Then Melinda came in. Her gaze took in the crowd in the waiting room, and she zeroed in on Dusty. Dusty met her stare with one of her own, but she couldn’t help but notice the tension level in the room rise. She stepped away from Helen, forcing herself to keep her chin high.
Melinda was the one who belonged here. Melinda knew that, Dusty knew that, and so did everyone else in the room. Dusty moved over to the corner and sat down beside Stevie.
Melinda latched on to Helen. “I’m so worried. I feel like I’m having a heart attack. When will they come out and tell us what’s going on?”
“You’d better sit down,” Helen said, leading Melinda to a chair. “You don’t need to get too worked up.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Melinda smiled at Helen, then turned to throw Dusty a look.
“Don’t worry about her,” Stevie said under his breath.
Melinda stood again to pace the room, her hand at the small of her back. “I don’t feel well. I’m so worried about Luke.”
“Sit down,” Helen said shortly. “Get off your feet.”
“I can’t. I’m too nervous about my fiancée.” She looked at Dusty again, her eyes narrowed. “I just love him so much. And he loves me. Surely God wouldn’t take him now, not when –”
“Melinda, sit down and shut your mouth,” Corinne ordered in the same tone she reserved for Cade when he was in trouble.
Melinda sat, but didn’t shut her mouth. “I can’t help it, Corinne. He’s the love of my life, my soul mate.” She stared across the room at Dusty.
Dusty forced herself to remain calm, but felt like her head was going to explode. One more second of hearing Melinda talk about how much she loved Luke, and it was going to.
The door swung open then and a man in green scrubs came out. He saw Helen and crossed the room to her.
“No big deal. A little bullet in the thigh, no problem for a brilliant doctor such as myself.”
Helen sagged, and Melinda cried out, “Thank you, thank you!”
The rest of the group gathered around the doctor, firing questions at him. The room was such a commotion of relief and joy that no one noticed when Dusty stood and began to edge her way out of the room, except Stevie.
He followed her to the door and asked in a low voice. “You want me to take you home now?”
She nodded, and they left quietly. Stevie was silent on the way back to Trailertopia, and for that she was grateful. He walked her to the door and stood silently by as she walked in. She remembered at the last second to thank him for bringing her home.
He nodded. “And don’t worry about the band. We’ll work something out before the next gig on Wednesday night. Maybe he’ll even be well enough to play by then.”
“Maybe.” The thought brought a painful relief to her, and she had to swallow before she could say, “Goodnight.”
She sat in the same chair she’d been sitting in when Stevie came, and glanced at the clock. Unbelievably, only an hour and a half had passed since she’d been trying to read her book.
Silence roared in her trailer, so heavy it filled the small space and stretched out endlessly before her.
She kept telling herself to turn on some music, or turn on the television, anything to push out this overwhelming silence that pinned her to her chair.
But she didn’t. She sat in her chair all night, wondering how two completely different sentences – ‘Luke’s been shot’, and ‘I love him and he loves me’ – could have so nearly the same effect on her.
Luke cracked his eyes open the next morning, to see a familiar face.
“Man,” he croaked. He licked dry lips with a dry tongue. “This must be bad if they called out the feds. How are you doing, Buddy?”
“Better than you.” Buddy Saiz stood, stretching to his full 6’3”, and shook Luke’s hand.
Buddy and Luke had attended the police academy together. Luke had come back to Aloma, and Buddy had worked his way up to a position in the FBI.
“How’s your head?”
Luke swiveled his head to see Toby, standing by the window, holding his hat in his hand.
“Not bad enough for you to be looking like you’re standing by my deathbed. How’s Joanne? Geralyn said she went home last night.”
“She got a bonk on the head, but she’s fine. No concussion. They pushed her into the cell and tied her up. I think she was more mad than anything.”
“Well? Did you get them?”
Toby frowned and shook his head. “Not yet. But we will.”
Luke pictured again the barrel of the gun staring him in the face, and the calm sense of satisfaction in the voice of the shooter.
“Don’t worry about it,” Luke said. “I kinda want to get them myself.”
“Get in line. A lot of people are looking for your friends.”
“How did you get involved, Buddy? The kid’s warrant said he’d embezzled from his company.”
“Evidently, they weren’t just talking about paper clips,” Toby said. “He worked for IND, and he’d been slowly stealing information on their new gaming system, and selling it to a rival company.”
Buddy said, “IND wasn’t exactly upfront with their suspicions. They tried to keep it in-house, until it became clear that things were out of their hands. What they were trying to do, we think, is keep the whole mess under wraps and get the data back into their hands, before their stockholders found out. But Kenny’s partner –”
Buddy looked at Toby, who nodded grimly.
“Kenny’s partner, a high level executive with IND, destroyed all that was left of the original data, leaving IND with nothing. So they finally gave the Seattle police the whole story, and we jumped on board.”
“Take a guess who Kenny’s partner is,” Toby said.
Luke frowned, his head aching. “Damn. Wayne Schotts.”
“Damn straight. Right there in our office.”
