Jackrabbit Junction Jitters

by Ann Charles

  Kate held still as he finished cleaning the wound. “I doubt your girlfriend would appreciate you missing dinner to hang out with us any longer than necessary.”

  “Stop grimacing. You’re making it bleed again.”

  “Sorry.” Kate smoothed out her forehead as he dabbed some clear goop on her skin, determined to be a good little patient so he’d hurry up and finish playing doctor. Holding up the flimsy wall she’d erected between them while standing this close made her palms clammy.

  “Lana isn’t my girlfriend, Kate.”

  “She’s not?” She stared at his Adam’s apple, wondering what that meant.

  “Nope. She’s my brother’s wife. She’s here to help me with some of the takeover paperwork.”

  Her face warmed in all of the usual places.

  Once again, she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion and landed head-first in a puddle of mortification. If only she could crawl away and lick her wounds.

  Butch grabbed a bandage from the kit. “Somehow you seem to have acquired this image of me as some kind of cheesy Don Juan, screwing anyone with shaved legs and painted toenails.”

  She opened her mouth to disagree, then closed it. He was right. Jealousy had a psychedelic way of distorting her sanity.

  He tore the bandage free from the wrapper. “To be honest, I haven’t had sex with anyone for quite a while.”

  She gulped at his admission. How long was a while?

  “And for the record …” He lifted her chin so his blue eyes could lock onto hers. “I really wanted to have sex with you.”

  “Oh.” His admission made her hot and sweaty in all the right places.

  “I still do, even though you seem to have such a shitty opinion of my character.”

  “Then why didn’t you stop me from leaving back there in your office?”

  “You’re trouble, Kate. Sex with you would only make matters worse.”

  “Gee, thanks.” She felt like the cover girl for Pariah Monthly.

  “Think about it. You’re only here on a temporary basis, and I’m building a life in Jackrabbit Junction. You wear designer clothes and I prefer holey T-shirts. You teach kids for a living, and I provide alcohol to the masses. We’re sailing toward different horizons. Not to mention that you tend to think the worst of me at every turn.”

  “That’s not true.”

  His smile was crooked. “Prove me wrong.”

  “I think you’re an excellent driver.”

  “Even though I don’t use my blinker when backing up?”

  “Touché.”

  He laid the bandage against her forehead, smoothing it out and then trailing his fingers down the sides of her face. “You and I are just not meant to be.”

  Several more pieces splintered off Kate’s duct-taped heart.

  “Besides, your mother scares me a little.”

  A chuckle escaped through her frown. “Medusa often has that effect on people.”

  Kate stepped back at the sound of Jess’s tennis shoes crunching toward them on the gravel shoulder.

  “Here you go, Butch. Lana says you better hurry or you’re going to lose your reservation.”

  “Thanks, Jess.” Taking the aerosol can of Fix-A-Flat from Jess, he squatted next to the spare tire.

  Kate backed away as Jess dropped cross-legged onto the ground next to Butch and started giving him second-by-second details of their latest crash.

  She needed some distance from Butch as he worked on the flat spare. Some time to repair the new cuts and scrapes he’d delivered to her already bruised and battered sensibilities.

  She lollygagged along the shoulder, pausing here and there to watch the ants rebuild after the flood, monitor the slow progress of a tarantula ambling across the sand, and breathe in the stinky bouquet of some pinkish-purple flowers.

  Jess’s voice droned behind her, Butch’s occasional deep tone interjecting as Kate tried to figure out where to go from here. The crossroads she’d reached had no signs pointing out towns or mileage. She felt empty with nowhere to go.

  “Kate!” Jess ran up beside her. “Kate, guess what?” The teenager bounced like she was trying out for Tigger.

  Shaking herself out of her self-pity party, Kate forced a smile. “What?”

  “I’m not going to Ohio.”

  No shit. “Why not?”

  “Because I got a job! Butch wants me to work for him.”

  A picture of Jess behind Butch’s bar made Kate pause. “You’re too young to work in a bar.”

