Just Down the Road

by Jodi Thomas

  “We’ll be long gone before anyone would see a fire.” Henry added his opinion from inside the house. “It’s not like folks have a neighborhood watch this far out of town.”

  Sullivan must have stalled as if to discuss the choices, because Memphis swore, snapping insults like he might a whip to get the two men moving. “Forget the barn,” he said, ending any plans the other two had. “I know how to make the boy talk. So help Henry find the brat. He’s around here somewhere, probably whimpering like a little rabbit just waiting to be caught.”

  Tinch fought to keep from passing out. He could hear the men tearing through his home, breaking things as they searched. The damage didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Jamie.

  Tinch stared out into the night, fighting to stay alive. As long as he could keep breathing and feel his heart pumping, he still had a chance.

  One set of lone car lights moved down the road almost a mile away from his front porch. Tinch had no idea who it would be this time of night, but whoever it was might be the chance he’d been waiting for.

  He reached for the shotgun, propped the barrel against the railing, pointed in the general direction of the van, and pulled both triggers. The thunder of a double blast rocked the sky and rolled across his land as the big gray van shook from the pelting.

  Chapter 36

  ADDISON WASHED HER HANDS IN THE PREP ROOM, THEN moved through the silent hospital hallways. She’d checked on Autumn and the baby. Both were sleeping, as was Tyler Wright in the waiting room. She’d told him to go home, all was fine, but he said he couldn’t. He was too excited.

  Grinning, Addison realized the usually reserved undertaker was beyond happy tonight, and she was glad. As she passed, she glanced in his direction.

  He held his cell phone in his hand but, to her knowledge, he hadn’t called a soul. The two volunteer firemen, who’d rolled in with Autumn between them, had left with a list of names Autumn gave them to call after sunup.

  Ronny Logan, Autumn’s friend, was sleeping in the recliner by the new mother’s bed. The two young women seemed an odd pair to be friends. Autumn had suffered a rough life before she came to Harmony, and it still showed in her face. Ronny, on the other hand, looked like a woman who was just waking up to life.

  Addison smiled. If she was thinking of odd couples, she and Tinch would win the prize. A month ago she would have sworn she’d never have anything in common with such a man, yet somehow he was always in the back of her thoughts. He wasn’t a man who tried to make a good impression, but the longer she knew him the more she respected him. He was a man of his word, and in the world today that was rare. She’d never heard him brag about anything but his ability to two-step, or boast, or even defend his actions.

  She decided to work a few more hours, then return to the B and B so exhausted she could sleep until she had to report for duty officially at noon. The hospital didn’t need her any longer tonight. For once, the labor and delivery had more staff working than patients who needed care. Even the emergency room was empty except for the two nurses on duty and an orderly sleeping on one of the couches in the waiting room.

  Stepping into her dark office, Addison relaxed, leaning against the door and letting the excitement of the birthing settle. There were days, sometimes months, when all she had time to be was a doctor; then there were moments like this where she just wanted to be herself. For as long as she could remember, her parents had wanted her to be a doctor. It was almost as if she were nothing until she completed med school and, now that she’d finished, they still wanted her to be more.

  When she went home, her father would lecture until he got his way and her mother would simply frown at her as if she feared Addison and their real offspring must have been mixed up at birth.

  Addison thought of one man who seemed to like her just the way she was. All she’d been able to think about since her few minutes in the barn with Tinch was the way he’d handled her. In the silence, those feelings floated back around her almost like a hug. He’d touched her as if he couldn’t get enough of the feel of her. Like she was someone to be cherished. To be loved. She’d told herself it was just a physical attraction between them, but she knew it was more, far more. They seemed to both thrive on breathing the same air.

  Tinch could have had sex with her in the barn. She was willing. But he hadn’t. He wanted more. She saw it in his eyes. Felt it in the way he touched her.

