by K. B. Draper
My face must have betrayed my thoughts as Ashlyn brought her eyes up to mine and I heard her heart trip in her chest. “Was there something else you wanted this morning, Ranger?” I knew the underlying meaning to my seemingly innocent question. So did the Ranger.
A smirk rose to Ashlyn’s mouth. “Are you like this all the time?”
“Like what all the time?”
She pointed a finger at me, doing a couple of figure eights in the air. “That. All causal, and …”
“And?” I challenged.
“And sexy,” Ashlyn answered, meeting my challenge.
“Sexy?” I grinned. “I think you have that confused with interested, attracted … captivated.”
Ashlyn merely shook her head. “Can anyone say no to you?”
“I don’t know.” I kicked my legs out, one boot over the other. “Can they?”
After a couple of deep breaths Ashlyn spoke again. “I won’t compromise my job, this case. Cases,” she corrected.
“I wouldn’t want or expect you to. And I wouldn’t be interested in you if you were that kind of woman,” I said.
Ashlyn seemed to ponder that for a long moment. “I somehow believe you.”
“Do you believe that I didn’t have anything to do with the murders?”
Another long consideration. “I don’t think you’re directly involved with the murders, no. But,” she searched my eyes, “I think you know more than you’re saying. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you and Danny are here.”
I wasn’t going to lie to her, so I didn’t say anything.
She sighed. “And I don’t think you’re going to tell me the real reason.” She set her coffee mug on the ground and stood to go.
I stood as well, moving to her. We stood there, several heartbeats, just searching each other’s eyes for the answers we both wanted. Needed. “I’m sorry.”
“I need to get to work,” Ashlyn replied but made no move in that direction.
“Can I help?” When she gave me a sardonic eyebrow lift, I chuckled. “Right. And we’re back to the why you’re really here thing.”
“Exactly. Otherwise, you can help by getting me your statements. I need them for the file.”
I nodded.
“I should go.”
I stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I am really sorry,” I whispered.
She looked down at my hand then back at my face. “I’m really sorry too.” She smiled softly and started for her truck.
I didn’t want this to be it. Didn’t want what hadn’t even started to already be over. I followed her. “How about this? Maybe you could get to know me a little better while you are working? I was thinking about taking in some of the local culture. I heard there’s a bar just outside town?”
“The Down ’N Dirty,” Ashlyn answered, her hand on the handle of her truck. “You’ll get a full dose of local culture there and more than likely an irritating rash.”
“Sounds perfect. I like living on the edge.” Ashlyn looked back at me through the rolled-down window of her truck. “How about I do my statement today and you could come there to pick it up? Maybe we could have a drink?” When she took too long to answer, I added, “Who knows, I might be a lightweight. Couple of drinks and I could start blabbing away.” I put my hands next to hers on the window frame. “I could end up telling you all my dirty little secrets.” I ran a thumb across her knuckles. “What do you say, Ranger?”
She released an exasperated breath. “Apparently the answer is no.”
“Apparently the answer is no?”
“Yes. Apparently, no one can say no to you.” She slid her hand out from under my caress. “I’ll see you tonight to pick up the statements.” She crawled into the driver’s seat, pulled the door shut, and fired up the engine. “One question though …”
“Yeah?”
“You wouldn’t know anything about a guy getting duct-taped to the flagpole in front of the sheriff’s office, would you?”
“A guy got duct-taped to a flagpole in front of the sheriff’s office?” I repeated.
“Yeah, exactly what I thought.” She smirked. “I’ll see you tonight. Try to stay out of trouble until then.”
Chapter 8
Danny shooed a backhand at my face. I was apparently annoying him by looking too closely over his shoulder. Something I had been periodically doing the entire afternoon. But I was anxious. He’d just unlocked the “MOM” folder from the Sheriff’s computer, which contained the original report forms from the night of Ashlyn’s father’s death as well as the one on Sheriff Linn’s mother’s murder.
Danny held his tablet to his chest as I leaned over him again. “Oh my god, go over there and sit down and I’ll read them to you,” Danny ordered.
