Читать книгу Cowboy Conspiracy - Joanna Wayne - Страница 8

Large drops of rain splattered the windshield as Wyatt pulled off the highway and next to one of the gas pumps at a 24-hour truck stop. Eighteen-wheelers lined the truck parking area off to the right, the drivers no doubt sleeping soundly in their fancy cabs.

He was the only gas customer and the parking lot in front of the café was empty except for a motorbike that looked as if it had seen its best days years ago, and a snazzy new Corvette.

Wyatt climbed from his brand-new double-cab pickup truck, his going-away present to himself for trading a job he loved for a reunion with his father.

All he owned was either tossed into the backseat or stored in the truck’s bed beneath the aluminum cover. That included the fancy rod and reel the other homicide cops had presented him with as their going-away memento.

Stretching to relieve the kinks from his muscles, Wyatt massaged the stiff tendons in his neck. The beers he’d enjoyed with his buddies last night had left him with just enough headache pain to dull the fun of hitting the road.

The splatters became a pelting downpour as he filled his gas tank. A gust of icy wind almost blew his black Stetson off his head. He tugged the hat lower with his free hand.

Just as he was returning the fuel handle to its cradle, a late model Honda Accord pulled up across from him and a woman stepped out.

The wind was blowing so hard now that the sheltering canopy above them did little to keep them dry. She pulled a denim jacket tight and glanced around nervously.

He tipped his hat. “Rough night for traveling.”

“Yes. I was hoping the rain would hold off for another hour,” she said, cautiously avoiding eye contact as she unscrewed her gas tank.

There was no one in the passenger seat, but he spotted a little girl in the backseat. Her face was pressed against the window as she peered at him. She opened the door for a better look.

“Don’t get out of the car, Jaci. It’s cold and you’ll get wet.” When the girl closed her door, the woman quickly locked it with the remote on her key.

“You’re getting wet, too,” Wyatt said. “Why don’t you let me finish gassing up for you and you and the kid make a run for the café before it gets any worse?”

“We’re not going in. And thanks for the offer, but I really don’t need any help.” Her tone and stare clearly told him to back off.

Smart woman. He was harmless, but plenty of men weren’t. And a woman and a kid traveling alone would make an easy target for some of the perverts he’d dealt with.

If he was still carrying his APD identification, he could probably reassure her, but he was no longer a cop, at least not officially.

“I’d give the rain a few minutes to slack off before I hit the road again. Just a suggestion,” he said, tipping his hat again.

He headed inside for a cup of coffee as the wind and rain picked up in intensity. He was less than thirty miles from Mustang Run but in no hurry to get there. He’d decided about forty miles back that he’d check in to one of the town’s two motels for the night and then drive out to the ranch in the morning.

He needed a good night’s sleep before he faced Troy.

Troy Ledger, convicted of murder, but still claiming his innocence. Wyatt hoped to God he was, but he’d read and reread the trial notes so many times he knew every last detail. If he’d been on that jury, he’d have come to the same conclusion they had. Guilty of murder in the first degree.

That was the Troy he’d be facing. But it was the other Troy he had been thinking about ever since he’d crossed the Texas line.

The father who’d chased monsters from his bedroom, taught him to ride a horse and a bike. Given him his first pony. The father who’d stayed with him all night when that pony had been so sick they thought they might have to put her down.

Wyatt stamped the water from his worn Western boots and made a stop at the men’s room before entering the café proper.

“C’mon in,” the waitress welcomed when he finally stepped into the main area of the café. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, blonde, with heavy, smudged eye makeup.

“You made it just in time,” she said. “Sounds like a whopper of a storm kicking up out there.”

“Is this your usual January weather?” he asked.

“No, but nothing about the weather’s predictable in this part of Texas. One day you’ll be in shorts, the next day you’ll be wearing sweats. Where are you from?”

“Texas originally, but I’ve lived in Georgia for most of my life.”

“Welcome back to the Lone Star State.”

“Thanks.” He shed his jacket and dropped it to one of the counter stools.

She handed him a plastic-coated menu. “You looking for dinner or just coffee and a warm, dry spot to wait out the storm?”

“Both.” He checked out her name tag. “I’ll start with a cup of black coffee, Edie.”

“The cook’s already gone for the night,” she said as she poured the coffee and set it in front of him. “I can fix you a burger or a sandwich and fries. I can do most of the breakfast items, too. There was chicken tortilla soup, but a couple of truckers finished that off about thirty minutes ago.”

“Whatever you’re cooking now smells good.”

“I’m making the guy in the back corner a grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich. I recommend it.”

“Then I’ll have that.”

“You got it.”

Wyatt glanced at the only other customer. He was bent over a road map that he’d spread across the narrow table. His hair was shaggy and looked like it hadn’t been washed in days. His jeans were faded and frayed at the hem. Heavily tattooed muscles bunched beneath a wife-beater T-shirt, and there was a wicked scar at his collarbone.

He might be a perfect gentleman with a spotless record, but he was the kind of guy who always courted a cop’s attention.

But Wyatt was no longer a cop. He turned his attention back to the front of the café. The rain slashed against the huge front windows now, and he thought of the woman in the Honda again. If she was trying to drive in this deluge, she was in for trouble. Visibility would be reduced to a few feet.

