Sure enough, a block later they caught sight of the Taurus whipping around another comer. The height of the truck’s cab gave them an advantage as they struggled to keep it in sight without attracting attention.
“I don’t understand why she won’t listen to reason,” Mitch growled as he drove.
“I do.” Kate had seen the same attitude in angry teenagers one summer when she’d taught high school remedial classes. “She has a mental image of herself as a helpless kid and you as an all-powerful adult. She thinks you can control everything that happens.”
“Don’t I wish?” The Stetson cast a shadow over his face but she could hear the frustration in his words.
They rounded another bend and Kate spotted the silver car entering a motel parking lot. Mitch slowed the truck as they cruised by.
“I don’t see Tiny’s van,” he said.
“Those bandits aren’t that stupid,” Kate suggested, although she wasn’t entirely convinced of that. “If they’re here, they’ve had plenty of time to hide it.”
Mitch pulled to the curb and they watched his cousin hop out of her car. Key in hand, Loretta walked toward Room 104.
In the room’s window, something glinted where the curtains had been pushed aside. Kate blinked and focused harder. She hadn’t been mistaken; sunlight was reflecting off the muzzle of a gun.
“They’re inside!” she cried, but her voice didn’t carry to Loretta.
Nothing mattered to Kate at that moment except the fact that a young girl, a student whom she herself had influenced, was walking into a death trap. Without hesitation, she wrenched open her door, jumped down and barreled across the sidewalk and the asphalt, yelling, “Wait! Wait! Wait!”
Loretta turned with a frown. Kate pelted toward her, her heart and lungs threatening to burst from a combination of adrenaline and speed.
Behind her, she heard the truck roar into gear and knew Mitch must be hurrying toward the entrance to the parking lot. If only that weren’t half a block away!
Loretta stood frozen on the sidewalk. Kate was still a dozen feet from her when the door to Room 104 banged open and all three bandits tried to rush through it at the same time.
Stuck in the middle, the tall skinny one, Dexter Dinkens, let out a string of curses that turned the air blue. Wedged behind him, the massive Tiny Wheeler gave a shove that sent Dexter stumbling onto the sandaled, sock-clad foot of Nine Toes Blankenship, who let out a scream so high-pitched and unearthly it would surely have won him a role of some sort from the opera company, if only for its novelty value.
In that brief window of time before the bandits could disentangle themselves, Kate grabbed the younger woman and pulled her toward her car.
The Taurus was unlocked, thank goodness. Kate pushed Loretta into the driver’s seat.
From the far side of Room 104, the truck jounced toward them. It loomed, massive and unmistakable, in the cramped lot, and with horror Kate saw Dexter Dinkins raise his shotgun and take aim at Mitch.
She jumped into the car beside Loretta. “Honk your horn! Distract him!” When the girl didn’t move fast enough, Kate reached over and pushed it herself.
The blare nearly deafened her. “You’ll get us killed!” Loretta cried, finally coming to life. She quickly turned the key in the ignition.
They backed out, fast. Dexter took aim again at Mitch, only to be jostled as Tiny Wheeler thrust past, racing toward the Taurus. Her panic yielding to fury, Loretta floored it and zoomed past the truck toward the exit.
Mitch! He couldn’t turn around in this cramped space, but Nine Toes Blankenship, who appeared to care less about the man who was escaping than about the man who had stepped on his foot, began pummeling Dexter’s shoulder. Tiny turned to yell at them both, and the truck lumbered past, still headed in the opposite direction from the Taurus.
“He’ll have to come out a different way!” Kate said. “Circle around and we’ll meet him...”
A police car turned onto the block. For one heart-stopping moment, she thought someone had reported Mitch. Then she realized it was cruising toward the three bandits, who stood in front of the motel trying without much success to hide their shotguns.
Swiveling, Kate saw Mitch’s truck disappear down a side street. Of course he wouldn’t hang around, not with an All Points Bulletin issued. Besides, if the police weren’t already hunting him, Tiny Wheeler would put them on the scent.
