A knock sounded. Joy scootched past them and opened the door a crack. A man pushed a file of entries into Joy’s hand.
Eric pulled the brim of his hat down to shield his features and Sarah turned her face to the side. She gazed over the announcer’s shoulder, pretending to be studying a skit that two clowns—or bullfighters, as they liked to be called—performed to kill time while the announcer and Joy and all the people running things behind the scenes readied the next event’s entries. Best to be safe. There was always a chance whomever was at the door was more of a news hound than Joy or Smithy.
The door thunked closed, and Sarah let out a heavy breath of relief.
Joy wedged herself through the tight space once again. “I got the breakaway roping here next, Billy.”
“All right.” The announcer turned, hand reaching for the file. He looked up at Eric…and froze.
Sarah’s blood froze with him.
Seemingly in slow motion, he reached for the microphone. He turned on the switch and leaned his lips close. “Security. I need security. Up here in the announcer’s booth. Hurry.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ERIC GRABBED SARAH’S ARM, BUT he didn’t need to. She was already moving, throwing open the door, racing down the steel steps. They reached the main walkway and dashed past a concession stand. Their boots thundered on the steel grating.
Two men in Stetsons rounded the corner. Shoulder to shoulder, they blocked the stairs.
Sarah slammed to a stop, Eric almost running in to her from behind. She whirled around, looked up at him, the whites of her eyes bright in the arena lights.
The men started up the steps in unison, a wall of cowboy.
Eric spun in the other direction. A man came at them from that direction, too. Striding out from the seats of The Buzzard’s Roost. Another entered the walkway behind him.
Eric had to do something now.
He grabbed the rail and looked over the edge. A maze of steel fence shown in the dimness, ten or fifteen feet below, chutes that returned bucking horses and bulls to the holding pens. He grabbed Sarah’s arm. “Over the edge.”
Grabbing the rail, she swung a leg over the edge and jumped.
Eric followed. He hit the ground behind her. The impact sent a stab of pain through his foot and a shudder through his body. But the ground was soft, stirred up by hooves and padded with manure.
“Eric!” On her feet already, Sarah was running for the gate.
Eric followed.
Voices clamored behind them. The tramping of feet rumbled down the stairs.
Sarah half climbed, half vaulted one pipe gate, then another. She slipped over the last of the gates designed to funnel the bucking stock and disappeared into a holding pen.
Eric followed her path. Each time he jumped a gate and landed, his foot screamed. By the third one, his foot was numb.
Fine by him.
He raced across the churned-up ground of the pen. A loud snort sounded to his right. He glanced in the direction of the sound. A huge gray bull stared back.
Damn.
“Over here. Just run for it.”
He made for the sound of Sarah’s voice. Behind him, he could hear the animal. The beat of his hooves. The snort of his breath. He braced himself for goring horns.
Sarah stood near the fence. She flapped something in her hands, something…
The bull raced straight for her.
“No.” Eric veered to the side.
“Keep running! Jump the fence!” she yelled.
Her coat. That’s what she held. She waved it like she thought she was some damn Spanish bullfighter. As the bull drew close, she tossed it. It fluttered in the air. He stabbed into it with his horns and dashed it to the ground.
Sarah jumped for the fence. Ten feet down, Eric did, too. They clambered over. When their feet hit the ground on the other side, they raced for the back gate.
Men’s voices jangled behind them. Asking questions. Yelling directions. Someone shouted that he’d called police.
Eric pushed his legs to move faster. When they’d arrived, a man in a cowboy hat had been watching the gate. No one was there now. Eric could only guess that he’d responded to the call for security. That he was one of the men pursuing them now.
Eric grasped the chain looped around the gate’s latch. He yanked it open and he and Sarah slipped through. He veered to the left, racing past the trailers and motor homes.
Sarah motioned to the jumble of rigs. “We—”
“Too obvious.” No way they could stow away aboard a random trailer now. Not with men combing the grounds for them, men who would be out of the stands and smack on their trail at any moment. It was the first place they’d look. “The river.”
They ran across the flat area as fast as they could, gravel shifting and scattering under their feet like marbles. The gravel ended and the ground grew rough. When they hit the spot where it started sloping down to the river, Eric dove for the dirt, pulling Sarah with him.
Behind them, shouting came closer, rising over the sound of the river’s rushing water.
Eric scooped in breath after breath, trying to satisfy his hungry lungs. The faint odor of sulfur in the water hung in the back of this throat. “The river. We follow the bed to the highway.”
Cheeks pink from their escape, Sarah nodded. Her eyes glowed with determination. Her dark hair swirled around her in the wind. She looked so alive and vibrant, his chest hurt.
He had to get her out of this mess. He looked at the rushing water. “Ready?”
“Right behind you.”
He jammed the black hat low and half crawled, half stumbled down the bank to the water, keeping his body as low to the ground. Rock bit into his hands, his knees.
Above the roar of the water and thunder of his pulse, voices rose in the night air. Somewhere a siren screamed.
______
Sarah couldn’t remember ever being so cold.
