Ride 'Em (A Giddyup Novel) Page 9

  It was time to leave. Not just Minnie’s, but Bolero. Hilltop. Logan. The week was a bust, and everything else was a waste of her time—an emotional regression. A set of complications her new, shiny life had no room for.

  The clouds tumbled higher and darker, finally losing definition as they compressed into a denser mass. Even in the air-conditioned restaurant, the humidity was palpable. If Mindy had been in shorts, her thighs would have stuck to the vinyl of the booth seat when she tried to stand up after leaving a ten on the table and waving a goodbye to the waitress. When she opened the door, the air hit her like a wall of pea soup, thick and warm. Still, too still—the calm before the storm.

  Driving straight back to the ranch to get packed would be the sensible thing, so she could be on the road and clear of town before the rain hit, but she figured she had at least a few minutes left. She should accomplish something more than pie on her field trip.

  There were at least four tourist-trap gift shops within the shopping district of “downtown,” but the general store usually had the same stuff at a better price. Parking in front of the old-timey storefront, Mindy had to angle between two pickups—one a dually, one extended-cab with a roll bar. Pulling back out would be an exercise in blind faith. Two horses were hitched to the “Cowboy Parking Only” post. If Hilltop had been a bit closer to town, and if she wasn’t so out of practice that her inner thighs still ached today, she might have been tempted to ride and avoid the hair-raising experiencing of weaving her small car between all the giant trucks. Too late now, though.

  The place was empty, except for a clerk she didn’t recognize. After they shared a polite smile and nod, Mindy passed by the T-shirts, the heavily tooled leather purses and horseshoe plaques with corny sayings on them, the racks of folksy candy in colorful packs, and made for a display of refrigerator magnets. Her cubicle mate at work collected them, and would probably love a new one. The cheesier the better.

  Mindy was debating between the cowboy hat (“Bolero, TX—Cowboy Central!”) and the pair of spurred boots (“Save a horse, ride a cowboy!”) when the bells on the door announced a new customer had arrived.

  The law.

  Crisp, white straw hat. Khaki shirt with epaulets and insignia, dark olive pants. He even had the mirrored sunglasses, though he took them off a few seconds after entering the store, tucking one earpiece into his front shirt pocket to hold them as he nodded at the clerk.

  “Bernie.”

  “Chet.”

  “How goes the battle this afternoon?” Chet’s words were directed at the clerk but he was scanning the store, and as Bernie mumbled an answer, Chet’s eyes lingered a fraction longer on Mindy than she was comfortable with.

  She thought he frowned at her, but it was hard to tell through his dense mustache. It could have just been squinting as his eyes adjusted to being indoors. It made her feel vaguely guilty, anyway, suddenly terrified he would interpret her loitering over the magnets as a prelude to sticking one in her purse.

  Logan’s cousin Chet. He was a few years older, so she’d never gone to school with him. But in a town of under a thousand people, there was no escaping some level of acquaintance. She remembered him to look at, and she recalled the stories. Now he was the law, but there was a time when Chet Garcia had been the bane of the authorities in Bandera. Not because he was a bad kid, but because he was an infuriatingly good kid who did things like get up at town council meetings and argue about whether it was constitutional to have an age-based curfew. Or whether the wording of a particular ordinance against litter was unenforceable due to a grammatical error.

  He’d been the captain of the debate team and the football team. And he’d also once used fireworks to blow up a cactus a hundred feet outside the city limits. Nobody was injured, and it hadn’t been technically illegal, so the police held him for a few hours but ultimately had to let him go. The next week he’d posted an op-ed in the local paper about weaknesses in the city and county ordinances that had allowed for the legality of a potentially lethal explosive being detonated so near human habitations with no legal consequences. The following month, the city and county had pushed through additional regulations about explosives and noise nuisances. Mindy couldn’t decide whether Chet’s current position as sheriff was the ultimate irony or made the most sense of anything she’d ever heard.

