by Cara McKenna
“You think old Tremblay owned himself a bike like yours?” Dancer nodded at the BMW.
“I couldn’t say for sure . . . Though it seems unlikely.”
“He didn’t.” Dancer took a drink. “So that narrows your search down to the radius a panicking, middle-aged man is willing to hike himself and a bag of bones off the beaten track.”
True, maybe. “That shrinks the most probable area to perhaps a mile on either side of the roads fit for civilized vehicles . . . and likely routes with no streetlights, no nearby homes, little traffic.”
Dancer tapped his temple with the bottle’s neck. “Now you’re thinking like a murderer.”
“That still leaves an awfully large area.”
“Sure. But tell me this—you’re the sheriff, out on your little mission to ditch some evidence. You gonna take your cruiser or your civilian wheels?”
“The latter, I suppose . . . Though actually, the cruiser might be less conspicuous, potentially. On duty, he’d look less out of place patrolling quiet roads, if someone saw him.”
Dancer tossed back the bottle, making Duncan feel like a trained dolphin, thrown a fish for encouragement. He drank.
“What else?” Dancer prompted.
Duncan tried to paint the scene in his mind. “He’d take his cruiser, which would look less suspicious on the back roads . . . provided he stayed in his own jurisdiction. In Brush County.”
Dancer smiled. “Go on.”
“It’s still a needle in a haystack—it’s an evidence burier’s paradise out here.”
“You strike me as the kind of prick who’s got loads stashed away in the stock market,” Dancer said. “Am I right?”
“You are.”
“Right. So think of that evidence like an investment. Think of those bones, tucked away in their grisly little dirt safe-deposit box. Tremblay’s investment in covering his own ass, right?”
“And?”
“And what do people do with their investments?”
Duncan considered it, thinking of his own stocks, feeling the knee-jerk urge to whip out his phone and open his trading app. “We monitor them.”
Dancer snapped his fingers approvingly, then made a grabby gesture. Duncan capped and tossed back the rum.
“The greedy and the paranoid,” Dancer said, then toasted them with a drink. “How they love to keep an eye on their stashes.”
Gears turning in earnest now, Duncan nodded. “The badlands are nothing if not redundant.” You could drive for fifty miles in either direction and the landscape stayed identically, relentlessly the same. Same brush, same earth, same rocks and hills. “It’d take a landmark to find what you’ve buried out there. A landmark, or GPS coordinates.”
“Guess you better hope he went with the former, huh?”
“A landmark,” Duncan muttered, trying to imagine what such a thing might look like. “It’d have to be distinctive, but not interesting enough to invite much notice.” So, nowhere as well trafficked as Big Rock or the hot springs, nor any of Fortuity’s other modest wonders.
“You got the reasoning part down,” Dancer said. “Your brain’s taken you as far as it can. Now you turn this shit over to your gut.”
“My gut?”
“You want my advice—which nobody ever does, ’cause you’re all dumb-asses—you go at this like that coyote you were babbling about. All hunger.”
Duncan frowned. “I’m afraid I trust logic far more than I do intuition.”
“Fuck intuition. I’m talking hunger, man. Like you haven’t eaten in a week and those bones are fucking Thanksgiving dinner. Animal hunger. That growling in your gut that leads a man to what he wants most—easy money, free pussy, or in your case, some poor bastard in a smoke-stinking sack.”
Stymied, Duncan asked after a moment, “And where does your hunger lead you?”
Dancer smiled. “Opportunities.” His bird shrieked, crest flaring. “Hush, Cookie.”
“Well, I’ll see if I can’t manifest some of that hunger, then.”
“Yeah, you do that. Now stay the fuck off my property.”
“I rather doubt this is your property,” Duncan said dryly. “You’re also wearing women’s sandals, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Don’t you make my hunger get in a mood for fighting now, son. Fuck off and good luck.”
Duncan offered a nod of thanks and walked back to the bike.
My hunger . . .
Felt like such rubbish, when all he’d ever hungered for before was order, stability, control, security. And where had that gotten him, really? Fucked over and unemployed, that was where.
“Fine,” he muttered, and stomped on the starter. He was a starving stray now. And if any pathetic, scrounging creature was fit to find itself some bones, Duncan supposed he was it.
Chapter 17
She’d waited for him.
Expected him by six thirty, to start this supposed dinner.
Gotten a touch annoyed by seven.
Nervous by seven thirty, scared by quarter of. She texted Where are you?
By eight, the alternating irritation and anxiety drove Raina downstairs to the bar to join Abilene behind the taps. At the bottom of the stairwell, she jumped when her phone buzzed against her butt.
Alive and well. Just got back into cell range.
And with the fear assuaged, she was pissed. Fucker. He’d stood her up—and for the date he’d planned himself. He’d had her checking her phone, for fuck’s sake. When was the last time a man had driven her to that shit? Years. And she was far angrier with herself for caring than she was with Duncan for leaving her hanging. She shrugged it off. Or told herself she did. Stupid spooning, messing with her head.
“Looking quiet,” she said to Abilene, stringing a towel through her belt loop. Just a dozen quiet drinkers scattered around the front room.