They followed the river until it flanked the highway. Most of the way, they were able to stay on the shore. But in some spots, the bank rose almost vertically from the water. Then, they had to plunge into the frigid water. Deeper than the stream that crossed through her ranch, the Shoshone’s current tumbled and swirled around them, fast and relentless. And even though she was soaked and scared and drained of any energy she had left, she was grateful to make it to the highway alive and not in the custody of police.
They followed West Yellowstone Avenue and turned toward downtown. They needed to find a car or a place to hide, and the other direction only promised the reservoir and a desolate highway that led to the gates of Yellowstone, almost an hour’s drive away. But still, walking into civilization made Sarah nervous.
She tried not to look behind her. Tried not to focus on the red and blue lights pulsing from the rodeo grounds. There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic in this stretch of Cody, making it hard to blend in. So they stayed off the highway, moving through ditches and along parking lots.
Eric reached out a hand to help her up a steep ditch and to a more level cluster of driveways leading to restaurants and motels, busy on a Saturday night. “Cold?”
She nodded. But that wasn’t the half of it. The cold, the fear, the ebbing adrenaline…her list went on. But try as she might, she couldn’t stop shaking. It wasn’t within her grasp. Not any longer. The best she could do was stumble forward and hope Eric was in better shape.
He rubbed a hand over her back as they walked. “So if you were a tourist, where would you want to stay?”
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.
“Come on. Price is no object.” He gave her a smile that seemed a little tired and forced, but she had to admit it was better than she could have done.
She could at least put in what effort she could muster. “The Irma,” she said, suggesting the famous hotel Buffalo Bill Cody named for his daughter.
“A sucker for history, eh?”
“You bet.”
A police car sped past
, lights flashing red and blue.
Sarah sucked in a breath and tried her best to keep focused straight ahead, to look like she didn’t have a care in the world, not that she remembered what that felt like anymore.
“What would you have for dinner?”
She forced her mind back to Eric’s game. “A steak, of course. Baked potato with sour cream. A salad, ranch dressing.”
Her stomach growled, right on cue.
“Steak, huh? I suppose a beef rancher is required to say that.”
“Hey, it’s real food, that’s what Layton always likes to say. How about you? You’re not going to choose seafood or quiche or something, are you?”
He didn’t answer. His steps slowed.
“What is it?”
“Not sure.”
They cleared the strip mall and walked to the next drive. A small restaurant sat off on its own at the back of the parking lot, a sign in front proclaiming it had the best steaks in town. The building was cute but older, built of rough-hewn logs and sporting a green roof that made Sarah think of kids’ Lincoln Logs. But unlike the restaurants they’d passed earlier, the lot in front was vacant and no lights shone from the interior.
Eric pointed to a sign on the front door announcing the restaurant was temporarily closed for renovation. “I can’t promise a room at the Irma, but we might be able to get you that steak.”
______
Eric carried a bucket of fried chicken the workers must have had left over from lunch and plopped it on the table. He added two dinner plates and linen napkins he’d found in the waiter’s aisle.
“You promised me steak,” Sarah said, lighting a candle with a wooden match. Gentle light flickered over the booth.
Covered with thick upholstered padding and wide enough for sleeping, the booths were the first thing Eric had spotted after they broke in through a window that was fortunately not alarmed. In addition, the pantry and walk-in freezer still held a stock of staples and the plumbing in the kitchen worked like a dream. They would even have coffee in the morning.
Eric set down two tall glasses of water and slid into the opposite bench. “Have I ever told you that you’re awfully demanding?”
“Funny, I’ve always thought I wasn’t demanding enough.” She tilted her head to the side and gave him a smile.
For a moment, he felt like they’d turned back time. That he’d never walked away from her. That no one had been killed. That the police and sheriff and half the state of Wyoming weren’t looking for them now. That all he had to concentrate on was how good being around her made him feel. Accept it. Soak it in.
Nice fantasy.
For a long while, all they did was eat and drink, not wasting even a moment on talk. By the time they came up for air, the bucket of chicken was empty and piles of bones lay on the plates.
Sarah tilted the bucket toward her and picked crumbs of greasy breading from the bottom. “Hope the workers bring a lunch tomorrow. This ‘being fugitives’ stuff has turned us into criminals.”
“We could always leave them some cash to pay for it.”
“How much cash do you have?”
“Under fifty dollars. Forty-eight to be exact.”
Her smile faded. Clearly she understood there was no way they could get more. Not without the law tracking them down. “I guess they’ll just have to deal with it.”
Eric was sorry he’d brought it up. For a moment, they’d had a little reprieve, food, relative safety…they’d been able to forget a little. He was sorry his comment had brought them crashing back to earth.
“Ready for dessert?” The lightness in his voice sounded forced, even to his own ears.
She arched her brows. “Dessert?”
Eric thrust himself up from the booth and strode into the bar area. Even in the dim light, he could make out boxes lining the wall. What he wouldn’t give for a stiff shot of whiskey. But since Sarah couldn’t drink because of her pregnancy, he skipped over the booze boxes and found a different kind of treat.
Twisting open the jar’s cap, he carried it back to the table and set it in front of Sarah.
