Cowboy Sing Me Home (23 page)

            Probably just a couple pulled back there
to make out.  But it wouldn’t hurt to check, just in case the girl was back
there against her will.  He grabbed his flashlight from its holder by the seat
and headed to the back alley.

            He was almost to the corner when he heard
two male voices.

            “Hold that box still and I’ll climb onto
it.”

            “That box is not going to hold your
weight.  Here, put your foot in my hand.”

            “I don’t see why we couldn’t go through
the front door.  No one’s watching.”

            “Because, if we go out the front, we have
to circle the building to get back here.  And yes, these guys are a bunch of
inbred Bubbas, but I still don’t want to give them any more chances than we
have to.  I took enough chances coming through the front door.”

            Luke plastered his back against he side of
the building and pulled his gun.  He craned his neck to see around the corner. 
Wayne stood with his feet spread, his knees bent and his hands laced together. 
Kenny was halfway out the window, his foot waving around in the air looking for
Wayne’s hand.

            Luke rounded the corner, his gun braced in
his clasped hands in front of him, and watched quietly as Kenny put his weight
on Wayne, Wayne dropped him, and they both stumbled around, cussing each other
and bumping into the garbage cans.

            Once they were upright and quieted down,
they turned.  To see Luke standing under the light, his gun drawn and pointed
at them.

            “I can’t believe you’re trying to escape
my hospitable jail.  Have we not been good hosts?  Did I not keep you fully
stocked with reading material and soft drinks?”

            Wayne glared at him, his hands half up. 
Kenny made a high-pitched whining noise, choked, then fell into a coughing fit.

            “You should have stayed on the right side
of the law, Kenny.  You’re not cut out for a life of crime.  What did you do to
Joanne?”

            “She’s tied up inside.  She’s fine.”

            “She’d damn well better be.  All right,
both of you down on the ground, hands behind your back.” 

            Kenny hit the ground so fast he grunted on
impact.  Wayne bent his knees a little, but stayed upright.  He looked at
something over Luke’s shoulder.

            The hairs on the back of Luke’s neck
raised.  He whirled, just in time to see a wrench arc down, and crash into his
skull above his right eye.

            Luke’s world exploded into brilliant
colors and sickening pain.  The earth tilted, and everything went silent.

            He didn’t think he was unconscious, but at
the same time he didn’t remember lying down, and now he had a face full of
gravel and couldn’t seem to lift his head. 

            “Let’s get out of here,” Wayne yelled. 

            “Is he dead?” Kenny shrieked.  “Did you
kill him?”

            Luke was strangely curious about the same
thing.  His face was cold, and he couldn’t feel anything except the gravel
against his cheek.

            “We’d better make sure.” 

Luke didn’t recognize the voice, but it
obviously belonged to the man who’d hit him.  He struggled to get his gun back
up, but his fingers were numb, and they felt like they gripped the gun through
fourteen layers of cotton batting.

He managed to get his head turned in time
to see the third man standing over him.  The streetlight was behind the
stranger, so Luke couldn’t make out his features, but the cool way he studied
Luke, the calmness with which he raised his own gun made Luke’s blood freeze in
his veins.

Luke lurched up with all his strength, but
only managed to get his leg raised.  The bullet exploded and hit him with the
force of a punch from King Kong.  His leg dropped back to the ground.

“
Now
I’ve killed him.”

Luke wasn’t sure, but he thought the man
might be right.

The man strolled to the car as Kenny and
Wayne screamed, “Come on. Come
on
!”

Just before he lost consciousness, Luke
realized the song the man was whistling was “I Shot the Sheriff.”

Dusty put down the book she was pretending
to read.  She hadn’t turned a page in half an hour.

            She glanced at the clock again with a sigh
of disgust.  It was only 10:15.  It was too early to go to bed.  With her
schedule, she was used to staying up until 3 or 4 am.  And she didn’t want to
get out of her routine just because…

            Just because she’d seen Luke holding a
pair of baby shoes?  And had been unable to stop replaying the scene in her
mind since?

            “This is stupid,” she said out loud, and
then, because it felt so good, she said it again.  “Stupid!”

            So he was getting married.  Big deal. 
What possible difference should that make to her?  Yes, they played beautifully
together, and she knew it wasn’t easy to find someone who fit her like that. 
That was important to her.  No harm in admitting that.  She was, after all, a
musician, first, last and always.  And sure, she enjoyed his company.  That
hadn’t changed.  She was still going to be around him, no less now that he was
engaged and about to become a – a father. 

            Nothing had changed, she told herself. 
Nothing at all.

            So why did she have this feeling like
she’d lost something very precious?  Why was she sitting in her chair, sagging
under the weight of a disappointment she couldn’t name?

            “It’s just the sex,” she said.  Maybe if
she said it out loud, the rest of her would agree.  “I was prepared for a
physical relationship and she interrupted it, that’s all.  If she’d waited one
more week, everything would have been fine.”

            Someone knocked on her door.  Dusty was
startled enough that she jumped in her chair and dropped her book.  Her heart
pounded painfully, and she stared at the closed door for a moment, wondering at
the wisdom of opening it.

            It was Luke.  She knew it was, could feel
it.  And if he looked at her like he had last night, she didn’t know if she’d
be able to turn him away this time.

            He knocked again.

            She hesitated a moment longer, then
reached for the knob, angry with him for putting her in the position and
irritated with herself for being rattled.

