Baby, I'm Yours

by Susan Andersen

  There were only so many places to check in this town. So, maybe, the smart thing to do would be to start at one end and simply work her way through to the other. If—God forbid—that didn’t turn up anything, she could always cross the road and do the same over there. Even if she already knew Bobby wasn’t anywhere near the beauty parlor, which was the only building that side of town.

  She left the room, keeping an eye on the road in case Jimmy Chains should come back as she made her cautious way along the uneven sidewalk. For the first time in her life, she cursed her fondness for tall-heeled shoes, but finally she reached the gas station/general store that defined one end of town. A bell rang over the door when she opened it, and the young man behind the counter looked up.

  He had a prominent Adam’s apple and it bobbed convulsively at the sight of her. “Kin I help ya?” he inquired of her breasts as she approached.

  She reached across the counter and hooked a finger beneath his chin, tipping it up until he met her eyes. “Keep your eyes up here, sugar, and pay attention,” she said, tapping a crimson-tipped finger on her temple parallel with her own eyes. He turned red, which ordinarily would have amused her. Right now, all she felt was an unaccustomed, testy urge to snarl that she didn’t have time for this shit.

  If there was one thing Kaylee knew inside out, however, it was men and their sometimes fragile egos, so instead she gave him a gentle smile and rubbed her thumb across his jaw before dropping her hand. “You look like an observant kind of guy. Have you seen a woman around here today looks just like me?”

  Adam’s apple working furiously up and down his throat, he shook his head. His gaze kept wanting to wander, but he brought it diligently back into line time and again. “No, ma’am. I sure woulda remembered that.”

  She flashed him an aren’t-you-just-the-cutest-thing smile. “How ’bout a guy, about six-foot-two, black hair, and blue eyes? Seen him?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Damn. Well, thanks anyway.” She was almost out the door when a thought occurred to her and she turned back. The young man’s gaze was glued to her ass, but it immediately bounced up to her face. She hid a rueful smile, but really, you had to adore young men. They were so trainable. “How about a man, just a little under six feet, has brown hair and wears a lot of gold chains?”

  The kid’s expression lighted up, clearly pleased to be able to supply a positive answer. “Yeah, him I saw. Dresses weird. He’s been in a couple times the past few days.”

  It really was pure dumb luck that she and Bobby hadn’t run into Chains before. “Thanks, sugar,” she said to the clerk. “If he comes back, do me a favor and don’t tell him I was asking about him, okay?”

  “Gotcha.”

  She took the time to flash him her hundred-dollar smile. “You’re a prince.”

  She was off the store’s lot and headed toward the tavern when she turned back and eyed the telephone booth that sat on the boundary line between the two. Chances were slim to none that someone could be on the floor of the booth, but the bottom half, door included, was made of some kind of metal, which made it impossible to know for sure from a distance that it was, indeed, empty. She walked over to it and gave the door a push.

  It opened into the booth easily.

  She was turning away when her eye was caught by the Dumpster behind the store. Her heart gave a huge thump, and she had to reach out a hand to brace herself against the rail that ran adjacent to the telephone booth. Then, girding her loins, she pushed upright and picked her way over to the receptacle.

  Her pristine new manicure looked out of place against the battered green metal as she grasped the hinged lid and heaved upward. Holding it open as far as the reach of her arms allowed, she raised up on tiptoe and leaned forward to peer inside—only to immediately sag with relief to find it contained nothing it shouldn’t. She let the lid drop with a clang.

  Mopping sweat from her forehead with the back of her forearm, she patted the soft fullness over her heart with her free hand and tried to control its racing beat with a couple of slow-breathing exercises. “Jaysus, girl, you’ve got to get a grip here. I think your first grey hair just sprouted.”

  Entering the tavern’s dim interior a few moments later did nothing to relieve her stress, but it was at least a break from the sun’s relentless glare. She stood just inside the door and waited for her vision to adjust, ignoring the headache beginning to kick up behind her eyes. As shadows slowly separated into individual details, she looked around and took inventory.