  Tinch wanted to make love to her, and she had no idea how many times it would take before either got enough. Maybe years. He didn’t just want a woman, a body, a one-night stand. He wanted all of her, and that one fact frightened and excited her. With him there would be no polite affair, no casual one-night stand.

  With him Addison felt she wouldn’t just be good enough, she’d be all he’d ever want.

  Flipping on her office light, she tried to pull her mind back to her work. She checked her messages and found a dozen from her father, all demanding she call him back immediately. As she erased them one by one, her cell phone rang.

  “Dr. Spencer here,” she snapped, expecting it to be the emergency room or an ambulance en route.

  “Doc,” a small voice whispered.

  “Jamie.” Addison heard panic in his high tone. “Are you all right? Did you have a bad dream?”

  “I’m fine. I hid just like Tinch told me to when the mean guys came, but I keep hearing shots and I’m scared.”

  Addison started running toward the exit. “Where are you? Where’s Tinch?”

  There was a long pause, and then Jamie stumbled over words as he said, “I think he’s dead. I couldn’t see much, but it looked like he fell down. A guy at the van fired a gun. He shot at my puppy too. I ran as fast as I could toward your place, but you weren’t there.” He let out a cry. “Tinch gave me his coat and I found this phone in it. He told me to push two to get you, so I did.”

  “I’m on my way. Stay where you are until you know you’re safe then run to my place.”

  Addison grabbed her medical bag and a field kit at the emergency room’s nurses’ station, still asking questions. How much time had passed? Were the men still there? Had he turned on any lights that might draw attention?

  No one answered. The phone was dead.

  “What is it?” Georgia yelled from where she’d been reading a book behind the admissions desk.

  “I think Tinch has been shot!” Addison shouted. “Call the sheriff and have someone meet me at his place.”

  Georgia grabbed her coat and caught up with Addison at the door. “I’m going with you. I’ll call from the car. If he’s hurt, you may need another set of hands. We only have one ambulance running tonight, and he’s thirty minutes away with a heart attack victim who asked to be moved to the hospital in Clifton Creek.”

  “Why?” Addison asked as she shoved all the supplies behind the driver’s seat and climbed in. She wanted to scream, How could a town only have one ambulance? but she already knew the answer.

  Georgia talked as fast as she worked. “The woman he’s transporting is ninety-three. She’s been at the nursing home for ten years and never said a word. Then tonight she must have decided death might really come to get her and she wanted to die in the town she was born in.”

  Addison didn’t have time to argue. While she raced out of the parking lot, Georgia placed a call to the sheriff’s office.

  As she shot through the night, Addison tried to think of what she might face. Having a fully equipped ambulance streaming behind her would help, but Harmony’s backup ambulance standing on call was little more than a station wagon. A few nearby towns could have a unit in Harmony within thirty minutes, but with luck, she and Georgia would be back from the farm by then.

  “Dispatch said they’re sending two cruisers and calling the highway patrol for backup. He’s also trying to reach the sheriff.” Georgia’s voice didn’t sound as calm as usual. “Tell me what you think we’re going into, Doc.”

  “I’m not sure. Jamie was out of the house and watching
from somewhere in the dark. He said Tinch got shot by some bad men.” She couldn’t bring herself to say that the boy thought Tinch was dead.

  “How’d he call?”

  Addison flipped her cell open and looked at the last call just to double-check. “He called from Tinch’s phone.”

  Georgia was trying to reason. “So, somehow the boy had his phone. Even if Tinch is hurt, he wouldn’t be able to call us.”

  “Right.”

  “Are the men still there?” Georgia asked. “The ones who shot Tinch?”

  Addison nodded slowly, realizing the danger they were about to face for the first time.

  The nurse looked at her watch in the dash lights. “At this speed we’ll be there in seven minutes. If you go any faster on these wet roads, we may not get there in one piece.”

  Addison slowed slightly. Seven minutes might mean life or death if Tinch was hurt.

