All Fired Up (Stardust) (5 page)

“They owe a bundle at my daddy’s gas-and-grocery, too,” Mike added.

“And they still haven’t paid those speeding tickets,” Juan said. “
Dios
, they’re going to need at least three hundred dollars by the first to stay out of jail themselves.”

Earl chuckled. “Well, then we know what this is all about, don’t we?”

Yeah,
blackmail
, Slo thought. Every barrel had one or two dubious apples, and the Bullfinch brothers were Star’s. They knew his income was almost six figures a year. Nothing extravagant in today’s world – but Star wasn’t really in today’s world. By local standards, he was a friggin’ billionaire. All Randy and Andy wanted was a little piece of it. They were going to offer to drop charges if he’d shell out a few C-notes to them. The poor fools were always shooting themselves in the foot. He’d have given them the money if they’d simply come to him yesterday afternoon and asked. Now all Slo wanted to give them was another boot in the backside. The memory of them groping Roxanne made him see hot red. And the connected memory of how she had felt in his arms was spreading the heat southward…

With a low groan, Slo hauled to a sitting position and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Who was he kidding? He’d been planning on groping the girl himself before the drunk squad showed up.
Shit.
Someone should kick his ass harder than he’d kicked Andy’s.

“Ina Lorene, I take it Slo’s still in the house?” Earl asked.

“Out like a light, and wastin’ half the day, as usual,” she grumbled. “You know that boy wouldn’t get up before ten if you lit a fire under him.”

Wrong. The church chimes were striking the half-hour; it was only eight-thirty. But someone had lit a fire, and he was
up
all right. Grunting with the effort, Slo painfully pulled on his jeans.

A metallic
thwap
sounded. Earl must have just discharged his entire tobacco plug. That meant he’d decided on a course of action. Slo hoped it was a good one.

“I know what you boys should do then, and I don’t think the sheriff will fault you for it either,” the old man said. “Since Slo is safe put for now, why don’t y’all go next door and talk to Roxy Sinclair. You’re gonna have to take her statement about last night anyway. While you’re doing that, I’ll call the Bullfinch boys and offer them a deal on their insurance if they’ll drop charges. With a little luck we can get this all sorted out before Slo even wakes—”

“Hello,” someone called – a new voice in Ina Lorene’s yard – and the conversation crashed around Slo’s ears.

Lydia Jones?

Something was very wrong. Lydia never left her own property. Never. She hardly ever even left her house.

Slo finished dressing while he listened, an ominous chill crawling over his flesh.

Lydia was asking if anyone had seen her niece. She had gone to wake her for breakfast and discovered Roxanne was gone. So was some of the family’s old camping gear, a pup tent and sleeping bag…

“…and Jil’s backpack and hiking boots. It appears she’s decided to experience the wonders of nature for a few days, but I do wish she would have discussed it with me first. Roxy has never been camping before,” Lydia said. “Sammy had to go to Lubbock today, so I haven’t been able to tell him yet, but I imagine he’ll be rather perturbed when he finds out.”

Sam wasn’t the only one. But with Sam gone, Slo doubted there was anyone else in town with both the ability and the inclination to find Roxanne fast. Except himself.

He didn’t wait to hear anymore. The girl was alone, on foot, and inexperienced. Also hearing impaired. That was all he needed to know – that and the weather report his grandmother had given him yesterday. There was scarcely a cloud in the sky. The professional forecasters had predicted a dry week, but Ina Lorene said thunder was on the way, and she was never wrong about things like that.

Summer thunderstorms in West Texas came with driving winds, torrential rain, and sometimes killer hail – and let’s not forget the magnificent lightning show – one of the wonders of nature. But not the kind you’d want to experience in a pup tent.

The deputies
might
have let him go, but Slo couldn’t be sure of that. Deciding not to chance a dash for his car, he darted unseen out the backdoor and took off running, sticking to the weedy back alleys of Star. The car wouldn’t help anyway. For this search he needed a…

Horse.

Groan.

Slo hadn’t been on a horse in years, hadn’t been much of a horseman even when he’d lived in this cowboy town. He wasn’t the cowboy type. Yet another reason why he and Star clashed. But there was no avoiding it now. Roxanne would be hiking into open range, which meant horsey ride for him.

Yippie-ki-yay.

Skidding into Thompson’s Grocery & Gas on the edge of town, he dropped a few coins into the old-fashioned payphone, had a hurried conversation, then waited.

Several minutes later, a hell-on-wheels honey of a hog screeched to a stop in front of him.

Wow—

Slo’s jaw dropped. His heart did a fast fandango. He almost drooled. For a brief mad moment he was crazy in love.

There sat a vintage
Harley Davidson Indian
– one of the originals from decades ago, but so masterfully maintained it looked almost new. Stupendous!

Its rider, however, wasn’t what Slo had expected. The man pulled off his helmet and dismounted. He was older than the bike, but in equally good shape – gray haired, but still straight and tall and muscular – a roguish, rugged figure with a leathery tan and a devil of a grin. Slo had been expecting his high school science teacher, a smart, trim woman in her early seventies, the ever-attractive Evangeline. This guy wasn’t her.

“Are you Winslow Larkin?”

“Who wants to know? Nobody calls me Winslow unless they’re lookin’ for a fat lip. The name is Slo.”

“Testy little booger, ain’t you?”

“Not so little I can’t knock an old fart’s false teeth out.”

“They’re real.” And a broad smile proved it. “I think you and I are gonna get along just fine, Slo.” He offered a rock crusher handshake. “I’m Harper Rourke. Evangeline sent me ahead to let you know the cavalry’s on the way. She’s got her nephew Cody loading the horse trailer. We figured it’d be best to start the search from town. Roxy can’t have got far.”