“Just tell me where you want me to drop you,” Loretta said tightly as they distanced themselves from the motel. Mitch was out of sight.
If only the two of them had arranged a meeting place in case they got separated! But the possibility hadn’t occurred to them. Now, with growing dismay, Kate realized that there was no easy way to contact him. She wondered what had happened to Loretta’s friends, but Loretta assured her they’d probably had auditions of their own.
Kate concentrated her concern on Mitch. He couldn’t be more than a mile away. But he might as well be in another city or state for all the likelihood of finding him.
She couldn’t give up so easily. “Try that direction.” She pointed toward where she’d last seen the truck. “We need to intercept him. Maybe he’s pulled over to wait for us.”
Loretta shrugged. “If you say so.”
They drove around for half an hour. Traffic was heavy, but even so, Kate felt sure they would have spotted the truck had Mitch been watching for them.
Obviously he had decided it was unsafe to linger in the area. Surely he would try to meet her somewhere, but where?
Not the central plaza; he was too likely to attract attention there. Maybe the RV park.
Grudgingly, Loretta swung by the location. But there was no sign of Mitch outside it, and, inside, their slot had already been taken by a new arrival.
They tried the music store and the opera company headquarters. No sign of him.
Loretta was clearly impatient, and Kate didn’t blame her. It was time to accept the painful truth.
She had lost Mitch.
No goodbyes, no chance to try to work things out, nothing. He was gone and, for his own safety, she could only hope he wouldn’t stick around Santa Fe.
It was time to return to Grazer’s Comers. Time to face Moose and the townspeople, and a life that had just had a great hole blasted through it
Someday, if she were lucky, she might hear from Mitch again. Certainly, as sheriff, she could keep tabs on the status of Gulch City’s investigation. But...
But she wanted him now. She missed his quiet strength, the sudden sunshine of his smile, the aroma of cedar and masculinity.
She missed the slight roughness of his cheek against hers, and the gentleness of his mouth, and the way he angled himself over her when they made love. She wanted to wake up and see Mitch standing at the stove making coffee, with the morning light playing across the planes of his face.
But she couldn’t.
“I guess it’s time for me to go back to California,” she said.
“Bus station okay?” Loretta asked. “Or I can take you to the airport.”
On the point of replying, Kate realized she hadn’t thought this matter through. “What are you going to do, after I leave?”
Loretta pressed her lips together and didn’t answer for a minute. Finally she parked in front of a convenience store.
“I suppose it’s safe to tell you, since you won’t be seeing Mitch,” she replied. “I’m going to the High C.”
“The ranch?” I
nstead of answering, Loretta got out of the car and marched toward the store. Kate followed, perplexed. “Why? And what are you doing here?”
“Laying in supplies.” Inside the store, Loretta grabbed a wire basket and began piling it with toiletry items. “After what happened at the motel, I don’t dare go back to Sally’s house. I’m heading straight for Texas.”
Impulsively, Kate picked up a basket, too. She’d left all her supplies with Mitch except for what was in her purse, which, fortunately, included her glasses, her credit cards and her birth control pills. But not much else.
At the same time, she had to talk sense into Loretta. “You can’t go back there,” she said as she tossed a package of contact lens cleaner into her basket. “You saw what those men are like.”
“They’re mostly bluff,” Loretta told her. “Billy Parkinson would never hurt me. Anyway, I know when it’s safe to go to the ranch. On Sunday mornings, everybody goes to church—it’s one of Billy’s rules. I’ll be fine, Miss Bingham.”
“Can you tell me what you’re searching for?”
A headshake set the mass of brown curls bouncing. “Sorry. That’s my secret.”
Loretta didn’t have an ounce of sense, Kate thought. She’d nearly walked straight into Tiny Wheeler’s arms—or the sights of his gun—a few minutes ago, and here she was determined to march into the lions’ den.