  “I don’t need her at The Shaft.” Butch walked around the front of the truck, wiping his hands on his jeans, staring at Kate as she and Jess approached. “I need her at my greenhouse.”

  “Oh.” Kate wanted to curl into a ball and hide under the nearest mesquite tree. Butch had saved the day, and yet still managed to crush her heart into fine, red powder in the process. “That’s great news, Jess.” She tried her hardest to sound happy for the girl and included Butch in her smile.

  “You’re all fixed,” he said.

  No, she wasn’t. She felt very broken.

  “Now we can go home and you can drink that vodka you bought.” Jess had a knack for finding Kate’s humiliation button and jumping up and down on it with both feet.

  “I’ll see you Friday, right?” Butch said to Jess.

  Jess nodded and stuffed a new piece of grape-smelling gum in her mouth.

  Looking at Kate, Butch reached out to touch her cheek, but stopped inches from her skin. He shook his head and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Take care, Kate. You should probably have that cut checked out.”

  “Yeah, maybe I will.” Somehow, she managed not to wrap her arms around his leg and beg him to give her just one more shot. She still had her pride, even if it dangled by a single thread.

  Without a backward glance, Butch walked back to his pickup and climbed inside.

  Kate climbed into the old Ford and started it up.

  With a honk and a wave, Butch drove off toward Yuccaville. She watched his taillights fade into the distance and out of her life.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Mac squeezed out through the crevice in the rock face, tugging his pack out with him, and gulped a couple of breaths, the warm, clean air scrubbing the mustiness from his lungs.

  The sun sat on the western horizon, so it had to be close to seven o’clock, giving him about an hour of daylight left to find Claire. The desert floor panned out below, motionless.

  Where was Claire?

  He scanned and then scanned again, searching the valley’s growing shadows for some sign of life. She must be a little further around the side of the mountain.

  In the sun’s fading light, he slipped on his backpack and slid twenty feet down the slope, then jogged along the side of the mountain on a narrow deer trail.

  The side of his head ached where Richard had used his skull for batting practice. He still couldn’t believe the bank vice president was dead, even though he’d checked for the man’s pulse before finding his way outside.

  His thoughts slipped back to the burial chamber and the darkness that had ensued after Claire had led Porter away almost an hour ago.

  He had freed his legs within seconds and hurried along behind them, following the sounds of their footfalls. He reached the wall of boards and the dead miner in time to see Porter’s ostrich-skin cowboy boots wiggling through the hole.

  When the gunshot rang out, his stomach had dropped. After the rumbling quieted and the dust had cleared, the skeleton and he were roomies in a sealed tomb.

  Ten minutes later, he’d raced back to the burial chamber, grabbed his backpack, checked on Richard, and searched the side room where rows of burial mounds lined a floor littered with painted gourds and tiny rudimentary stone statues—what Mac guessed were ceremonial artifacts.

  A corridor split off and led to a small storage room, cluttered with baskets, clay pots, remnants of what he guessed used to be corn cobs, hand-carved tools, and worn grinding stones. Here,
he found a sliver of an air hole in a crumbling wall laden with roots and melon-sized rocks.

  Digging his way to freedom through several feet of earth and stone and squeezing out that narrow crevice had taken almost forty-five minutes—enough time for Claire and Porter to make it out of the mine and down to the valley floor if they hadn’t stopped for any reason and had made it out alive.

  He picked up his pace, jogging faster, mindful of the uneven surface and slippery spots where puddles had formed and drained within hours.

  His headache chiseled away at the inside of his skull. Dizzy spells tag-teamed with the nausea racking his body, but he had to keep moving.

  Time raced along, faster than his feet. Ten minutes later, across the hillside, the mouth of the Lucky Monk finally came into view—a gaping black hole against the brown rock.

  Mac stopped to catch his breath, digging out his canteen, thirsty as hell. He took a couple of sips of warm water, and then fished his binoculars out and searched the shadowed valley floor.