  Either way, he could definitely work the uniform. “Texas cop,” right out of central casting. Late thirties, slightly stocky, mustachioed cowboy-turned-enforcer. Dark hair, with piercing gray eyes that were slightly startling against his sun-bronzed skin.

  He’s one of us.

  Definitely hiding a freaky streak under that fine, upstanding exterior.

  Chet turned down the store’s central aisle and headed directly for the Slim Jims and jerky, grabbing several preserved meat items and returning to the counter to off-load them. The clerk started ringing them up while Chet backtracked for a large coffee. No cream, no sugar, just pure bitterness straight out of the dispenser into the biggest Styrofoam cup available.

  Mindy realized she was staring about the time Chet finished paying and turned to leave. He stopped mid-pivot, meeting her gaze with curiosity then advancing toward her with purpose. Flustered, she dropped one of the magnets, then fumbled with the other, attempting to put it back on the metal display board.

  “Mindy Valek?”

  She’d been the homecoming queen, for fuck’s sake. There was a time she could have owned this town if she’d wanted to. And she’d come here to do a job, not to perpetrate crimes; there was absolutely no need for her to be shaking in her boots next to a shelf full of plush armadillos in “Bolero” T-shirts. Besides, if she knew nothing else, she knew how to charm a random person into thinking she had her shit together. She pulled herself up, squaring her shoulders and unloading her biggest polite-society grin at him. “Chet Garcia. Well, look at you.”

  He didn’t smile back. “Your left brake light is flickering.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your left brake light,” he repeated with a more obvious frown, “is flickering. And significantly dimmer than the right. If you’d been driving through town in bright sunlight when I saw your vehicle, I might have had to ticket you. However, as it’s overcast, I was able to make out the light clearly and did not feel I could reasonably argue it was too dim to pass inspection. I could have written you a warning, but I dislike writing warnings for infractions people ought to be aware of on their own.”

  She tried to wrap her mind around all the words that had just come out of his somber mouth. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but none of that had been it. “You mean a fix-it ticket?”

  Chet grimaced. “Yes. A fix-it ticket. I dislike them.”

  “Okay.” Nonplussed, she tried to figure out how to extricate herself from the conversation. “Thank you? I’ll get somebody to look at it as soon as possible.”

  “Good.” His expression shifted, looking more irked than anything else. He tapped one booted toe a few times, then sighed as if he’d made a decision he wasn’t that happy with. “I could write you a ticket if I see the defective brake light again. As long as you’re here in town that remains a possibility. Here in the vicinity. Within my jurisdiction. Which includes Hilltop Ranch.”

  Heat rose in Mindy’s chest, and she clenched her hands into fists, then forced herself to relax. Checked that her smile was still in place as she asked a question she couldn’t quite believe she was asking. “Are you . . . threatening me?”

  He could’ve. Small Texas town, a sheriff drunk on power. Wouldn’t be the first or last time that had happened. But Chet’s face only grew more irritated. “No. That would be illegal.” He sounded downright grumpy about that. But resigned. It was some comfort, at least.

  “You were always a stickler for the law, weren’t you?” It was true. Even his youthful rebellions had been about demonstrating where laws needed improvement.

  “As a great man once said, ‘You have to accept the rule of
law, even when it’s inconvenient, if you’re going to be a country that abides by the rule of law.’”

  “Benjamin Franklin, right?” It was a shot in the dark, but Mindy had long since discovered that most political quotes could be traced to about three people, and Benjamin Franklin was tops on the list.

  Chet snorted, and his eyes suddenly sparkled in the fluorescent glare of the store. “Jesse Ventura.”

  She’d been punked, and it didn’t feel good, so she pushed back. “The pet detective?”

  The sparkle fizzled out as the glare returned. “The former professional wrestler turned Minnesota governor.”