            Except it wasn’t Luke on her step, when
she opened the door.   Stevie stood there looking up at her, his head at
shoulder level.

            “Oh, good grief,” she said.  Now that he
knew Luke was out of the picture, he’d come chasing after her.  “What is it?”

            “I’m sorry,” he said.  “I’m sorry to
bother you.”

            He looked sincerely so, and she felt
guilty for being such a crab.  “It’s okay.”  Might as well get it over with. 
“What’s up?”

            “My dad has a police scanner in the
garage, and we were listening to it while we looked at Mom’s carburetor.”

            Fascinating.  She forced herself to nod as
if she was interested.

            “So we heard when they called for the
ambulance, and I called Corinne to see if it was true, and she said it was.” 
He swallowed and nodded.

            Ambulance.  She didn’t want to hear any
story that started with someone calling an ambulance, especially if the story
was making Stevie look like he’d rather hit himself in the head repeatedly with
a hammer than be here.   

            She didn’t want to know, so she waited a
full ten seconds before she finally said, “What was true?”

            “Luke got shot.  At the jail.  That guy
was trying to break out and he shot Luke.  I thought you’d want to know.”           

            Dusty knew Stevie was still talking
because his mouth kept moving and his hands gestured, but her world went silent
when he said the word ‘shot.’  She stood and watched, but didn’t see, until
finally he quit talking and looked at her like he was waiting for an answer.

            “Is he…” She couldn’t bring herself to say
the word.  “Is he okay?”

            “I don’t know.  They were taking him out
to the hospital when I talked to Corinne.  I knew you’d want to know, so I
thought I’d see if you wanted to ride out there with me--”

            He cut off when she shut the door behind
her and marched past him down the steps. 

            “Well?”  She said over her shoulder. 
“Let’s go.”

            “Let’s go,” he repeated, and jumped down
the steps to follow her.

            Dusty rode with her hands clenched.  She
kept hearing a tapping noise, and was surprised when she realized it was she,
tapping her foot.  She planted her feet on the floorboard and locked her knees,
as if they would get there faster if she pushed.

            “How fast are you going?”

            “Almost seventy,” Stevie said.

            “Go faster.”

            Stevie pushed the accelerator further to
the floor.

            “Who shot him?”

            “All I know is, they had a prisoner, and
he broke out and shot Luke.  The dispatcher got hurt, too.  I don’t know how
bad, for either of them.”

            “Did they catch the guy?”

            “I don’t know.  I don’t think so.”

            Dusty pushed harder with her feet.  It
felt like they were crawling through the night, but eventually she saw the
lights of the hospital up ahead.  Stevie swung his pickup around to the back,
where the entrance to the emergency room was.  The lights of the waiting area
were like a beacon, and Dusty was out of the pickup before Stevie had it
completely stopped.

            She yanked open the door and headed for
the first person she saw, Luke’s mother.

            “How is he?” Dusty asked.

            Helen Tanner shook her head.  “We don’t
know anything yet, we’re waiting for the doctor to come in and tell us.  I just
got here myself.”  Her voice broke and she twisted her hands together.

            Instinctively Dusty reached out for her. 
The contact was awkward for Dusty; she wasn’t accustomed to any physical
contact with another person.  But Helen wrapped her arms around Dusty and
seemed to draw some comfort from it, so Dusty hugged her back.

            Corinne came through the door with Cade on
her hip.  “How is he?”

            “We don’t know yet,” Helen said again. 
“They took him back there, and we’re waiting to hear.”

            “I just talked to Toby on his radio.”  She
shifted Cade to the other hip.  “They’re trying to track down the kid who shot
him, but he said it looked like they’d gotten a good ten minutes head start. 
He said they’d tied up Joanne too?” 

            “Joanne’s got a bump on the head, but
she’s going to be okay,” Helen said, sniffing back tears.  “Geralyn Thompson
came out a few minutes ago and said she was okay.  She didn’t know anything
about Luke.  Does Toby know who shot him, or why?”

            Cade struggled in Corinne’s arms, and she
put the toddler down.  “He just said their prisoner had escaped.  Evidently he
had some help, but Toby didn’t know from whom.  But either the prisoner or
whoever helped him escape shot Luke.”  She moved forward and hugged Helen, and
the three women stood in the middle of the floor, locked together. 

            Cade stepped up to them, his big eyes
anxious, and Helen managed a smile for him.  “It’s okay, sweetie.”

Corinne smoothed Cade’s hair, her eyes on
Helen.  “He’ll be okay, Helen.  He’ll be fine.”

            “He has to be,” Dusty whispered, and
didn’t realize she’d said the words out loud until Corinne wrapped an arm
around her waist and hugged her tightly.

            Stevie came in with Claude Tanner. 

“How is he?” Claude asked.

            Helen took a step forward, and Dusty could
feel her straining to move toward him, before she drew herself back.  “We don’t
know
.”  Helen frowned at him.  “Where have you been?”

            Claude ignored the question.  “What
happened?  Who shot him?”

            Melinda explained the situation again, and
Helen grabbed Dusty’s hand.  Together, the group stood in the small waiting
room, wondering what had happened, when they would know something, and whether
or not Toby had caught the men who had done this.  Dusty stood silently,
acutely aware that she had no real business being with this group, but grateful
they allowed her here, anyway. 

She studied the dynamics of the group. 
Claude and Helen Tanner each took a side of the room, and Corinne and Stevie
went back and forth between the two.  Cade provided enough distraction to keep
the tension in the room from exploding.