*He could have let this silence go on. Instead, he heard words coming out of him. Words he hadn’t known were coming.
“You want to know why I did it this way? Going by Bill. Not telling Dad and Sue. Not telling other folks. It’s because at the start I knew I wasn’t ready for the big time. Might never be ready for it again. And I wanted to find out one way or the other without brass bands and fireworks all over the place. You said I didn’t want the spotlight on me and you were right. You can say that makes me a—”
“I don’t blame you.”
“—stiff-necked, stubborn— What?”
“I don’t blame you. That means,” she said with saintly patience that had one side of his mouth quirking up, “that I understand why you didn’t want all the attention a comeback by Chapin Johnson would stir up.”
“You sure weren’t understanding about it in Park.”
She turned her head away like she might have spotted something out the side window, though he didn’t see anything there except her reflection.
“Have you found out?” she asked.
He snorted. “Yet to finish in the money. Those results are pretty obvious, don’t you think?”
She turned back to him. “No. I don’t think. Because they’re not the answer to the question you really have — if you can make it to the big time again.”
He snorted. “How about if I can be decent again.”
“You know with time you’ll be better than that. You’re avoiding the real question. Have you found out?”
This time he said it straight out. “Yeah, I have.”
Her next question was there in her eyes.
He hadn’t even said the words to himself, but he had to answer her. “I can get back to the big time.”
Her breath came out in a soft “ah.”
“I can feel it. The rhythm, the … the knowing. The flow, I guess you’d call it. It’s starting to come with this hand.” He opened his left hand, looking at it a moment, before returning it to the steering wheel. “It’ll come.”
“As long as you can stay on the circuit and keep competing.”
“Yeah. As long as I can do that.”
*
Why the hell hadn’t he gone on to Bardville?
Why hadn’t they?
It was Monday morning and four of them — Chapin, Tate, Adam, and Goose — were hanging around like they were going to take up permanent residence in Sherman. She hadn’t seen Lindy, though the rumor was that she’d spent all her free time with that local roper.
Tate and Goose had the best reason to still be here, since they’d competed in the last go-round last night.
Chapin had wrapped up around sunset, so maybe he’d decided to wait to have daylight for the trip east across the Big Horn Basin, then winding up and over and down the Big Horn Mountains to reach Bardville.
But Adam had finished in the early afternoon. With the other two preparing to compete, she’d tailed him the short distance to the ratty motel where he was staying.
That was another weird thing. Ropers traveled with their own horses, so most stayed in their trailers to cut costs. Without earnings, why was Adam springing for a motel — even a dump like this?
She’d expected him to pack up and head out, but not long after he arrived, a pizza was delivered and Adam seemed to be settled in.
Bribing the hotel clerk to contact her if Adam left had been disgustingly easy. Disgusting because he clearly took her for a buckle bunny on the hunt.
At least he’d earned his money by letting her know that Adam checked out not long ago.
She was already in her vehicle at the rodeo grounds, but some distance from the competitors’ parking area.
She hadn’t seen Chapin, Tate, or Goose.
Adam arrived, presumably to tend his horses before the trip to Bardville. She lost sight of his truck. Had he parked?
Then a pickup came from between the rows of vehicles and headed for the exit to the highway.
Red, dust streaked. Not conspicuously old, not brand new.
Just like Chapin’s.
Her hands shook as she brought the binoculars up.
The shake didn’t matter because, with the sun coming in at her, the driver was a silhouette of a man in a cowboy hat.
She had a better view of the Wyoming license plate, but the number was smeared with mud. Like the one vehicle caught by a security camera.
She fought a wave a nausea.
He had to be a suspect. Logic said so. She couldn’t ignore that. Not for memories. Not for all the years of … caring about him. Not for anything.
She followed the pickup along Sherman’s main street, past the courthouse at the center of town, and then to the eastern edge, right past where the street transitioned to highway.
The pickup turned into the parking lot for a line of stores. Right next door to a standalone bank. Their parking lots backed up to each other with a strip of rough ground between them.
The pickup backed in on the side of the lot closest to the bank. She couldn’t be sure from this angle, but it looked like none of the bank’s windows or doors had a view of that area.