“Very. I had to load up the jukebox myself or it’d be crickets serenading us.”
“Ouch.”
“I heard the ranch hands are throwing some cookout kegger tonight.”
Raina nodded. “There’s two-thirds of our clientele spoken for.”
“I could probably fly solo,” Abilene offered.
“Nah. I need to do a stock take anyhow.” And no way was Duncan getting back to find Raina sitting around upstairs, looking as though she had nothing better to do than wait on him.
She grabbed a pad and began tallying up the bottles and cans in the fridges.
“Oh,” Abilene said. “Our tips just doubled, at least.”
Raina straightened, heart going hot and cold at once to spy Duncan walking in from the back. Still dressed in the jeans and jacket, he met her eyes, strolled to his usual stool, and sat. A couple of patrons eyed him, and a pair of them began talking in earnest, too quietly to be overheard. Raina added their names to her mental list of potential vandals.
Duncan’s hair was messy from a now absent helmet, and it seemed unthinkable that he hadn’t taken the time to fix it. “Quiet night, I see,” he said mildly.
She smiled, leaving any measure of charm out of the gesture. “You stood me up, Duncan.”
His eyes grew wide, realization dawning. “Good God, I did. I’d forgotten completely. Apologies. Some very strange things happened since last we spoke.”
“Oh?” They better be fucking good.
He took a breath, brow furrowing. “Can you spare a moment, away from the bar?”
She looked to where Abilene was loading the washer. “Sure. Abilene—I’ll be back in five.”
The girl nodded.
Raina led Duncan into the office in the rear, shutting the door on the pop-country and chatter.
She sat on the edge of her cluttered desk. “What happened?”
“I had my lesson. It went fine for two hours or more. Then Casey had a . . . an inciden
t.”
She frowned. “What kind of incident?”
“He fell off his bike, babbling and shaking. Talking as though he was hallucinating. Miah passed—we were out near the ranch—and we got Casey there in his truck.”
“He okay?”
“I think so. A man from the clinic came out. Vince came, too, and he seemed rather rattled.”
“That doesn’t sound like Vince.”
“Rattled . . . but also not especially surprised, I don’t think. Casey’s not epileptic, as far as you know, is he? He seemed unsteady right before he went down. And he shook quite a lot after the fall.”
Her frown deepened. “Not that I’ve ever heard of.”
“Whatever Vince might know about it, I wasn’t deemed worthy of cluing in. He and Miah were going to talk, after I left.”
She drew a deep breath, stymied. “Well, as long as Case is okay, I guess.”
After a loaded pause, Duncan blurted, “What happened to you, the night of the meteor shower?”
Raina froze. “Excuse me?”
“Vince said something to Miah, something about a meteor shower. It sounded as though you’d been in trouble. What it had to do with Casey’s issues, I couldn’t say, but he looked rather grave.”
As he should. It was the runner-up for the worst night of her life, second only to when her dad had passed away. It might even have taken the prize, except Vince had managed to show up, right when she fucking needed someone. She’d already had her skirt shoved up to her waist, her panties ripped, three sets of rough hands on her, holding her down and covering her mouth. A fly had already been lowered and repulsive, drunken promises made.
Then she’d heard it—the most glorious sound in the world. Vince’s R80. His headlight had shown him everything he’d needed to see to inspire what came next. His bike had hit the dirt, and then his fists had gone to work. There’d been a nose broken, and a jaw, a thousand bruises, and maybe a few cracked ribs. And Vince had told those men—men they’d both grown up with—that if they ever showed their faces in Fortuity again, he wouldn’t hesitate to get a gun involved.
He’d ridden her home without a word. Raina hadn’t worn a skirt or dress since, and though she’d held Vince tight and maybe even fallen half in love with him for as long as that surreal ride lasted, they’d never talked about it aloud.
He’d given her a .22 the next day; given her shoulder a squeeze and kept his gaze on the floor. It had taken over a year for him to look at her without that loathsome softness in his eyes—that look that made her feel like a victim as surely as those pinning hands had. She hated that look, and every hard, honed edge already built into her personality had grown sharper, telling the world she wasn’t helpless, or hurt, or traumatized, or scared. That she refused to be any of those things. No man got the right to break her like that. Not with his hands, and not with his pity.
Not with hateful words scrawled across my home, she thought, spine stiffening.
In time, Vince had gone back to treating her as he always had done. And in time, she’d gotten to a place where she could forget about that night for days at a time.
She’d never told her dad. She told Miah about it, years later, after she’d run off to Vegas and gotten herself humiliated in a far different way, and slunk back home with her tail between her legs. She’d never seen Miah’s eyes go so black, but she’d told him it was the past, and he’d respected that, much as she knew it had killed him.
Though how Vince had managed to find her, or to even be looking for her . . . That was a mystery she’d never solved, and since asking him about it meant acknowledging the incident, it would just have to stay a mystery.
Before her, Duncan’s expression was pure worry. She didn’t want his worry, or horror, or sadness, or anger. She wanted his lust and his banter, and his rare, heart-stopping laughter; a flash of perfect—nearly perfect—white teeth when she coaxed a true smile out of him. No heavy things. No conversations that would change how he thought about her, recast her as someone helpless.
