Buckle Bunny

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  The front door opens. A big guy in a cowboy hat too small for his head walks in. Close-set eyes lock on her, and he comes straight to her table. In an accent that sounds like Cristiano and Senor Valdez, he says, “Hank Sibley’s buckle bunny. Just the woman I want to see.”

  Her eyes lock on the scar along his jaw. The man from the VIP area at the rodeo earlier. The one who delivered dois cervejas to her and Senor Valdez. She tries to look and sound casually surprised when what she feels is terror. “What?” With one hand, she covers the buckle Hank had playfully secured around her waist earlier.

  “Don’t play any dumber than you are.” His voice is cutting, his eyes dismissive in his olive face.

  Inside rage bubbles up to mix with her terror. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m certainly nobody’s buckle bunny. I’m just a singer. I played at the Buckin’ A the last few nights.”

  He shakes his head. “I know where you played, but a thing is as it appears. And you appeared here with Hank Sibley.”

  “I’m on the road to my next gig in Billings.”

  “You chose the wrong side in this fight.” He slides into Hank’s chair.

  “You need to leave.”

  He pats his hip. “This is a gun in my pocket. You’re going to follow me to the parking lot.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  His eyes bore into hers. “If you do anything stupid, I shoot someone. Maybe you. Maybe that teenager waiting people. Maybe the grandmother with the babies by the door. I don’t care who. Got it?”

  She swallows. Hank really had gotten the wrong people mad. She hopes her prayer wasn’t too late. If this guy was here for her, this could mean Hank escaped. “Got it.”

  He stands, and Maggie follows his lead. He gestures for her to walk ahead of him, then does it again impatiently when she hesitates. Her legs feel wobbly, and blood rushes from her head. She steadies herself with fingertips on the table. Come on, Maggie. Come on, she tells herself. Finally, her legs move, and she shuffles forward.

  Inspiration strikes. She stops. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Not now.”

  “But—”

  “I said not now.” His hip and the hard metal of his gun bumps her from behind. “You’ve got two seconds until I start shooting.”

  She feels his hand move into his pocket, and she musters up the courage to move again. He trails her to the exit of the restaurant. Maggie tries to make eye contact with people, but no one pays any attention to them. Maybe the waitress will see I’ve walked the check and come after us. But that will be no good, if this Neanderthal keeps his promise to shoot. He opens the door, indicating she should go first. The night wind bowls her over, warm and hard, like it wants to push her back into the safety of the diner.

  He grabs her elbow.

  “Ouch.” She tries to yank away. “Where are you taking me?”

  His grip is steady, but he doesn’t answer. He marches Maggie beyond the reach of the lights from the street and from Western Sky’s. They reach a boatlike sedan, decades old from the shape but well preserved. She can’t identify it in the dark. He stops at the driver’s door, reaches in, fumbles around, and pushes a button repeatedly.

  “Damn old piece of shit.” He propels her ahead of him. “Around back.” He opens the trunk with his key.

  Maggie’s heart is a drumroll in her chest. He’s going to put her in the trunk. There’s no way she can let that happen without a fight, because whatever he does to her somewhere else will be much worse than what he can do here.

  “Are you looking for Hank? I can tell you where he is.” She unbuckles her belt and slips it into her hand behind her back. Her fist tightens on the belt, and she tenses, ready.

  “I couldn’t care less where he is. You’re my assignment.”

  “But why? I don’t get it.”

  “He disrespected the boss. The boss always returns the insult. You’re Mr. Sibley’s punishment. Now, you can get in, or I can put you in.”

  “Aren’t you going to move the tire over? I won’t fit.”

  He glances at the interior of the trunk.

  Maggie grits her teeth. With all her strength, she whips the ten-pound belt buckle into the side of his head, then rears back, ready to do it again. He falls forward. She lets the belt drop. With strength she didn’t know she had, she grabs him around the thighs and topples him the rest of the way in. As she slams the trunk, he’s already recovering and beginning to thrash. She pauses with her weight on the trunk lid, listening. He’s groaning, cursing, kicking. It hasn’t been half an hour. Her breaths come fast in panting gasps. She can’t leave Hank. Can the thug get out of the trunk? She has no idea. There could be a latch. Or he could bust it open.

