Staying For Good (A Most Likely To Novel Book 2)

by Catherine Bybee

  “You always threaten civilians with those guns of yours, JoAnne?”

  “It’s Sheriff to you, Mr. Brown.”

  He leered a slow slide down her body and back up. “You don’t look like a cop tonight.”

  Jo shook off the feeling of walking into a spiderweb the size of a house, filled with a new hatch of eight-legged creepers.

  “I’m always a cop, Mr. Brown. Now how about you tell me what you’re doing out, in the dark, at ten o’clock at night?”

  He shifted his frame off the tree and stretched his arms over his head. “Rained most the day. I needed to get my exercise in. I’m not much welcome in town. Can’t help it if R&B’s is on the road.”

  She didn’t buy it. “You’re out for a walk?”

  “Free country. And I’m a free man.”

  “You’re on a leash.”

  The smile on his face faded.

  “You like to tie ’em up, do ya, Sheriff?”

  The conversation made her want to heave. If it weren’t for the fact that she had her gun within reach, she would have ended the conversation before it began.

  Noise from inside the bar drifted out as a group exited the building.

  “I’m watching you, Ziggy.”

  He lifted his defiant chin. “You do that.”

  She wanted to shoot him just on principle. Instead, she took the few steps to her Jeep, got in, and then blinded him with her headlights.

  Ziggy put his hands in his pockets.

  Jo put a hand on her gun.

  Then he turned and made his way back toward home.

  She passed him on the road ten minutes later.

  It started to rain.

  Ziggy had sat across the street from R&B’s waiting for his contact. He needed a ticket out of this one-cop town. Needed a place where he could walk into a liquor store and buy a fucking beer. To do that, he needed money. The pennies Sheryl brought home were nothing, barely enough to eat off of.

  When he noticed little JoAnne Ward’s Jeep in the drive, he tucked back in the shadows and waited.

  His contact pulled into the parking lot, flashed his lights . . . and when Ziggy didn’t come out, he drove away.

  He’d been pissed, but once he saw the sheriff walk from the bar, a man in tow, the voyeur in him came out.

  Watching her pull a gun and hearing the waver in her voice when she told the guy off showered Ziggy with information.

  The woman carried her gun, even in civilian clothes. Not sure why he hadn’t seen that coming. The other thing he realized was that he had her running scared. Lord knew he loved the power of a woman shaking. The thought of doing more than scaring little Miss Ward had crossed his mind more than once. Taking what she was good for would result in him having to kill her. There would be no turning back from that.

  He was told, on the inside, that once a man killed someone, beating the shit out of others didn’t make sense.

  Still, when she’d blown off Casanova, Ziggy just had to fuck with her.

  He knew his rights and knew there wasn’t much she could do but shake a fist at him. And if she did cuff him, all the better. He wouldn’t resist . . . no way. He’d make her know just how willing he was to spread his legs to have her pat him down.

  He watched her sitting in her Jeep before turning his way back to the trailer.

  Only when it started to rain did Ziggy cuss out the night.

  Mel stepped into the kitchen of the bed-and-breakfast, shaking the rain from her jacket. “Is it ever going to let up?”

  Zoe juggled several pans full of crepes, eggs, and breakfast sausage.

  “You’ve been back for over a year. You would think you’d be used to it by now.”

  Mel hung her jacket on the hook by the back door. “Living in California all that time thinned my blood.”

  “I didn’t have that problem in Texas. Rains there all the time.”

  “That smells amazing.” Mel removed an apron from the walk-in pantry and wrapped it around her waist.

  The weekend routine was starting to find its pace. The inn was close to capacity on weekends, with bookings spilling into the week.

  Miss Gina hired two of the high school girls to come in and help with the housekeeping while the guests were in the dining room, enjoying breakfast.

  Knowing she was the draw at this point, Zoe made sure she welcomed the guests and wasn’t opposed to showing up at the wine and cheese hour in the evenings.