  Chapter 37

  TINCH FLOATED OUT OF THE PAINLESS BLACKNESS AND back into reality. Someone pulled him to a sitting position and tied one of his hands behind the porch pole. His side burned and one of his eyes felt swollen from the butt of the rifle colliding with his head.

  “If he can fire a shotgun, he can damn well talk!” Memphis yelled as one of the heavyweights slapped Tinch hard.

  “Where’s the boy, Turner?” Memphis’s tone rose with excitement. “You’re going to die anyway. The only question is how much pain you can take before you do.”

  “Go to hell,” Tinch said between clenched teeth as the thug split his lip with his fist.

  The thug he thought he’d heard called Henry stomped out of the house with a handful of Jamie’s clothes. “The kid’s been here. My guess is he’s been told to hide.”

  Memphis moved his face an inch from Tinch’s nose. “Tell us or we burn the barn, still full of horses, and then the house.”

  Tinch spat blood in the little man’s face.

  He didn’t hear any order, but the beating came in rapid-fire blows and kicks for several seconds before Memphis must have given the signal to stop.

  “The brat ain’t worth this, Turner,” one of the men said. “Hand him over.”

  Tinch thought he heard Henry yell that a truck was coming up the road fast. Then all three men disappeared and Tinch slipped back into painless blackness.

  Chapter 38

  NOAH HAD BEEN DRIVING FAR TOO LONG, BUT WITH EACH round past Turner’s place and then down Lone Oak Road he told himself just one more check and he’d call it a night. Reagan wasn’t a woman to be jumpy for no reason. If she thought she was being followed, she probably was. He wished, for the hundredth time, that the rain earlier had let up enough on the drive back from Amarillo for him to see the car behind him. Noah felt like he was driving around blind, not even knowing what he was looking for.

  When a gun blast rattled the night, Noah slowed. He thought he’d seen the flash from a rifle or shotgun firing a half mile ahead on his left. He scrubbed his face and tried to see into the night.

  When he looked down the dirt road that led to Tinch’s house, he noticed the yard lights shining bright. No one in the house could be asleep with all those lights on, and he would swear the place had been dark thirty minutes ago when he’d passed.

  Then he saw the van. Tinch didn’t own a gray van. Neither did anyone else Noah could think of. Turner had company. Unwanted company.

  The sense that something was wrong, very wrong, crawled along Noah’s spine like a dozen hairy spiders.

  Noah swung onto Turner’s property and reached for his cell phone. If nothing was wrong, all he was doing was wasting a few minutes of sleep. If something was wrong, he wanted backup.

  The mud made the road slippery. Noah followed tracks that had to have been made since the rain stopped. Whoever drove the van had driven onto the ranch after midnight. The tracks were fresh.

  Halfway between the gate and the house, he saw three men running for the van. Noah gunned his engine. One big guy slipped in the mud and had to run to jump in before the van shot away from the house and toward Noah.

  Noah swerved into the grass, taking out a few fence posts as the van drove past him, slinging mud in waves on both sides.

  He grabbed his cell and speed-dialed his sister.

  She answered on the first ring. “Noah?” Though it had to be near four o’clock in the morning, his sister didn’t sound asleep.

  “Turner’s place, fast,” was all Noah had time to say before he pulled up in front of the farmhouse, dropped his phone, and took off in a dead run toward the body on the porch.

  Chapter 39

  THE NIGHT AIR AROUND HIM COOLED AS IF WINTER rushed in on snowy feet. Tinch could feel his heart slowing, taking a few last moments to remember what he’d never see, never feel, never smell again. Final snapshots to treasure but never share.

  He relaxed, knowing he was leaving the only home he’d ever known. He’d learned to walk holding on to the railings of this porch, and now he’d die with his blood soaking into the tiny cracks between the wood.

  It was time for him to see Lori Anne again.

  Sweet Lori Anne, who’d made him smile every day they’d been together. He’d take her hand and they’d walk for a while with no direction in mind and no sense of time. He’d always loved the feel of her hand in his. Since they’d been kids she’d needed his strength. At one point in her dying days at the hospital, he’d thought if he held on tight enough she wouldn’t pass. Best friends, first loves were supposed to live long lives together. Only, she’d left him. She’d died.

