“I thought you might want me to take you home again,” he said with a smile.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
“After everything that happened yesterday, I didn’t want you heading back there by yourself,” he said. “If he’s broken into your house once—”
“Yeah, yeah, he might do it again and then what? Then you can capture him and be the big hero,” she spat.
“Evelyn—”
“What? Am I wrong? Is that not what you want?”
He took a step back, off the porch and back onto the street. She was above him now, looking down on him from outside the store.
“What are you talking about?”
“Is that what you want?” she asked again.
“Of course, it is,” Lonnie said. “It’s what everyone in this town wants, the sheriff, the citizens, we want Willard Lane behind bars.”
“And you’ll do anything to make that happen, won’t you?” Evelyn said, marching over to him and jabbing her finger into his chest. “Whether it means hurting me or not.”
Lonnie looked confused. She hated that he was still putting on this act, putting on this show for her, like she hadn’t already figured it out. Maybe she just needed to spell it out for him again in order to get the message across.
“I know what you are trying to do with me, Lonnie,” she said. “And I want you to know that I never want to see you again.”
“Evelyn—”
“Starting now,” she interrupted. “Now please, just go away.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t understand what’s going on and until you tell me, I’m not going anywhere.” He stepped a little closer to her and she took a step back. She could feel eyes on her, people walking by a little slower to see what was happening, to see what Evelyn Pierce was going to do next.
She sighed. “I know what you did.”
Lonnie sighed too. “Evelyn, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you’ve been using me to get closer to Willard,” Evelyn growled. “I know that all of this is an act and it’s just so I will sell him out or something. But I want you to know this, Lonnie. You’ll never find him now, and you won’t become the next sheriff. Not if I can help it.” She moved to walk away but he grabbed her arm, pulling her back. “Let go of me!”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this,” he said. “I don’t know who told you this, but you’re wrong.”
“Fine.”
“Evelyn!”
“I don’t believe you!”
“Well, you have to!” Lonnie shouted. “You have to believe me, Evelyn, I’m not using you to get to Willard. How could you think that about me? I care about you, I want you to be safe, that’s all I want. We’ve been getting to know each other over the past few days and I’ve been enjoying myself, I was finally starting to feel like I belonged here, like I could settle here, but… maybe not.”
He marched away, back into the town and she watched him go. She couldn’t help but watch as he left her, probably for the last time. She couldn’t stop herself from shedding a tear, a couple of them rolling down her cheeks. She didn’t want to cry over him, but she couldn’t stop herself either.
She dabbed at her eyes, sniffing back her tears when she saw that people were watching her. She wouldn’t give him or anyone else the satisfaction of her tears. They didn’t deserve them. She raised her head and walked away from the prying eyes, away from their inquisitive expressions and back toward her house. If she didn’t hate men before, she certainly did now. This was it for her. Evelyn Pierce would not make the mistake of trusting another man.
She returned home, refusing to look back and slammed the door when she made it inside. Her father looked up at her, a little startled, but didn’t move to ask her why she was so upset. It was just another thing that made her want to break down.
But she wouldn’t.
Evelyn cleaned the house from front to back, she scrubbed the porch, she cleaned the kitchen, she swept the floors. She made dinner for her father, a dinner she could hardly stomach because the second she sat down, her brain moved to think about Lonnie once again. So, she got up and once again found something to keep her brain and her hands busy.
When her father finished his dinner, she wasted no time cleaning up after him. She darned socks, she fixed any holes she could find in her father’s clothes, not that it mattered, when he hardly had the inclination to go anywhere.
When the house could occupy her no more, she headed outside. She pulled out any weeds she could find, tidying the garden even though the sun was fading from the sky and she was running out of light. She kept going. People walked by and looked at her with worry. She had to hold her tongue, stop herself from biting at them like a rabid dog as they wandered by.
She finished at the front of the house and moved to the back. And there she saw it. It had grown since she had planted it, grateful for the light and for the water that she tried to provide it with on a daily basis. It was still deep red, the petals silky, the stem a bright shade of green. It sat there all alone, a rose with nothing nearby, the mound of dirt around it yet to sprout anything else.
She couldn’t stop herself. She walked over to the rose and sat by it, finally letting the tears roll down her face until she was sobbing in the dirt, watering the rose with her own sadness. If it drooped and died, it would be all her fault.
Chapter 18
Lonnie could hardly believe what had happened to him. How had everything turned so quickly? He’d gone to Evelyn’s house when she’d been in trouble and, to the best of his knowledge, thought he had managed to rescue her from being attacked by Willard. And suddenly she didn’t want anything to do with him. Was it something that Willard had said? There was no way she could have come to that conclusion herself.
