4. Chapter 4
“ M orning, Sheriff!” Rosalee chirped from her desk right outside his office.
“Morning,” Jeff returned, letting the door close itself behind him. “That baby still not born yet?”
“He’ll be inside me until he’s ready for college, I swear.” Heaving herself out of her chair, her hugely pregnant belly leading the way, the receptionist stroked it fondly as she waddled over to hand him his messages.
“Anything exciting need my attention?”
She snorted.
“Have you heard from Gideon and Isaiah yet this morning?”
“Yup,” she said with a nod. “They’re clocking in every hour, just like you told them. How much longer are we going to be surveilling Travis’s place?”
“A couple of days. I’ve just got a feeling.”
Rosalee blinked at him. “About that missing girl or about something else? Iz tells me just about everything he hears when we’re at home. So far though, he’s walking a respectable line. He’s not witnessed your brother saying or doing anything even remotely suspicious.”
“That girl was Travis’s responsibility, and she’s gone,” he returned, pouring himself a cup of hot coffee and trying hard not to let his gut tell him Tabby was his responsibility.
“Kids run away,” the pregnant receptionist suggested.
“Not Jess,” Jeff returned, going through the messages.
“Her time was up. Believe me, if I were on probation in this town, I would be so out of her the second my release came through. I mean, Travis gives me the creeps, but he has the receipts. He can prove he drove her to the bus depot in Salt Lake.”
“She said she was going to call me,” Jeff argued.
“She said it was important . I believe her, too. If she could have, she’d have called me by now.
” At least he hoped she would. Every time he’d had cause to talk to Jessica, she’d struck him as a tough cookie.
She’d never once mentioned leaving after her probation was done.
In fact, she’d made zero secret of the fact that she wouldn’t have minded seeing how good of a bare-back rider Jeff could be with his badge on her nightside table and his hat hanging on her headboard post.
Frankly, she’d been so bull-stubborn determined to get him into bed, that he’d actually started avoiding her.
Not that she wasn’t pretty. Jessica, with her long dark hair and seductive brown eyes, just simply wasn’t his type.
Like a brat on crack, there was no ‘obey’ anywhere in her.
There was no submission, either. No glimmer of a love for yielding, kneeling, or needing to be taken in hand.
She did not hit so much as a single one of his triggers.
Unlike Tabitha, his mind cheerfully added, and Jeff promptly shut that down.
Just not before he caught himself wondering how she was doing this morning, or if it was too soon to try apologizing again.
At least the groceries hadn’t still been sitting outside her door when he’d driven past the halfway house this morning. That was a step in the right direction.
Unless someone else stole them. Not that it was stealing if Tabitha refused to accept them. He preferred to think she had and that she was even now enjoying a blueberry muffin and watermelon for breakfast.
Yeah, right before she got on Travis’s bus and ended up on God knows whose farm up there in the mountain canyons.
No. Jessica didn’t leave town of her own volition. Everything in his gut screamed that she was somewhere up on the mountain, too. What he didn’t know was whether she was being kept up there of her own free will, or even if she was still walking around above ground.
Or buried somewhere underneath it.
***
Tabitha awoke with a jerk when she heard Travis pounding on her door.
“Roll call in five,” he called, before moving on to the next door.
Unlike yesterday when she’d first arrived, she wasn’t the only woman staying at the motel anymore.
Somewhere around 7:30 last night, a beat-up white bus had pulled into the parking lot and discharged a dozen or so raucous women right outside Travis’s office.
Laughing, talking, shouting to one another as well as to the bus, they dispersed to their own rooms. That’s when the music came on, and the banging and squabbling began.
To not be alone should have made her feel better.
It didn’t, not when everything she heard brought her straight back to being in prison.
And definitely not when she knew full well just how fast another woman’s laughter could turn into a hair-pulling, biting, scratching, punching and kicking, outright brawl.
There were no guards here to break it up, only Travis.
Also, shit rolled downhill. As the newest person here, she had no choice but to stand exactly where misplaced aggression would fall.