I did as he asked, only with an added growl.
“Okay.” He scanned the reports, “looks like they occurred on the same evening, not even an hour apart. Ashlyn was witness to her father’s, the Sheriff her mom’s.” He paused. Clicked a few keys. Furrowed his brow.
“And?”
“Either these reports have been whitewashed or the small-town sheriff’s department really didn’t know how to conduct a thorough investigation. There’s nothing else, just the basic details: time of call, witnesses’ names, addresses, etc. No crime scene photos. No witness statements … well, except for the Honorable Reverend’s.”
“And what does Mayor McDouche have to say?” I asked.
Danny read. “Just vague details of an encounter with a bear who attacked his wife and how he narrowly escaped, but of course not before he was able to save his daughter.”
“All hail the hero. Coroner reports?” I asked.
“Another locked file.”
I stood. Paced. Found myself looking over Danny’s shoulder. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? Shouldn’t you be getting ready versus annoying me?”
I looked down at my watch. 7:30. “I guess I should groom myself before my big night on the town.” I finished my beer, stood, and pulled off my T-shirt, leaving the black tank I wore underneath. I then leaned over, ran my fingers through my hair, straightened, and finger combed a couple more times. “Okay, done. How do I look?”
Danny gave me an up and down. “You’re ridiculous.”
I rocked my hips side to side. “But am I ridiculous in a hot kind of way?”
Danny released a resigned sigh. “The hottest.”
I walked over and gave him a kiss on the head. “Thanks, and you ain’t so bad yourself, sweet cheeks.”
“Be careful, please,” Danny yelled to my retreating back.
“You too. Keep your head up and keep Nancy within arm’s reach.”
Danny tapped the shotgun that leaned next to him. “Got her.”
The Down ’N Dirty was quite possibly the most accurately named bar on the entire planet. Everything down, meaning everything below my eyeballs, was in fact dirty. Being that I was rather tall that included 95 percent of the bar’s inhabitants as well. I wasn’t afraid of a little dirt. I was, however, slightly wigged that every step I took required me to unsuction my boot from the tacky substance that seemed to be coating the floor. My super smeller was not liking the mix of wet hay, cow shit, cheap drugstore cologne, and thirty years of sweat, sex, and cigarette smoke.
I moved to the bar. “Whiskey and Coke,” I yelled at the rode-hard, put-away-wet cowboy who was moving back and forth behind the bar, filling drinks, and dropping off beer bottles. He smiled, revealing his serious need for dental floss or possibly a jackhammer to remove the chewing tobacco packed at his gum lines. “Forget the Coke,” I yelled again, louder this time, as the volume on the decade old jukebox was set at “annoying as fuck.”
The cowboy hat worked his tongue around in his cheek, spit on the floor, and then yelled back, “Comin’ right up, pretty lady.”
While I waited, I took in the rest of the establishment and its patrons. The typical neon beer signs were hung around the bar walls, some of them working, some of them lon
g fried. For the super fancy décor that wasn’t a la neon, someone who had most likely passed third grade art class with a C- had painted the walls with crude cowboy boots, lassos, a horse with a really long neck or maybe it was an alpaca, and what I think was supposed to be a cowboy hat but looked more like a vagina riding a stingray.
At the far end of the place was a small dance floor, which of course was home to one already drunk woman. She was solo dancing to a rhythm of her own as it didn’t match the whiny kick my dog country music that was blaring over the speakers.
The cowboy hat behind the bar slid my drink to me. “Five bucks.”
I dropped a fifty. “Keep them coming.”
He swiped the bill, shoved it in the front pocket of his fit-ten-years-ago jeans, spit, and winked. “Will do, pretty lady.”
The burn of the whiskey felt good going down. I hoped it was going to help dull my senses a little so Norm and I could stand to be in this place. I also prayed that on its way down it was killing all the dirty leg, hick-a-billy cooties I was inhaling.
