Chance Reddick Box Set 1

by David Archer

  Grandma smiled. “Well, you’ve got the reputation for it,” she said. “Maybe this is what you’re meant to do. I think your grandpa and your sister would both be proud of you, Chance.”

  Chance ducked his face and looked at the tabletop. Somehow, he wasn’t sure that was true, not if they knew what he was really going to be doing.

  He spent the evening with his grandmother, watching a movie on TV and just enjoying a little bit of home life. He had a feeling he was going to miss that while he was gone, but he didn’t really want to think about the job ahead. Losing himself in the movie was one way to put it out of his mind.

  And then the movie ended, and Grandma went off to bed. Chance went up the stairs to his own room and packed a bag, set an alarm so that he could get up early, and then lay in the bed until past midnight, thinking about what he was going to have to do.

  FOURTEEN

  Despite his lack of sleep, Chance was up at five and got dressed quickly. It took him a few minutes to figure out the holster for the Maxim, which actually hid the gun down inside his jeans, and then he used a smaller holster to put one of the little Ruger pistols near his ankle, and he was finished and out the door only ten minutes later. He drove the old truck out to the coal mine, used the key Oscar had given him for the gate to get inside and switched vehicles, then locked the gate behind him as he left. He didn’t bother changing the license plates, because he figured there wasn’t much chance he would have any problems with the police until he got to where he was going.

  He followed the highway up to Interstate 64, then took that all the way to St. Louis, then picked up Interstate 40. That highway would take him all the way to Kingman, Arizona, where he would cut north on Highway Ninety-Three.

  He wasn’t in any hurry. He figured the drive would take him about three days, with stops in Oklahoma and Arizona, and he had planned his trip accordingly. He made his first stop for the night just after crossing from Missouri into Oklahoma, and spent the night at a cheap motel. The next night, after deciding that cheap motels were worth what you paid for them, he chose a Holiday Inn Express in Flagstaff. He definitely slept better.

  It took him only four more hours to get to Las Vegas, but Oscar had said that Gabriella lived somewhere around the tiny town of Clarksville, another three hours north of Vegas. Chance drove on, and finally found the place in the midafternoon.

  Clarksville was a very small town, and the post office was inside the one large building that served as the local store, the gas station, the tavern, the village hall and even the police station. There was one lonely squad car parked out front, but it was more than twenty years old and covered with so much dust that Chance wondered if it even ran. He parked the Taurus around the side of the building and walked inside. There were a few tables and he could smell the aromas of cooking, so he sat down and picked up the handwritten sheet that served as a menu.

  “Hey, handsome,” said the woman who approached his table. She looked like she might be somewhere between twenty and fifty, a large woman who had the typical jovial personality that people expected from someone like her. “What can I get’cha?”

  Chance smiled up at her. “How about something cold to start with? Do you have iced tea?’

  “We sure do,” she said. “Sweet tea, or unsweet?”

  “Sweet tea, please,” Chance said. “That’ll give me a minute to figure out what I want to eat.”

  “No problem, sugar,” the woman said. She sauntered off toward the counter, and was back two minutes later with a very large glass of tea. “Figure out what you want?”

  “Actually, the buffalo burger sounds good. Is it really buffalo meat?”

  The woman, whose name tag Chance suddenly noticed said Holly, smiled and nodded. “Sure is. My dad keeps a herd of them, so we basically raise our own. You want French fries or potato chips with it?”

  “I’ll take the fries,” Chance said. “So, this is Clarksville, is it?”

  Holly turned around and yelled toward a window that led into the kitchen. “Big Buffalo and a side of fries,” and then turned back to Chance. “Well, Clarksville isn’t much. If we didn’t have the highway going right through the middle of it, we probably wouldn’t even be here anymore. We get just enough traffic to keep us afloat, because God knows the locals don’t spend enough money to keep this place open.”

  Chance grinned at her. “Are there a lot of people around here?”

  “Not a lot,” Holly said. “A few hundred, maybe. There’s a bunch of ranches around here, and I guess they do bring us a lot of business. If you live anywhere around here, you either get what you need from us or you drive all the way to Eureka. That’s a four hour round-trip, so most folks go ahead and buy here when they can. Animal feed, fertilizer, all that kind of stuff, we carry it all.”

  “I had a friend who bought some land out here somewhere,” Chance said. “His name was Morales. Don’t suppose you’d know him, would you?”

  “Morales, Morales,” Holly said. “No, I don’t know any Morales.” She turned and looked at the fellow at the end of the counter, whom Chance suddenly realized was wearing a badge on his shirt. “Lester, you know any Morales around here?”

  Lester shook his head. “Nope,” he said. He went back to nursing the cup of coffee in front of him, obviously having no more to say. Holly turned back to Chance.

  “Sorry, hon,” she said. “A lot of people come and go around here. How long ago did he come out this way?”

  “Couple of years, I guess. I don’t remember exactly, but I recall he mentioned Clarksville.”

  “Well, sorry, I don’t know him.” She wandered away, and came back five minutes later with his buffalo burger and fries.