  When she passed, he knew that all the reason, all the joy had dropped out of his life as well. She’d gone to heaven and he’d been left behind in hell.

  But now, he was almost with her. He could almost feel her hand in his.

  He’d tell her about Jamie. She’d like hearing everything the boy said. He’d tell her how the kid packed his pockets with Cheerios because the horses liked oats, and how the boy got all excited to hear that they’d swim with tadpoles in the spring.

  The image of watching Jamie sleep passed through his thoughts. He could see Addison on the other side of the bed. A guardian angel in his flannel shirt. She thought she was so strong, so sure of herself, yet at almost thirty she still hadn’t stood up to her father.

  She needed him too, and a part of him needed her more than he’d ever needed anyone. Like steel sharpens against stone, he needed her to challenge him, to argue with him, to never accept anything from him but his best.

  The chill of raw pain shook through Tinch’s body along with a bottomless sadness. He couldn’t leave the boy. He couldn’t. Lori Anne was at peace, he felt it, but Jamie needed him and Tinch needed Addison because she’d take all the love he had left to give.

  Tinch took another bolt of pain, reminding him he was still alive. Moving his hand a few inches, he grabbed the railing of the porch and gripped so hard he was surprised the wood didn’t splinter in his hand.

  “Hold on,” he whispered. “I have to hold on. I’m not going anywhere. I can’t.”

  Chapter 40

  TURNER RANCH

  HIS BRIGHT HEADLIGHTS FLASHED ACROSS THE FRONT porch. For a moment all Noah saw was blood, and then he made out what looked like a body tied to one of the poles.

  Noah was out of the truck and running.

  He’d grown up on a ranch, knocked around at rodeos for enough years to see cowboys twisted and bloody, but nothing prepared him for what he saw on the porch. Tinch Turner had been beaten so badly, Noah almost didn’t recognize him. Blood was dripping from his mouth and head, but it seemed to be pouring in a steady stream from his side.

  Noah pulled a knife from his pocket and cut the rope, then had to hold Tinch to keep him from falling. Slowly and as carefully as he could, he lowered the man to the boards of the porch.

  “Tinch!” Noah turned the rancher’s face toward him. “Turner, answer me!”

  He shoved some of the blood away, trying to see any sign of life, and pressed his finger
s along the cut on the side of Tinch’s head.

  Tinch jerked an inch away, and Noah almost laughed with relief.

  Noah stood and ran into the house. If he didn’t slow the bleeding, Tinch wouldn’t be alive long.

  The place looked like a tornado had hit. Broken dishes, slit leather furniture. Noah grabbed a blanket at the bottom of the stairs and another from the couch. He gathered all the kitchen towels he saw and headed back to the porch.

  Sliding to his knees on the blood, Noah began to work. All he’d had in the way of emergency training was a course one summer when he’d volunteered with the fire department, but he put everything he’d learned to use.

  Tinch was breathing and still bleeding. All Noah had to do was keep the first one going and try to stop the second.

  It seemed like hours, but it must have been only a few minutes when first a police car, then a little sports car both came flying through the gate toward him. The deputy shouted for backup as he ran from his cruiser, but Dr. Spencer and a nurse rushed toward the porch, their arms loaded down with supplies.

  Noah stood and stepped back as the two women moved in. For a moment, he just stared at his hands covered in blood.

  “He’s still alive,” the doctor announced. “Let’s get him stable enough to transport.”

  Noah stared as the two women worked. The doctor might be young, but she seemed to know exactly what to do.

  “Since I don’t see an exit wound,” she added, “the bullet must still be in him.” She worked quickly, like a fighter determined to win the round.

  The deputy circled the yard, answering questions on his cell phone, or rather trying to answer questions. Finally, he looked at Noah. “Did you see who did this?”