Hot on the Trail

by Vicki Tharp

  “It’s Jenna,” she said.

  “Yeah.” At least his voice didn’t shake. “What do you want?” The words came out gruffer than he’d intended, less irritation, more accusation.

  Again, the silence.

  He and Jenna didn’t talk. She wasn’t calling to ask him about his day. With the way things between them had ended four years ago, there could only be one reason for her to call.

  His knees went weak, and his quads failed him. He dropped onto the weight bench. The air in the cushion escaped with a hiss. “Kurt.”

  “Yes.” The word came out puny, insignificant, but he knew it was neither.

  “Is he okay?”

  “No. No, he’s not okay.”

  His stomach tipped and dipped and dived. “What’s wr—”

  “D-dead. Kurt’s dead.”

  Dead? His stomach hit the ground—a cable cut—tippy-top floor to bottom basement. A death-defying descent.

  His heart didn’t drop. It stopped.

  “Quinn?”

  He hadn’t been body slammed this hard since he’d crashed his helo.

  “Quinn?”

  Anger flooded in, so hot, so hard, so electric, it jump-started his heart.

  “Hey, you still there?” Her voice didn’t break, but it lacked its usual power, like an engine running on outdated fuel.

  Yeah, he was still there, but the last surviving member of his helo crew was dead.

  “How?” was all he managed.

  Someone tapped Quinn on the shoulder. “Hey, buddy, if you’re not going to use the equipment—”

  Quinn cut him a savage glare. He would have flipped the guy off, but it seemed redundant.

  Alone again, he tuned back in to Jenna’s words.

  “…he fell and lay there.”

  “Fell? From one of the horses? You promised me the horses were safe, that the—”

  “You’re not listening. He didn’t fall from a horse, Quinn. He killed himself.”

  Suicide?

  Fucking bastard.

  Fury hijacked anger. His phone slipped from his sweaty hand, glanced off a dumbbell, and clattered at his feet. The screen shattered.

  Jenna’s voice came from far away, tinny, the words unintelligible, but it didn’t matter what she said.

  Kurt was dead.

  Red, scalding rage—at Kurt, at fate, at the world—steamed through his system. Blood beat against his eardrums, louder, louder, louder still.

  He picked up the fifteen-pound dumbbell, cocked his elbow, but Gym Rat caught his arm mid-pitch, stripping the weight from his hand.

  Gym Rat picked up Quinn’s cell phone and slapped it into Quinn’s hand. “Take it outside, dude.”

  Quinn grunted at the man, bumping him as he shouldered his way past, and ignoring the “asshole” comment as he stalked toward the front doors.

  “Hello? Quinn, are you there?”

  “I’m here.” Quinn shoved his way outside into a pissing rain, and jogged to his vintage Harley. “I’m on the way.”

  “You don’t have to come.”

  “Yeah, Jenna, I do.”

  “Seriously. They have to do an autopsy, and the sheriff has no idea when the body will be released.”

  “Hang on a sec…” At his bike, Quinn activated the Bluetooth headset on his helmet, pocketed his phone to keep it out of the rain, and slipped the helmet over his head. “You there?” he said into the mic boom.

  “Yeah, but there’s no reason to come. Kurt’s mother will probably want to have his memorial service closer to home, anyway.”

  Putting his foot on the kick-starter, he brought the bike to life. The engine purred, the vibration rumbled through his system, calming his nerves better than a shot of whiskey or any drug ever could.

  “Yeah, but…” He pulled out of the parking lot, headed toward his apartment, the road ahead of him blurry, but not because of the rain sheeting down his face shield.

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. Kurt had a problem with drugs, with alcohol, but he’d kicked that. And even when he was using, he wasn’t suicidal. He leave a note?”

  “Not that we’ve found.”

  “Talk about harming himself?”

  “No.”

  “Act in any way that made you think he was a danger to himself?”

  “No. Nothing.” Her voice shook. “Nothing like that.”

  Tailing the slow-moving car in front of him, Quinn laid on his horn. The driver slammed on his brakes, and Quinn stomped on his, his rear tire skidding on the slick road, the rear end of his bike overtaking the front. His heart revved; his pulse pounded at his temples.