  The food was good, but Chance was more worried about how to find Gabriella. Other than this little place, which was known as Harold’s, there wasn’t much else in the way of commerce around the town. Chance didn’t relish the idea of trying to drive around the area for several days, hoping to find someone who might remember Benito and his wife.

  On the other hand, he didn’t want to ask too many questions, especially with the town constable sitting close by. The last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to himself. At some point, there was going to be a body found, the body of a pretty young woman. Chance didn’t want anybody connecting him to that unhappy circumstance.

  He finished eating and paid his tab, then went back to his car. He had gassed up at a truck stop a couple hours back, so he was good on gas. He decided to leave Clarksville behind for a little while, find a hotel and get some sleep, then start working on the problem in the morning. Holly had said that Eureka was two hours away; Chance figured that might be a good spot to find a room, so he called it up on the navigation app on his phone and saw that it was still further to the north.

  He started the car and backed out of his parking spot, and was just about to turn north when he saw a pickup truck pulling up to the gas pumps. There was a woman driving, and it took him only a second to realize that he was looking at Gabriella Morales.

  Talk about dumb luck, he thought. What are the odds that she’d drive in just as I’m getting ready to drive away?

  He backed the car around the side of the building again, and then spotted another old building that was just about falling down. He had seen that she came from the north, so an idea quickly formed in his mind. He pulled the car behind the dilapidated building and shut it down, then grabbed his bag and locked up the car. He stuffed the keys inside the bag, then walked out to the highway and started toward the north.

  He walked about two miles, and the heat was starting to get to him. Although it was still only June, the sun beating down in the Nevada desert had the temperature well into the nineties, and that was even with the sun starting to go down. He hadn’t actually expected him to have to walk so far, but the heat and the effort were beginning to make him wonder if his idea was a stupid one.

  Suddenly, a few minutes later, his ears picked up the sound of an approaching vehicle
. Chance held onto his bag and turned to look in the direction the noise was coming from. Sure enough, it was only a matter of minutes before he saw that same red pickup truck round the bend he had just passed moments before.

  Holding his breath in anticipation, Chance stuck out his right thumb. As the vehicle approached, he kept repeating a silent prayer, hoping that the good Lord was still on his side. It was the only real hope he had of getting close to Gabriella, and he hoped he looked pitiful enough in the heat and the dust to make her want to stop and offer him a ride. He almost closed his eyes, not wanting to witness a disappointment that he could ill afford.

  His luck held, and he heard the sound of tires grinding to a halt on the stone-littered dirt road. Chance put a smile on his face as he looked at Gabriella, sitting behind the wheel of the truck and looking nervously at him. Sure enough, there she was, and Chance couldn’t believe that his luck was holding out so well.

  “Thank you,” he said to the pretty lady behind the wheel. “I sure can’t think of anything more beautiful that I’d rather see right now than this set of wheels. Well, I guess as far as that goes, any set of wheels would have looked pretty good.”

  He reached out to the door handle, putting a question mark into his face as he watched hers for reactions. When she nodded, he opened the passenger door and a soft feminine voice reached out to him.

  “Need a lift?”

  “I sure do,” came Chance’s reply. “It gets mighty hot out here on this road.”

  “Well then, just throw your stuff into the back and hop in.” Chance hoisted his bag into the truck bed and climbed inside the cab. The first thing he noticed was the air conditioning that immediately began to penetrate into his sweating body.

  Putting a smile on his face, he turned to the beautiful woman who was driving and said, “Hello. Thanks for the ride. I sure am glad you came along when you did, because I was beginning to figure that I was going to roast to death before I got to the next town.”

  Putting the pickup into motion, she turned and faced him, saying, “I’m glad to be of help. You’re pretty lucky, you know, because at this time of the day there usually isn’t any traffic on this road at all.”

  Chance looked her over, and his forced smile disappeared, replaced by a genuine one. He could see the curvaceous figure she had, and her flawless, beautiful face simply added to the image of perfection that he saw. She wore her beautiful midnight hair down to her shoulders, with slight curls on both sides of her face. Sparkling blue eyes accented a most pleasurable smile over a smooth, mocha complexion.

  Gabriella Morales was absolutely gorgeous.

  FIFTEEN

  Chance pulled his mind away from this vision of beauty and directed it to more important matters.

  “It sure is awful hot out there,” he said, trying to make small talk as he considered his next move.

  “I know, it’s a real scorcher,” she said. “Where are you headed?”

  Chance shrugged. “I’m mostly just passing through. I’ve never been through this part of the country, so I wanted to come and look it over. Probably should have chosen some cooler weather, huh?”

  “That might’ve been a good idea,” Gabriella said with a smile. “I can take you about twenty-five miles, to where I turn off the highway. There’s a little casino there, so it’s better than that little town behind us. At least you can get out of the heat and get something cold to drink.”

  “You wouldn’t know whether there’s a motel there, would you?” asked Chance. “Thinking about trying to find a place to get some rest for a few days.”

  “There’s nothing there, not until you get all the way up to Eureka. You do look pretty tired. Has it been a while since you had any sleep?”

  “Oh, not that long,” Chance said. “I’ve been on the road for a couple of weeks, though, so it’s starting to get pretty old. I was thinking I might decide to stay in one place for little while, especially if I can find some kind of work.”

