Bad Moon On The Rise (29 page)

“
You eat last night?” he
asked, sounding concerned.

I looked up and had the decency to
feel a little embarrassed. “It was too much of a risk,” I lied.
“Although I’ve got to say, whatever they were cooking at that music
festival smelled good. It tortured me all night.”

“
Have at it, then,” he
said with his lazy grin. It was a smile that could pretty much
cause me to melt—which was good, because the next thing he did was
order me to slouch down so no one could spot me. I don’t let a
whole lot of people get away with telling me what to do.

“
They’re looking for me,”
I mumbled through a mouthful.

“
I know. I heard a report
on the radio on the way up. According to the announcer, you’re
armed and dangerous."

“
No shit,” I said.
“Really?” I felt inexplicably pleased.

“
They’re saying you’re
part of some Mafia drug ring.”

“
What?” I almost shouted I
was so startled.

“
That’s what they said on
the radio.”

Damn. I was in trouble now. You could
be a homegrown boy, like Ramsey, and do just about anything and
people would find a way to justify it. But if you were a Yankee
who’d drifted down to rape, pillage or steal? Man, get a parking
ticket and the populace would turn against you. No one would give
me sanctuary now.

“
I can’t believe they said
that. It’s so unfair.”

“
Here.” Ramsey handed me a
Dr. Pepper nearly as big around as my head. “Drink something before
you choke.” He rolled his eyes as I slurped my way to happiness.
“Lord, girl, no one could ever accuse you of being a picky
eater.”

“
Nope,” I said, more
concerned about who had floated the story about the drug ring and
why they wanted to find me so bad. Well, aside from the fact that
I’d escaped from their stupid prison. “They say anything about
Bobby D.?” I asked.

Ramsey shook his head. “Nope. Look
here, you have got to sit lower and I’m putting this on top of
you.” He threw a blanket over me and pushed my head down until I
hovered just a few inches from his lap.

“
Seems like old times,” I
said cheerfully.

“
Don’t go getting any
ideas,” he warned me. “I’m about to pull a five-point turn on a
two-lane highway and I don’t need any distractions.”

“
We’re going back down the
mountain?” I asked.

“
Yup,” he said. “We need
gas and we need to get the hell out of here. I’m not going to end
up in West Virginia. I got me enough problems as it is without
transporting an escaped prisoner across state lines.”

He was serious about getting the hell
out of there. Within a minute, we were barreling down the highway
again.

“
There’s only one gas
station,” I said. “And it’s not exactly a safe spot. The owner is
nosy as hell. With a big mouth, to boot.”

“
We’ve got no choice,”
Ramsey said. “We need gas. It was closed when I was on the way in,
but they’ll be open now. I passed a lot of hunters on my way up the
mountain. They opened a special two-week black bear hunting season
on account of overpopulation.” I could tell from his tone of voice
that he was about to launch into one of his anti-development
tirades and, sure enough, he was just getting started.

“
We take their land and we
build a bunch of unneeded houses on it and then we complain when
the bears don’t respect some fucking deed filed with the clerk of
courts,” he said. “Pretty soon, the bears are getting hit by cars,
and they’re crawling all over these damn woods looking for some
room to breath that’s just not there anymore until, finally, it’s
kinder to cull them through hunting, although I do think picking
off a few humans might be a hell of a lot more
effective.”

Bears were crawling all over the
woods? Hunters with guns were heading in? I was very glad I’d
gotten out of the forest before the amateurs had started firing
away.

“
I owe you one,” I told
Ramsey. “I owe you a big one.”

“
Say nothing of it,” he
assured me. “The thought of you trapped inside a prison makes me a
little bit sick. I’ve been there. I know what it’s
like.”

I was silent. A flash of being inside
Silver Top had washed over me at his words. I guess I
shivered.

“
It’s okay,” Ramsey said.
“You’re out of there. Just hang on and I’ll get you
home.”