  At the last second, the lane next to him cleared and he released the brakes and slid clear of the bumper with inches to spare.

  Jesus, that was close. He swallowed a couple of deep breaths and said, “Then, what makes the sheriff think he killed himself?”

  “He was using again. They found a syringe.”

  Shit. The stupid, stupid bastard.

  “I’m coming.”

  “Ok. Fine.” The dismissive way she said it, him going back to Wyoming was most definitely not fine, and he doubted it had anything to do with the fact that Kurt was dead.

  “I can stay at my parents’ place. You don’t have to see me.” Quinn turned into the parking lot of his complex. The rain had stopped, but his clothes were soaked through and clung to his body. That wasn’t a problem, because the fire in his belly kept him plenty warm.

  “You can stay in Kurt’s cabin if you want. Might give us a chance to talk about…to talk…”

  “Talk about what?”

  The line went silent again. Quinn took the stairs up to his apartment two at a time.

  “Us. We never—”

  He opened his front door, his heart tripping as he crossed the threshold. He coughed out a laugh as bitter as the base’s twice-burned coffee beans.

  “Sweetheart,” the cold, clear way he said it, she’d never mistake his “sweetheart” for a term of endearment. “There is no us. There is no we.”

  * * * *

  Jenna sat on a stool in the sun in front of the barn, cleaning saddles and bridles that didn’t need it. She caught a whiff of leather cleaner every time the breeze kicked up.

  The scent was one of her favorites, but today it didn’t bring back memories of the early years with her dad. The good years before he’d left her behind with her grandparents for a life on the rodeo circuit.

  Now there was this chasm in her chest where her heart used to reside. Her dream of helping veterans, which she’d been so close to realizing, struggled to stay alive.

  Behind her came the clomp of horse hooves. Boomer led her blue roan horse, Angel, by the reins, Sidney with him, astride a sorrel paint mustang she had in for training. Her foster daughter, Pepita, brought up the rear on Sidney’s buckskin gelding, Eli. Though the way that horse had taken to the fourteen-year-old, you couldn’t call him “Sidney’s horse” any longer.

  “You sure you don’t want to come?” Boomer said, “I could saddle up another horse. Beautiful day to blow off some steam.”

  Jenna glanced at Angel, tempted to hop on her horse, head for the hills, and never come back, but that wouldn’t solve anything. Or bring Kurt back.

  “I have two more saddles to clean.”

  “Pepita cleaned them last week,” Sidney said. “They’re not even dirty yet.”

  Pepita stopped Eli in front of Jenna. “Come on, prima.” “Cousin,” Pepita had nicknamed her. “Race you to the stock pond.”

  Pepita put on a too-big smile and batted her brown eyes—an I-know-you-can’t-resist-the-cute-kid kind of face.

  Jenna tossed the cleaning rag and stood to go find a horse to ride as the deep rumble of the motorcycle
came up the long drive.

  “Quinn?” Sidney asked.

  Jenna nodded.

  “We can stay,” Boomer offered.

  “No.” The word was more squeak than substance. Jenna cleared the tension from her throat. “I think I need to do this alone.”

  “If you’re sure,” Sidney said as Boomer swung up into the saddle.

  “Positive.”

  The engine grew louder, and the roar settled in her chest like a hard-rock bass line. Boomer held her gaze, waiting for her to change her mind. When she didn’t, he reined Angel around, and the three of them trotted off toward the range gate. Sidney stopped to open it, but Pepita and Eli sailed over the top.

  Pepita might not have been born on the back of a horse, but she’d made up for the lost time since she’d come to live at the ranch.

  Quinn pulled up to the barn and killed the engine, and her eardrums rattled from the vibration. He sat there unmoving for the longest time, as if he couldn’t decide whether to stay or go back to California. She hadn’t expected him so soon. He’d had a fifteen-hour drive without stops. By her calculation, he’d made it in fourteen.