He thought he had been clear with her from the very beginning. All he ever wanted to do was capture Willard to keep her safe and to relieve this community and others from his crimes. Yet, it seemed like she didn’t want to hear it anymore. She had translated that drive, that passion, that want to help as something ugly that meant he didn’t care about her at all.
“Why the long face?” Tommy asked him as he got back to the office. “You look awful.”
“Well, I don’t feel that great,” Lonnie said, unable to keep his head straight. How had this happened? He thought they were getting somewhere, he thought that maybe they had something. How could he have been so wrong?
Maybe, even after everything that had happened, after all the two of them had been through together, she still loved Willard. Maybe it was harder to give up a first love than he gave it credit for, or maybe that was the plan all along. Perhaps Sheriff Hawker was right from day one, and they had a greater plan to really unleash some horror onto the town.
I thought I knew her, he thought as he took a seat at his desk. But I guess I didn’t know her after all.
“Come on, Lon, what’s eating you?” Tommy asked. “You’re bringing me down too.”
“I’m just…” Lonnie took a moment. Maybe it wasn’t right to drag Evelyn into this. “I’m frustrated,” he said eventually. “We’re not getting anywhere with Willard Lane and I just want him gone. The sooner he is out of the picture, the better off we’ll all be.”
“Amen,” Tommy said. “But I know you’re working on it, and I’m working on it too. Plus, I got people in town with their ears to the ground. We’ll get him kid, don’t you worry.” Tommy sighed. “But until then, I’ve got something I need you to do.”
“What is it?”
“One town over in Malwakee, we got some buddies in trouble,” Tommy said. “Men of the law in the town are in deep. There are a group of bandits there with their sheriff hostage and…” Tommy trailed off. “Lon, I hate to ask you to do this, you’re already doing so much for me, so much for the town, but if a place as close as Malwakee sneezes, we catch a cold, you know what I mean? We gotta protect our allies.”
“I’ll help,” Lonnie said. “What can I do?”
>
Tommy smiled and told Lonnie what to do, sending him off on the road to Malwakee with a couple of men in tow. He knew what he needed to do. This was a town that needed him, this was what Lonnie had come here to do, to help people. Maybe, in getting distracted by Evelyn, he’d lost sight of that. His focus needed to be on the job at hand, he needed to help this town and then find a way to catch Willard Lane. No more thinking about Evelyn.
* * *
He rode the hour or so that it took to get to Malwakee and was met with a town in utter turmoil. There were screams ringing out, buildings that were in the process of being burned out, black smoke billowing into the sky and threatening to fill their lungs.
“What do we do now, Lon?” one of the men asked Lonnie. They needed to act quickly. Once the bandits knew they were there, they would be in trouble. If they got away, it would be a disaster.
“Find them, track them down, round them up in the town square,” Lonnie ordered with a lot more confidence than he felt. He pointed at one of the three men. “You come with me, you two, head in that direction. Work as quickly as you can. Keep them alive. They might know something.”
They galloped into town, Lonnie ready with his gun in his holster, his lasso at his side. There were people running in all directions trying to keep out of the way of the horses, recognizing that they were here to help.
When Lonnie saw a man running, a gun in hand, something that looked a heck of a lot like stolen goods in his arms, he didn’t waste any time. He turned after the person, closing down the distance between them in no time at all and lassoing him before he even had a chance to protest.
“Stay here,” Lonnie told one of the men. “Keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”
Lonnie rode off into the town, following the sound of gunshots and the sounds of the screams until he saw another man ahead. He was wearing dark clothes, his hat pulled low on his head, his black and white beard growing wild and wiry down his face.
The bearded man had his gun trained on a man outside a store, the man was cowering, quaking, his arms outstretched to shield his family, offering anything the man wanted, just to get him to leave his wife and family alone. Lonnie wasn’t having any of it.
He reached for his gun and shot at the ground near the bandit’s feet. He looked up, giving the man and his family enough time to take refuge inside the store. Lonnie wasted no time as he charged the bandit, leaping off his horse when he got close enough to tackle the man to the ground. He wrestled the gun from the bandit’s hand and landed a clean punch on his jaw.
He dragged him back to the town square and tied him up, throwing him down with the others.
After they captured the remaining bandits, Lonnie headed into the sheriff’s office and rescued him from the cell the bandits had locked him in. Lonnie took him out into the square, back into the light to show him the men they had rounded up.
“That’s all of them,” Sheriff Flynn said, taking off his hat and scratching at his bald head. “You came all the way from Kecheetah? You got here fast.”
“We needed to get here fast, sir,” Lonnie said. “Sheriff Hawker told us you were in trouble, so we came as fast as we could.”
“Thank you,” an older woman was clinging to Lonnie’s arm. “Thank you so much for all you have done here today, sir. You are a true hero.”