  It helped that Zoe had convinced Miss Gina to up her game with her selections. When Zoe had called a vineyard she especially liked in Washington State and asked if they would endorse—by means of cheaper pricing—the inn using their wine exclusively, they jumped at the opportunity. The chief sommelier himself had booked a trip to River Bend later in that week to finalize the deal.

  Zoe felt good about Miss Gina changing her strategy and increasing her bottom line.

  She’d set up an office in her room at the inn. Writing a cookbook was more difficult than she’d expected. Even with regular shipments of supplies, Zoe would sometimes run out of stuff she needed when sampling her own work.

  The good news was the guests at the bed-and-breakfast had no problem devouring whatever she made.

  “Here.” Zoe handed Mel two finished plates. “The Wong family.”

  Mel put on her best waitress smile and left Zoe to finish cooking.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Glynis, you there?”

  Jo had ducked out of the rain to call into the station. It had been coming down in sheets for a steady six hours. And now that it was getting dark, the calls were coming in. So much for small town living.

  “That’s a big ten-four, Sheriff.” Glynis had been studying call numbers and going completely out of her way to use them.

  “I’m trying to get ahold of Luke, he isn’t answering on the ham. I have a mess out here just past Grayson’s farm. I need a tow.” More like three, but she’d take one at a time.

  The radio crackled when Glynis responded. “Last I heard he was pulling Mr. Mason’s Dodge out of a ditch.”

  “Well, tell him my mess is cutting us off from Waterville. The road is completely blocked and Highway Patrol informed me there is a slide on the 101, and there aren’t any reserves to send this way.”

  “You got it, Sheriff. I’ll do my best.”

  With cell service being spotty at best on the back road, Jo knew getting ahold of anyone would likely take a rudimentary radio.

  Jo sucked in a fortifying breath and stepped back out into the rain.

  Emergency lights flashed on both sides of the six-car, one-RV pileup that had resulted from a blind curve and a boulder that slid onto the road, taking out the first car.

  That many vehicles on the road at one time was a rarity but easily explained when she realized the group was the same that had spread around the pool table at R&B’s. The men were caravanning back to Eugene . . . more accurately, they were wishing they’d left the night before instead of overdrinking and sleeping in the now-demolished motor home.

  With water dripping off her covered sheriff’s hat and yellow slicker, Jo walked back to the middle of the mess.

  Deputy Fitzpatrick from Waterville was attempting to write down names and information on a small notepad.

  “It’s going to be some time before Miller’s can get here.”

  Fitzpatrick turned as the only injured driver was leaving in a Waterville ambulance. “Thirty minutes on this side.”

  “I hate nights like this,” Jo said.

  “Yeah, nothing good ever happens when it’s coming down this hard.”

  The buzz in his head matched the pounding on the thin roof of the trailer.

  He had enough liquor to take him through the night, but scoring more when it rained this hard was impossible. Not unless you flat walked into a store and bought it. Which he couldn’t do.

  The local store turned Sheryl away, or so the bitch told him.

  Lucky for him, he’d made a couple of friend
s who understood his plight. Didn’t matter to Ziggy that the cost was triple what the stuff was worth. It was hard enough living in a shithole, he wasn’t going to do it sober.

  One headlight beamed through the window, signaling Sheryl’s arrival.

  She ran inside, shook rain from her hair.

  With his eyes trained on the television, he yelled, “Shut the damn door.”

  She slammed it, forcing his attention her way.

  “You gotta problem?” he barked.

  “The wind caught the door.”

  He didn’t believe her.

  “Is Zanya here?”

  Ziggy shifted his eyes to hers, then back to the TV. “In her room with her crying brat.”

  “Blaze is teething,” she excused the kid’s shitty behavior. Like she’d done for years when their own brats were little.

  “Well, maybe if you hadn’t raised a slut, we wouldn’t be dealing with teething babies, would we?” Keeping the anger from his voice was harder when there wasn’t anyone around listening.

  “I was younger than Zanya when I had Zoe.”

