Chapter Six #2
But she loved him for it, she thought as she watched him take a seat in an empty booth away from everyone—instead of a spot at the counter like he normally did. Worried, she joined him. Did he just want peace and quiet? Or did he want to continue their argument from earlier?
“Get you something to drink?” she asked quietly.
He raised his head to look at her and what she saw in his eyes made her stomach drop. “I need you to move in with your cousin.”
She stared at him, the words not making any sense.
Not this again. She’d hoped after their last breakup that they were moving in the right direction toward marriage and kids and a life together.
She’d given him some time, then they’d found their way back together.
She’d moved a few things into his house and soon she was living there again.
He’d certainly not said anything as they’d gotten closer.
Until now.
Was that what he was afraid of? How close they’d gotten living together? “Are you going tell me why?” she asked as she dropped into the booth across from him, her legs shaking.
He looked so pained it made her heart hurt. “I just need you to move out as soon as possible. Today.”
She tried to find words, only coming up with, “Is this about Cordell? Is he moving in?”
Max shook his head, then his gaze met hers and held it. “As much as I hate doing this…” She saw him swallow before he finished. “I need you to give me some space.”
“For how long?” she asked, her words heavy with emotion.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what the future holds, but I need you to do this. I’m sorry.”
She leaned back in the booth across from him, her pulse a thunder in her ears as her heart threatened to break.
She fought to keep her voice down when she wanted to yell to the rafters.
She’d been so patient with him. She could only guess at the life he’d had before arriving in Dry Gulch, he and his brother looking like the orphans they apparently were.
She cleared her voice. “We’ve been going out for years, living together the last four. How much slower could we have moved, Max?”
“Goldie, please don’t—”
“Please don’t what, Max? You’ve had plenty of time. Why don’t you admit what’s really happening here. You’re breaking up with me. Again.”
“I don’t want to keep doing this to you,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “I should have never let it get this far.”
She took a ragged breath as the impact of the words hit home.
This man is never going to marry you. She’d only been fooling herself thinking he needed time.
While she didn’t know everything about his dark past, she knew enough from the horrible nightmares she’d witnessed and always pretended she hadn’t.
Letting out the breath, she rose from the booth and looked down at this man she’d loved from as far back as she could remember. “You’re right about one thing. You can’t keep doing this to me.”
* * *
Cordell had been looking forward to Goldie’s dinner special, so he wasn’t thrilled when his brother entered the cellblock empty-handed. Then he saw Max’s expression and knew. “What did you do? You broke up with Goldie.”
His brother merely grunted in reply as he motioned him out of the cell.
Max had always been the coolheaded one, the person he knew he could trust with his life. “I’m so sorry.” Cordell hated this. Goldie and Max belonged together, yet he understood why his brother had held off on marriage. “In all this time together, you’ve never told Goldie the truth about your past?”
His brother shot him a look that made it crystal clear he had not. Nor did he ever plan to tell her. “I’d suggest you keep your distance from Josie, as well.”
Cordell let out an amused laugh. “Like that is going to be a problem. She doesn’t seem to want much to do with me. If anything.”
“It’s for the best right until this is over,” Max said.
He wondered if Goldie would feel that way when it was over. “I can see this is tearing you up,” Cordell said. “Couldn’t you have at least told her what’s going on?”
“No,” Max snapped. “She’d want to get her gun and be part of a standoff against the man. I don’t have to tell you, do I, that Josie would be the same way. Everyone in this town has to believe that I broke it off with Goldie. It’s the only way I can protect her.”
He could see that there was no changing his brother’s mind. “I’m sorry, but I really wish you’d told her after you picked up our dinner.”
Max cursed in answer. “You can really think of food at a time like this?”
“Yeah. I’ve always been like this, hungry. I think it’s from going without in the past.” He fell silent for a moment. Like Max, he’d thought all of this with Grimes was behind them. “You know he’s on his way here.”
Max sighed, thinking about his brother being like a fish in a barrel locked up here. “Come on, you’re coming with me,” he said, and led the way out of the sheriff’s department and into the twilight. The sky around them darkened as they walked down the nearly deserted street.
Cordell felt his stomach growl as he matched his brother’s long-legged steps with his own.
“Max, everyone is going to know about our past if Grimes comes to Dry Gulch for us.” His brother grunted in answer.
“Where are we going?” he asked, moving fast to keep up.