I have loved many a man in my life but
at that moment I knew that I would always love Ramsey
Lee.

My love for Ramsey lasted six minutes,
which was how long it took us to reach what seemed to be the only
country store and gas station in all of Bartow County, the one with
the nosy owner where Tonya had sent her son a postcard. Ramsey had
called it correctly: though it was not yet six o’clock in the
morning, the place was bustling. Trucks and cars pulled up to the
pumps, disgorging hunters who dashed inside to take a final pee
before they went commando. Meanwhile, their companions gassed up
their vehicles, bought beef jerky and purchased beer over coffee at
a ratio I pegged at about twelve to one, although it was difficult
conducting surveillance crouched down in the cab of Ramsey’s truck
while he, in a rather paranoid fashion, attempted to block me from
anyone’s view.

“
This is pointless,” I
complained. “All I can see is your ass. Literally.”

“
Too bad,” he answered.
“And just for the record, this is a bad idea. Sitting here is
asking for trouble.”

“
I have no other options,”
I said. “Sooner or later, one of the guards has to show up here and
we can follow him home.”

“
Sooner or later one of
the deputies has to show up here and we could both end up back in
the slammer.”

“
Well, when you put it
that way,” I mumbled. “I guess this means you’re not going to help
me?” I’d told Ramsey the whole story about what I was doing on the
mountain, about Tonya’s death and my attempts to find her son. He
seemed most interested in the fact that Burley was Trey’s father.
Of all my ex-boyfriends, Ramsey said he disliked Burley the least,
which was practically a compliment coming from Ramsey. He even said
he’d consider helping me once I was done telling him the whole
story. Hope had flared in me like a gasoline fire at his words: I
still might find the boy. But now it appeared he was backing
out.  I didn’t blame him. It was a lot to ask.

“
Relax. I’m going to help
you,” he told me. “I’m still sitting here, aren’t I? Oh shit.”
Ramsey sat up straighter. I tried to join him and he pushed my head
beneath the dash. “Stay down.”

“
Is it the
cops?”

“
Yes,” he said. “And I
think it also might be the guys you’re looking for. They seem
mighty friendly with each other, for the record. You best remember
that.”

“
How do you know it’s
them?” I asked.

“
Well, the deputy is in a
deputy uniform, so it’s not much of a stretch to reach the
conclusion he is a deputy.” The contempt in Ramsey’s voice was
obvious. He had no love for law enforcement, having been on the
wrong side of it a few times too many in his eco-terrorist days,
which we both knew were still going on; it’s just that Ramsey had
gotten better at it and not been caught blowing up construction
bulldozers in years. I suspected he’d started to smuggle endangered
species into areas he wanted to protect these days instead of using
dynamite. I didn’t ask him, though. As with all things between us,
we had an understanding.

“
What about the guards?” I
reminded him. “How do you know it’s them? Are they in
uniform?”

“
No. But there are three
of them and they look paramilitary. Flat tops, cammo, storm trooper
boots. They look like they’re getting ready to invade a country,
not shoot some poor bastard of a  bear who wandered out of the
national park.” Ramsey hee-heed to himself, thinking this was high
humor.

“
I hope the bear wins.
They’re heading out to hunt?”

“
No,” Ramsey said.
“They’re heading in. They look like assholes, but they know what
they’re doing and they know how to handle their rifles.”

“
How can you
tell?”

“
They’re tagging and
bagging their catch now.”

Oh, damn. That made me a little sick.
I’ve seen pigs slaughtered. I’ve hunted deer. But there was
something downright wrong about killing the magnificent black bears
that wandered through the Appalachians. Their fur was so glossy it
shone silver in the sunlight and all they really wanted was to stay
as far the fuck away from humans as possible. I hated these
intermittent open seasons on them, even if they only lasted a few
days.

“
It’s a nice one too,”
Ramsey said. “Those assholes can put a nice bear rug down in front
of their fireplace and roll around with each other on it.” This he
thought even funnier than his first crack at them.