  Four years ago when he’d pulled up, he looked much the same. Matte-black helmet, black jacket, black riding pants, heavy-duty black motorcycle boots. A black rucksack bungeed to the jump seat behind him.

  Finger by finger, he stripped the leather gloves off, laying them across his tank. He unfastened his chin strap and pulled the helmet off his head. All his movements slow, purposeful, as if that little effort consumed all his concentration.

  Jenna took a hesitating step forward. She tried for a smile, but it felt stiff, wrong.

  He brushed his fingers through his short-cropped hair, but the action did little good against the helmet hair. He had bags under his eyes, and his color was two shades off from normal. But then again, it had been a long time since she’d seen him last, so what did she know?

  She took another step forward. “Hey.”

  He looped the strap of the helmet over the throttle. A chin bob was his reply. He put the kickstand down and swung his leg over, taking a quick step to balance himself, like a sailor hitting the docks after months at sea.

  He looked beat and done in and yet at the same time so, so…Quinn.

  Her stomach knotted, her throat tightened, and she sniffed back the tears. Not happy tears for seeing him again after so long. Tears of sorrow for a man who’d lost his best friend, tears of regret, tears of guilt.

  She hurried the remaining steps over to him, hitting him too hard as she wrapped him in a hug. He took another balance step, his arms hanging at his sides.

  “It’s really good to see you,” she said into his chest.

  One of his arms came up and rested lightly on her back, not as if he wanted to hold her, but as if he didn’t know what else to do with his hand.

  Jenna took the hint, and a step back. “How was the drive?”

  “Long.” He undid the bungee straps and shouldered his rucksack.

  She guessed that meant he was staying there. It said a lot about his relationship with his parents that he preferred to stay at the ranch. “Was it hard getting leave?”

  “No. I’m not flying, and I have leave saved up.”

  “Not flying? Still? After the accident?”

  “It wasn’t an accident. It was a goddamn crash.”

  Jenna took another step back. “Sorry, I—”

  “Jenn.” He lowered his voice. Hands on his hips, he stared down at the ground and huffed out a heated breath. When he glanced back up, he looked everywhere but at her. “Can you stop with the pleasantries and show me Kurt’s cabin?”

  “Yeah, sure.” She made a motion toward his bike. “You wanna ride or walk?”

  “Walk. I need to stretch my legs.”

  Quinn wasn’t much taller than she was, but she half-walked/half-jogged to keep up with his ground-eating pace. A hundred yards from Kurt’s cabin, Jenna heard the screen on the kitchen door slam and Dink raced over to them.

  Dink whined at Quinn’s feet, his lips pulling back into a doggie grin. Quinn squatted and ruffled his hand through Dink’s scruff. “Hey, old boy, how are you?”

  Dink jumped up and hugged Quinn’s neck, knocking Quinn on his butt. Jenna stomped down on the stupid stab of jealousy that her dog had gotten a better greeting than she had.

  Then again, Dink had never broken Quinn’s heart.

  A few licks and rubs later, Quinn stood. He wasn’t smiling, but the persistent furrow between his eyes had vanished.

  At Kurt’s Mustang, Quinn came up short, ran a hand over the sanded Bondo on the side of the driver’s rear quarter panel. This wasn’t a collector’s edition Mustang, newly restored to factory condition. Each body panel, hood, and door were a different color, as if the car was the vehicular version of Frankenstein’s monster. The roof was a sun-faded black, so she assumed that had been the original color.

  “I remember when he bought this. On the way home, it broke down on the side of the road. Had to have it towed. Money-wise, he would have been better off putting a bullet through the block, but Kurt…” Quinn chuckled, sad, rueful. He glanced up at her. “When Kurt got something in his head, when he committed, he saw it through. And no one could tell him different. Stubborn bastard.”

  “I saw a piece of that…that stubbornness, that inability to give up on the horses he worked with.”

  Quinn scratched at the day-old scruff on his jaw. “That’s what I don’t get. How does a guy like that, a guy who won’t give up on his piece-of-shit car, a guy who doesn’t give up on the horses, how does a guy like that give up on himself?”