Someone needed to keep an eye on her. And as she regarded her nearly full basket, Kate realized she’d already made a decision.
“Mind if I come with you?” she asked.
Something that might have been relief shone in Loretta’s eyes. “I guess it couldn’t hurt,” she said. “I don’t much like driving alone.”
As they paid at the register and departed, it occurred to Kate that this way she might see Mitch again, after all.
It would be safer for him if he didn’t figure out their destination and come after them. But for Loretta’s and her own safety, and for the sake of the throbbing ache inside her chest, she hoped he would.
Chapter Twelve
Mitch had always known that someday he was likely to lose Kate. But he hadn’t been prepared for it to happen yet.
Damn it, he thought as he cruised along Paseo Peralta, he didn’t want to lose her, ever. Crazy as it seemed, given his present circumstances and the fact that she had no desire to spend the rest of her life on a ranch, he intended to marry that woman.
First, though, he had to find her. And that wasn’t going to happen in Santa Fe.
He’d driven by the music store, the opera headquarters and the plaza, but there’d been no sign of Kate. He’d approached the RV park only to see a police car turning in at the gate. It might be a coincidence, but maybe not, since he’d had to register his license number with the office.
So Kate was gone, although, presumably, safe. She would probably return to Grazer’s Corners.
That was exactly where Mitch would go, too.
Even though he had nothing to offer Kate now, he couldn’t let her marry Moose. The man was wrong for her.
In his mind, an image of Kate took shape, not a flat photographic picture but the warm rosy reality of her. Glowing skin, swingy blond hair, bright blue eyes.
He could see her slender figure planting itself in front of the trading post, defying the show-off biker. And hear her earsplitting whistle alerting him that Loretta had emerged from the audition.
No wonder he could hear her. His ears were still ringing.
There couldn’t possibly be another woman in the world like Kate. Mitch refused to give her up, even though from this angle the future resembled a patch of quicksand more than a sea of opportunity.
He wasn’t looking forward to making the long drive back through Arizona. Neither would Kate, he supposed. She would probably catch a plane rather than a bus.
The airport lay in the same general direction as the freeway. He decided to swing by there on his way out of town, just in case he could spot her.
ON CERRILLOS ROAD, Mitch went right by the office with its cactus-shaped shingle reading J. C. Lopez-Gaucho M.D., General Podiatry before he realized what he had seen.
A rusty van with Texas plates sat wedged between a Mercedes and a Volvo in front of the building. The Tiny Wheeler gang had been released.
At the motel, Nine Toes Blankenship had been hopping around on an obviously injured foot. He must have stopped to get it checked. Then, with Billy no doubt tracking Loretta by her credit charges, they’d be hot on her trail.
Mitch’s gut twisted with anger. For the past ten years, his every attempt to set the world right had backfired.
When he’d finally gone to the ranch to try to reach an agreement with Billy, he’d barely escaped with his life. Since then, at least, he’d had a clear-cut goal: to find his cousin and prove his innocence.
Instead, he had put Loretta’s and Kate’s lives in jeopardy. Going to Grazer’s Comers might satisfy his emotional need to see Kate, but it would leave his cousin unprotected.
As long as he was on the lam, he couldn’t even track Loretta. It was time to stop running around like a crazed coyote and start thinking about what was best for the people he loved.
Grimly, Mitch pulled into a service station and set to filling his tank. He would be hitting the freeway, all right, but he wouldn’t be traveling to California.
It was time he went back to Gulch City and turned himself in.
LATE ON SATURDAY, Kate and Loretta came within fifteen miles of Gulch City. They didn’t want to risk being recognized, so they stayed at a bed-and-breakfast in nearby Fort Jenkins.
It had taken them five days to make what should have been at most a three-day drive from Santa Fe. That was because they’d had to spend two nights in El Paso after a tire blew.
Kate remembered what Mitch had said about the Taurus pulling to the right. Well, the pulling had finally worn through one of the tires.