  Damn bitch was doing it again. Telling him in her sly way that he was full of shit. He hated being talked down to. So many years of having to bend to the uniformed men on the inside, the warden that hated him.

  “Like I said, a slut.”

  Sheryl winced but shut up.

  He snapped his fingers and opened his hand.

  She handed him a small wad of cash. “What the hell is this?”

  “It was slow. Sam sent all of us home, said it wasn’t a fit night to be on the road late.”

  There wasn’t enough there to get the whiskey he needed. Even as he thought the words, he tilted back his Coke bottle that didn’t hold any soda. He flipped the dollar bills in his hand like a switch. “You sure there isn’t any more?”

  She didn’t look at him once again . . . and moved into the kitchen.

  “That’s all. Maybe if we could find you some work, we wouldn’t have to worry about money so much.”

  His forearms tightened. “Don’t you think I’m tryin’? No one wants to hire an ex-con.”

  “Didn’t your parole officer say he knew some people in Eugene?”

  “You tryin’ to get rid of me?”

  “No, baby . . .” she used her placating, talk him down from the edge voice. “We’re just running out of money.”

  “You kept this place together without me for seventeen years, and you’re tryin’ to tell me you can’t do it now with me here?”

  She turned on the water and rolled up her sleeves. “Zoe helped before.”

  Just hearing her name shot his blood pressure high. “That snotty bitch daughter of yours. Too good to give it now, is she?”

  “I can’t make her.”

  Ziggy took another swig . . . his eyes landed on Sheryl’s purse. “Funny how there is always money for that baby back there.”

  Sheryl tried to hide her eyes, but he caught her following his stare.

  “You know something, baby?” His voice was nice and even. Nice and low as he stood. “I think you’re lying to me.”

  He saw terror on her face when he lifted her purse.

  “Ziggy . . .”

  He tilted the bag, spilling everything on the dirty floor. Keys rattled alongside a wallet, and change took up the rest of the space. He shook harder as Sheryl reached for her bag.

  He pushed her away and found what he was looking for. Two fives and a ten. “That’s all! Maybe I should get a fucking job!” he mimicked her words.

  “Ziggy, please, I can explain.” She moved too close.

  The back of his hand connected with her jaw and spun her into the coffee table.

  Ziggy’s gaze landed on his spilled drink.

  He saw red. “I’ll teach you to lie to me.”

  Sheryl threw up her hands to block the blow, and the front door swung open.

  The power at Miss Gina’s flickered all day and finally gave out after six o’clock. Mel, Miss Gina, and Hope entertained their guests with impromptu card games and Pictionary. By candlelight, Zoe managed to make a stove-top meal, so no one was hungry.

  Eventually the guests made their way to their rooms, more than a little tipsy on the free-flowing wine.

  Wyatt was out with Luke, helping with the accident on the road to Waterville, so the women decided to bunk down at Miss Gina’s.

  Hope had decided she wanted to sleep in Miss Gina’s mini house, as she called it, and the two of them retired with homemade popcorn and hot cocoa.

  By firelight, Mel sat in the parlor, reading, and Zoe used the quiet to write. With every recipe she decided needed to go in the cookbook, she wanted a short story telling how she came upon the idea and what she did to make it uniquely hers. A book filled with pictures and directions was not what she wanted to be known for.

  She’d just unfolded from the chair to fill her mug with more chocolate when the phone to the inn rang.

  Mel stirred.

  “I’ll get it.”

  They normally turned the phone for reservations on to voice mail in the evenings, but with most of their cell phones showing one bar, they left it on.

  “Miss Gina’s Bed-and—”

  “Zoe? Zoe, come get me. Please come get me.”

  She turned stone-cold. “Zanya?”

  “He’s tearing the place up. My baby.”

  The sound of something crashing on Zanya’s end felt like lightning to Zoe’s system. “Oh, God.”

  Mel ran from the parlor.

  “I’m on my way.”

  Zoe dropped the phone and ran past Mel to find her purse in the kitchen.

