Crossroads Burning

by Nash, Layla

  I hated asking, since I was pretty sure I already knew the answer. But if for some reason the trip to the Crossroads didn’t pan out or the tourists didn’t pay much, we needed a backup plan.

  Rory’s eyebrows rose as he glanced back at me. “Really, Luckett? I thought you were working for the rangers these days.”

  “It’s been sparse this season.” I waved to acknowledge Hazel’s gesture for me to join them, and hoped they got the message that I had some business to take care of first. I really didn’t want them to overhear me begging for a job washing dishes in a greasy spoon. “And with winter coming and all… We wanted to see if there was something available.”

  He was a nice guy, probably old enough to be my grandfather, and handed me the milkshake in a tall, frosty glass. He even waved away the crumpled bills I offered to pay for it, and handed me napkins instead. “I’ll let you know. We’ve got two dishwashers now but they’re not the most reliable, and when school starts up again, we might need help.”

  “Thanks, Rory.” I smiled and hoped he believed it. “And thanks for the milkshake.”

  He winked and went to the other end of the counter to ring up someone’s ticket, and I ran out of excuses for avoiding Lincoln and his pals. I really didn’t want to avoid him, not when every look he sent my way sent the most delicious shivers all the way through me. But I felt like I stood a better chance at keeping hold of my dignity if I stayed away from him.

  Hazel grinned and kicked a chair out from the long table they occupied so I could sit. “Nice bike.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I rested the helmet on the table and the milkshake next to it, shedding the leather jacket even though it was kind of chilly in the diner. I nodded at everyone, trying not to react to the very slight smile on Lincoln’s face. “Hope you all are enjoying your stay in town.”

  “It’s been…interesting,” one of the brothers, probably Mason, said. His unruly blond hair made him look even younger than he had the night before, and the clean-shaven jaw was far more square and cut than I remembered. He almost gave Lincoln a run for his money in the panty-dropping department. He dunked a French fry in what looked like mayo and licked some extra off his fingers in a way that reminded me of rumpled sheets. “We spent the morning at the fort. I didn’t realize so many tourists like that kind of thing.”

  A safe topic. I nodded and leaned back, spooning up a bit of the milkshake, and tried not to judge him for the sacrilege of eating mayo with fries. Everyone knew it was ketchup or ranch dressing or nothing. Weirdo. “That started up not too long ago. Something about people who played the Oregon Trail computer game having the time and money to experience close to the real thing but without the dysentery. About the same time, some archaeologists uncovered artifacts and stuff around the remains of the fort. They always knew the fort was there, since the Army kept all the records, but no one knew much about the early history. It all came together, and now we get tourists all summer.”

  “So you have people doing wagon train reenactments?” This from Nelson, who was equally clean-shaven but with dirty blond hair instead of his brother’s gold.

  “Oh yeah.” I forced a smile and jerked my chin in the general direction of the fort. “It’s the tail end of the season, so there aren’t as many, but from June to August this town is lousy with tourists and Conestoga wagons and all kinds of shit. There are a couple of adventure tour operators who run different length tours out of here, so people can go bumping along the prairie in a wagon towed by oxen for however long they like.”

  “Sounds like a higher form of insanity,” Hazel said. She added a little pepper to the veggie omelet in front of her, shaking her head. “I can’t imagine wanting to go camping for that long.”

  “It’ll be a couple weeks to get out to the Crossroads and back,” I said, suddenly cautious. Maybe it was her way of asking to take SUVs instead of horses. “Depending on how long it takes for you all to find your doodad.”

  “Our doodad?” Mason grinned, demolishing most of the giant meat-eater’s burger that Rory’s made—half a pound of beef, quarter pound of bacon, two fried eggs, and a slab of hash browns layered with three buns. It was a wonder he didn’t have a heart attack right there at the table. His chair creaked a little under his weight, though. “The drone, you mean.”