The bell above the front door tinkled. Wyatt looked up as the woman who’d said she wasn’t coming in herded the kid inside and toward the restrooms on the right. Hopefully that meant she’d decided to sit out the storm here.

A loud clap of thunder rattled the doors and the lights blinked off and on.

Edie leaned over the counter in front of him. “I’m sure glad you stopped in. I get spooked if I’m alone or with only one customer when the power goes off. Normally if I yell, any number of truckers would come to my rescue, but they’d never hear me in this storm.”

“Is the guy sitting in the back a regular?” Wyatt asked.

“Never seen him before.” She leaned in closer. “Hope to never see him again. The way he looks at me gives me the willies. That’s another reason I was glad to see you walk in. You look like a guy who can handle trouble.”

“Only when trouble throws the first punch.”

She smiled and stuck a paper napkin at his elbow. “Storms lure in lots of strangers, especially when the rain is falling so hard you can’t see to drive.”

Wyatt kept his gaze on the front of the café until the woman and kid came out of the restroom area. The woman looked around and met his gaze for one quick second before leading her daughter to a table at the front of the café.

The waitress sashayed over to them, starting up a new conversation about the storm.

“Just black coffee for me and a glass of milk for my daughter,” he heard the woman say once they got around to the order.

“Sure thing. Are you traveling much farther tonight?”

“Just to Mustang Run. I thought I had enough gas to get there, but then the gauge dropped so low I was afraid to chance it.”

“Good that you stopped and came in,” Edie said. “One of my regulars ran his truck off the road last time we had a gully washer like this.”

“We’re moving to my great-grandmother’s old house,” the kid said excitedly. “It has a big yard.”

“Lucky you. Is your daddy going to work in Mustang Run?”

“My daddy got sick and he’s in heaven,” the little girl said. “But I have a gramma Linda Ann in Plano. She’s a schoolteacher. At a college.”

So the woman was a widow, Wyatt considered. And she and her daughter were moving to the same small town as he was, on the same night.

Alyssa would claim it was serendipity and that he should go right over and introduce himself. But then Alyssa also believed that throwing pennies in the fountain in the courtyard of her favorite restaurant would help her meet the perfect man. If not, Facebook would.

“You’re going to love Mustang Run,” Edie said to the little girl. “I live about thirty minutes in the opposite direction, but I go into Mustang Run every year for the Bluebonnet Festival Dance. The locals are really friendly.” She turned to the woman. “And the cowboys are sooo cute.”

“I’m not looking for a cowboy.”

Wyatt hooked the heels of his Western boots on the stool’s rung. That ruled him out. Not that he worked with cows, but he was a cowboy in his soul.

“Where are you moving from?” Edie asked.

“East of here.”

You couldn’t get much more evasive that than, Wyatt thought. His cop instincts checked in and he wondered if she might be on the run—from the police or perhaps an unwanted lover.

“We’re getting a cat,” the little girl said.

“That will be nice,” Edie said. “I had a cat when I was young. I named it Princess.”

“I’m naming mine Belle. That’s a princess name.”

“It is. I like that.”

“My name is Jaci.”

“I like that, too. Now I better get back to my grill before I burn the ham.”

The thunder was now a constant growl in the background and the pounding on the metal roof sounded like hailstones. The lights blinked again as Edie pulled sliced tomatoes, lettuce leaves and jalapeños from a small built-in refrigerator beneath the counter.

Wyatt shifted on the stool so that he had a better view of the woman at the front table without staring obviously. His mind automatically sized her up the way he would a suspect. The hair was strawberry blond, clean and shiny. It was cut short and in wavy layers that flipped about her chin. She had a cute nose that turned up ever so slightly on the end.

Nice breasts. Slender hips—he’d noticed those when she was pumping gas. Full lips. Great smile—when she smiled.

Okay, so maybe he was noticing her more like a woman than a suspect. She did intrigue him, maybe because she was showing absolutely no interest in him.

She looked up, saw him watching her and shot him that same back-off stare she had aimed at him outside.

Once Edie put his sandwich in front of him, his concentration turned to the food. When he did look up, he caught the guy at the other end of the bar eyeing Jaci’s mother. Wyatt couldn’t fault him for noticing an attractive woman. He’d done the same.

But the way this guy was looking at her bothered Wyatt. He could see why the waitress felt uncomfortable around him.

Wyatt felt that copper’s itch to find some reason to ask for the man’s ID. He’d like to check him out and see if he had a record or an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

A few minutes later, the guy paid his tab, stood and swaggered toward the door. He stopped near the woman at the table and rested his right hand on his groin area, leering until the woman looked up. She glanced away quickly.

Wyatt’s muscles clenched. Badge or not, he wasn’t going to let the slimy weasel intimidate a woman while he was here to stop it.

But then the guy turned and strode out of the café and into the full fury of the storm.

By the time Wyatt had finished his sandwich and a second cup of coffee, the steady pelting against the roof had finally slacked off. The woman and kid were already pulling on their jackets. They left as Wyatt paid his tab.

He’d just shrugged into his own jacket when he heard the piercing wail. Adrenaline rushed his veins. He shoved his way out the door, his instincts already kicking in and ready for whatever he might find.

Anything except this.