  Two men sat at the bar, a couple more talked over beers at a booth in the back, and a long, lean drink of water bent low over the pool table, solitarily running it of balls. He looked up at her without straightening, thumbing back his Stetson the better to give her an appreciative once-over. For once in her life, Kaylee felt no gratification at being the recipient of a man’s admiration. Accompanied by the jukebox’s soft wail of a woman who had her daddy’s money and her mama’s good looks, she made her way to the bar.

  The bartender was a rare individual who kept his gaze strictly on her face as she asked her questions. His courtesy was appreciated, but that was about the only satisfaction she received. He hadn’t seen Bobby or Catherine.

  A little over an hour later, Kaylee had circled back to the motel and was trying her very last option, the refrigeration shed behind it. She found the door locked, its knob badly bent, which seemed a pretty strong indication to her that no one, let alone Bobby, had been in there today. She rested her forehead in defeat against the door’s solid panel.

  She had talked to what seemed like the entire population of Arabesque, Wyoming. And the only person who remembered a man answering to Bobby’s description was the cashier in the café. She recalled seeing him leave with someone who sounded suspiciously like Jimmy Chains.

  She had to face it. Bobby might not have been the victim of foul play. She’d checked every place where a body could be conveniently dumped. She had seen Chains with her own two eyes as he’d driven off by himself, and she couldn’t spot so much as one questionable mound of dirt that indicated a hastily dug grave. No matter which way she looked at it, she was left with only one conclusion.

  Bobby was in cahoots with Jimmy Chains and had been all along. What else explained Chains’s ability to track them to this town? Ordinarily, he was a guy who would have a tough time finding his ass with both hands and a flashlight.

  She was unprepared for the pain of betrayal, but it seared like acid through her stomach. She’d been telling herself that Bobby was just another guy to share a couple of laughs and some dynamite sex with, but somewhere along the line he’d managed to sneak beneath her guard and become more than just a good-time lover. She thought it probably had to do with the way he’d agreed to help her find Catherine, even though Kaylee had cut off the sex he found so important and in spite of his own obvious reluctance to get involved.

  And hadn’t he played her like a fish, though? Acting so unwilling, which had only served to endear him to her all the more when he’d nevertheless stuck by her and done his best to help. God, he must have laughed his fool head off every time she thought he was off collecting their meals from the café and he was meeting instead with Chains to plan her downfall.

  She slammed her fist against the door. “Damn you, Bobby!”

  “H’lo?”

  It was a husky whisper, so faintly spoken that at first she thought she’d imagined it. She gave a snort of self-derision. You chump. You just want all these nasty suspicions to be untrue. Well, get a clue, sweetheart.

  There was a faint scratch low on the other side of the door, and another barely audible whisper of sound. “Somebod’ there?”

  Her head snapped up. “Bobby?” She pressed her ear to the door, her heart drumming so furiously with renewed hope that she could barely hear above its roar. “Bobby? You in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, God. Are you hurt?”

  “Hmm.” There was a long pause, then he mumble
d, “Cold.”

  Kaylee rattled the knob and put all her weight behind the shoulder she rammed against the panel.

  It didn’t give any more than it had when she’d tried it earlier. “The door’s stuck. I’ll be right back; I’m gonna get help.”

  There was no answer, and she hesitated a moment in an agony of indecision, her ear pressed up against the panel. “Bobby? You hear me, sugar? I’m gonna go get help.”

  Still he didn’t answer, and she was just beginning to feel the first faint pinch of panic when he finally said in a barely audible whisper, “’Kay.”

  She raced around to the front of the motel, barging through the office door with enough force to keep the miniblinds on the door bouncing long after she’d reached the desk.

  No one manned it.

  She slammed the dinger down on the little freestanding summons bell, and when that didn’t get immediate results, did it again. And again.

  She kept on slapping it in a cacophonous frenzy.

  “What the fargin’ hell is going on out here?” The owner came barreling out of the back room, swiping at a smear of spaghetti sauce near one corner of his mouth with the napkin in his right fist while he used his left to yank free another one that had been tucked bib-style into his collar. “Quit that racket.” He snatched the bell out from under Kaylee’s palm.

