“She’s not…” Cat realized she was getting rude and defensive again. Dora was a runaway, after all. That was precisely the issue. “So did she leave?”
“Don’t know. One of the guys tried to get her to go with him, thought she was—you know.” The woman lifted her painted eyebrows, and Cat realized she had a lot to learn about truck stops. “But she told him off.” She smiled again, displaying a crooked eyetooth. “Sassy little thing.”
Cat bristled. “How could he have thought she’d have anything to do with him? She’s not…”
Mack’s hand settled over hers and pressed down. Hard. Looking at the waitress, Cat realized there was a good chance she had her own trucker waiting for her at home.
“Belle,” hollered a bearded man from a neighboring booth. “You gonna gab all day? Need a fill-up over here.”
“I got it, I got it. Hold your horses.” Belle started toward the bearded man, then turned back to Cat. “I saw her out there, crossing the road.” She pointed out the window and Cat eyed the uneven expanse of macadam that led to the highway. Cars flashed by at eighty miles an hour, along with eighteen-wheelers that rattled the windows as they bounced over the cracked concrete.
The waitress quirked her painted lips in a humorless smile. “Don’t see any grease spots in the road, so I reckon she made it.”
Chapter 39
Mack gripped Cat’s hand in his as he waited for a break in traffic. A tractor trailer hurtled past, stirring up a swirl of dust and blowing back his hair.
“Come on.” He dragged her after him, almost pulling her over as he ran. She’d kept up with him in every way at the ranch, and he’d forgotten she was so much shorter than he was. She was doing her best, though, and didn’t complain as they clambered over the Jersey walls that divided the two streams of traffic. If she managed to keep up, they wouldn’t become grease spots on the highway either.
By the time they reached the far side of the road, he felt as if he’d swum a particularly tumultuous river. Glancing up and down the row of buildings bordering the highway, he spotted a chipped sign that read “Auto Repair and Restoration” and took a sharp right.
The building beneath it needed some repair and restoration itself. A low stucco box, it was painted a hideous shade of mustard yellow broken only by long jagged cracks in the concrete. The broken glass in the door was mended with a few crooked strips of masking tape, while the missing panes in the window beside it had simply been replaced by plywood.
A skidding, rattling noise greeted their arrival, and a figure scooted out from under a car. It appeared to be a man, but it was hard to tell through the black grime that coated him head to toe. He was so skinny and jug-eared—and so ancient—that Mack wondered if this was the place where the term “grease monkey” had been coined.
“Help ya?” Man or monkey, he wasn’t about to rise from the wheeled creeper he lay on. Propping himself up on one elbow, he regarded both of them with blue eyes that were bright as crystal in the grime smudging his face. If she hadn’t been so worried about Dora, Cat would have laughed. Resting his head on one elbow, the mechanic looked like another ironic interpretation of Manet’s snowy-skinned Olympia.
He smiled, exposing false teeth nearly as bright as his eyes. “I can fix most anything.”
“How ’bout an International Harvester pickup?”
“Well, isn’t that something.” He smacked his thigh. “I haven’t seen an International in months, and you’re the second one today.”
The man struggled to rise, but what was evidently a bum hip had him thrashing on the floor like a grounded trout until Mack offered him a hand and helped him on his feet. Cat wondered what he did when nobody was around to help. From the look of him, he probably slept on the creeper.
“Somebody brought one in earlier?”
“Didn’t bring it in. Couldn’t. Little girl came in, wanted me to go over to the diner and look at one. Felt like a heel sending her away, but she said it didn’t run and I can’t travel these days.” He punched his hip as if he could smack something back into place. “Crossing that road’s taking your life in your hands, ’specially when you can’t move so fast.”
“Where did she go?” Cat asked.
The man shrugged. “Don’t know. Didn’t pay attention.” He looked suddenly stricken, and for a moment Cat thought his hip had gone out or something. “Little thing’s not in trouble, is she? She seemed okay.”
“Was she on her own?”
“Yup.” He ran his hands over the sparse strands of hair on his bald head and grimaced. “All alone. I should have called someone. Got her some help. But she lit out of here like somebody was chasing her.”
“And you didn’t see which way she went.”
He shook his head, staring ruefully down at the smudged concrete floor. “Didn’t see. Sorry.”
***
Mack took Cat’s hand as they exited the garage. Once again, he was taking care of things, helping her out of a jam.
She tried not to feel irritated—with him or herself. This was his world. It was only natural he’d be the one solving the problems. It wasn’t a reflection on her intelligence or capabilities.
But she couldn’t help feeling useless.
They stood in the hard bright sunshine outside the garage. The light reflecting off the mustard-colored stucco bathed Mack in a golden glow that made him look like the hero of some long-ago Western. He squinted, looking up and down the highway, and those rugged crow’s-feet bracketed his dark eyes.
“She has to be on foot,” she said. “I really don’t think she’d hitchhike.”
“Let’s hope you’re right. We’ll cruise the service road, search all the parking lots. She can’t have gotten far. It’s not much of a town.”
