The Great Jackalope Stampede

by Ann Charles

  “You’re so full of shit.” His words were edged with laughter, the storm beginning to dissolve.

  “What?” She bumped him sideways with her shoulder. “I mean that.”

  He reached over and pulled her hat brim down. “Then why did you leave me at the house with that asshole?”

  She adjusted her hat. “You know Mom’s bark is worse than her bite.”

  He laughed. “I meant Jess’s dad.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten about him.”

  “I guess it’s to be expected that he slipped from your mind being that you were in the midst of planning how to commit your next felony.”

  “It wasn’t like that.” Well, not completely like that, anyway. She hadn’t put thought into the actual act of entering the R.V.s until after she had left the house.

  He stopped and swung her around to look up at him. “What was it like then, Claire? Because I’m going home now, and I won’t be here to save your ass from landing in jail or something worse next time.”

  She blinked in surprise. What did he mean he was going home? “You’re going back to Tucson?” At his nod, she asked, “Now? Why?”

  “There’s no room for me here.”

  “Does Chester have a date tonight?”

  “I’m not talking about Chester’s couch. I mean in general.” He glanced back toward the store. “With your family everywhere, there’s no place for me.” His tone was matter of fact.

  She sighed. “Listen, Mac, if this is about Ronnie …”

  “It’s not about Ronnie, Claire.” His gaze locked onto hers, all jest gone from his expression. “It’s about you.”

  “Me?” She took a step backward. “What did I do?”

  His eyelids lowered, his eyes shifting down to the left. “Nothing. Not a single thing.” He pulled his hand free from hers and took off walking again.

  She did not let him get far before hooking his arm and dragging anchor until he turned hard a-starboard. “Is this about the pocket watch?”

  He extracted his arm from her grip. “Contrary to what you seem to think, not everything revolves around that damned watch.” He and Kate could have sung a duet on that subject.

  She shoved her hands in her front pockets, trying to read him and coming up blank. “But I don’t want you to go home yet.”

  “You’re busy working. I don’t need to be here to watch you finish that building. Your grandfather and his cronies are doing a bang-up job of doing that without me.”

  “I’m not busy all of the time.”

  “Really?” He crossed his arms over his chest, rocking back on his heels. “I’ve been here since yesterday morning and seen you how much?”

  The undercurrent of frustration in his voice gave her pause. After all of the overtime he had been putting in at his job, leaving her alone with Ronnie evening after evening back home in Tucson, she wanted to stomp on his toes. “What about last night?”

  “You mean when I went looking for you at The Shaft?”

  Her jaw jutted. “I called you before that to come have a burger with me, but you were too busy playing cards.”

  “Not by choice.”

  “Oh, I see. So Manny had your arm twisted while Chester sat on you and forced your hand.”

  His eyes hardened. “No, Claire, I stayed because Ruby asked me not to go until your mother went to bed. Since you and your sisters weren’t there to help deal with Deborah, I agreed.”

  Claire grimaced, his words fueling the guilt trip she had been on since she and Natalie had come up with that lame excuse to go to Yuccaville yesterday instead of having lunch with her mother. Stopping at The Shaft on the way home had been a weasel’s way out of dealing with her overbearing mother’s need to point out Claire’s lack of a steady paycheck, and staying until the she-beast had bedded down for the night, a cowardly solution.

  “You’re right.” She blew out a breath, lowering her gaze. “I was only thinking of saving my own bacon. It was selfish and immature.”

  “Slugger,” he lifted her chin, his face not so rigid. “I understand. Your mother takes great pleasure in pecking at you.”

  “I should carry chicken feed in my pocket at all times.”

  His lips twitched as he towed her closer. “It doesn’t help that you’re living with me, her least favorite person on the planet second only to my aunt.”

  He was forgetting about Claire’s father. He trumped Ruby and then some.

  “My mother can kiss my ass,” she said under her breath.

  Mac lifted off her hat and then brushed his lips across hers, flirting. “I love it when you whisper sweet words like that in my ear.”

  “Stay here tonight and I’ll whisper a few more things.” She pulled him down, looping her arms around his neck, breathing in the fresh scent of his sun warmed skin. Mac always smelled like the desert, a pheromone-fueled mix of sage and mesquite with an underlying hint of something spicy and erotic. Pushing up onto her tiptoes, she kissed him good and proper, teasing him with her tongue, hinting at what could be.

  His hands trailed down her ribs, landing on her hips where they held tight for several seconds before rounding over her bottom. “You play dirty,” he said against her mouth and then gripped her through her jeans.

  “Yeah, but you like it dirty.” She ran her mouth along his jaw and nipped his earlobe. When she finished her seduction attempt, she drew back enough to stare into his eyes, imploring. “Stay with me, Mac.”

  He placed her hat back on her head. “And spend another night on Chester’s couch? I don’t think so, sweetheart.” He trailed his thumb down her cheek and then pulled away, putting some air between them. “Besides, I got a call from work. They need me to be down at the job site south of Tucson by five tomorrow morning. Tonight, I’m sleeping in my own bed.”