“
I need to find out where
that fireplace is,” I reminded him.

“
Keep it in your britches,
Hot Pants. And don’t you dare move while I am gone.”

“
Where are you going?” I
called as he slipped from the cab, but he ignored me and kept
walking.

Damn it. I hated being on the run.
Ramsey was having all the fun and there I was, lying with my face
mashed against a seat cushion that smelled a little too much like
the hounds Ramsey had left at home in the care of a
neighbor.

“
Here.” A man of few
words, Ramsey was back within minutes, shoving a fresh cup of
coffee and a honey bun in my face. “They were out of doughnuts.
Deputy Dawg must have eaten them all. But this’ll perk you
up.”

“
You’re too good to me.
What did you find out?”

“
The tattoo is on their
forearm, a ploughshare and sword?”

“
Yup. That’s
it.”

“
All three of the assholes
have one. Oh, yeah, forgot this.” He pulled a rolled-up newspaper
from his back pocket and tossed it on the seat between us. I could
not believe it. I was staring straight into Bobby D.’s
eyes.

“
Are you serious?” I
asked, choking on my coffee. I smoothed the paper out. it was just
a little mountain rag and only eight or so pages, clearly
photocopied in someone’s basement. But I was horrified to discover
not one, but two, mug shots covering half the front page: mine and
Bobby’s. Oh, god. Poor Bobby looked like an ax murderer was
approaching him with killing in mind, he was that scared, while I
looked like I’d just pulled a two-day shift turning tricks at a
truck stop.

“
Oh, my god,” I said.
“That’s the worst photo of me ever. I have never looked worse in my
life.”

Ramsey made an indefinable sound.
“Might not want to look in the mirror right now,” he
suggested.

I rattled the newspaper angrily. “I
can’t believe they bothered to put out a special addition of this
low class county rag on account of us. This is ridiculous. Listen
to this bullshit: they’re saying Bobby is some mafia kingpin and
I’m his daughter! Who floated this crap to the press?”

Ramsey shrugged. “Some lady named
Bunny. She owns a hotel around here or something. Most of the
article is based on an interview with her. Probably just someone
else you pissed off.”

“
That bitch!” I said. “And
after I was so nice to the other guests.”

“
Oh, yeah,” Ramsey
remembered. “They’re in there, too. They said they knew all along
the two of you were crooked.”

“
These people are insane.”
I scanned the article. “They need to get lives.”

“
Well, you are a prison
escapee,” Ramsey pointed out. “You can’t blame them for thinking
you’re a criminal.”

“
She had beady eyes,” I
read out loud. “And she was kind of pasty, like she’d been in the
slammer.” I was incensed. “I remember this woman. She has some
nerve saying anything about me. Her hair was orange, her face
looked like the ass end of a baboon and she was splitting the seams
of her sweat suit. Plus she was whiter than Marilyn Manson. She had
enough face powder on to supply a morgue for years.”

Ramsey took the paper from me and
stuffed it under the seat. “Focus on the job at hand. There were
three guards in all that I could make out. Three guards and one
vehicle. Which means they will be easier to follow.”

“
Did they make you?” I
asked as I tore away a corner of the honey bun and took a bite. I
almost gagged: it had enough preservatives to keep King Tut fresh
for the next six hundred years.

“
Did they make me?” Ramsey
was incredulous. “Are you serious?”

Oh boy, I’d insulted his honor. Ramsey
was a mountain man, born in the hills of North Carolina, and if you
ever implied he was, in any way, even close to a city slicker, you
were in trouble. You had to let him think you considered him
something along the lines of Davy Crockett’s older brother, maybe
on steroids and with some scary automatic weapons to boot, and let
it go at that.

“
Forget I asked,” I said.
“What’s next?”

“
They’re waiting for some
asshole to weigh his big scary bear, and then they have to check in
with theirs and they’ll be off.”