  “Sure. Drone, doodad, doesn’t really matter to me.” I flushed and deliberately didn’t look at Lincoln in case I sounded like a toothless oakie. “You have some way of tracking this thing other than the last known coordinates, right? Or are we going to be wandering around looking for pieces of sky junk?”

  Hazel chuckled, fishing around in her bag for a tablet. She flipped through the screen and brought up some kind of app, tilting it so I could see the screen. “This is where it’s beaconing from, but we don’t know how long the batteries will last. If they die before we reach it, we might have to wander around a bit.”

  I frowned as I picked up the tablet and started fussing with the resolution, zooming out to try and orient myself to where the little flashing dot was in relation to the rest of the Crossroads. I navigated the prairie by the ley lines, but those wouldn’t show up in the maps she used. “Hmm. That looks like it’s right in the middle of the Crossroads. It’ll definitely be four or five days to get out there, probably a couple days to search for what you need, then a week to get back. So at least two weeks.”

  “You’re willing to take us?” Lincoln sounded only politely interested, though he smiled as he watched me. Like he knew a secret.

  “Maybe,” I said. I cleared my throat and tried to come up with a less-awkward way of asking about payment than just demanding to know how they’d make it worth my while. “It depends on if you’re able to rent horses from Grady or someone else, and supplies, and—”

  “And payment,” Hazel said. She frowned at the table, not looking at me as she clicked through something. “Some of these adventure tour operators charge an arm and a leg, but it’s understandable with what they offer. Looks like… about five hundred a day?”

  I choked on a mouthful of milkshake, partly because I’d never actually checked how much those places charged and partly because it almost sounded like that’s what they intended to pay me. I wiped at my eyes and tried to laugh, leaning back in my chair. “Yeah. They pull the tourists in, even with that price tag.”

  I wanted to add “fools,” even as I wondered whether my sisters and I could run tours and charge that much. Just one trip a month at those rates would get us more income than all three of our jobs. And if we kept a monopoly on the Crossroads, we could probably charge even more.

  Mason offered me one of the laminated menus, which I’d had memorized since I started high school. “Order something for lunch, Luckett. We have a generous stipend for food. The patty melt looks good.”

  I smiled and tried to wave it away, but Lincoln leaned his elbows on the table and his deep voice shivered through me until I wanted to stretch and purr like a cat. “Please. We’re probably keeping you from something important, so the least we can do is buy you lunch.”

  “Uh, thanks.” I flushed and bought some time by staring blindly at the menu. Hazel kept frowning at her tablet, scratching notes on a half-used napkin next to her plate. I put the menu down and tried to squint at the math she did, but then Mason waved at the waitress and a girl I knew from high school sauntered up.

  Her expression soured when she caught sight of me. “Hey Luckett. Fancy seeing you here.”

  “Hey Marie.” A knot formed in my throat and I handed her the menu. “The chicken ranch wrap, please, no tomatoes. No fries. Thanks.”

  “Extra fries,” Nelson said, giving her a winning smile. “Three baskets of fries, and some mozzarella sticks, and another grilled cheese, please.”

  She snatched the menu from me but gazed hungrily at the stranger and his muscular shoulders. “Anything for you, hon. I’ll have it right up.”

  And from the way her eyebrows moved, she expected to have something else right up. I had
to bite my lip to keep from laughing, which would have no doubt earned me some spit in my wrap, and from the way Mason elbowed his brother, I wasn’t the only one who heard the undertones. Marie had been scheming to get out of Rattler’s Run since freshman year of high school, dating only football players who stood a chance of getting a scholarship out of state and joining every club there was that could have taken her somewhere other than where we were from. I didn’t blame her, although she only made it through two years of college before she ended up back on her daddy’s farm.

  Lincoln was studying my expression when I finally shook my head and went back to my milkshake, but he didn’t speak as Hazel sat forward and handed him the scrap of napkin. “Check my math, boss. Does that seem about right?”

  My eyebrows arched as I watched the deliberations, embarrassed they were talking about my payment right in front of me. I slid my chair back. “I can step outside, if—”

  “Looks good to me,” Lincoln said. He handed the scrap back to Hazel, not taking his gaze off me. “Do you have your own horse, Luckett, or will you need us to rent one for you as well?”