  “You mean that you’ve been hitchhiking around the country for that long?”

  “Yep. It might not be so bad, but the last ride I hitched dropped me off in the middle of nowhere,” he lied.

  “Well, where are you from?”

  “Oh, from here and there. Actually, from nowhere in particular. I just started drifting around and this is where I’ve wound up,” he replied, continuing his deception.

  “You mean, you’ve been traveling across the country at this time of year? Why wouldn’t you have waited at least till the fall, when it would be at least a little bit cooler?” She looked at him with a questioning gaze in her eye, as if she didn’t quite believe the lies that he was telling her.

  He looked directly into those beautiful eyes of hers, smiled, and gave her the most plausible answer he could think of. “The truth is, I’ve never liked to stay very long in any one place. I look for work and stick with that job until I save up some money or get fed up with it or the people around me, and then I just pack up and move on. I never concern myself with the weather or what time of year it is. If I get the urge to move on, that is what I do.”

  That seemed to satisfy her and her next remark proved it.

  “It must be nice to be able to go wherever you want to, whenever you want. I’ve never been that way. I’ve always needed some sort of security to hang on to. Oh, I don’t mean that I’ve never been out of Nevada, because I have; it’s just that I always had someplace to come home to.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Chance. “But you don’t have to explain it to me. I’m just a nobody who’s here today and gone tomorrow. I never really had anyone I had to answer to, because my parents died when I was young and I grew up with my grandparents. And you certainly don’t need my approval for what you do. After all, some people are born settlers and others are born wanderers. Me? I think I was born a Gypsy.” He looked over and smiled at her. “Still, it might be nice to have someplace to call home. Someplace that’s yours, that you can always count on being there when you need it.” He hesitated for just a moment, then said, “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but you are absolutely beautiful, do you know that?”

  She blushed and giggled. “Well, thank you very much for the compliment. I’ll confess I’ve been told that before, but sometimes it’s hard to believe there’s any truth to it.” She looked over at him. “I’m sorry for prying,” she said. “What you do is up to you, of course, I wasn’t really trying to stick my nose into your business.”

  “Hold it, now. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that whatever you do really isn’t any of my business. I sure didn’t mean to imply that you were prying into my life. I’m sorry if I upset you, but I promise I didn’t do it intentionally.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not upset. I just thought you felt like I was trying to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong, and it’s me that should be apologizing for acting childish, not you. I’m sorry; I just don’t know what got into me.”

  Chance grinned at her. “Not a problem. If you don’t mind my asking, what do you do for a living way out here?”

  “Not nearly enough. I have a little ranch about thirty miles northwest of here. I had to run into town to pick up some supplies, get the mail, that kind of stuff.”

  “You own a ranch? That sounds like quite an awful lot of work for a woman on her own. I’m guessing you have a husband back home?”

  She gave him a sad little grin. “I’m a widow. My husband died about two years ago. I have two little boys who try to help out a lot, but they’re pretty small, and a hired hand who helps me around the place.” The conversation quieted down while both were lost in their own thoughts, and the road rolled by underneath them. It was a couple of minutes before Gabriella spoke again.

  “So, what kind of work do you do?” she asked, striking up a conversation again.

  “Little bit of everything, I guess. What I mean is that I’ve done a lot of different jobs. I actually grew up on a farm, myself, so I have some idea of what you
go through. I’ve been pretty lucky though because even if I didn’t know how to do a job, I’ve always been a very quick learner.”

  “You actually grew up on a farm?” she asked. “Is that for real, you’re not just telling me a story, are you?”

  He looked at her questioningly, trying to figure out what she was leading up to before he answered, “Why would I… Oh, are you saying you might have a job available?” Chance couldn’t believe he could be that lucky. If he could actually stay at the farm with her, he might have a chance of finding the money himself.

  “Well, if you’re really thinking about staying in the area for a while, I could use somebody. I have a hired hand, but he up and quit on me about a week ago, and I’ve been having a rough time dealing with everything all on my own. If you’d be interested, it would save you having to get a motel room and help me a lot at the same time.”

  Chance pretended to think about it. “I don’t know. I mean, people might think there’s something funny going on if a strange man suddenly shows up at your place, right? I wouldn’t want to cause you any problems.”

  She chuckled. “Listen, there’s nobody around for about twelve miles. The only people who ever come by my place are a couple of Mexican ladies who live down the road and babysit for me from time to time. They’re watching my boys, right now.”

  Chance grinned. “And you think they wouldn’t wonder if you showed up with a new man in tow?”

  She shrugged, and grinned back at him. “Who cares? It’s not like they talk to anybody important, and people around here are pretty much inclined to keep their noses out of other people’s business.”

  He sat and looked at her for another moment, then slowly nodded. “Well, then I guess I’ll say okay. I am getting a little low on money, so it would make sense to work for a while. No real promises though, you never know when I might get itchy feet again.”

  “No problem,” she said. “ I can understand that. When it’s time to go, it’s just time to go, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much how it is with me. By the way, I don’t even know your name. Can I ask?”