The
Harper Rourke? The man who had recently done the impossible by marrying Star’s longtime poster girl for Women’s Lib? This still wasn’t what Slo had expected. He could barely imagine Evangeline married at all, and then only to some academic type, like a college professor.

“
You’re
Vangie’s new husband?”

“I’m the luckiest man alive,” Harper said with an intensely satisfied sigh.

For some reason that satisfaction bristled Slo’s backhairs. Maybe because he’d been feeling so
un
satisfied himself lately.

“You’re not good enough for her,” he drawled.

“Ain’t that the truth.” Harper chuckled. “But don’t tell her that. It took me fifty years to corral that woman. I’m not about to lose her now.” He scanned their surroundings, a distant gaze in his dark eyes, like he was staring into the past, comparing it with the present, and trying to reconcile the two with the unforeseen future. “Town really hasn’t changed much,” he reflected. “I was raised around here, y’know. That’s how Evangeline and I met. We grew up together.”

No, Slo hadn’t known, and didn’t care. He smelled the bittersweet fragrance of philosophy in the air – a scent he’d never much appreciated, and least of all when he was sizzling with impatience to begin with.

“But I thought Star was too small for me, wasn’t sure I wanted to be tied to one place,” Harper rambled on. And on. “Then Evangeline and I had a falling out, and I decided maybe I didn’t want to be tied to one woman either. So I took off runnin’ – ran clear around the world chasing rainbows. It took me a long time and some hard falls to figure out I was just chasing my own tail.” He spoke as if he were merely discussing the weather or the price of feed. “Let that be a lesson to you, son. No matter how far or fast you go, you can never escape your own heart. It’ll always bring you full circle back home.”

Home?
Slo’s eyes narrowed. Had his grandmother enlisted the whole damn county to make him return? What had she been telling Evangeline, and what had Evangeline been telling her longwinded new spouse? Whatever. It wouldn’t work. It was none of this gray haired king-of-the-road’s business, and there were far more pressing concerns.

“Thanks for the tip. I’ll try to remember it.” But not very hard. Slo glanced at the darkening horizon, then looked up the road, searching for some sight or sound of a pickup pulling a horse trailer. “Any idea how long it’ll take Cody to get here?”

“Could be a while yet. The horses were in the big paddock. He’s gotta catch ’em before he can load ’em. But don’t worry, Roxy should be easy to find. Evangeline thinks she knows where the girl’s headed. The old gully between the ranch and town. She’s taken her there to hunt fossils and arrowheads. It’s a good spot for a campsite, and a place Roxy knows.”

So did Slo, ironically. The gully was a refuge he had often used himself years ago. It lay a few miles away over rough terrain, a tedious trek by foot, and not much faster on horseback. He studied the horizon again, seeing storm clouds gathering, rolling in like billows of smoke. Ina Lorene’s thunder could be here even sooner than he’d thought.

Damn.
What had possessed Roxanne to run off? Slo was starting to fear he might never get the chance to ask her.

To complicate matters, a high-pitched wail pierced the air.
Huh.
Juan and Mike must have discovered he’d eluded them, but how the hell had they eluded his grandmother? Their patrol car appeared at the end of the street, lights flashing and siren shrilling an alarm. Slo supposed he really couldn’t blame them. They got so little chance for action in this town. But the siren was a bit much.

“Those guys must be having an especially boring week,” he said.

“Friends of yours?” Harper asked.

“Yeah.” Slo sighed. “I’m wanted for assault and battery. I rearranged Randy Bullfinch’s face for him last night. Did a little work on Andy, too, but farther south.”

“I’m sure they both look a heap better. Anything would be an improvement.” Harper straddled his cycle and revved it to life. “Duck around back. I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

Slo ducked.

The patrol car braked.

“Hey, Harp,” Mike called out the window, “you seen Slo?”

“A slow what?” Harper replied.

“Not a what, a who,” Juan said. “Slo Larkin. Have you seen him?”

“Don’t think I’ve ever met him,” Harper lied. Smooth dude. “What does he look like?”

Mike described the culprit.

Juan added a few embellishments.

“Oh,
him
.” Mr. Smooth lowered his voice to a conspiratorial stage whisper. “Yeah, I saw him hot footin’ it toward the café about five minutes ago.”

“Damn,” Mike cursed. The patrol car did a screeching three-point turn and roared off in pursuit.

Harper grabbed his helmet off the handlebars, tucked it under his arm, and zoomed around to the back of the building.

“Very cool,” Slo complimented him. He hated to admit it, but he was beginning to admire Evangeline’s taste in husbands.

Harper grinned. “It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.” He handed the helmet to Slo. “Put this on.”

“Why? We goin’ for a spin?”

“Not we. You. No point waiting for the cavalry now. You’ll make better time on this anyway. Think you can handle her?”

Slo stared at “her” in covetous admiration. “Are you kiddin’? I’ve seen
Easy Rider
at least a hundred times.”

“That’ll have to do, I guess.”

Chuckling, Harper climbed off, and Slo took his place.

“Now
this
is what I call a
mount
,” he said as the big bike rumbled and vibrated beneath him.
Hi-yo, Silver.
If this couldn’t outrun the weather, nothing could.

“Just don’t ride
too
easy,” Harper cautioned him. “Might be a storm on the way.”

Slo cast him an incredulous look. “Really? I hadn’t noticed, but I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.” He gunned the engine, braced himself, and shot out of town like a streak of black lightning.

Chapter 5

Why was it humping and twisting? That couldn’t be right, could it?

Stepping back from her labor, Roxanne took a moment to size up the situation. Hands on hips, she stood staring and studying and thinking. Granted, she didn’t have much experience with tents – hell, she didn’t have any experience – but she was pretty sure that tents, in general, weren’t supposed to look like a camel suffering a seizure.

She tried a few things to straighten it out.