  There!

  He moved back a hair and focused on Claire, leading Porter along the edge of the dry wash about a half-mile away.

  If only he could let her know he was there, signal her to stall while he snuck up on Porter.

  A flickering of light to the northeast caught his eye. A bank of clouds, black in the dusk sky, stacked up against the horizon. Lightning illuminated the clouds like the finale of a Fourth of July fireworks show. Even without his binoculars he could make out the dark curtains of rain.

  Another check on Claire before he started his race down the hillside made his breath catch.

  She and Porter had dropped into the wash, their shoulders and heads barely visible now.

  Mac watched their progress for several seconds.

  Damn it! She knew better than to walk in a dry wash, especially with it still raining up north.

  Mac visually backtracked, following the twists and turns of the dry wash as it zigzagged upstream.

  Then he saw it.

  A fist of water that filled his binoculars sped toward them. It couldn’t be more than two miles away from them.

  His heart jackhammering on his ribs, he yelled, “Claire!”

  On a still evening, the valley might channel his echo down to her, but the breeze interfered, muffling him.

  Claire and Porter continued along inside the wash, oblivious that a wall of water was about to slam into them.

  “Oh, God, no,” he whispered, then ran and slid down the hillside as fast as his feet would carry him.

  He was already too late, though. He knew it.

  There was no way he’d reach her in time, but he prayed that Claire would hear the roar of the water coming.

  That she’d have enough time to make it out alive.

  * * *

  A trickling stream wound its way through the blend of sand and gravel covering the floor of the dry wash. This hint of life in an otherwise barren world, along with the congregation of flash-filled storm clouds crowding the northeastern horizon, had drawn Claire into the ravine.

  Lucky for her, Porter had played right into her hand and followed her lead down the steep bank without question. He apparently hadn’t read much about the desert before visiting Jackrabbit Junction.

  Her ears tuned to catch every little sound, Claire stuck to the edge of the wash, her muscles tense and ready to scramble up the bank on cue. She knew better than to think she could outrun Mother Nature’s septic system, especially in this section of the dry wash where the sheer walls channeled rain runoff into snarling waves five to six feet high.

  With each crunching step, she fought the urge to glance over her shoulder and check upstream. Fear that her auditory sense would fail her and send the run-for-your-life signal too late had her heart fluttering. The snap of a twig underfoot nearly sent her careening down Coronary Infarction Avenue.

  As plans go, this one fell into the “Totally Insane” category, but desperation and reason didn’t usually run hand-in-hand in her head.

  If it worked, she might shake Porter long enough to go help Mac out of the mine, and possibly even make it back to Ruby’s in time to warn everyone and call Sheriff Harrison.

  If it didn’t work, and she ended up full of bullet holes or drowned and spit out in some muddy desert backwash, she’d haunt the crap out of her mother for the rest of Deborah’s mortal life. Maybe even pester her for eternity.

  Paybacks were hell.

  A quiet, crackling sound, like the static-filled black holes in-between the stations on an AM radio, drifted into the ravine. Her pace slowed, her knees stiffened. She shot a quick glance over her shoulder.

  “Quit dragging your feet, Claire.” Porter poked her in the kidney with the revolver’s barrel. “There’s a beach chair with my name on it south of the border, and I want to be sitting in it by morning.”

  So that’s how he figured on escaping the long arm of the Arizona law after all was said and done. Mexico had a lot of beaches—South America, too, for that matter—along with plenty of other places to disappear.

  Her thigh muscles trembling, she forced her feet to continue the trek along the wash. The crackling noise swelled, clearly audible in the hushed, shadow-filled land of dusk. Her fingers and toes began to tingle.

  “What’s that?” Porter had stopped.

  Claire continued forward several more feet, putting some distance between them, before halting. “What?”

  “That sound?”

  Run! A panicky, squeaky voice shouted in her head.

  Claire held her ground, her fists clenched.

  Just a little longer. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “You don’t hear that?” Porter waved the gun in the air.