“Maraschino cherries?” A chuckle escaped from her throat. “I haven’t had these since I was a kid. Mmm, on hot fudge sundaes.”
“I’m afraid that’s the only part of the sundae I can manage.” Although he’d found some staples like sealed, premeasured bags of coffee that were still stored in back, steak and ice cream and other perishables were harder to find in a restaurant closed for renovation.
She plucked out a cherry and took it between her teeth. Tearing it from the stem, she closed her eyes as if it was the most decadent of treats.
She opened her eyes. “Aren’t you going to have one?”
“Maybe I’ll just watch.”
Her laugh sounded deep and rich and intimate, and he realized it had been a long time since he’d heard it. “Feeling better?”
“Trying. I think my mind needed food.”
“I’m sure it needs sleep, too.”
“Probably more hours than we can afford.”
“At least we have a name for our murdered man.”
The candle’s flicker caused shadows to shift across Sarah’s face. “I kept finding myself wanting to tell Joy her husband was dead. It’s sad that she thinks he grew too arrogant to talk to her.”
“I’ve lost count of all the things that are sad about this mess.”
“Confusing, too. Why on earth would a sheriff want to kill a fingerprint analyst?”
Eric felt relieved to focus on the mystery at hand. Mistakes and motives of other people were a lot easier to examine than his own. “Because Hodgeson wouldn’t give him the result he wanted?”
“But his wife said he was retired. Has been for a while. So he wouldn’t be working on pending cases. Maybe it was personal?”
He tilted his head to the side, considering. Could a sheriff in Norris County and a state crime lab analyst in Cheyenne have a personal connection? It was possible. Of course, knowing as little as they knew, a lot of things were possible. “Or Larry Hodgeson found evidence in an old case, something Sheriff Gillette wants buried.”
“What kind of evidence? Fingerprints they hadn’t noticed before?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I’m just grasping at straws. But we’ll find out.”
“How?”
It was a good question. They’d gotten a break in finding this restaurant tonight. They needed another. “Tomorrow we check out junkyards, car lots, whatever. See if we can find a vehicle that runs.”
“Steal one, you mean.”
“I doubt forty-eight bucks will buy one.”
“And then?”
“We need to find out more about Larry Hodgeson. If we know who he was, what he worked on, maybe we can come up with why someone would want him dead.”
“How? We can’t very well drive down to Cheyenne and waltz into the crime lab. Seems a bit bold.”
“You’ve got to admit, Sheriff Gillette wouldn’t expect it.”
“Right,” she said, tone dry as the Bighorn Basin in August.
“Actually I was thinking of newspapers.”
“The writer. Joy said her husband was talking to a writer.”
“We can search for stories mentioning him online.”
“The library has computers.”
“Risky.”
“What isn’t?”
She had a point. Even now the police could be tracking them down. Closing in on the restaurant under the cover of darkness.
Eric watched Sarah pop another cherry into her mouth. Whenever he looked at her, touched her, heard the sound of her voice, a need to protect her welled up inside him like a snow-melt flood.
He’d always felt too much for her, and the past two days, those feelings had grown tenfold. The threat of something going wrong, her getting hurt, something happening to the baby…all of it was hard to take. And the hardest thing to accept was that he had so little control over what happened next. From the moment Ran
dy had been shot and the sheriff had shown up at Sarah’s ranch, he had been scrambling to react, to keep disaster from crashing down on them and sweeping them away. So far, he’d barely been half a step ahead.
“What is it?” Sarah leaned forward, hands splayed on the table in front of her.
“Nothing. I just… the risk can’t be helped. But we’ll find a library in some other town. They’ll have their eyes out for us here in Cody.”
Her fingers were trembling. She folded her hands together. “Okay.”
“We’ll find answers, Sarah. I promise.”
“Don’t promise. Isn’t that what you always said? Not unless you know you can keep it?”
He fitted his hands over hers and gave them a gentle squeeze. Her fingers felt so fine in his big mitt, so delicate. Yet he’d seen her use those hands to rope cattle and string fence right along with the men who worked for her.
Sarah was strong. But even strong people had vulnerabilities. Even strong people needed to be able to rely on someone.
A tremble centered deep in his chest. Had he been afraid of being that someone? Was that why he left just as things between them were getting serious? Was that what caused the jumble of emotion inside him whenever she was near?
He wasn’t sure. But there was one thing he did know. Now that Sarah was in danger, now that they had a baby on the way, he no longer had the right to opt out. Scared, confused, none of that mattered. He had to be that someone Sarah could rely on. And he couldn’t let anything get in the way.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SARAH SOAKED IN THE FEEL of Eric’s hands sheltering hers and watched the candle’s flicker play across his face. Over the months since he’d told her he couldn’t see her anymore, the months the life they’d created was growing inside her, she’d longed for this. His eyes looking at her as if she was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. His skin touching hers. His voice washing over her, full of feeling he didn’t often show. She wanted to believe all of it was real. Lasting. Not merely the by-product of their situation.
Unfortunately, she was far too pragmatic for that.
“I have to know something. Something kind of off-topic.”
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