  Cautiously, she stands, watching the trunk latch and at the ready with her giant belt buckle. His efforts seem futile, and she finally decides she can risk it. He’s not going to break out. She has to get back to where Hank expects her to be waiting for him. Shaking, she puts the belt back on, looking around her to see if anyone had seen what happened as she does it. But she’s completely alone except for the struggling man in the trunk.

  She takes a few deep breaths, each less shaky than the last. “I’m nobody’s buckle bunny, asshole.”

  Hank

  * * *

  A punch to the base of his skull sends Hank spiraling face-first to the gravel a block from the diner. His hands reach out to brace his fall, but he’s too late. His lip lands first, and from the sting of it, it busts pretty good. He’d run out of Western Sky’s with only one goal in mind: to draw the Brazilians away from Maggie. So the fist is a good sign as far as he’s concerned. They’ve found him. They’ll leave her alone. Except if they best him too quickly, they could still go back for her. Well, he’s not one to go down without a fight. He rolls and wraps up the ankles he sees in the low illumination from a street light.

  “Fila da puta.” The body crumples and folds beside Hank.

  Hank crouches. “Listen, before we do this, I’ve got an offer for Senor Valdez.”

  The man dives for Hank, his hands closing around his neck.

  Hank gets his fingers under the man’s grasp. He gets a glimpse of his face. Gapped teeth. The jerk he’d seen at the Kum and Go. “Well, shit.” His words come in short bursts as he gasps for breath. “You aren’t a very good listener, are you?”

  Hank’s second-best rodeo event is steer wrestling, which makes people wrestling seem like a Sunday morning cuddle. No horns, no hooves. He flips the Brazilian on his back, breaking the grip around his throat. He straddles the bigger man’s hips, using his own weight to anchor the bucking body, and pins the wrists into dirt, grit, and trash. Sweat pops out and his arms jerk as he holds the struggling Gap Teeth down.

  “I want to cut a deal with Valdez. Give him my winner’s check to repay him for not losing. All I ask is he leaves my girl and me alone.”

  The man spits in Hank’s face.

  Hank laughs. “While not friendly, that’s nothing compared to bull snot, my friend.”

  He’s in a conundrum. He can’t hold this guy down forever. When he lets go, all hell is going to break loose, and he could lose his advantage. He needs something to restrain Gap Teeth with. Instinctively, he glances at his waist, but his belt is around Maggie’s slim waist. And he doesn’t regret it. He remembers pulling her to him and cinching her. He wants to do it again. But first he has to figure out what to do with his little problem. He pushes the thought away. Focus, Sibley. This guy can kill him if he doesn’t stay focused.

  “So what’s the plan, then? You bash my head in?”

  “Senor Valdez desires to talk to you.”

  “Talk.” Hank snorts. “I don’t remember getting an invitation to tea.”

  “How things go once you are with him, I cannot say.”

  Hank twists his neck, popping it, wishing his shirt wasn’t buttoned to the top. But he’d been hell-bent to impress Maggie, so before the presentation of the buckle and c
heck earlier, he’d changed into his best shirt—it was now probably ruined with grass stains—and new black bolo tie with the silver-and-bronze bull rider oval.

  The bolo tie. It’s just about the length of a pigging string. He’s done his time as a team roping heeler with hog-tying duties, although it’s not his best event. This guy isn’t as fast or lethal as a steer. But if he’s going to do this, he has to disarm Gap Teeth first. Hank knees around on him searching for a weapon. There has to be at least a gun or knife somewhere, maybe both, maybe more than one, even if he’s only under orders to bring him to Valdez in one piece. Which Hank knows is so Valdez can have the pleasure of ripping him limb from limb himself. He doesn’t find anything hard on Gap Teeth’s sides or front. That means any weapons are in his boots or on his back. Probably. Maybe.