She’d learned a lot about fighting in the last three years. Mostly, what she’d learned was that she wasn’t any good at it. So, she stayed inside, away from the windows and tried to be as invisible as possible. Today was a new day though, and she couldn’t stay invisible forever.
Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she rolled into a sitting position on the side of the bed. She had to get up, put her shoes and socks back on, and tackle this, the first day of the next three years of her life.
Nervous as she’d been last night, she’d gone to bed clothed, so getting dressed was simply a matter of finding where she’d dropped her socks and putting her shoes back on.
Washing her face, she cleaned her teeth with her finger.
Not that the sheriff hadn’t provided her with a brand-new toothbrush.
It was still in one of the grocery bags, where she intended it would stay until she next went into town.
She had every intention of flinging every single one of the extra items he’d bought for her into his station parking lot just as fast as she could afford to buy what she needed.
Except, in the bright light of morning, already her convictions were wavering.
Memories of last night still stung, but she wasn’t mad anymore, and she really kind of needed all the things he’d bought.
Still, every woman was entitled to her pride, whether she could afford any or not.
Fixing her hair as best she could without a hairbrush, she made it outside just in time to see the long line of women lined up in the parking lot.
At the far right end, Travis was already walking down the length of them.
She tried not to notice the reproving look he gave her as she raced to join them.
“Don’t test me,” he said for her ears alone as he and his clipboard walked passed her. “You won’t like the consequences.”
“Yes, sir, Travis, sir,” she just as softly replied, and he continued to walk the line until everyone was logged in for the morning.
“Bus comes in five,” he told them.
Tabitha didn't move until everyone else did.
None of them had said so much as a word as they scattered back to their rooms to finish getting ready.
Not knowing how her day would be regulated at the farm, she ducked back into her room, keeping the door wide open so she wouldn't miss the bus.
She made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ate it while she made her lunch—another peanut butter and jelly sandwich with two apples.
She wrapped the sandwich in a plastic grocery bag to keep it from drying out, and then stuffed both it and the fruit in another plastic sack.
Her lunch. It looked strange, sitting there in such a pathetic heap.
In her past life, she'd have had a can of soda, soup or salad, a meat sandwich, carrots and veggie dip, cookies and chips—all of it stuffed into a temperature-controlled lunch cooler.
That wasn't just a whole different life ago. It was a life that felt as if it belonged to someone else entirely. She had nothing to do with it anymore. She wasn't the little girl she had been. She was different now and different wasn't always better.
"Psst."
Turning, Tabitha stared at the sun-bronzed woman in cut-off jeans and a dirty yellow tanktop hovering in her doorway, an empty, beat-up plastic water bottle out to her.
"You got one of these?" the woman whispered.
Glancing at it, keeping her hands to herself, she shook her head.
"Take it. Fill it every chance you get, whether it's empty or not. Don't lose it, ‘cause I don't have another to give you."
Beware of gifts that seem free. Nobody got something for nothing, not even a used up disposable bottle. Prison had definitely taught her that.
"I've got watermelon," she offered, reluctantly taking the water bottle from her.
"God, I haven’t had watermelon in forever," the woman said with a grin, and ventured inside. “What’s your name?”
"Tabitha."
Extending a friendly hand, the woman said, "I'm Mara.
I love watermelon. We can have it tonight after you've survived the day.
Hurry up, if you're not ready. The instant the bus gets here, your butt needs to be on it, or you'll be in trouble.
Stick close to me today, I'll walk you through the rules.
Break any of them, including the ones you don't know, you'll be in trouble.
Trust me, trouble isn't what you want from that bastard.
" Mara mouthed that last word, giving it no sound at all.
Tabitha had no problem reading her lips.
Adding the water bottle to her lunch sack, she gathered her things and followed Mara out into the bright sunshine of the already hot Utah morning. She was careful to close the door behind her.
"Don't keep anything out in the open you don't mind having stolen," Mara continued as she headed toward a group of other women already gathering.
When she looked way down the road, Tabitha glimpsed the short, white form of the bus driving toward them with a cloud of red dust billowing out behind it.
"More than anyone, it's Travis you need to worry about. "