  The stream at her feet no longer babbled, its volume doubling before her eyes. The sand and gravel around her popped and snapped as air bubbles made their escape.

  A deep rumbling started, so muffled that she wondered if she was imagining it.

  “Must be the Copper Snake.” She swallowed to keep her voice from trembling along with her legs. “They do a lot of blasting in the evening.”

  “That’s not blasting. It’s more like …” Porter stood on his toes to peer over the rim of the dry wash. “Wait. Now it sounds like a caravan of tanks rolling toward us.”

  That was pretty close to the mark.

  “You think?”

  She inched toward the bank while he had his back to her.

  The rumbling surged, throbbing around them. Pebbles tumbled down the banks, the ground seemed to quiver in anticipation. A puff of air, thick with the scent of wet earth, breathed over the beads of sweat dotting Claire’s face, toying with her bangs.

  Porter whipped toward her. “What’s going on?” he yelled over the growing cacophony.

  His eyes darted to where her hand clung to an exposed root sticking out of the bank. He pointed the gun at her chest.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  She had no time to answer. Fifty yards upstream, the beast emerged from around the bend, roaring, rushing and churning toward them in the pre-twilight shadows. The wave leading the flood frothed and splashed over the bank as it slammed into the wash’s inner elbow.

  Now! A voice inside her skull shrieked, or maybe she screamed it aloud—she couldn’t tell in her panic.

  She used the root to hoist herself partway up the bank. Her feet slid backwards in the crumbly earth, but she plowed forward and upward, grasping and tearing at the earth.

  Her upper torso crested the top with seconds to spare. She threw one leg over the edge, letting the other dangle as she dug her fingers into the earth to keep from sliding backward, and hoped like hell the bank didn’t collapse under her weight.

  Sparing a glance upstream, Claire gasped at the sight of the muddy wall of branches and tumbleweeds, boards and rocks tearing toward her. The flood was swallowing everything in its path. She’d made it just in time.

  A hand grasped her ankle that dangled over the ban
k.

  Shit!

  Then another hand clamped onto her shin.

  Frantic, she clawed at the ground as Porter’s weight dragged her backwards, downwards, both legs now back over the edge.

  “Let go!” she screamed over the bedlam, trying to kick free of the hands towing her into the path of the raging monster that was just a breath away from swallowing her whole.

  “Pull me up, damn it!” Porter’s weight suddenly seemed to triple, dragging her hips over the edge.

  Her fingertips stung as she scratched at the hard, gritty desert floor, trying to cling to it. Her breath wheezed as the bank’s rocky edge dug into her abdomen. “I can’t—”

  The wall of water crashed into them.

  Porter’s grip on her leg slipped, his scream melting into the roar of the water.

  Claire struggled against the pull of the water to heave herself over the bank before the crest of the water reached her. She pulled one leg up onto dry land and started to lift the other when the bank crumbled under her.

  In a gasp, the water dragged her down, its muddy fingers tearing at her.

  She tumbled amidst sharp branches and blunt rocks, quickly disoriented in the swirling and spinning darkness.

  A current slammed her even deeper into the maelstrom.

  Her back scraped along the gravel floor as the water towed her along. An arsenal of debris bounced off her tangled limbs and torso. Her lungs ached and burned.

  She pulled her feet under her and pushed to the surface, breaching with a gasp, coughing and spitting in the muddy water. She tried to point her feet downstream and float on her back, but the current tugged her under again, twirling her around and around.

  Her muscles weakening, wobbly at best, Claire quit fighting and let the water shove her this way and that. She bobbed to the surface again and choked in more oxygen while the current wove her between a pair of boulders.

  Something under the water snagged her leg, biting into her flesh. She moaned as claws scraped down her knee and calf, then jerked her to a jaw-snapping stop as teeth locked on to her ankle.

  She fought to keep the rushing water from swirling over her face while rocks and boards ricocheted off her. She tried to kick free.

  The water spun her around then, just in time to see something big and black surfing toward her.