“No wonder he wanted to come look around. He was casing the place.” Luke rubbed his hands over his face. “He must have been laughing his head off at us the entire time.”
“I know. Ever since Buddy told me, I’ve felt like an idiot. I even took a stock tip from the bastard.”
“There was a third guy,” Luke said. “The shooter.”
“We’ve got a pretty good idea who he is, too. You up to looking at some pictures?”
“Hell, I want to get out of bed and go after them myself. Sure I’m up to it.”
Buddy slipped the photos from an envelope. “Is this the guy?”
Luke studied the picture. The alley had been dark, and the streetlight behind the shooter. Plus Luke had already been knocked over the head when he saw the guy.
“You don’t know how much I want to say for sure that’s him. It could be.”
“His name is Derek Broeker. All our leads point to him as the accomplice, the one who’s been doing the running from Kenny to the other company, plus he has a criminal history that fits right into this picture.”
“Do you know who the buyer is?”
“IND’s CEO gave us a few leads, and we’ve got some guys watching them right now.” Buddy slid the pictures back into the envelope. “We’ll get them, Luke.”
“What were they doing in Aloma?”
“The only thing we can figure out is that this was the rendezvous point to hand off the information. Kenny suddenly quit IND about four days before he showed up here, and it wasn’t until after he left that they figured out what he’d been doing. When they started looking around, some fingers pointed to Schotts as being involved, and since he and the CEO are good friends from way back, he called Schotts onto the carpet and forced him to leave the building, but offered the guy a chance to make it right before he got the law involved. Instead, Schotts hit the road, and only then did IND discover that all the information they have is scrambled. Getting it back into working order is going to take some time. In the meanwhile, a clean copy is floating around somewhere, maybe already to the buyer by now.”
“Kenny didn�
�t have anything on him when I arrested him.”
“If he’d already delivered it, I doubt Wayne would have bothered with breaking him out of jail. He would have his money and be in another country by now, so he probably wouldn’t care if Kenny talked or not. We feel like he hid the data somewhere before he was arrested, and Schotts came to bust Kenny out so he could take him to it.”
“What are we looking for? Anything on paper? Or…like a disk or something? A jump drive?”
“Probably a jump drive, but I’m betting it’s long gone by now. If Kenny hid it somewhere, they got it last night, after they broke out. Our best bet right now is to keep an eye on the potential buyers. That will lead us to these guys.”
Dusty opened the cabinet under the sink in Tumbleweeds’ ladies room and narrowed her eyes at the empty space. Evidently it was asking too much for Rodney to keep the bathroom stocked. She slammed the door.
She checked the storeroom, and found an old umbrella stand full of broken pool cues and a busted fluorescent beer sign, but nothing of any use. She muttered under her breath and went in search of Rodney. She’d been on edge all night and all morning, and she needed someone to take it out on.
Rodney was behind the bar, as usual, mixing something in a blender. “Here, taste this and see what you think. I’m going to call it the Rain Dance.” He poured some of the frozen concoction into a cup and slid it across the bar toward her.
“There’s no toilet paper in the ladies room. None in the store room, either.”
“Oh, man! I was supposed to order that last week.”
“Oh man!” she mocked. “And you forgot, didn’t you? The way you forget about everything unless it’s right in front of you. In the meantime, we’re going to have several hundred women in here drinking alcohol. Do you know what happens when women drink alcohol, Rodney?”
She was aware that she was verging on a shriek. She took a deep breath and lowered the pitch. “Not to mention that I’m here, you’re here, and we may need some.”
“Um…” He cleared his throat and silently slid a pile of cocktail napkins across the bar to her.
Dusty looked at the pile of napkins, then raised an eyebrow at him. “Where’s the checkbook?”
A horrified look crept across Rodney’s face, and Dusty shook her head in disgust. “I want you to sign a check so I can go into town and get some supplies.”
“Oh! Good idea.” He bent, then rose and slapped the checkbook on the bar. “Very good idea. You know, I need somebody like you around here to help me keep things in order.”
“You need something.”
As he signed the check, he said, “You want a job? Singing and playing with the band on weekends, managing the bar during the week?” He held out the check across the bar.
Dusty was surprised to see that he was serious. She stared at his outstretched hand, then at him. “You mean permanently?”
“Sure. Like I said, I need somebody around to look after the business end of things, keep me from getting the place shut down over some kind of legal infraction. And you could sing every weekend. Have your own permanent band.”
She could stay here. The concept left her stunned. She could stop moving, buy a little house like a normal person. Live like a normal person.
Except she wasn’t a normal person. She never had been and never would be. She had forgotten that lesson once, and she wasn’t going to do it again.
“No thanks.” Dusty’s lips were numb as she reached for the check. “I don’t work for other people.”
“I can understand that. Of course, I wouldn’t be opposed to somebody buying out half the bar and being a full partner, either. Could work out well for both of us – “
“I said no thanks.” Dusty looked off and clenched her jaw. “Look, no offense, but I’m just not interested.” She walked away before her temper got her into something she should regret.