  Hank catches his breath and plans out his strategy just like he does before the barrier drops in a real calf-roping event. Get the hands to the back first so Gap Teeth can’t go for his gun, stay out of the way of his legs, pin him on his belly, rip the bolo out of his collar, secure the wrists, draw the legs up one at a time. Tie them off to the wrists. Stay smooth. No wasted movements. No backtracking, no second chances. Simple as pie. He almost laughs. Even if he executed perfectly, the bolo would be just barely long enough. Well, if worse came to worst, he had a lot of practice running from bulls, and he could put that to good use, too.

  Mentally, he counts down from five, careful not to tense and give away the timing of his attack. At the last second, he says, “One, motherfucker.” He twists one of Gap Teeth’s wrists while he releases the other. At the same time, he lifts his weight and kneels to give himself room to flip the man over. Only Gap Teeth doesn’t react as he’d anticipated, just about like every calf he’d ever taken down.

  With the torque from Hank twisting the wrist, the bigger man’s shoulder slips out of socket with a pop, ruining Hank’s flip. He grins up at Hank, displaying the enormous space between his incisors. Gap Teeth swings his free fist, connecting with the bridge of Hank’s nose. Even though his leverage from the ground is poor, the Brazilian’s fist is big and his adrenaline makes his strength formidable. Hank’s nose cracks and blood spurts.

  “I just healed that son of a bitch. It’s on, asshole.” Hank strikes back, his hard fist fast as a lightning strike as it punches the side of the Brazilian’s head.

  The Brazilian returns the favor, catching Hank’s right eye. It stings, and Hank sees bloody stars. He decides to take a chance that the dislocated shoulder will be incapacitated and releases that arm so he can deliver a volley at Gap Teeth. Right to the chin. Left to the nose. Right to the cheekbone. Left to the temple. Right to the ear. He keeps going, until the return punches stop and the other man lies still. He stays poised for a five-count over the man’s torso with his fists up, just in case.

  Quickly, he rolls him. He pats for weapons. He finds a 9mm in the back of Gap Teeth’s waistband and a switchblade knife in his boot. He throws both of them as far as he can, into some darkened underbrush beside a crumbling brick building. He takes a minute to scan his surroundings. There’s no one in sight, no eyes through windows, and Hank is relieved their scuffle didn’t draw attention. “Yes, officer, this man was kidnapping me because I reneged on a deal to cheat at Frontier Days” wasn’t something he wanted to have to explain to any cop in Wyoming.

  He pulls the oval off his bolo and strips the tie from his collar. His knuckles already ache, and he flexes his fingers before he makes fast work of the hog-tie. When he finishes securing the Brazilian, he jumps to his feet with both hands in the air.

  It may not have been his best time ever, but he’ll take it.

  Maggie

  * * *

  Hank slides back into his chair at Western Sky’s twenty-five minutes after he’d left.

  Maggie stifles a scream with her hand. Her eyes are wide, pupils enormous. “I thought you were him again.”

  “Him who?”

  “Some Brazilian thug. What happened? Are you all right?” She reaches across the table and touches his face.

  His busted lip is smeared with blood, and his nose is already swollen. His eye promises a hell of a shiner. He winces at her touch, but then leans into her hand, snatching it and kissing it, which makes him groan. “You should see the other guy.”

  “Where is he?” Her eyes cut back and forth around the diner, like they’ve been doing ever since she came back in to wait for Hank five minutes before. She’s been expecting her thug to burst in any minute.

  Hank pats his sternum. “I hog-tied him with my bolo.”

  “Nice.” He’s still pressing her fingers to his lips and kissing them. She pulls her hand away. Her expression changes. Her eyes harden. “Time to tell me what the hell is going on, Hank.”

  He squirms in the booth, staring at her mutely.

  After a few seconds, she speaks in an irritated voice. “We’re not really running from my band, or Fawn. The Brazilian guy in the trunk—”

  “Wait—what guy in the trunk?”

