Chapter 7 #2
The rain hits the parking lot as I cut the engine.
She gets out, walks around the back of the truck to grab her duffel.
I get out the driver's side. I'm walking to the back to help her with the trailer when I see it.
A piece of paper.
Folded in half.
Tucked under the windshield wiper of my truck.
I don't move, but she does.
She comes around the front and sees what I'm looking at and she stops.
Neither of us reach for it.
"Spur."
"Get in the room."
"Spur."
"Dakota. Get in the room. Now."
She gets in the room.
I take the paper off the wiper. Don't unfold it yet. Walk it inside, soaking by the time I'm at the door, and she's standing in the middle of her motel room with her arms crossed.
Her face is ghost white and her phone’s in her hand.
I close the door behind me and unfold the note.
Same block letters. Same notebook paper. Same Sharpie.
He can't watch you every second.
I read it once. I look at her. I read it again.
She doesn't ask what it says. She knows what it says by my face.
"Show me."
I show her.
She reads it. The color does the same thing it did in the tack room, which is leave her face for a full second and come back as anger instead of fear.
"He was here."
"Yeah."
"He was here in Stephenville. He drove. He drove from Sharp, or wherever the fuck he’s from."
"Or he was already here."
She looks at me. "He was waiting for me here."
"Maybe."
"Spur…"
"Yeah."
"Find him."
"I'm going to."
I say it the way Pops taught me to say things you mean.
Flat. No heat in the voice. Just the fact spoken once so the woman across from you knows it's done.
She believes me.
I see it land. Some of the tension in her shoulders goes out and a different kind of tension takes its place.
I’ve seen this in horses I have worked with. The shift from fear to trust isn't softening.
It's a redirection. The body is still wound. It's just wound around something else now.
I take out my phone and call Phantom.
He picks up on the second ring. "Yeah."
"Note on my windshield. Hampton off the interstate. He's tracking her."
There’s a long quiet on his end. "Bring her home."
"Tomorrow morning. Won't drive through the panhandle in the dark with a tail."
"Where is she?"
"With me."
"You stay with her, Spur. Eyes on her until you cross my property line."
"Yes, Prez."
"If anything happens—"
"With all due respect, Prez, if anything happens, I’ll fuckin’ handle it."
"Good." He hangs up.
I put the phone in my back pocket. Look at Dakota standing in the middle of a rented room with the rain coming down on the parking lot outside the window and a note in her hand that says I can't watch her every second, and I make a decision in my body before I make it in my head.
I'm going to find this man, and I'm going to put him in the ground.
Whatever it costs me with Phantom.
Whatever it costs me with the club.
Whatever it costs me with whatever is left of the man I have been trying to be for the last decade.
She's mine to protect.
I haven't said it. She doesn't know it. The club doesn't know it. Phantom doesn't even know it.
But it's true.
And somewhere in the country between the Tri-State Fair and the highway home, a man who has been watching her for who knows how long has just walked into the last week of his life.
He doesn't know it yet either.
He will.
* * *
I have the adjoining room door open all the way.
I'm sitting in the chair by the window of my room with the lights off and the rain is coming down hard.
There’s a beer I haven't opened on the table beside me that I can’t break myself to open yet.
Dakota's in her room. She’s been in the shower for fifteen minutes.
Then I hear the water cut off, and the sound of her moving around her room, and the smaller sounds of her getting into bed.
The TV comes on low. Some show I don't recognize. White noise.
After a while the TV goes off, then she's in the doorway of the adjoining door.
Tank top. Sleep shorts. Hair down and damp from the shower.
The Hampton bedside light behind her in her room, which puts her in silhouette against the doorframe.
"You sleeping?"
"No."
"Me neither."
She doesn't come in. Just stands there.
I don't move. I don't tell her to come in, and I don't tell her to go to bed.
I don't do any of the things a man in my position would do.
"My phone buzzed," she says. "I thought I'd tell you."
"Who."
"Presley. Just a good luck for tomorrow."
I wait.
"There's no tomorrow for me at this qualifier. I rode this morning. I'm done."
"Tell her that."
"I don't know if I want to."
"Why?"
She's quiet for a second.
"She told me good luck. She doesn't know I rode already. She sent it because she remembered I was here."
"Yeah."
"I haven't really answered her in months, Spur."
"I know."
"What do I say?"
I think about it. Take my time. The rain on the window. The hum of the AC unit. The light from her room across the floor of mine.
"You don't have to say anything. You can answer or not. But what you've done for the last few months is what the past version of you looked like. Today's a different day."
She doesn't answer for a long time.
Then I hear her phone unlock, the sound of her thumb on a screen, the swoosh of a sent message.
The room goes a little brighter for a second as her screen flares. "What did you send her?"
"A thumbs up."
I try not to sound judgmental, but I know I am. "That's what you've got for your sister after the better part of ignoring her?"
"It's what I have right now."
"At least it’s something."
"Is it enough?"
"Dakota. It's the most you've given her since the BBQ. Yeah. It's enough."
I hear her breathing in the doorway. Hear her swallow. Hear her shift her weight from one foot to the other.
"Spur."
"Yeah."
"Don't sleep tonight."
"I wasn't planning on it."
"Okay."
She turns and walks back to her bed.
The light goes off in her room. I hear her settle.
I hear her breathing slow over the next half hour, and then I hear her breathing change into the breathing of a woman who has gone under.
I sit in my chair, don't open the beer. Instead, I watch the parking lot through the gap in the curtains.
There are six cars in the lot. A red Silverado. A white minivan with Oklahoma plates. A black sedan I can't see the plates on from this angle. A Subaru. A blue F-150 with a topper. A brown station wagon that hasn't moved since we got here.
I track them.
I watch the door to the office. I watch the rain. I watch the sodium lights buzz in the parking lot until the rain dies down around two in the morning and the asphalt starts to dry in patches.
A bit after two-forty-five a man walks out of the office and gets into the brown station wagon.
He's heavyset. Mid-fifties. Trucker hat. Not him.
At four the black sedan pulls out and drives away.
At five the sky east of the lot starts to gray and Dakota turns over in her sleep and makes a small sound before settling again.
I don't sleep.
I sit in the chair until the sun comes up over the panhandle and the parking lot fills with the smell of wet pavement and morning, and I think about the man somewhere out there who is going to find out that the woman he has been writing notes to has a man.
And the man she has does not lose.
At six I stand up, walk to the bathroom, and splash cold water on my face.
I look at myself in the mirror, and fuck I look rough.
I haven't slept, but I’ve decided what I’m going to do from here on out.
I dress, pack the truck, and wake her at six-thirty with a coffee in my hand.
"Time to go home."
She blinks at me. Sleep-soft. Unguarded for one second before she remembers where we are and what was on the windshield last night.
Then she's awake. Up. Moving.
We're on the road by seven. In Sharp at noon.
And every mile of the panhandle behind us, I’m thinking about the man who put a piece of paper under my wiper, and the promise I made him in a motel room.
He’ll know soon enough.