I watched two cowboy hats enter from the back hall, carrying speakers, guitars, and mic stands. Oh, goodie, live kick your dog, lose your woman music. I groaned. I didn’t hate country music; there was a place for it. Actually there were lots of places for it, like any and all places in the whole entire world where I wasn’t presently in earshot of it.
Another cowboy hat bellied up to the bar next to me. That wasn’t just a figure of speech; literally, his belly hit the bar a good thirty seconds before the rest of him. “Whatcha drinking, ma’am?”
I held up my glass and looked at the brown liquid swirling in the ice cubes. “Pina colada.”
“That a fancy city girl drink?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“I figured.” He turned to me, tipped his hat up with his knuckle, and gave me a once over, the first in this place that didn’t have me wanting to take a shower. “You look like a fancy city girl.”
“What gave me away? My full set of teeth or my jeans touching my boots versus stopping at my ass cheeks?”
Cowboy hat chuckled. “Both. I’m Earl.” He held out a meaty hand.
I shook it. “Hey, Earl. I’m AJ.”
“So where ya from?”
“Here and there,” I answered, finishing off my drink and signaling the bartender for another. “How about you? I take it you’re a local?”
“Born and raised. What gave me away, my missing tooth,” he pulled back a cheek to show a gap, “or was it my ass cheeks?” He added a little butt wiggle.
I smiled. “Both.”
“I run the local feed store. Been in my family nearly seventy years.”
“Ah, I was by there the other night. Next to the hardware store, right?”
“Yeah, Butler Hardware,” he answered in a tone that said he didn’t much approve of his drug dealing neighbors.
I was going to ask more but the bar door opened and Wayne Jr. graced us with his presence. Wayne Jr. took one step into the bar, followed closely by Thing 1 and Thing 2. Wayne Jr. stopped and surveyed his domain, giving all the peasants ample time to take in the awesomeness that was him.
Earl groaned next to me. “Good lord.”
“What’s his story?”
“Trouble with a capital T. That’s Wayne Jr., son of Reverend Wayne Cline Sr.”
A waitress scurried over to Wayne Jr. with an already open beer on her tray.
Wayne Jr. snatched up the beer, took a long swallow, and leaned in to whisper something into her ear, which made her go all giggly. He dismissed her with a slap on her butt-hanging-out-of-her-shorts ass.
“And his claim to fame is?”
“Being a pompous, lower than rat spit, ass,” Earl answered.
Wayne Jr.’s eyes got around to me then, and a slow wolfish grin took up residence on his pretty-boy face. He tipped his beer in my direction.
“Sounds like the exact kind of guy I like to make a complete and utter fool of.” I took a drink of my newly refreshed whiskey.
Earl grabbed my elbow. “AJ, don’t go messin’ with Wayne Jr. — him or his daddy. They don’t take kindly to people that cause them trouble.”
“Doesn’t sound like very good Christian-like behavior.”
Wayne Jr. said something over his shoulder to his two groupies at which point three wolfish grins turned in my direction.
“They’re a little loose with the interpretations,” Earl offered as he and I watched Wayne Jr. make his way in our direction.
“A little overzealous on the wrath and damnation parts?”
“AJ, I’m serious. They’re not a family you want to get on the bad side of.”
I turned to Earl and saw genuine fear in eyes.
“I’m serious.” He looked past me. “You need to be careful.”
“Earl, you sly dog you. Are you hitting on the prettiest girl in this place?” Wayne Jr. asked from behind me.
“Wayne Jr.,” Earl said in greeting. “Just welcoming a visitor to our little town.”
“That’s mighty nice of you, but I think I can take the welcoming from here.” Wayne Jr. put a hand on the small of my back. “But it’s always nice to see you. Please say hello to your daughter for me.”
Earl’s neck and face went crimson but he nodded, taking the hint he was being dismissed. “AJ, it was nice to meet you. I hope to run into you again.”
“I’ll come check out your place before I leave. No worries.” I gave him a wink, hoping it would help ease the guilt he had at leaving me with Wayne Jr.