“That’s what worries me,” Cat said. “I mean, you don’t even have real cops here.”
“I thought you were all impressed with Officer Brownfield.”
She laughed. “Are you kidding?” She shot him a disbelieving stare. “He was an idiot. Did you not notice he was totally coming on to me?” She snorted. “Real professional.”
His smile was clearly relieved. Had he really thought she’d fallen for Officer Brownfield’s knight-in-shining-armor act?
They braved the rushing cars and trucks again, scampering across the highway at the first sign of a break in the northbound traffic, then scrambling over the concrete barrier to wait for a southbound truck to pass. The wind from its passing buffeted Cat, tossing her hair around her face and throwing dust in her face. Coughing, she followed Mack at a dead run across the road.
“Need anything to drink?” he asked.
She shook her head, stretching her stride to keep pace with his long legs. “I’m fine. Let’s just find her.”
They’d just rounded the corner of the truck stop when she spied a tiny figure perched on the running board of the played-out ranch pickup.
“Dora!” She nearly fell as she tugged her hand from Mack’s and dashed across the lot. Dropping down beside her decidedly bedraggled niece, she choked out, “Honey, where have you been?”
“No place.” Dora, slouched on the running board with her elbows on her knees, scanned the broken-down buildings that surrounded the parking lot, scowling. “Bumfuck, Wyoming. That’s where.”
Cat put her hand to her chest and took a breath, hoping to suck in some sanity with the clear sunlit air. She’d been thinking the entire drive about what she’d say if they found Dora, how she’d handle the situation now that she knew just how desperate the girl was. To take off like this, head out into the middle of nowhere—she had to be terribly unhappy.
“What were you doing, hon?”
Dora shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Mack said. “Your aunt thought you might have taken up hooking at the truck stop. Glad to hear you didn’t throw yourself to th
e Bubbas.”
Cat started to protest, then swallowed her anger. Mack’s joking tone had charmed Dora into a faint but perceptible smile. Maybe she should stop the lecturing and the advising, the analyzing and the counseling. None of that was working.
Maybe she should follow Mack’s lead and lighten up.
“You at least need some new clothes if you’re going to change careers,” she said. “They have some nice trucker caps in there. I’m thinking these Wyoming guys will go for anything that says ‘John Deere’ on it.”
Dora and Mack both stared at her for a moment, their mouths slack with surprise. Then Dora let out a little laugh.
“I thought about that,” she said. “But I didn’t know if I’d have any money left after I fixed your damn truck. I sure as hell don’t want one that says ‘International’ on it. What the hell kind of brand is that, anyway? Can’t you buy an American truck?”
“It is American. The full name is International Harvester.”
Dora scowled. “That explains it. It’s not a truck; it’s fucking farm equipment.”
“Exactly,” Mack said. “It’s not made for highway driving. How are you planning to get it back where you found it?”
“Oh.” She looked stricken, and Cat wondered if this was the first time she’d realized how much trouble she’d caused. “I can pay to have it towed if you want. I mean, my dad can pay.”
“Your dad didn’t drive it to death,” he said.
Dora stared down at the gravel lot. “I could do some extra work.”
“Like what?”
Dora thought a while. “I’m good at braiding manes and tails,” she said.
Mack laughed. “Great. That’s just what I need—a pack string gussied up like show horses.”
Dora gave him a thin smile that spread into something genuine when he smiled back.
“Let’s just see if it’ll start,” he said.
“It won’t. I tried, like, four hundred times.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. How long’s it been since you tried?”
She shrugged. “Half an hour? Maybe a little more?”
“Okay.” He gave her a devilish grin. “How ’bout this? If I get it started, right here, right now, you braid all the horses’ manes and tails.”
“Okay.” The way Dora jumped on the deal, it was pretty clear she loved braiding manes.
“You ready to go home?” Cat asked as Mack climbed into the truck.
“Home?” Dora’s eyes widened, and Cat wondered just how bad things were back in LA with her dad.
“Back to the ranch, I mean.” She felt her face reddening. She’d been there a week, and she was calling it home. What did that say about the life she’d carved out in Chicago?
Dora looked at her like she’d grown wings and a tail. “You’re not going to yell at me?”
“No. I’m just glad we found you.”
“You’re not going to lecture me?”
“No. Well, maybe later.” Cat gave her niece a crooked smile and threw an arm around her shoulder. “But for now, let’s just go back. Did you eat?”
Dora nodded. “I had the meatloaf.”
Cat felt tears heat the back of her eyes, but she blinked them back as the truck shuddered, hiccupped, and roared to life.
“It just has to sit a while,” Mack told Dora. “If you’d just eaten your meatloaf and tried again, you’d be to the border by now.”
He stepped out of the driver’s seat and gestured for Dora to get in.
“You want me to drive it?”
“You got it out here,” Mack said. “You can get it home.” He turned to Cat. “I’ll call the cops and tell ’em to stop looking.”