  “We’ve got a horse. Ornery beast, but she’ll get me out there and back.” My heart rate ticked up a notch, waiting for them to say the number. Maybe I could get a couple grand out of the deal, and an advance so I could buy food and supplies. We didn’t have enough credit left at the grocery store.

  “Easy enough.” Lincoln frowned very slightly as he rubbed his jaw. “We can draw up an official contract, if you want the paperwork, but it would probably be easier to just give you cash. Is four hundred a day acceptable?”

  I just looked at him, certain I’d hallucinated.

  When I didn’t move or speak, his eyebrows rose. “Not enough? We could probably swing five hundred, although we’d fund all the supplies either way.”

  He couldn’t mean it. They couldn’t. My voice came out in a croak, and I gripped the edge of the table until my knuckles ached. “That’s very…generous.”

  “It looks like the going rate for guided tours,” Hazel said. She handed me the tablet and flipped through the half dozen tour sites she’d checked for the region. “I took off a bit since we’re providing our own horses, but four hundred a day seemed fair if we provide the food and grain and other equipment.”

  I really thought I might pass out right there at the table and make a fool of myself. I cleared my throat a couple of times. “You, uh, realize this might take more than two weeks, right? I can’t guarantee we’ll find what you’re looking for that fast. It could take a while. I don’t want you to think it’s just going to be—”

  “Here you are,” Marie said, carrying a laden tray. She started slinging plates into the center of the table, smiling at everyone but me, and finally set the wrap in front of me before tucking the tray under her arm. “Everything look okay? Great.”

  I could already see the tomatoes peeking out of the wrap, and sighed. Of course. She’d already spun on her heel and flounced back to the front of the diner, and didn’t bother to stick around to see me unwrap the wrap to pull out of the tomatoes.

  Nelson arched an eyebrow. “I thought you asked for no tomatoes.”

  “I did.” I cleared my throat and tried to focus them on the business at hand, instead of the shitty service. “But as I was saying, the length of time we’re out there will depend on how you track down that drone.”

  “Two weeks minimum,” Lincoln said. “Which means… fifty-six hundred minimum. We’ll go up from there.”

  I concentrated on re-wrapping the wrap as Nelson and Mason demolished all three of the plates of fries, and Hazel took half of the grilled cheese. My brain said it was too much, even though my bank account told the rest of me to shut the hell up and run with it. But everything we did came back to us threefold, and I didn’t want to overcharge them or lie about what I’d expected. “Like I said, that’s very generous. I’m not sure I can accept that.”

  “You want to talk us down?” Hazel asked, a hint of incredulity making her comical. “You’re not much of a businesswoman, Luckett.”

  “I’m not trying to cheat anyone,” I said, holding my hands up. “And karma’s a bitch, so I don’t want that on my balance sheet. I don’t think me taking you out there is worth four hundred a day, especially since you’ve already got to pay for food and equipment.”

  I bought some time by taking a bite out of the wrap, hoping Marie hadn’t done anything else to the sandwich. Since Rory probably made it, chances were it was fine. Lincoln picked up the other half of the grilled cheese and shook his head a little. “If we’d somehow booked ahead, I could see charging less. But you’ve got a bit of a monopoly on going out to that part of the park, from what the rangers said, so I’m surprised you wouldn’t charge us more. We’ll split the difference and agree to four hundred a day for the first two weeks. If we go over that by more than a couple days, we can renegotiate.”

  “Great.” I wondered if maybe I got dollar signs in my eyes as I blinked at him, like in the cartoons. Maybe if they paid me in cash, I could take the five grand home and throw it on my bed and roll around on it. Just the thought gave me shivers. “Would you mind giving me a small advance? I’ve got a pick up a few things before we head out.”

  It hurt my pride to ask, but there was no way in hell I could get supplies without it.