  * * * *

  Quinn stepped up onto the cabin’s porch, not expecting Jenna to have an answer to his question. He certainly didn’t have one. His hips creaked as badly as the floorboards, his joints stiff from so many hours on the bike. The tips of his fingers tingled as the feeling returned to his extremities.

  All that vibration—from the bike, from the tires, from the road—did a number on his body. He was glad he’d installed the palm lever on his throttle, because he’d left whatever strength he had in his right hand somewhere near the Utah/Wyoming border.

  He worked the fingers on his right hand, but they refused to form a fist. Jenna stepped around him and opened the unlocked front door. Dink trotted inside and hopped up on the bed.

  Quinn glanced around as he walked in. Standard setup. Like the cabin he’d stayed in six years ago while he worked on the S as a hand. Only this cabin was newly built, the curtains unfaded from the sun and the bathroom fixtures a neutral white, not puke green.

  On the left side of the cabin, Kurt’s covers lay in a tangle on the bottom bunk, a dent in the pillow from the last time Kurt had laid his head there.

  “No note?” Quinn asked again. Not because he didn’t remember her answer, but because reconciling the man he knew with what Jenna had said, didn’t jibe.

  “No note.”

  Kurt’s jacket hung from a hook on the wall at the foot of the bunk beds. It was an old-style, green canvas army surplus that all the skateboard kids back home wore to look cool while boarding along the beach’s sidewalks, even in the heat.

  Quinn ran his hands through all the pockets. Coming up with a book of matches, a dead prepaid cell phone, and a bent business card for a guy named Ward Holleran—with a number scribbled in flowing purple ink on the back.

  Quinn dropped the items onto the table. “The sheriff wasn’t interested in these?”

  “Either they didn’t check Kurt’s pockets, or they didn’t think it was relevant.”

  “Not relevant?” Renewed anger poured in, and as tired as Quinn was, he couldn’t be bothered to keep his voice from rising. “Not ‘relevant’? What kind of Barney Fife we got working our county now?”

  “It’s not like that.” Jenna laid
a hand on his forearm, but Quinn stepped away. “Sheriff St. John is a good guy. I’m sure he’s doing his best, it’s…”

  “It’s what?”

  She glanced away as if she didn’t want to say, but he gave her points for meeting his eye when she spoke. “The case is pretty cut-and-dry.”

  The base of his neck prickled, and the sensation had nothing to do with the fact it was late in the day, the windows were closed, and the cabin lacked air-conditioning.

  He shrugged out of his riding jacket, the protective plating making the garment hot and heavy. As the sleeve pulled free, it yanked a layer of dried blood and scabs with it. “Jesus Chr—”

  He’d been in such a hurry to leave his apartment that he hadn’t rebandaged his forearm before putting on his jacket. Sometime during the ride, the mesh on the inside must have chafed, causing the delicate skin to bleed and stick to the fabric.

  Quinn shook the sting from his arm and slapped a hand to the open wound. Dense with new capillaries, the tissue bled easily. Not like a sliced artery or anything, but the blood oozed and trickled down the back of his hand.

  Jenna disappeared into the bathroom and returned with a basic first-aid kit. “Let me see that.”

  The blood had already started to coagulate, the rivulets making the skin on the back of his hand tight. “It’s okay.”

  “Sit.”

  “I said—” He looked at her, from the hand on her slim hip, to the tight purse of her lips, to the raised brow that asked whether he was up for a fight, because she most certainly was. He decided he wasn’t.

  “Fine.” He pulled out one of the two table chairs and plopped into it.

  Jenna took the other, cracked open the kit, and went to work. A scrub of peroxide, a dab of antibiotic ointment, a double wrap of rolled gauze, and he was ready to go.

  “Your arm,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “That from the crash?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re still not flying after all this time?”

  He shook his head. “I thought you knew. I figured Kurt would have told you.”

  “I didn’t know it was that bad. When I asked, Kurt said you were okay.”

  “You could have called.” Quinn wanted the words back as soon as they’d left his traitorous mouth. They made him sound needy. He didn’t want false concern.