  “What’s happening?”

  “That was Zanya. I need to get her from my mom’s.”

  “You shouldn’t go alone.”

  “No choice. Call Jo!”

  Without any other words, Zoe ran from the inn, jumped in her car, and tore out of the drive.

  “You wanna piece of this, boy?”

  Zane stood in the doorway, rain blowing in behind him.

  “Get off her.”

  Ziggy grabbed Sheryl’s scrawny neck instead.

  Her hands caught his, and she started to kick.

  “You motherfucker!”

  Zane charged him, knocking him off.

  Through the rain, Luke felt his cell phone in his back pocket buzz. The number to Miss Gina’s popped up, along with a picture of the flower child herself.

  He smiled and answered, knowing it was Zoe checking on him. “Hey, baby.”

  “Luke? Thank God.”

  “Mel?” Not the person he expected to hear on the phone.

  “Is Jo with you?”

  Luke looked past the jumbled mess of cars, and the one he’d just loaded onto his truck, to find Jo talking with a deputy from Waterville. “Yeah, why?”

  “It’s Zoe. She ran out—” the call started to crap out.

  “Mel?”

  More static.

  “Mel?”

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Don’t move. What about Zoe?”

  “Zanya called. Zoe ran out to get her.”

  His grip on the phone threatened to crush it. “At Ziggy’s?”

  “Yes. Hurry. It didn’t sound good.”

  Luke turned and ran toward Jo, yelling her name.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The front door to the trailer was wide open. The motorcycle Zane rode was dumped in the yard, the lights blared along with a TV, and Blaze’s cries rose above the screaming from inside.

  Zoe hit the door at a run.

  Zane and Ziggy rolled on the floor, fists flying.

  Zanya stood in the hall, Blaze in her arms, yelling, “Stop!”

  Zoe’s eyes landed on her mom, who was picking herself up from the floor. Her face was bloody, one of her eyes already swelling shut.

  Ziggy managed to get his feet under him, pulling Zane with him. “You wanna fight me?” His hand pulled back, sending a fist into Zane’s face with
a horrifying crunch.

  When Zane fell, he tripped over a chair and into Zoe.

  They both crashed to the floor.

  That’s when Ziggy noticed her. “Look who’s here to join the party.”

  He wiped the back of his hand across his lips—it came up bloody.

  Blaze screamed louder.

  “Get him out of here, Zanya!” Zoe yelled as she attempted to get to her feet.

  Ziggy lifted a hand. “You stay right there.”

  Zanya cowered back, and Sheryl scrambled to her side.

  Before Sheryl could get there, Ziggy shot a foot out, tripping her.

  Zane shot up again and rushed.

  Zoe rolled to her feet as Sheryl pulled Zanya back down the hall.

  Ziggy’s blows to Zane looked like a rabid dog on the attack, each blow harder, faster than the last.

  Zane fought, catching Ziggy a few times, but as Zoe knew, her father was a vicious man who lived without rules.

  The grunts and fists started to slow, until only Ziggy was fighting.

  “Stop it! You’re killing him.”

  Another hit and Zoe had to do something.

  She rushed in, knowing the blow would come to her. But her little brother was hardly moving. Standing by and watching her father beat one of them, any of them, was something she vowed she’d never do again without a fight.

  Ziggy laughed like a sick man on the edge of a complete breakdown and grabbed a fallen lamp.

  Zoe charged before he could deliver a final blow to her brother.

  She caught part of the lamp with her shoulder, but stopped it from hitting its mark.

  First came a fist to her face, and when she fell, Ziggy’s foot met her ribs.

  Coughing hard, she rolled over beside Zane and covered her face when Ziggy lifted the lamp over his head.

  Then the room exploded.

  Jo saw blinders. Her speedometer shot past one hundred on the straights and sixty-five on the corners.

  Luke white-knuckled it in the passenger seat, neither of them saying a thing.

  The rain threatened their safety on more than one turn. The final stretch to the Brown home was open road.