As hungry as he was, he said, “I’m not sure going to the café’s a good idea all things considered. ”
“We’re not going to the café. You are.”
Cordell shot a look at his brother. Max tossed him the keys to his pickup with the rented trailer still parked on the street.
“When you get through eating, drive up to my house. Park it in the back. But I don’t want to see you for at least thirty minutes.”
He felt a jolt. “You think he’s already here, maybe waiting for you at the house?
” He started to argue that he didn’t want Max going alone but changed his mind at the steely glint in his brother’s eyes as well as the star on his chest and the weapon on his hip.
The sheriff’s look said he’d lock him in a cell again if he gave him any trouble. “I am hungry.”
Max shook his head. “I can hear your stomach growling from here. Thirty minutes, Cordell. Park in the back.”
* * *
The sheriff waited until Cordell disappeared into the café before he started back up the street. Max figured that if Grimes was already in town, he’d be waiting for him at the house. He’d started toward the sheriff’s department, where he’d left his truck that morning when he got the call.
“A man who says he’s your father is on the line,” the dispatcher told him. “Says it’s urgent.”
Max felt as if he’d been punched in the throat. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. “I’ll be right there.” He hurried the last few yards, pushing through the door and heading straight for his office. “Put the call through,” he said to the dispatcher.
His phone was already ringing as he closed the door and headed for his desk. He tried to steady himself, to breathe, but it was as if all the air had been sucked out of him. “This is Sheriff Lander,” he said as he took the call, surprised how calm his voice sounded.
The raspy voice on the other end of the line let out a chuckle, bringing back a nightmare of horrible memories. “How ya doin’, son?”
“I’m not your son.”
Grimes’s laugh still had that promise of imminent violence. “I think we should meet and talk about old times.”
“Why would we do that?” Max asked as he slowly lowered himself into his chair, all the time aware of the danger looming at the other end of the call. “I’ve spent years trying to forget you and those old times. I want nothing to do with you.”
“Funny, but I just can’t forget the last time I saw you and your brother,” the man said.
“Too bad it really wasn’t the last time.”
The laugh this time had an edge to it that told Max that Grimes was about to get to the point of the call. “You know I never told anyone about that night.”
“I would imagine not. Who would believe you given your criminal record?”
A tense silence followed, then Grimes quit trying to be friendly. “Guess you don’t want to know where your mama is, then?”
Max gripped the phone so hard his fingers ached. “You’re finally admitting that you killed her and buried her where she couldn’t be found?”
“I told you she was fine when she left that night. She’d had enough of the two of you. But I did track her down while I was in the slammer. I can tell you where she is. But you’ll have to come home since I really want to see you and your brother. We have some issues to resolve, don’t you think?”
“Home? You can’t mean that shack in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming, where you took your meanness out on us, keeping us prisoners there so you could terrorize us.
” Grimes had picked the place, he realized now, because there wasn’t another house for miles.
They’d been alone and trapped with a psychopath.
“I guess we remember it differently, but you were young.” Did Grimes worry that Max was recording this call?
Was that why he was being so careful? “Son, I really want to see you. Why don’t you and Cordell take a ride down here?
Or I can come to Dry Gulch. I’d like to meet Goldie.
And now Cordell’s back. Heard his high school sweetheart, Josie, is an attorney?
I would imagine they’ll get back together, don’t you? ”
He knew about Goldie and Josie? Max felt his heart threaten to burst from his chest. Had he really thought getting Goldie out of his house would protect her? It hit him again. Where the hell was Grimes getting his information?
“I think the two of you should come home for this reunion,” the man was saying.
“I can meet your girlfriends later. Unless you’re inviting me to Dry Gulch.
” He chuckled. “It’s just as well. I’m not planning to stay long down here so I hope to see you at the old homestead by tonight.
Otherwise, I guess I’ll have to make the trip up to Dry Gulch. ”
“You do know that threatening an officer of the law will get you sent back to prison, right?”
“Threatening?” He howled with laughter. “I just want to see my boys one last time. I’m not as young as I used to be. That’s why I’m heading out to the West Coast after our reunion. I liked the sunshine down in Florida but that was about all.” He chuckled again. “See you soon.”
Max started to speak but realized Grimes had already hung up. He slammed down the phone and swore. Grimes had been so careful not to threaten them outright, but he’d gotten his message across loud and clear.