  “Come quick!” she urged. “There’s a man stuck in the refrigeration shed out back.”

  “What?” He glared at her. “No one’s s’posed to be in that shed.”

  “He’s not there because he wants to be!” She all but danced beneath the force of her impatience, willing this skinny little duffer to shake a leg. “Come on, dammit, will you move? We gotta get him out.”

  The owner was a little rooster of a man, and her tone ruffled his feathers. He drew himself up with affronted dignity. “Don’t you go swearing at me, young lady. You think just because this here’s a small town, we’re all a bunch of rubes? Well, think again. I’m in the middle of my supper and don’t have time for your city-slicker rudeness or your games.” He turned back toward the doorway that separated office from living space.

  Kaylee rounded the counter in three of the longest strides she’d ever taken in her life. Grabbing his shoulder, she whirled him around and grasped him by two fistfuls of shirt, hauling him forward with all her strength. In high heels she was close to six feet tall, and by the time the little proprietor had quit stumbling forward his nose was buried an inch deep in her cleavage. She fished him free, hauled him up onto his toes, and lowered her head until they were eyeball-to-eyeball.

  “Listen, you little pipsqueak, this is no game. My man is stuck in your refrigerator shed. It wasn’t his idea to be put in there, and if anything happens to him because you refused to haul your skinny little ass out there and check, never mind get him out, I’ll slap you with a negligence suit so huge you won’t see the light of day through the paperwork until you’re in your sunset years!” She turned him loose and executed an about-face on one stiletto heel. Without so much as a backward glance, she headed for the door. “Now move your ass!”

  He moved his ass.

  His outrage flared anew when he saw the condition of the doorknob, which Kaylee was beginning to suspect was the handiwork of Jimmy Chains.

  “Look at this,” he cried. “Just look at this! Somebody’s going to pay for this. Some—”

  Kaylee could only assume he got a good look at the expression on her face, for he swallowed the rest of his tirade whole. “I’ll have to get some tools,” he muttered.

  “Make it snappy.” She didn’t wait to watch him leave, but crowded up close to the door. “Bobby? Sugar? Can you hear me?”

  There was no answer and she pounded her fist against the panel. “Bobby! Oh, Jaysus, please, please, answer me.”

  “C…cold, lady,” she heard him say weakly.

  “Just you hang on, sugar. We’re gonna have you out in just a minute—two at the most. Then I’m gonna warm you right up.” She looked around frantically. “Oh, God, where is that little pissant?” Throwing back her head, she began screaming for help at the top of her lungs.

  It was no doubt the sheer volume of the racket she made that garnered such swift results. The motel owner came running with a box of tools, simultaneously, the café’s kitchen staff poured out the diner’s back door. A second later, a man Kaylee took to be a rancher also came running, a gnawed toothpick stuck out of one corner of his mouth.

  It was he who took command of the situation, cutting through the babble of questions to ask with calm authority, “What have we got here, Irv?” The inquiry was directed at the motel owner.

  “Some city boy got himself stuck in my ’frigeration unit,” Irv replied sourly as he fiddled without noticeable results with the bent doorknob.

  Kaylee, who recognized a doer when she saw one, turned the full force of her attention on the rancher. “Please, mister,” she implored. “Get him out. He’s not in there because he wants to be, and I’m scared to death he’s been injured bad.”

  The rancher eyed the door. “I suppose I could kick it in.”

  Irv immediately puffed up, but Kaylee cut off what she feared would be a tirade on the sanctity of his property before it had a chance to develop. “No,” she reluctantly refused. “You might end up hurting him worse. It sounds like he’s on the floor right behind it.”

  The rancher squatted down and pawed through the toolbox. When he’d selected whatever it was he’d been looking for, he rose to his feet and stepped forward. “Move aside, Irv,” he directed.

  Irv did, and the rancher took his place. Several moments later he had the door open as far as it could go before Bobby’s inert body blocked its path.