  Claire snorted. “What’s so important about building a freaking wall that you have to be there at the butt crack of dawn?”

  He cocked his head to the side, his forehead creasing. “You do realize that my job as a geotechnician entails more than just laying bricks, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” They’d had this conversation too many times to count. When he continued frowning at her, she added. “It’s just that I need you here.”

  “To drag you out of windows?”

  “To help me protect Ruby and Gramps.”

  “That’s what they have firearms for.”

  “What if that’s not enough?”

  “If this is about someone stealing that pocket watch …”

  “It’s not about the damned watch!” Claire would just as soon throw that thing down a mine shaft and be done with it if that would solve the real problem. “It’s about what’s behind the stupid thing and all of the other hidden treasures Joe buried in this damned desert.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, looking like he was considering the legitimacy of her concern, and then shook his head.

  “Mac, you know I’m onto something here.”

  “Maybe, but I wish you weren’t.” He grimaced in the direction of the archaeology crew’s cluster of campers. “Why were you trying to break into that R.V.?”

  She opted to keep quiet about sneaking into the first R.V. for now. What Mac didn’t know would not hurt him or give him reason to speculate on her soundness of mind any further. “I have a gut feeling.”

  He groaned. “I don’t like your gut feelings, Claire. They usually get one of us almost killed.”

  Ignoring that comment, she explained further, “I think one or more of those archaeology students is up to something.”

  “As in something to do with the pocket watch?”

  “No. Maybe.” She kicked at a few loose pebbles of gravel. “I don’t know.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “I think they found something in the Lucky Monk besides the artifacts from the ruins, something Joe left behind.”

  Doubt rippled over his features. “I’ve been in that mine many times, Claire. I even mapped it.”

&
nbsp; “I know.”

  “Besides the dead guy, some big spiders, and the burial site stuff, there was only porphyry granite, copper, several pockets of turquoise, a few veins of amethyst, some malachite, and rats.”

  Claire fought the urge to roll her eyes at his detailed analysis. She stepped closer, lowering her voice even though their only audience was the grasshoppers bouncing around their feet. “Natalie overheard one of them on the phone last night.”

  One of his honey-brown eyebrows lifted. “Was she listening outside the camper window you were trying to crawl into?”

  “No. She’d forgotten her socket set at the new building. With all of these strangers around, she didn’t want to leave it there overnight, so she walked back to get it and heard someone talking behind the back wall—the one without plumbing that we have partially finished. She was minding her own business, but then she heard him say something about a cache of artifacts being extremely valuable followed by the words ‘black market.’”

  “Maybe he is in charge of getting the dig site finds safely back to the university and is worried about someone greedy getting their hands on them.”

  “That was Natalie’s first thought, too.” Claire shoved her hands in her back pockets. “She’s not as suspicious as me.”

  He chuckled. “Most of us don’t have Nancy Drew fantasies.”

  “Manny and Chester do.”

  “I said, ‘most.’” He crossed his arms over his chest. “So that’s all you have on this guy?”

  “There’s more. He caught Natalie eavesdropping.”

  “Then what? Did he threaten her?”

  “He hung up.”

  Mac let out a hmfff. “Claire, that hardly adds up to a suspicion that he’s planning to sell artifacts from the site on the black market.”

  “Maybe not, but we have no idea what this guy is capable of and now he knows Natalie might be a problem.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I can see where this is going, Claire, and I don’t like it. Promise me you’ll try not to get into trouble while I’m gone.”

  She crossed her fingers behind her back. “I promise.”

  He tipped his head to the side. “You’re crossing your fingers back there, aren’t you?”

  Claire smiled. “Call me when you get home.”

  Chapter Eight

  In her hurry to escape the two men in the black sedan, Ronnie had stumbled into a bigger problem inside the Mule Train Diner.

  All around her, pictures and paintings of mules hung on the walls. Sculptures and miniatures of the stubborn animal lined shelves nailed up high here and there. Even the tablecloths had cute versions of the beasts of burden on them. There were mules everywhere, including sitting at the table in front of her, demanding she sit in the chair he had kicked out and join him.

  With his whiskey-colored eyes scrunched into a wary glare, Sheriff Hardass watched her like he thought she might turn tail and bolt at any moment. But the high and mighty lawman did not realize with whom he was dealing. After being grilled repeatedly by a dizzying number of investigators from multiple law enforcement branches of the U.S. government about Lyle Jefferson’s many illegal activities, one Sheriff from Po-dunk-ville, Arizona did not have a chance at winning a standoff against her.

  Acting all prim and proper, Ronnie tucked in her skirt and lowered into the seat waiting for her as if she had not recently been playing hide and seek with a couple of boogeymen. She laced her fingers together and rested them on the table, adopting the same stiff-backed stance she had in each interrogation months ago.

  She nodded and smiled at an older couple who passed by their table on the way out the door, leaving her and the Sheriff alone except for a grizzled, gray haired old guy at the counter.

  Sheriff Hardass’s stare did not waver. Was he even blinking? The thought of reaching across the table and flicking him on that slightly crooked nose of his made a giggle bubble up in Ronnie’s throat. She coughed it back down and glanced at the remains of his sandwich.