He reached up and pressed his hat down firmly on his head and strode off to his truck.
Cat watched him go. She couldn’t blame him for being angry with Dora. Hell, she was angry with Dora. But the kid looked exhausted.
“I’ll drive,” she said.
Dora climbed in the passenger seat while Cat scanned the controls on the truck and tried out the gear shift.
“You called the cops?” Dora said.
“Of course we did.” Cat pulled out of the lot and made a sharp right, then cruised onto the entrance ramp. Once they were on the highway and up to speed, she turned back to Dora.
“We thought Trevor kidnapped you.”
“Trevor? Why?”
Cat watched Dora from the corner of her eye, searching for the telltale signs of a lying teenager. She knew from her own adolescence how good girls were at covering up things, like a trip to the mall when they’d said they were going to the library, or a meeting with a boyfriend when they were supposed to be at a friend’s house. But Dora’s posture was relaxed as it could be under the circumstances, and her eyes were clear and guileless.
“We found him on your Facebook.”
“Trevor?”
Cat slanted another look at Dora. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“Do you remember a fashion site called ‘The Maines Event’?”
It took a moment, but recognition finally dawned on Dora’s face. “Oh, yeah. They show all kinds of skank clothes. I got a coupon there for some lip gloss a long time ago. What does that have to do with—oh. That’s his last name, isn’t it?”
Cat nodded. “He’s been your Facebook friend ever since you got that coupon. He knew you were coming here. He followed you.”
Dora clasped her thin arms around herself and bent over like she was going to throw up on the dashboard. “Ugh. Are you kidding me?”
“No. Of course, they probably can’t do anything about it.”
“Who, the police?”
“Right. Because your Facebook profile says you’re twenty years old.”
“Oh,” Dora said. They rode in silence for a good half hour before she spoke again.
“I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”
Cat shook her head. “No.”
“I’m not?”
“No. I’m not going to punish you, Dora. That’s not my place. You keep reminding me I’m not your mother. Well, you’re right. I’m not. All I’m going to ask you to do when we get back is take down that Facebook page. I want you to do it while I’m watching, as soon as we get home.”
Dora fidgeted, twirling a strand of blonde hair around one finger. “Okay. Right away?”
Cat nodded.
“But don’t you have a class to teach?”
“Yes, but you come first,” Cat said firmly. “You always come first.”
Chapter 40
Maddie slotted the last of the lunch plates in the dish drainer and dried her hands. Mack had called to say he’d be home in a half hour with Cat and Dora.
She pulled out an old Junior League cookbook and flipped through it, looking for new recipes. She was good at chuckwagon cooking, but the fare was a little limited. She needed to make something new, something impressive. The Art Treks group would only be there for three more days, and she wanted to make sure they raved about the food.
Three more days. Then Cat would be gone, and Mack would be impossible. Maddie’s plan had backfired like an old jalopy with a busted carburetor. She’d hoped for sparks between her son and the leader of the trip, but she hadn’t expected those sparks to turn into flames.
Worse yet, Mack was planning to audit the ranch books once the dudes were gone. She’d told him they were in trouble, but she hadn’t told him just how bad things really were. Ollie had taken her for everything she had, and then some. She’d been ashamed to talk about it, but the day of reckoning was coming closer and closer.
She was still staring at the cookbook, pretending to read recipes but really just staring, when Hank walked in.
“I need to talk to you,” he said in his rusty, seldom-used rasp.
“It’s as good a time as any.”
She followed him to the table, where he proceeded to stare down at the table for a good five minutes, apparently trying to work up the courage to speak.
She could hardly stand to watch him, he was so uneasy and awkward. She’d come to know him better in the past months, better probably than anyone had ever known him. She knew he was a good man, an honorable one. She knew he loved her.
She wished she’d known it sooner. Maybe if she’d known how Hank felt, she wouldn’t have been so quick to marry Ollie. But Hank and John Boyd had been like brothers, so he’d never said a word.
That was probably half the reason for the awkward silences between them. She’d gone to him for comfort after the dance—a stupid thing to do, seeking comfort from a man who had no more manners than a bull calf. He’d sat with her on the sagging sofa in the little sitting room in his apartment in the barn, sat there and held her hand and stared at the wall. Never said a word. Never touched her, past the hand-holding. She’d finally slumped over onto his shoulder and fallen asleep, and he’d still been there when she woke up. Still staring at the wall.
And now here he was, sitting and staring again. But this time he was staring right at her.
She shoved her chair back and stood.
“Wait,” he said.
“I’m done waiting. I’ve got work to do.” She turned sideways on the chair, ready to rise. “You’re a slow man, Hank. Slow to talk, slow to act.”
He nodded, as if mulling what she’d said over in his head. She figured they were done talking, and whatever he had to say would remain unsaid, like everything else that had ever passed through that hard head of his. But then he cleared his throat and fixed her with those pale eyes, pinning her in place.
“You ought to find yourself a man,” he said.
Now she did shove the chair back—shoved it until it slammed into the wall behind her.
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