  Kaylee eased inside. “Bobby?”

  He lay facedown on the floor, and a moan of distress escaped Kaylee’s lips when she saw the swollen goose egg on the back of his head. At its center was a deep gash that was black around the edges with crusted blood.

  “Jaysus.” She dropped to her knees by his side. His bare arm was cold to the touch when she reached for it. “Bobby?”

  “How you doin’ in there, miss?” The meager shaft of light that came through the doorway was temporarily eclipsed by the rancher’s sturdy body as he squeezed through the opening. “He all right?”

  “No. His skin is freezing, and he’s not answering, and…” She ran out of breath and couldn’t seem to drag enough of it into her lungs. Panting, she felt hysteria threatening to seize control. She reached a hand out to the rancher. “Please,” she implored him helplessly between wheezy breaths. “Please.”

  “Okay. It’s all right.” He stuck his head outside the door. “Somebody get me a paper bag.” Swiveling back, his leather-tough hand closed around hers and he helped her to her feet. “Step outside, miss. Let me bring him out so we can see what we’re dealing with.”

  He laid Bobby down on the hot concrete a moment later, using his own pristine handkerchief to shield the head wound from contact with the gritty ground. Kaylee squatted at his side, dying to lend her assistance. Unfortunately, she was about as helpful as the man stretched out at her feet as she wheezed and struggled for air, and when a line cook ran up waving a brown paper lunch sack, the rancher snatched it from his hand, shook it open, and handed it to her.

  “Hold that over your mouth and nose and breathe into it, miss. You’re okay. You’re just hyperventilating.”

  Kaylee did as directed and watched over the top of the bag as he thumbed back Bobby’s eyelids one at a time, checking for pupil reaction to the strong afternoon light. He then pressed two fingers to the artery beneath Bobby’s jaw and sat back on his heels, looking over at her.

  “I’d say he’s got himself a case of hypothermia that’s been aggravated by blood loss from the blow to his head. Got a concussion, too.”

  Kaylee lowered the sack. “Is there a doctor or clinic nearby?”

  “By Wyoming standards. Let’s get him loaded up in your car and I’ll draw yo
u a map.”

  “Thank you.” She reached across Bobby to touch the rancher’s hand. “You’ve been so great.”

  Bobby’s eyes opened then and he looked around until his unsteady gaze slid past Kaylee’s face, then backtracked to lock on it. His mouth crooked up in a shadow of his old charmer’s grin, and it rocked her right down to the ground. Immediately on the heels of that emotion came a punch of guilt delivered by the remembrance of what she had believed of him.

  “Oh, God, Bobby, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry for what I thought.” She picked up his limp right hand in both of hers and brought it up to cover in kisses. She then cradled it reverently between her breasts.

  “Hey. No prob’lm,” he slurred. He blinked at her several times, his gaze sliding in and out of focus. Finally, he seemed to get a bead on a point in her face that he could focus on. He stared up at her, mouth loosely smiling, brows drawn together in puzzlement. “Do I…”

  His voice trailed off but then he seemed to gather his strength to repeat, “Do I…”

  Once again his voice trailed into silence, and without relinquishing the grip that held his hand buried to the wrist between her breasts, Kaylee leaned over him. She gazed lovingly into his blue eyes. “Do you what, sugar?”

  He blinked up at her. “Do I know you?”

  15

  THE BUS PULLED off the interstate onto a scenic overlook. It had left the Great Divide Basin behind and was starting the climb into more mountainous terrain.

  “Fifteen minutes, folks,” the driver announced over the loudspeaker. “Take advantage of it to stretch your legs and enjoy the view.”

  Catherine was wary and on guard as she climbed off the bus. She kept glancing around, expecting to see Jimmy Chains pop up at any moment, brandishing his gun. Sam had a firm grip on her arm, and for once she welcomed his complete lack of trust. She didn’t even care that he had been such an ass back at the restaurant. All she wanted was to stick close to him, and did so even when he relaxed his hold and eventually dropped his hand from her arm altogether.