Fortunately, it happened at a traffic light, so all they suffered was a little jostling. Also the embarrassment of having to wait for a tow truck while horns honked and motorists glared.
Then it turned out that Loretta’s car had some kind of front-end problem which required ordering parts. The two of them used the time to run laundry and do a little shopping.
Kate found her companion warm, impulsive and determined. She hadn’t, however, learned what it was that the young woman expected to find on the ranch. In fact, Loretta didn’t like talking about any aspect of the months she’d spent working for Billy.
Kate’s explanation of how Mitch really lost the ranch was met with apparent indifference. Loretta also refused to acknowledge that only her testimony could save Mitch from a murder charge. In her view, her clever, capable cousin should simply use his legal training to extricate himself.
When Kate pressed the issue, Loretta put a tape on her cassette player and sang. It was frustrating, but heavenly.
Now they had negotiated their way into the heart of Texas, through rolling grasslands and fenced ranches bearing names like the Flying KW and Split Lightning. What buildings Kate could see from the highway were weathered and rambling.
On their way into Fort Jenkins, they rolled past the stone schoolhouse where a custodian was checking the playground equipment, no doubt planning to make good use of the summer break. Kate got an achy feeling when she thought of Grazer’s Comers Elementary and was surprised to realize she missed the place already.
A cheery lady rented them two rooms at the bed-and-breakfast. Kate put the charge on her card, since she assumed Billy Parkinson would be tracking any purchases Loretta made.
For dinner, they ate sandwiches in Kate’s room. They didn’t dare go out for fear someone would recognize Loretta and report her to Billy.
Push had come to shove, Kate reflected. Tomorrow, unless she could talk Loretta out of it, they were going to sneak onto the ranch. A ranch where they might find themselves up against some very unethical men.
At the prospect of staring down the barrel
of a gun, Kate’s hands went cold and her feet got prickly. Her tongue felt thick, too. She hoped she wouldn’t react this way if she got cornered and needed her wits about her.
Sitting on the carpet, Loretta propped herself against the edge of the bed. “The church service starts at ten. Billy makes all his hands go with him.”
“He’s religious?” The notion didn’t gibe with Kate’s impression of the man.
“No way,” said Loretta. “He just likes to look good to the town’s wheelers and dealers.”
“Like Chief Novo.”
“Yeah, and the mayor and the country club set. You know how snobby small towns can be.”
Kate thought of Grazer’s Comers. “Yes. But sometimes the movers and shakers are simply the people willing to take responsibility for getting things done.”
“I suppose,” Loretta conceded. “Anyway, there’s some Hispanic families that live on the ranch, too. One of the men, Mario, was Uncle Carl’s foreman, and Billy kept him on. Those families drive about twenty miles to a Catholic church, so they’re gone all morning, too.”
“Billy doesn’t leave anyone on the property for safekeeping?” Kate asked dubiously. “What if there was a fire?”
“It’s only empty for a couple of hours,” Loretta said. “Besides, this isn’t California. People leave their doors unlocked.”
“Is that how we’re going to get into the house?”
“We don’t need to,” replied the younger woman. “We won’t be going inside.”
“No? Then where...” Kate caught a warning gleam in Loretta’s eyes. No use asking; she wouldn’t get an answer. “What if we get caught?” she asked instead.
“I told you, Billy won’t hurt me,” Loretta said easily. “He hates Mitch—he always has. Some kind of male testosterone thing. He’s too smart to kill somebody in cold blood, anyway, and his clowns are probably still tripping and staggering around the Santa Fe jail.”
Kate wished she could be sure of that, but she didn’t intend to play it safe now. If she hadn’t trusted her instincts these past few weeks, she’d still be in Grazer’s Comers, and married to Moose. That would have been a terrible mistake.
The Cowboy & The Shotgun Bride (The Brides of Grazer's Corners #1) Page 17