“What happened?” Duncan prompted.
She stood. “I have to get back to work.”
He grabbed her arm, poised to stop her, but she met his stare with such fire in hers that he immediately released her. She brushed past him, and he looked subdued as he sat across the bar from her once more.
Duncan finished his drink a few minutes later, and when she took his glass to pour a refill, he shook his head. “I’m heading up.”
“You going to bed?”
His gaze was even. “I don’t have to.”
“Good. Don’t. We’re not done arguing.”
He nodded. “As you wish.”
And they both knew what happened when they bickered—their bodies took over when their mouths grew weary of clashing. And from that thought alone, she went from cold to hot in a single heartbeat. She watched him go, then threw herself into the demands of the bar.
Business never did pick up, and Raina and Abilene closed a little early, locking up by a quarter to two. She walked Abilene out, waving good night just as Vince’s bike came around the side of the bar. He switched it off and dismounted.
“Right on time,” she said. “Kim drive?”
He nodded. “She’s parked on the street, out front, half block away. She’s got her camera all decked out with the zoom.”
“And I imagine you’ve come armed in a slightly different fashion.”
He patted his side, where his jacket hid his holster and pistol. “You got your keys on you? I was hoping to sit in your truck—it’s gonna be a cold one.”
“It’s unlocked. Have at it.”
“Thanks. We’ll head home at sunrise, I figured. If that works for you.”
She nodded. “Thank you, Vince.”
“No need. Just get some sleep.”
That remained to be seen.
She said good night and went upstairs. The lights were on in the den, and she found Duncan on the couch with his headphones on, stroking his cat like a Bond baddie. He was still dressed to seduce her, though his jacket was slung over the couch’s arm. She crossed the room and picked it up, finding it dusty but generally unscathed. “Guess you did okay on your first ride, then.”
“I was adequate.” He hadn’t showered, which surprised her, and his hair was still messy, begging for her fingers to rumple it further.
She smiled and took a seat on the arm. “Adequate? You’d settle for that?”
“In arenas I have no business setting foot in? Yes, absolutely. Was that Vince’s bike I heard pulling up?”
She nodded. “And Kim’s out front.”
“Excellent . . . Again, I’m sorry I stood you up.”
“I couldn’t care less.”
“Well, I could. I’m never late for an engagement, to say nothing of forgetting one entirely. And cooking you dinner is far more compelling than a work appointment.”
“It’s fine. Sounds like you had a distracting afternoon.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“If it was, I’d accept it. So let’s drop it. You can cook for me tomorrow.”
“Good.” He relaxed visibly, then leaned forward, setting the cat on the floor.
“So, what else have you’ve been up to?” she asked. “Just Grossier drama?”
“After Casey had his incident, Vince and Miah took charge, and I continued riding, alone, from an hour before sunset until I got back here.”
“You kept riding? And it never occurred to you we’d made plans, once the craziness subsided?”
He smiled. “So you could care less.”
She rolled her eyes.
“The incident with Casey was . . . upending. He said such strange things, as though he was dreaming.”
“Nonsense stuff?”
“Yes. He seemed fixated on the notion that Miah was goin
g to die in a fire. On a starless night, he said.”
She frowned. “Creepy. A starless night? We see maybe ten of those a year, tops, during our five-minute rainy season. Anyway, you kept riding. It didn’t get weirder, I trust?”
He made a face. “It didn’t get any more normal.”
“Uh-oh.”
“I rode around the badlands. Then I came upon a man called John Dancer, out by—”
“Dancer? Christ Almighty, you have had a fucked-up day.”
“You know him?”
“Everybody knows Dancer, whether they’d like to or not.”
“Is he a patron of yours?”
“Barely. He comes into Benji’s maybe twice a year. Dancer collects enemies the way other men collect conquests. He’ll sidle up to the bar and ask if I’ve seen so-and-so lately, sidle back out after a nice long look down my shirt. I’ve never made a dime off him.”
“Did you go to school together?”
She shook her head. “He’s your age, I’d guess, or maybe early forties, and he didn’t grow up here. No one knows where the fuck he came from, but he’s probably been around for ten years or more. It’s like a coyote who took up permanent residence by the creek.”
“Indeed,” Duncan murmured.
“Wild Dancer spottings are a pretty common occurrence. How was he to you?”
“He aimed a rifle at my heart. We drank rum, talked philosophy. He told me to fuck off, and I did.”
She nodded. “That sounds about right.” Though she couldn’t help feeling he was leaving something out.
Duncan sighed and stretched his long arms above his head. “Enough about my day.” He crossed his legs, met her eyes. “Are you quite sure you won’t talk to me about what Vince said? About what happened to you?”
Her warmth toward him waned. “Don’t push me, Duncan.” The whiskey bottle still sat on the coffee table from their initial head-on crash, and she grabbed it, tugging the cork free and taking a healthy swig.
“Don’t push you?” he asked. “As you pushed me straight out of my motel room and into your custody?”