  “Ah, I see.” And she did. Chet was beating around the bush, but he knew why Mindy was there and he wanted her gone. And suddenly she was sick of subtext. “I have every right to be here. I have every right to be at your cousin’s ranch. I didn’t invent the oil and gas industry, and I’m really just trying to keep my job. Logan seems to have come to terms with my staying the week as a paying customer. If he wanted me gone . . .” If he wanted her gone, he probably wouldn’t have strongly implied he was still planning to whip her and bang her before the week was out. “He’s a big boy, he can fight his own battles. I know you helped finance the buyout so you’re an interested party, but that’s not really my problem. And it’s not cool for you to be throwing your weight around at me when I’m innocently trying to pick out a refrigerator magnet for a friend.”

  At the “throwing your weight around,” Chet moved a hand to his stomach, patting the khaki that stretched almost taut there. Some of the wind seemed to fall out of his sails. Mindy hadn’t meant to hit a sore spot, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret her words. Even if she had already decided to leave, she refused to be pushed out. And Chet rebounded quickly enough.

  “These days, the law frowns upon running interlopers out of town on rails. Tarring and feathering are also off the table. This means my options, assuming you obey the letter of the law during your stay here, are limited to meaningful glares and the occasional heavy sigh.”

  “You could also shake your head in disappointment.”

  Thunder rumbled, and they both glanced toward the door for a second, then returned to the pissing contest.

  “Don’t think I won’t resort to that if it’s called for. But rest assured, if I issue you a ticket regarding the brake light it will only be to address a traffic safety issue. Enjoy your stay, Miss Valek.” He tipped his hat.

  She nodded, gracious in her dubious victory. “Thank you, Sheriff Garcia.”

  In the end, unable to decide, she bought both magnets. Also, because she liked the color and nothing more, a blue burnout T-shirt with “Bolero, Texas” in distressed Wanted-poster lettering inside a lasso graphic.

  “My mom might like it,” she explained to Bernie the clerk for no particular reason. “She’s from here.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Bernie swiped her card, then gave her the receipt to sign as he dumped everything in a plastic bag. Never cracked a smile.

  So much for Texas hospitality.

  Mindy grabbed the bag, stalked out the door . . . and watched the first fat drops of rain spatter onto the street beyond the awning.

  Chapter Nine

  Nobody had gotten shot. That was a definite plus. Maybe it was a low bar to set for his first hunting excursion at the ranch, but Logan was happy enough to have crossed it. Just a rabbit hunt, because nothing else but hogs and turkeys were in season, and there didn’t seem to be any turkeys around lately. He hadn’t wanted to start with a night hunt, and you needed that for hogs.

  To be honest, no people or rabbits had been harmed on the trip. But the guests seemed happy enough. None of the four who’d gone hunting minded not bagging any rabbits. Mary Havlicek had gotten closest, and Logan had feared some grumbling about that from the three middle-aged men she’d sort of bested. But they’d all kept things in good spirits. Even raised a round of beer to Mary at the early brisket dinner Robert had laid out for them when they got back to the main compound.

  The old house was darkening already by five, guests and staff alike concerned over the increasingly frequent severe weather warnings. Robert and Logan distributed bags of fruit, energy bars, and water bottles, so nobody would have to venture back out after dinner for snacks. Everybody’s phones kept bleeping with emergency system signals, interrupting the meal. The laughter about it grew more and more tense as the barometer fell, and the first few heavy plinks of rain on the back porch’s tin roof were enough to end the gathering.

  Logan handed out umbrellas at the door, grateful his grandmother had always insisted on having enough to pass out to all the guests, and also glad that none of them seemed to be harboring any spiders.

  “Please watch your step. Keep to the hard path. If you encounter any unexpected runoff, just come back to the house here and we’ll put you up for the night.”

  Robert was the last one out the door. “Sorry, boss, but I’m actually out of here. I need to get back to my place before this gets too bad and make sure my cats aren’t shitting on the bed. You gonna be okay on your own if anything happens?” He pushed away the umbrella Logan shoved at him, shaking his head with a smile.

