Chapter 7 #3
She peeled his T-shirt up as he shuffled them toward a bathroom. He let go of her long enough for her to pull it up over his head and arms, then resumed kissing her all the way into bathroom and up against the wall.
“The pup?” she asked.
“He’s all right,” he said, nodding toward the cute little guy, who was gnawing his large bone-shaped treat as if his life depended on it.
He took advantage of her turned head to kiss and nibble her neck.
He wanted her with his entire being, and the power of it shook him a little.
He’d never felt anything this strong. He reached one arm sideways to adjust the shower knobs.
She undid her pants and let them fall, and he shoved down his jeans and almost tripped into the shower.
Their clothes got soaked. They kicked themselves free, and then it was hands and mouths and warm, slick skin, and her legs were around his waist, and the water was rushing over their entwined bodies.
He held onto her like he’d never let go. In that moment, he never wanted to.
For the second time, Willow crept out of the bunkhouse in the wee hours like a thief in the night while Jeremiah lay nude and deeply asleep.
She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to wrap herself in his arms and stay until morning, but that would risk being seen, and she wasn’t ready for all that with the family.
She didn’t even know what she and Jeremiah were doing.
He hadn’t opened up a bit about what he was lying to her about, and damn him for that, because it was starting to feel like things could be good between them.
Drew’s little Beetle was parked by her cottage when Willow pulled in at last. She shut off her pickup and got out.
The lights were on inside, gleaming through the little paned windows in front.
Night bugs were chirping up a lullaby. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze, and the night air was warm and dry.
She walked up the little stepping stone sidewalk to the front steps, which were stone and had moss growing in patches. The door was unlocked. She rarely locked up when she left. So she went on in.
Drew was asleep on the little sofa, curled up like a child. Her laptop was on the coffee table, open.
Frowning, Willow closed the front door. Then she knelt at the coffee table and turned the laptop around, jiggling it to life as she did.
There were several video clips on the screen.
“It’s surveillance footage from the Bluebonnet house,” Drew muttered. She scraped her hand across her face and sat up, blinking sleepily.
“What did we get? I haven’t had time to look.”
“Nothin’. Just scrub brush and wildlife.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Can you send me that footage?”
“Don’t need to. It’s on your phone, on the app we installed. Remember, I showed you?” She stretched and yawned.
Willow wondered why Drew had come all the way over here and waited up for her when she could’ve just sent a text. “Do you want to sleep over?”
“Nah, the folks’d worry. I just needed a quiet place to study where nobody could find me.”
“Oh. Cool. Yeah, anytime Drew. My place is your place.”
“I know,” she said. “Thanks. But I’m headin’ out now, cause I’m an early riser, and you need to spend the next several hours asleep.” She looked at the clock on the wall as she said it, then lifted her eyebrows. “How was it? With the Gringo?”
Willow opened her arms and fell backwards onto her own sofa. “Unbelievable.”
“Yeah?” Drew’s smile was bright.
“Yeah. And that’s all you’re getting. Did you call the art major?”
“He called me,” she said. “Asked me out. I told him I’d think about it, because I take these things much more carefully than my older and supposedly wiser cousin.”
Willow rolled her eyes. “Go home and let me sleep.”
“Night, Will.”
“Night.”
Drew scooped up her laptop and let herself out. She turned the lock before pulling the door closed behind her.
Willow went to her bedroom, peeled off her clothes and fell into her bed. But every time she started to drift off, she fell into Jeremiah’s arms again, holding him, kissing him, moving with him. Eventually, she let the visions sweep her into dreams, and then she slept for a solid eight hours.
When she got up it was nearly noon, and nobody had bothered her.
She made a single cup of coffee, stared into the fridge for a minute, and decided to have lunch at the WTD.
She found the files Drew had sent on her phone and watched the video of the Bluebonnet Inn’s back yard from the night before while she sipped.
The footage flickered. She frowned, stopped, went back, played it again, and watched closer.
For sure, it flickered. She played it a third time, watching the counter instead of the footage this time.
Sure as all get out, right at the flicker, the counter jumped ahead forty-four minutes! How the hay…?
He’d disabled the camera somehow! Or someone had.
He hadn’t dug anything up from what she could see on the live feed, the backyard looked undisturbed.
But it was too big a coincidence that there was a forty-four-minute gap in the footage just when she’d expected Jeremiah to go out there on his treasure hunt.
He had to be the most frustrating, untrusting, sneaky-ass man on the planet.
She got dressed and walked right past her truck and on to the horses.
It smelled so good in the cool of the stable.
She went into the tack room to get her saddle and a bridle.
The West Texas Diner was close enough to go by horse, and she didn’t like going anywhere by vehicle if you could get there by horse.
She had time, and Sundance needed the exercise.
She opened the back door of the barn and gave a whistle.
The horses turned her way, but only Sundance came galloping at her, his mane nut-red in the sun. “What a beauty you are, Sundance. You’re a good boy, yes, you are.”
He nickered and nuzzled her face. She said, “Come on,” and he followed her inside and stood like a perfect gentleman while she slid a blanket and saddle onto his back. She’d taken a halter instead of a bridle—no bit for her boy. He didn’t need it.
In no time at all they were riding cross-country, a far shorter distance than going by road. She intended to ask Marvella about her memories of Juanita Lopez and the criminal de Lorean. People often remembered more in the hours and days after an interview, their memories having been stirred up.
God, it was good to think about something besides her and Jeremiah.
She tried not to let her thoughts slide back to the infuriating man and instead focused on the gentle rocking of the animal beneath her, and the breeze in her hair.
They arrived all too soon. She took the rope from her saddle and tied Sundance loosely to a shady spot behind the diner, where some tender looking grasses were growing. A kid came out the back door with a bucket of water, sloshing over both sides.
“That a clean bucket, son? It been washed since anybody drank from it?”
“Great grandma puts boilin’ water in after a horse drinks,” he said.
“Good man,” she said as the boy set the bucket in front of the horse and patted her neck. He was maybe nine, red-headed and freckled in jeans and a T-shirt.
“Thanks, kid.” She handed him a couple of singles for his trouble, and headed around front and inside.
The interior of the diner was long and narrow, with red vinyl stools lined up in front of a counter and booths along the front wall, with a narrow walking space in between. The kitchen was even narrower behind the counter, with an open pass-thru in between.
She’d no sooner ordered a full-on breakfast, which they served there all day, when a loud buzzing sound drew her gaze around just in time to glimpse one of those crotch-rocket motorcycles fly past, bike and rider entirely in black.
In a heartbeat, the diner’s front window exploded inward.
People screamed and ducked and a brick landed on the floor.
Willow dove off her stool, running for the door, shouting, “Is everyone all right?” And as they nodded, she raced outside and around back to Sundance, untying his lead on the way. She jumped into the saddle, and squeezed his sides, “Let’s go, boy! Giddyap!”
Sundance loved to giddyap.
He was fast, one of the fastest on the ranch.
Could’ve been a racehorse, but Willow wouldn’t have it.
She steered Sundance off at a sharp bend, short-cutting cross country, catching up enough to see the biker.
As she rode, she grabbed her phone and tapped the mic symbol to record a message to dispatch.
“Unit three, I’m in pursuit of a motorcycle, no plates—”
She came to another big bend in the road, and again, steered Sundance off the road.
They jumped a fence, all but flying. Willow couldn’t help but thrill to the ride.
The wind in her ears, her hair flying like Sundance’s mane.
They came to the end of the shortcut and onto the road again—and there was the bike right in front of them, skidding around to face them and revving, then shooting forward.
Sundance reared and tried to pivot at the same time, and then he went over backwards, right on top of her.