Her heart kathumped hard enough to bruise her ribs from the inside. She forced herself to keep breathing, turned on her signal and pulled into a gas station across the highway. It had a wide open lot to one side that gave her a view across the highway of the stores’ lot where the pickup was parked, as well as the bank.
The driver’s door of the pickup opened, though she couldn’t see much more than his cowboy hat because his pickup was between them.
This was it. He was going to rob the Cottonwood County Savings Bank.
What are you doing, Chapin Johnson? This isn’t you. Why don’t you know that anymore? What happened to you?
Fighting nausea, she pulled out the binoculars, found the pickup, and began to adjust the range.
Blurred, wavy stripes covered the world.
She blinked. Still only blurred, wavy stripes. She looked over the top of the binoculars.
No. No, no, no.
An eighteen-wheeler had rolled to a stop in the front of the gas station lot. Between her and the road. Between her and the pickup and bank. Between her and Chapin.
The stripes were streaks of dust and dirt across the truck’s side. And now … the driver was getting out. This wasn’t a momentary pause before it pulled back onto the road, this was a late breakfast or a coffee break or some other kind of break. And no matter what kind it was, it was going to be too long.
Was this an omen? Was she not meant to witness the event that would send Chapin to prison? If she didn’t see it, how could she turn him in? She certainly couldn’t testify against him. She could pretend—
No. No, she couldn’t pretend.
She had to do what was right. For Betsy. For the WRC. For the Knight brothers. For herself. Maybe even for Chapin, because if he kept doing this, he was going to get killed and, yes, she knew he’d prefer that to—
She dropped the binoculars and reached for her phone to take video. Because his preferences weren’t the issue anymore. He’d forfeited that right if he’d put a comeback in rodeo ahead of anything or anyone — ahead of honesty.
The binoculars ticked the phone, sending it sliding off the seat and into the air. She grabbed for it and missed. It clunked to the floorboards, the back coming off and spewing out the battery.
Twisting sideways, she grabbed the main part of the phone. The battery had gone under the passenger seat. She got that, too. But the back eluded her. Would it work without the back? If she held the battery in place—? She undid the seatbelt and lunged deeper into the passenger footwell. There it was. Just beyond her reach. A little more… Got it.
She was out the pickup door, leaving it open, keys still in the ignition as she jammed the battery in place and closed the back with shaking fingers.
The screen came to life as she came around the back edge of the truck—
And saw no sign of Chapin.
The truck was there. The bank was there. But no person was in sight. And everything seemed peaceful.
Could she be wrong?
Could he have gone into one of the stores? Was this all perfectly innocent?
She zoomed the camera to see into the convenience store. No sign of Chapin, though she couldn’t see all the way to the back. With some difficulty, she got a view into what looked to be a dentist’s office next door. But beyond that, the angle was bad and why he’d have gone into an accountant’s office she couldn’t imagine.
Or— Oh, God — was he in the bank already? Could he have walked that distance in the time between when she last spotted him and when she got here to the corner of the truck and had been able to see again?
Yes. He could have.
She swung the camera toward the bank.
Should she call the police?
And say, what? There’s a pickup parked near a bank, but far enough away that I think the driver’s in robbing the bank? Right.
She hit the zoom, trying to see inside the bank, but the sun glinted off the door and front window, so she couldn’t really see—
“What are you doing?”
The abrupt voice from behind her inspired a jump that could have won her an Olympic medal. Bronze for sure. Maybe silver.
And if there were a medal for fastest time for heart leaping into throat, she had gold all the way.
She spun around.
Chapin.
Chapin!
William Chapin Johnson.
In the flesh. The broad-shouldered, dimpled-cheek, smoldery-eyed flesh.
“You’re not—?” Her head spun back to the bank — where William Chapin Johnson wasn’t — then returned to the man standing beside her.
“But your truck?”
“What about my truck?” He looked more confused than she had ever seen him.
And then she turned and saw the red pickup, dust-streaked, not too old, not too new, parked behind her vehicle. Not across the highway.
“Oh, my God. It’s not you. It’s. Not. You.”
“Of course it’s me. Right here in front of you. What is the matter with you, Regina Marie? You’re acting like a crazy woman.”