  Lincoln didn’t blink as he pulled a white bank envelope out of the inside pocket of his jacket, flipping through the cash inside to count it, then pulled out a thick stack of twenties. “Three hundred okay to start? That should cover your time from last night and today.”

  I didn’t know what the hell to say to that, but I accepted the cash and slid it into my wallet. “Thanks. We can just subtract it from the…the total.”

  “What do you need to pick up?” Mason eyed the remaining half of my wrap, and I wondered how the hell they could possibly pack enough food to feed all three of the men, given how much they’d consumed in just a single meal. They’d need a whole herd of pack mules just to carry the food. Maybe they could rent one of the Conestoga wagons and some oxen.

  “Supplies and food, mostly,” I said. “We haven’t, uh, done the grocery shopping yet this week.”

  “I thought we were getting supplies.” Hazel frowned and went back to her tablet, pulling up a list so I could review it. “We put in an order with the store this morning, so they’re supposed to have it all together for us tomorrow morning. We just included you in the calculations, and Eddie as well.”

  “Eddie’s going?” I concentrated on the stuff they’d picked out, relieved they at least knew enough about camping to get rice and pasta and beans and dehydrated eggs and oatmeal and other things we could make easily over a propane stove.

  Lincoln nodded, smiling with half his mouth. “Mason talked him into it last night at the bar, since the park rangers seemed rather hesitant about sending us out there at all. I think the rangers would feel better if he went along with us, and Eddie seemed pretty intent on making sure none of us caused you any trouble.”

  I laughed and offered Mason the other half of my sandwich so I could finish off my milkshake. “I don’t think Eddie really—”

  “Saying he threatened us might be a little strong,” Nelson mused, tapping at his chin. “But also pretty accurate.”

  I smiled, shaking my head. “I’m sure he didn’t.”

  Hazel grinned and took her tablet back. “Right. Anyway, he’ll be coming along. So we ordered supplies for six people, and Grady is going to rent us horses and mules to carry everything. We brought some camp stoves and fuel, first aid kit and all that, tents and sleeping bags, and other camping stuff. Can you think of anything else?”

  “Rifles, if you can get those from Grady or the rangers, but only if you’ve got the permits,” I said. “There have been more wolves than normal coming down from the Crossroads. An emergency radio or something like that. Matches, rain gear, snow gear, a shovel.”

  She nodded along and made notes on the tabl
et. “I think we’ve got most of that, but we’ll double-check. When do you think we’ll leave?”

  “If you’ve got everything ready, tomorrow morning would be best. The weather looked okay for the next couple of days, but it can change any minute. There’s no reason to delay.” I scraped the last bit of ice cream out of the bottom of my glass, wishing I could get another one for the road.

  “Great. I’ll shoot you a message later tonight when we confirm with Grady.” Hazel set the tablet aside and stretched, leaning back in her chair. “Anything else to do in this town, Luckett?”

  I rubbed my jaw and tried to come up with something. “There’s a movie theater the next town over. It’ll take you an hour to get there, but that’s something.”

  Mason grinned. “Seriously? Other than the fort, there’s nothing to do here?”

  “Nope,” I said. I found myself smiling back despite myself. “Apparently that’s part of the charm. Or so I’ve been told.”

  “I’m sure we’ll be busy packing and repacking,” Lincoln said. “So we don’t want to keep you from anything. Should we plan to touch base at the bar tonight to go over the plan?”

  “The plan?”

  A slow smile spread across his face, almost hidden by the beard. “Yeah. Departure time, location, the initial route we’re going to follow… A plan? Or do we just start riding west and kind of north from here?”

  “Right.” I cleared my throat, feeling blood rush to my cheeks. “The plan. Sure. I still have a few details to work out, but tonight or tomorrow morning will work, either way.”

  Hazel got up to wander over to the cash register to settle the bill, before I could even try to pay for my sandwich from the advance they’d given me, and left me at the table under the attentive gazes of all three men. Lincoln nodded, glancing down as his phone lit up with a message. “And we can hope for no more wolves showing up at your house, right?”