“Stop nagging him, Jean,” the sheriff said, having to practically pull the old woman off him. The sheriff cleared his throat and reached out a hand. “You really saved our skin there, Mr. Steele.”
“It’s Lonnie, sir.”
“Lonnie,” the sheriff corrected. “And Jean isn’t wrong, you’re a hero. You brought your men here, you rescued the town. You prevented a lot of bloodshed here today. You should be proud.”
Lonnie smiled, feeling the glow in his chest. This was what he had wanted to do the whole time he’d been around here. He’d not really had that feeling while he’d been in Kecheetah yet, but maybe this was the start of something.
“If you ever need anything—”
“We’ll be fine, Lonnie, thank you.”
“No, I mean it sir,” Lonnie said firmly. “I came out here to help people in need and if you ever need someone like me, whether it’s to help raise a barn or to vanquish some bandits, you know where to find me. Kecheetah isn’t far, I’ll come running. Or galloping,” he added, gesturing to the horse. The sheriff laughed and thanked him.
He gathered his men to leave. They headed back to Kecheetah, where Sheriff Hawker was waiting for them outside the office, seemingly relieved to have him back.
“How was it?” Tommy asked, nervous.
“They were awful, the bandits,” Lonnie said. “They’d ransacked the town. There were only three of them, but they’d split up, covered as much ground as they could and made sure they left the place looking like an absolute ruin. But me and the boys rounded them up. And we saved Sheriff Flynn too. He was very grateful.”
“I’m very grateful,” Sheriff Hawker said, putting a hand on Lonnie’s arm. “It’s something that I would have wanted to do when I was your age, something I would have been desperate to go and do, so I could prove myself to my superiors. I would have come back with a swagger and a head so heavy I would hardly be able to carry it on my shoulders.” Sheriff Hawker laughed to himself. “But you’re back here and you’re modest and you’re just pleased to have helped some people.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that, Lonnie, is what makes a sheriff,” Hawker said. “It’s not bravery or kissing up or being the big man about town, not at all. What makes a sheriff is wanting to help people, and that’s what you did today. You went above and beyond to do it, too.”
For the first time since he arrived in Kecheetah, a feeling of acceptance washed over Lonnie. He’d been trying so hard to be the best, to track down Willard, to do whatever it took to make that happen, that he’d almost forgotten exactly what he was doing it for. Hearing the sheriff tell him that he had what it took to be one too, made him glow inside in a way he hadn’t before. It was the kind of encouragement he needed from his father before he left, even while he was still at home. But hearing it from Sheriff Hawker was more than enough.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “This is all I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember. I’m from a long line of sheriffs and I just thought it was about capturing the bad guys but it’s… it’s more than that, isn’t it?”
Sheriff Hawker smiled. “It’s so much more than that, son,” he said. “And you’re getting the hang of it. I think this town, or any town for that matter, would be lucky to have you one day.” He took a breath, looking Lonnie up and down. “You must be exhausted. Head on home, I can’t see much else happening for the rest of the day. And you probably need to rest after all that.”
Lonnie thanked him and got himself ready to go home. It was only as he walked out of the sheriff’s office that a wave of exhaustion hit him. It had been quite a day. There was a part of him that wanted to walk over to the store to see Evelyn, to tell her everything that had happened, because that’s what they had done for the last few nights. They had been getting to know one another, sharing stories, and this was a story that he wanted to tell her. But that would certainly be a waste of time now.
She had been so cold to him yesterday. She hadn’t wanted him anywhere near her because she thought he was using her to get to Willard. Why would she care for anything he had done?
Chapter 19
The store was quiet once again. Evelyn hadn’t seen it this quiet in a while, not since Willard had been in town terrorising everybody on a weekly basis. She’d almost run the business into the ground before he’d left, and business picked up again after. The need for supplies outweighed the people’s hatred for her. Or maybe there never was any hatred for her, there was just a fear of Willard and what he might do.
Now that the shadow of Willard was hanging over the town once again, especially after the way she’d yelled at Lonnie just a couple of days
before, the store was like a ghost town, and Evelyn was standing behind the counter, twiddling her thumbs and working her way into a rage.
Miss Sylvia had stopped her this morning on her way into town, walking at her side and bragging about what the town thought of her after everything she had said to Lonnie. They were sure she was back in cahoots with Willard, something that Miss Sylvia had, of course, been sure of the entire time.
It had taken every bit of willpower that Evelyn had not to punch her there and then, to drag her through the streets, but she wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of doing that.
Everybody thought that she and Willard were still together, when actually it couldn’t be further from the truth. She still wanted nothing to do with him, didn’t want anything to do with any man right now, in fact. Lonnie was running a close second after everything he’d done.
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