“Sooo Addison Jo, I’m glad you came to your senses and dumped the Indian boy to come out with a real man.” He punctuated his statement with a groan and rub to my hip.
I reluctantly refrained from tearing his dick off and shoving it up his ass. “He was busy, so I thought I’d sneak out for a little fun.” I used the word little on purpose but he was too busy looking down my shirt to notice.
While the band was doing the last of its sound check, Wayne Jr. downed his beer and slammed it on the bar. “Drink up and let’s dance.”
“I don’t dance,” I said, forgetting momentarily that I was playing the “in awe” female.
He urged my whiskey glass to my lips. “Drink up and no worries. I’ll lead.”
I downed the rest of my drink, turning to the bartender and saying “I’ll need a double next round” just as Wayne Jr. grabbed my hand and pulled me to the dance floor.
Turns out I can dance, if by dancing you mean let Wayne Jr. rub his penis against me while dueling banjos play in the background. Didn’t someone make a movie like that once? After two songs, or maybe it was one really, really, really long song, I was done with the pelvis grinding, and all I had found out was that my first impressions of Wayne Jr. were correct. He was officially a card-carrying, small penis-rubbing douche. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Right on,” Wayne answered as I pulled out of his grip and headed off the dance floor.
I hit the bathroom door with the palm of my hand, slamming it against the wall, causing a hole and forcing the woman using the single sink to hold on as she went top heavy toward the mirror.
“Sorry, whiskey,” I offered as an explanation. Apparently, I’d caused her to smear the last go-around of “Hooker Red” lipstick outside the lip track she’d circled a good ten times already.
“Understood, sweetheart.” She pulled a paper towel from the roll someone had politely placed on top of the broken towel dispenser. “Men and liquor do that to me as well.” She dabbed at her face. “But for me, it’s bourbon. Gets me every time. I even put a hole in the side of my trailer once with a toaster.” She smacked her lips, tossed the used paper towel in the already overflowing trashcan, and turned to me. “I just hung a picture of Jesus over it. It serves as a good reminder that six drinks is my limit.”
“Good plan,” I replied.
“Not really.” She winked an overly mascaraed eye, the small motion nearly throwing her off her three-inch high heels, �
�as I’m on number seven as we speak.” She giggled as she righted herself. Well, righted-ish, as she was still leaning a half-bubble off-center, but it was apparently close enough for her as she started toward me. She squeezed my shoulder as she passed in a gesture of woman to woman support. Or maybe it was more solo support as she waddled out the bathroom door, despite having to shoulder check each side of the door frame once to make it all the way through.
I moved to the sink, turning on the faucet, and watching the long red hair the previous occupant had left whirl reluctantly down the drain. I fight demons for a living. I deal with green goo, blood, puss, slobber, and none of it’s a problem. Other people’s hair on a bed, a brush, or in a sink … yeah, ick-snay-to-the-grossbay. “And speaking of gross,” I said, dropping my head as the bathroom door reopened.
“I figured going to the bathroom was code for you wanted to fuck,” Wayne Jr. said as he shut and locked the door behind him.
I shut off the water. “No code involved. Just wanted to go to the bathroom.” My nice girl facade was quickly sliding away and down the sink with the icky hair.
“Well, being we’re both here now …” He moved behind me, pinning me against the sink.
“You know what? I’m really not feeling this. I think I’ll just head out,” I offered, giving him a shot at not getting his ass handed to him in the women’s restroom.
He grinded once against my ass before lifting my hair from the side of my neck. “Ah, come on. You don’t want to be a tease now, do you?” he asked as he started to lower his mouth toward my neck.
“Touch your mouth to any part of my body and you’ll be gumming bananas for a week until your new set of teeth come in the mail.”
He gave me a head to toe, then smirked. “How’d you know I like it rough?”
I used the small space he’d created to spin and face him. “You just seem like that kind of guy. Oh, and just for reference by guy I mean, meat-headed, ignorant, small-dicked jackass.”
Wayne Jr. grabbed a wad of my hair, yanked me to him, and forced his mouth to my neck.