Jodi Thomas - Wild Horse Springs

His life had been about his job and raising his daughter. He’d settled for a comfortable kind of loneliness. Eating meals in front of a ball game. Fishing for hours without really planning his day. Never looking for more than he had.

When she first tried to pull away, he didn’t let her go. He couldn’t. For once he wanted more from life than just settling.

She gently shoved again.

Then he heard someone bumping down the hallway toward her dressing room. Dan nodded once and stepped to the side.

By the time Sorrel tapped on the door, Brandi was sitting in her chair and Dan tried to look as if he was listening while he leaned against one of the storage shelves with his notepad in his hand.

Sorrel let himself in, seemingly unaware that he’d interrupted them. “I brought your nachos, Sheriff, and a beer.”

“Thanks,” Dan answered without looking at the food.

“It’s not any trouble. I always bring Miss Malone a sandwich between the last two sets.”

Dan flipped his notepad closed and accepted the plate. “I’ve a few more questions to ask, Brandi.” He tried to sound official. “Then, when you have time, Mr. Douglas, I’d like to ask you a few.”

“Okay,” Sorrel said as he handed Brandi her tray. “But give her time to eat. It’s a short break, and tonight the crowd is already asking when she’ll be back.”

The bartender turned to Brandi. “Now you tell him all about that creep on the back row who’s been bothering you. The sheriff needs to know.” He turned to Dan. “You wouldn’t believe all the losers and nuts that think she’s singing just for them. The other night after closing one almost knocked the back door down. He was so drunk he thought he had a date with her. Said she was sending him secret messages in her songs.”

Dan nodded. He believed the bartender. After Sorrel left, he set his plate down on the table beside her food. “Much as I’d like to go back to doing what we were doing, I think Sorrel is right.” He turned over a box of paper towels over pulled it up as a chair. “How about we eat as you talk?”

She stuck out her lip in a pout, and he almost withdrew his suggestion.

Before saying a word, she brushed his arm when she reached across and took one of his nachos. “It’s nothing really. Part of the job. If you’re good, the drunks always fall madly in love with you. If you’re breathing, some nut’s going to hit on you. It’s a bar, Sheriff.”

She ate while he stared, knowing what he had to do. If she was really in danger, he needed to make sure he was near. This assignment was no hardship at all. “Tell me the facts, Brandi.”

“This big guy in his forties comes in almost every Tuesday and Saturday. He drinks Jack and Bud until he passes out, or gets generally obscene and Hank kicks him out. I think he’s a trucker because sometimes he looks like he’s put in a long day. He smells of motor oil and fresh-cut wood. There’s no trouble if he only has a few beers. He leaves early, probably going home to his wife, or he’s out of money. But when he settles in for the night, he’s like a wild boar by midnight.”

She shrugged. “I’m not afraid of him, but I hate that Hank and Sorrel have to deal with him.”

Dan brushed her arm when he leaned closer and took half her sandwich. The touch, like hers, had been no accident. There was something very sensual about sharing food. Something lovers did. “And if he had more than a few, is that when he bothers you?”

“No.” She smiled, stealing another chip. “He bothers me all the time. Staring at me. Making obscene signs of what he wants to do with me. Telling anyone who will listen that I’m going to go home with him one night.

“When he’s drunk, he gets loud and starts saying I’m his girl. That’s why Hank started locking the stage door. I step off stage, Hank locks the door from the inside and goes back down the passage to the door by the bar. One night when the trucker tried the door, he pounded so hard they had to throw him out. After that, he’s been better, but he waits outside even after we close.” Brandi bumped Dan’s shoulder with her own. “How can you help?”

“I could talk to him, but unless you want to file a restraining order, there’s not much the law can do.”

She smiled that sad smile again. Like she was forcing sorrow away. Like her whole life was a lie. “I don’t want to think about it right now. I have another set to do. I’ve been hoping you’d come back to hear my songs.”

Dan couldn’t let the problem go. “And if he’s still here later or waiting in the parking lot?”

“Then I’ll sleep here. I’m not driving back to the motel worrying that he might be following.” She stood and fluffed her wild hair, painted her lips, pulled on a vest with fringe that tickled her hips.

He watched, fascinated at how she turned into someone else so fast. The hungry eyes he’d seen when he’d kissed her had frozen to porcelain like a doll’s stare, unreadable, cold. He didn’t know which Brandi was the real one, but both fascinated him.

“I’ll stay until you finish and follow you home, just to make sure.” He hadn’t slept in two days, but Dan knew he wouldn’t close his eyes tonight if he thought she was in danger.

She walked past him and opened the door. When she turned back, no smile curved her full lips. “If you follow me home, Sheriff, you’re not leaving until dawn.”

Every cell in his body wanted to pull her to him, but there was no time. The canned music had stopped. Hank must have unlocked the stage door because his voice blared down the hallway.

Dan stared at her, his words low. “I’m following you home. You’ll be safe tonight.”

“And warm,” she whispered back.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tuesday night

CODY WINSLOW THUNDERED through the night on a half-wild horse that loved to run. The moon followed them, dancing along the edge of the canyon as they darted over winter buffalo grass that was stiff with frost.

The former Texas Ranger watched the dark outline of the earth where the land cracked open wide enough for a river to run at its base.

The canyon’s edge seemed to snake closer, as if it were moving, crawling over the flat plains, daring Cody to challenge death. One misstep might take him and the horse over the rim and into the black hole. They’d tumble maybe a hundred feet down, barreling over jagged rocks and frozen juniper branches as sharp as spears. No horse or man would survive.

Only tonight Cody wasn’t worried. He needed to ride, to run, to feel adrenaline pumping in his veins, to know he was alive. He rode hoping to outrun his dark mood.

The demons that were always in the corners of his mind were chasing him tonight. Daring him to step over the edge and tumble into death’s darkness. Whispering that he should give up even trying to live. Betting him to take one more risk...the one that would finally kill him.

“Run,” he shouted to the midnight mare. Nothing would catch him here. Not on his ranch. Not on land his ancestors had hunted on for thousands of years. Fought over. Died for and bled into. Apache blood, settler blood, Comanchero blood was mixed in him as it was in many people in this part of Texas. His family tree was a tumbleweed of every kind of tribe that ever crossed the plains.

If the horse fell and they went to their deaths, no one would find them for weeks on this far corner of his ranch. Even the canyon that twisted like crippled fingers off the great Palo Duro had no name here. It wasn’t beautiful like Ransom Canyon, with layers of earth revealed in a rainbow of colors. Here the rocks were jagged, shooting out of the deep earthen walls from twenty feet in some places, almost like a thin shelf.

The petrified wood formations along the floor of the canyon reminded Cody of snipers waiting, unseen but deadly. Cody felt numb, already dead inside, as he raced across a place with no name on a horse he called Midnight.