Rodney held up his hands. “No problem. I understand.” He pulled the cup he’d poured back across the bar. “Listen, while you’re out, would you mind going out to the hospital and see how Luke is doing?”
Dusty froze in the doorway. Was her concern for Luke written on her face? She’d fought the urge to go back to the hospital since she’d finally given up on sleep and crawled out of bed early that morning. The only thing that stopped her from driving out there was the vision of herself, breaking down and making a fool of herself, in front of Luke or his family. Then everyone would know.
Know what?
Instead of dwelling on that question, she shook her head. “I really don’t have time to be running around everywhere. Why don’t you call out there? I’ll bet someone at the desk can tell you how he’s doing.”
She turned and left before he had a chance to argue.
She didn’t need to go out to the hospital to check on him. Last night the doctor had said he would be fine. He would recover completely. He was going to be okay. She didn’t have to go out there and see it with her own eyes.
But when she got to the Aloma city limits, instead of turning left toward the grocery store, she kept heading north, to the other side of town and the small hospital. Just to check the parking lot, she told herself. Just to see who was there.
Melinda’s car was not there. Dusty parked and stared at the entrance, feeling like an idiot for knowing what kind of car Melinda drove. And feeling like an even bigger idiot for letting someone she didn’t know dictate her actions.
She killed the engine, and the cab of her pickup grew almost instantly warm, without the air conditioner running. Only the pops and pings of the cooling engine broke the silence around her.
She thought of Rodney’s crazy offer. If she didn’t know it was a doomed proposition, she might actually take him up on it. It might be fun, to have a little place of her own. Running her own bar – because even with Rodney as her partner, she would be running the show, that much was apparent. Working with the same band every week.
That thought brought a screeching halt to her musings. Working with the same band every week meant working with Luke. Being around him on a regular basis. Seeing his wife grow with his child. Seeing him and his family and friends together.
The memories of the previous night came back with all the accompanying emotions. For one moment, she’d been a part of that group. Their shared fear and concern had included her, and no one had said she didn’t belong.
Until Melinda came in. Who did belong. To Dusty’s own fury, she still felt the scorn and shame in the pit of her stomach this morning.
Why would she want to live in a place that constantly reminded her of everything she was not?
Her mother used to tell her she had gypsy blood in her veins. She’d actually thought she was a gypsy, before she’d realized that was just another of her parents’ stories, like the one they told her about finding her in a basket in a gas station rest room and the one about buying her from a roadside vegetable stand. She’d never actually learned what her ancestors were. But she knew one thing. Her parents had not taught her to sit in a parked car like a chicken.
The receptionist at the front desk knew who she was and gave her Luke’s room number before she asked for it. The small building had only two wings – one long hallway, actually, with a nurses’ station and reception area in the middle – and she found his room easily. She knocked lightly on the door.”
“He’s got company.”
Dusty turned to see the nurse standing behind the desk.
“You can go on in if you want. I just thought I’d warn you.”
“I’ll come back later,” Dusty said, just as the door opened.
“No, we’re just leaving.” Toby held the door open for Dusty. “Come on in.”
Toby and a man Dusty didn’t recognize walked past her, and she eased into the room.
“Hey,” Luke said, smiling when he saw her. He was pale, and a white bandage covered the back of his head. Stubble darkened his jaw. “I’m glad you came.”
“Yeah, well, Rodney ask
ed me to come by and see…” She stuffed her hands in her pockets, feeling like an idiot. “Actually, I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Better now. Sit down.”
Without thinking, she reached to smooth the lines furrowed in his brow, wondering if it was worry or pain that put them there. At the last second she drew her hand back and clasped it with the other one in her lap.
“I lied to you,” she said. She hadn’t planned to say it that way, of course. She hadn’t planned to say anything at all, actually, but now that she was here. . .
He just raised his eyebrows in question.
“The other day with Cade, in the park, you said you could tell I’d done that before…taking care of kids. And I said I hadn’t. But I lied. I had…I had a daughter. Before.”
He cleared his throat and rose up on his pillows. “Had?”
“Had.” She bit the inside of her lip. “She died, when she was three months old.”
He reached to take her hand, and she allowed herself to grip it tightly before she pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “What happened?”
“The doctor said it was SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It’s –”
“I know what it is. A baby here died of that, six or seven years ago. They don’t really know what caused it, she just stopped breathing and…”
“Yeah, that’s it. I just went in, and my baby was dead.” She swallowed and cleared her throat. “No real cause or reason.”
“Dusty, I am so sorry –”
“I didn’t come up here so you could feel sorry for me.” She pushed her chair a few inches away from the bed. “I just came up here to…just to tell you. And to tell you that, I think you’re struggling a little, with what you’re going to do next, with your own child. And I thought I should tell you, whatever you need to do, to be with your child… do it. Whatever it takes. Whatever you need to do to work it out, Luke, just do it. You won’t regret it. Not for a second. Swallow your pride, do what you need to do, deal with whatever you need to deal with. Just don’t miss the chance to be with your child, as much as you can.”
Cowboy Sing Me Home Page 17