  “As eating joints go in this corner of the state,” she said, her voice steady, “the Mule Train Diner appears to be a step above the rest. You come here often, Sheriff?”

  He nodded once.

  She detected a hint of his bay rum cologne over the aroma of fresh baked bread, noticing his freshly shaved jaw. Did he smell that good all over? Her brain digressed, painting a picture of him dressed in only a towel while he rubbed cologne on his skin. Whoa! Where had that come from? She blinked away the image before he figured out what she was picturing and arrested her for having lewd and lascivious thoughts.

  “How are their doughnuts?” She could not resist a little jab.

  “Nonexistent.”

  “You could threaten the owner with jail time if he doesn’t change the menu to accommodate you.” She landed a second jab, still sore about his comment last night regarding making room in his jail cells for her family of outlaws.

  “I already tried that and it backfired.”

  Ronnie could not tell if he were joking or not. “Really? How?”

  “She told on me to my mother and I got chewed out for harassing my sister.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Yeah. She’s the owner.”

  Behind the rigid smile on her face, Ronnie cringed. Of all of the mule joints in all of the dust-bunny towns out West, Ronnie had stumbled into the Sheriff’s sister’s restaurant. Damn.

  Claire would have laughed her ass off if she had been sitting there next to Ronnie. Then again, Claire would not have hidden in this diner from those two goons. She would have grabbed a baseball bat and chased after their sedan, probably ending up staring at Sheriff Hardass through the bars of a jail cell.

  When Ronnie grew up and had untangled herself from this makeshift noose Lyle had wrapped around her neck, she wanted to be as carefree and reckless as her middle sister. She was tired of always being the proper and responsible one in the family. Look where it had landed her—sitting in a diner full of mules with the law breathing down her neck.

  “Maybe you should say ‘pretty please’ when you ask your sister for a doughnut,” Ronnie suggested.

  “Those two words aren’t in my vocabulary.”

  No shit. She leveled her chin at the Sheriff. “If we’re about done here, Sheriff Harrison,” she started, enunciating his name for her own sake, not wanting to drag this out any longer with insubordination.

  “We’re not,” he interrupted and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table.

  If he was waiting for her to sit there and sing like a canary for him, his sandwich was going to go stale. She raised her eyebrows. “Well, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  His lips twitched. “I always keep a firm grip on my piece, Mrs. Jefferson.”

  She found his attempt to embarrass her with a double entendre cute at best. But after the humiliation of finding out that Lyle had planted a hidden security camera in their bedroom and some of the federal investigators had taken a peek at several of the episodes starring Ronnie with her favorite intimate massage device, which she fondly had referred to as Raphael at the top of her lungs during the filming, this was child’s play.

  She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I have a pair of tweezers you can borrow if it will help.”

  The widening of his eyes showed her that she had hit his battleship. Now to sink the sucker and be on her merry way.

  Sitting back upright, she smiled big and bright. “Sheriff Harrison, if you have something you would like to ask me, can we please get to it. I have somewhere I need to be.” As in the inside of a glass of gin and tonic while sitting on a bar stool at The Shaft, but he didn’t need to know that.

  His jaw stiffened so fast she checked his cheeks for stress fractures. “Where is your husband, Mrs. Jefferson?”

  Oh, crap. She didn’t want him digging up what she had tried so hard to bury since coming down to Arizona. Holding onto her smile for dear life, she used the standard answer she’d been using since she
had said, “I do,” all of those wasted years ago. “He’s away on business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “The kind involving travel.”

  He sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. “You pawned your wedding ring set.”

  There was no use denying it. She had blabbed that on their first meeting. “I did.”

  “I take it the travel business is not going well for your husband.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t talked to him in a while.” Except for that one collect phone call she had accepted before heading to Arizona when Lyle had warned her about the possible price on her head, she had only spoken to the son of a bitch through her lawyer.

  “Surely he has some way of being reached while traveling.”

  There was a cocky glint in his eyes that made Ronnie want to lean over the table and bite his head right off. “Sheriff, what is the point of these questions?”

  He shrugged, his shiny star bobbing along with his shoulders. “I’m just trying to figure out your next move, Mrs. Jefferson.”

  “I’ll save you the trouble.” She jabbed her thumb behind her. “I’m heading right out that door.” And out of his life, if possible.

  “What about that black Bonneville?”

  “Bonneville?” She played dumb to buy a moment. Double crap! Of course he had not missed that detail. She must have been as obvious as a cat on the ceiling in her panic stricken state.

  “Yes. The one you were hiding from when you ran in here.”

  “Oh, that black car.”

  “Yes, that one.” When she didn’t expound on her answer, he raised both brows. “Well, Mrs. Jefferson?”

  “You can call me, Veronica, Sheriff.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “Yet you continue not to.”

  “I prefer to keep your current status in the forefront of my mind when in your presence.”

  “And what status is that?”

  “A married woman on the run from her husband.”

  Her throat constricted, making her cough. She stole his drink, letting the cool water relax the tightness threatening to choke her.