He was so beautifully, gloriously confused.
“You don’t understand, Chapin. It’s not you.”
“You’re damned right I don’t understand, including why you’re grinning that way. What—”
“But what are you doing here? How did you—? No. Never mind that now because—”
“Seems to me you’re not minding anything. You left the keys in the ignition and the door open while you— What are you doing now?”
Thinking. Finally, her brain had kicked in.
Since Chapin was here, who had driven that other pickup? She’d thought it was Chapin’s truck. So it might be a perfectly innocent person, out for a little shopping? Or—
She twisted around and spotted a figure, cowboy hat low, jacket collar high, sunglasses big, just reaching the back of the pickup, coming from the direction of the bank. Not appearing in any particular hurry. Without anything to compare it to, it was hard to gauge height.
Was that a shopping bag the figure was carrying?
She zoomed in, clicking as fast as she could.
“What on earth, Regina?”
It was a grocery bag. Exactly as Betsy described.
“It’s him. It’s him.”
And in the other hand, a metallic glint. A gun?
“Who?” Chapin demanded. “What are you—?”
“I don’t know who. I thought it was—”
“Hey! What’re you doing by my truck?” A beefy hand fell on her shoulder and spun her partway around.
Chapin stepped in. “Get your hands off the lady.”
The gallantry was great, but he’d hit her elbow, the phone went flying again. And came apart again, as if she hadn’t secured the back as well as she’d thought.
“Arrrgggghhhh” She twisted away from the truck driver’s hold and scrambled to pick up the pieces at the same time trying to keep an eye on what was going on across the highway. But bent over like this, traffic blocked her view, and that blankety-blank back cover had skidded away again. She was going to nail the thing on first chance she had—
She got off photos as she straightened, but the driver was already in the pickup, not to mention he’d walked along the far side of it, so the truck would have blocked her view.
No one had followed him out of the bank yet. Had he blocked the doors again with a metal rod?
Chapin and the truck driver were still exchanging words. She spun and sprinted to her truck. If she could get in behind the pickup and get close enough, maybe even with the mud she could—
“Hey. Hey.”
This time it was Chapin yelling at her. She didn’t slow.
She was in the truck, door closed, reaching for the keys—
No longer in the ignition.
Chapin ran up to her window. “What the hell is going on, Regina?”
“Give me the keys. Now.”
“First, you tell me—”
“Chapin. Now. I need them now.”
He looked at her for another beat, then handed the keys in through the window. But he also ran around the front of the truck and was in the passenger seat, yanking the door closed as she spurted forward.
Only to be cut off by the lumbering eighteen-wheeler rolling across her path to the exit.
She reversed, yanked the steering wheel, and sped toward the other exit. She tromped on the accelerator to cross in front of a line of approaching traffic and headed the same way the red pickup had gone.
Except there was no red pickup in sight.
“Who are you chasing?”
“I told you, I don’t know who.”
“What are you chasing?” Chapin asked
“Red pickup. Looks like yours.”
She felt his gaze come to her face, but she had no time to return it. “Like—?” He cut himself off. And turned his gaze back to the road.
“Look in the lots. Do you see him? He could have pulled into any of them.”
“I’m looking. But there are red pickups all over and he could have turned either way down this crossroad coming up.”
“Maybe we’re behind him. He didn’t have that big a lead on us— Damn.”
The red light gods had mocked her optimism about the size of the fugitive’s lead. She might have run it, but the vehicle in front of her had stopped.
“Regina—”
“Not yet. No time yet. Keep looking. And put your seat belt on. As soon as the light changes—”
Which it did right then.
But you wouldn’t have known it for the vehicles blocking her way.
The car in front inched ahead of the one in the next lane, tormenting with its slowness. Finally, she had space to squeeze ahead and down the highway.
No red pickup.
At least not the one she wanted.
The town ran out. They’d reached open highway. No red pickup. Not even a dust trail.
She pulled over to the shoulder, aware of Chapin watching her. But able now only to hold onto the steering wheel and look straight ahead.
“What’s going on?” He asked it so softly, so gently.
She pulled in a breath to explain.
What came out was, “It’s not you,” then a stream of tears.