  “The one that tried to take me to his boss to punish you for your disrespect.” She makes air quotes on the word disrespect. “I brained him with your belt buckle, straight into the trunk he was about to put me in.”

  “Jesus, Maggie.” He grabs her hand again, but this time he massages it, a mix of horror and awe on his face. “You’re incredible.”

  She dips her head in a seated curtsy. Her voice loses its edge. “I am. But you owe me the truth.”

  “You’re right.” He takes a deep breath. “My buddy Gene and I are starting a stock contracting business. Payment was due on our first broodmare. Sassafrass. I was hard up. Bull riding doesn’t come with guaranteed paydays, so when I got an offer to make as much losing, nearly, as I could make winning it all, I took it.”

  “Hank!”

  “I’m not proud of it. But I can’t ride bulls forever. Rough stock ranching is my future. Then I met you. And I wanted you more.”

  “More than what?”

  “More than, well, anything.”

  They stare at each other.

  Maggie feels tingles, hot prickles of excitement. “Go on.”

  “You can guess the rest.”

  “You won. For me.”

  “For you.” His eyes turn bright. “And to make my parents and sister proud.”

  She nods. Hearing him talk about his family like that fills her with a warmth everywhere the hot prickles hadn’t reached. “So, the people that hired you to lose, they’re pissed.”

  “That’s putting it lightly.”

  She ticks on her fingers. “You took money from gangsters. You helped them fix the results. You tricked me.”

  His eyes are pools of anguish. “Yes.”

  Maggie considers the things she’s done to further her career, things she isn’t proud of. She can’t judge Hank for doing the same. “I should make you take me back to Cheyenne.”

  “I will if you want me to. But you need to know that even if they break my knees, a shot with you was worth it. I won for you, Maggie, with the best ride of my life, because everything was on the line.”

  Maggie holds very still. No man has ever talked to her this way before, like she’s something special. Something to cherish. Since she was a teenager, men had taken from her. She can’t think about the things she’s been asked to do—the things she’s done—by takers, for the sake of her career. Partly a result of her ambition and bad choices, maybe, but that didn’t mean what they made her do was right. Things that might change Hank’s mind about her if he ever found out. Well, she’s not going to be the one to tell him about them. But her experience with men has made her mistrustful. She would have been willing to share her body and Hank’s bed, but it sounds like he’s asking for much more. Her heart. And she’s kept that carefully guarded for a long, long time.

  Her throat is so tight she can barely get the words out. “What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing. Nothing except our date.” He grins. />
  Oh, those dimples. She steels herself against them. “Ri-ight.”

  “It probably doesn’t sound like a good bet, asking you to trust me when I haven’t been straight, but I swear on my life, all I want out of this is you. From the second I saw you, you’ve done crazy things to my heart. Give me a chance, Maggie. A real chance.”

  Her eyes burn. He’s set her on fire with his words, shown her a possibility she’d never expected for herself. The wall of resistance inside her crumbles like dust. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He moves so fast he nearly knocks the table over. She puts the hundred he gave her earlier on the table. He grabs her hand, and together they bolt from the restaurant and to the passenger side of his truck, which is as far as they make it. Their lips crush, their hands clutch, their bodies slam into the door.

  Hank moans. “Shit.”

  Maggie jerks back. “What is it?”

  He touches his battered face. “Hurts so good.”

  He reclaims her mouth, and they both forget his injuries. Maggie’s head spins. She’s never been turned inside out by a kiss, until this one, and she never wants it to stop. She whimpers into his mouth and fists his shirt.

  Hank rips his mouth away. His voice croaks. “I want you. So bad.”

  She sucks his top lip into hers again, but he pushes her away.

  “As much as I’d like to do that some more—a lot more—right now, we can’t.”

  “We can.” She tries to capture his mouth again, but he catches her face in his hands.

  “It kills me that some asshole tried to hurt you tonight, and I can’t let that happen again.”