  Logan shrugged and slipped the umbrella back into the ceramic stand. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be inside where it’s dry. I’ll probably even have power and Wi-Fi unless this shit gets entirely too real.”

  Checking the blackening sky, Robert shook his head. “Optimists. I give your Wi-Fi about fifteen more minutes. Sir!” With a whoop and a grin, he hurtled off the front porch and down the rainy path toward the parking lot.

  Only once Logan had closed the door did he realize he hadn’t accounted for everyone.

  Shit. Mindy was still out in the rain. Lamar said she’d gone to town for pie—was that a euphemism?—but she should have made it back for dinner.

  Lightning flashed, still distant enough that the thunder came many seconds later.

  Logan scanned his phone out of habit, looking for a text, before realizing she didn’t have his private number. If she’d called the ranch line, there might be a voice mail patched through, but there didn’t seem to be any of those, either. Not that she’d have had a reason to check in, of course. He had no cause to expect that. He shouldn’t want to expect that.

  But the rain had started to sweep down.

  Possibly she was in her cabin, safe and sound. Logan punched in a quick text to Robert, asking him to swing by and check on his way to the car. He was already wet; the tiny detour wouldn’t make him much wetter.

  The wind picked up, and an ominous clattering, slapping sound sent a sliver of dread straight to Logan’s heart.

  “The fucking shutters!” he yelled aloud to the empty hall. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  The main house at the ranch was kind of a folly, a Victorian farmhouse that had been updated and added to over the years. His grandmother’s addition had been shutters on the front and side windows—decorative ones on the top story, but real latching shutters on the bottom.

  Logan sprinted to the window in the front parlor and shoved it open, reached for one of the shutters, then cursed himself and closed the sash again. He knew better, he’d done this chore enough times as a kid. There was no hope for it; he’d have to go out into the rain and secure all the shutters. And he needed to do it now, before the heaviest part of the storm hit.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket and he yanked it out to check the text on the screen. Robert reported no sign of Mindy at the cabin.

  Great. Flapping shutters and a lost guest. Superb start to his hospitality career.

  He grabbed his hat off the rack by the front door as he dashed out of the house. He ignored the umbrellas—he’d need both hands, and the wind was picking up anyway so umbrellas would be useless soon.

  It was dark as night now, only the faintest hint of greenish-purple illumination in the clouds. The color of tornados. He clamped down on that knowledge hard, because the forecast had only called for severe thunderstorms a
nd there wasn’t an active tornado watch yet.

  The shutters along the front porch were covered. He decided to save those for last, and ducked around one side of the big, rambling house to catch the most exposed windows first. It was easy to spot the shutter that had come unhooked from its usual open position and was smacking the siding as the wind began to howl. Logan secured that one firmly closed, hoping the latch would hold through the storm so the shutter could protect the dining room window. The next two pairs were cooperative, but the last one had a slightly rusted hook that he finally gave up on. The mudroom window would just have to take its chances.

  He was halfway down the other side of the house when his phone buzzed again. Drenched, not wanting to stop and take the damn thing out in the downpour, he ignored it and smacked another hook loose from its eyebolt, swinging the shutter shut and latching it securely. Two more shutters here and he was home free. Neither of them gave him any trouble.

  Rounding the corner to return to the front porch, he saw a ghostly figure looming through the rain, and gasped before he could help himself.

  Then he shook the rain from his eyes, the ghost ran a few steps closer, and he realized it was Mindy. Looking like a heroine from a scary movie, frankly. Pale as impending death, eyes dark with smeared makeup, soaked hair slicked back with rain. Her white button-up shirt was practically see-through, but there was nothing very sexy about it.

  “Jesus, Mindy, you scared the ever-lovin’ crap outta me!” And relieved him so much it was all he could do not to scoop her into his arms.

  “Sorry!” She dashed onto the porch ahead of him, then stared when he didn’t follow her toward the door. “What the hell are you doing out here? Are you insane?”