Chapter Nine
The grocery store parking lot in Yuccaville looked like an old pickup truck rally was in progress. Sitting behind the steering wheel in Grady’s truck, Ronnie blended in with all the others—well, almost. Grady’s rig was relatively new in comparison, but it was dusty as hell, same as many of the dented, sun-faded rally participants.
She checked her cell phone for the time. Duty called. She had a half-hour to grab the items on the list Butch had texted to her. That would leave her enough of a window to swing by and pick up Mindy Lou, saving Penny a drive to Jackrabbit Junction.
Grady’s niece was the main reason Ronnie was borrowing his pickup this morning. Normally, she shied away from driving his rig for multiple reasons—a couple were silly and had to do with where she felt they were (or were not) at this point in their relationship; others were more practical, such as a possible lack of insurance coverage and her qualms about operating a big vehicle.
Pocketing the keys, she pulled up Butch’s list on her phone and headed inside the grocery store. The produce department seemed busier than usual this morning and filled with shoppers who had all of the time in the world to pick out the perfect apples or check every head of lettuce for the smallest sign of wilt.
She was almost through her grocery list with tomatoes being the final item when her cell phone pinged. Figuring Butch had something else to add, she pulled up the message. It wasn’t from Butch. It was from a different area code, one she wasn’t familiar with in these parts or from back home in South Dakota.
Leaning on the cart’s handle, she checked the message: I’ve been looking 4 U. Now U R mine.
She froze and read the words again.
Who sent this? Glancing around, she looked to see if someone was watching her this very moment. But the other shoppers were still busy scrutinizing the fruits and veggies.
“Calm down,” she whispered to the heavy-breathing neurotic woman in her head who wanted her to run back to Grady’s pickup and hide inside with the doors locked.
She looked at the phone number again, pondering the area code: 323. Where was that from? She did a quick search for it on her phone … Los Angeles. Okay, so who did she know from L.A.?
Uh, nobody, that was who.
But there were probably lots of cartel hitmen living there.
Her heart started beating in double time. Shit. She needed to get the hell out of here and back to The Shaft where Mississippi—and his gun—would be watching over her.
Glancing around again, she grabbed a plastic bag from the roll provided by the store and hurried over to the tomatoes. She just needed a dozen.
She tried to open the end of the bag, but her fingers were too sweaty and slid over the plastic. Scowling, she wiped her hands off on her pants and tried again, realizing she was trying to open the wrong end. Damn it, why didn’t they print on the plastic which way was up? She flipped the bag around and tried to open it, but the bag slipped out of her hands and fluttered to the floor.
“Oh, screw you!” She bent down to grab it. When she came back up, someone was standing next to her.
She let out a yelp of surprise and took a wild, right-handed swing at the person before reason caught up with panic.
Sadie Jenkins leaned back, barely avoiding Ronnie’s fist. “Whoa!”
“Sadie!” Ronnie clutched the plastic bag to her heart. “Jesus, I’m so sorry. You … you scared the hell out of me.”
The other woman’s dark eyes roved over Ronnie’s face. “Yeah, I can see that.”
Her pulse still pounding in her ears, Ronnie glanced around the produce section. Several shoppers were watching her now, including an employee in a green apron, who was stocking the cucumbers. She focused back on Sadie, who looked like a tall ninja in her black seersucker-like shirt, pants, and combat boots. All she was missing was a hood to replace the black stocking hat she was wearing. And a samurai sword.
Sadie took the plastic bag from Ronnie and opened it, grabbing a tomato and slipping it inside. “You’re a pretty uptight babe, aren’t you?”
Ronnie grasped the edge of the tomato display to hide her shaking hands, smiling as she tried to pretend her heart hadn’t nearly exploded a moment ago. “You surprised me, that’s all.”
The frown Sadie gave her made it clear she wasn’t buying Ronnie’s line of hogwash, but she shrugged and handed her the bagged tomato. “How many more do you need?”
“A dozen total,” she said.
Together they picked out the tomatoes in silence.
“So, what’s your deal today?” Sadie asked as Ronnie tied the plastic bag shut.
“I’m getting a few groceries for The Shaft,” Ronnie answered, ignoring the deeper question.
“Right.” Again, it was obvious Sadie saw through Ronnie’s smoke, but she didn’t push for more.
“What are you doing here?” Ronnie asked, realizing that Sadie had no cart or basket of her own.
“Taking care of a few things.” She reached into her back pocket. “Which reminds me, I wanted to give this to you.”
Ronnie frowned down at what looked like a credit card. “What’s that?’
“It’s a thank-you for helping me.” When Ronnie just looked at Sadie, she added, “And my mom.”
Ronnie shook her head. “I told you I didn’t want anything for that.”
“I know, but where I come from, you reward people for saving lives.” She held the card out toward Ronnie. “Please, take it.”
Ronnie didn’t. “Where is that?”
“Where is what?”
“Where you’re from.”
“Around here,” Sadie said and took a step back.
“You mean Yuccaville?”
“I mean in this general area.”
“Of the county,” Ronnie pressed.
“Yep.”
Something didn’t add up with Sadie and her mom. “How did you find out my name?” Ronnie asked the question she’d wondered since Sadie had come into The Shaft yesterday.
“I asked one of the other customers who was in the diner.”
Ronnie thought back to that moment, trying to remember who else had been there. She didn’t remember seeing anyone she knew outside of her sisters and Penny. Especially anyone who might know her as “Veronica Jefferson” rather than Ronnie Morgan.
“What did this customer look like?”
Sadie waved her off. “That’s not important.” She held out the card again, practically shoving it into Ronnie’s hand. “Please, take this gift card as thanks. It would mean a lot to me if you’d just let me even the score.”
“I really don’t think—” Ronnie started.
Sadie leaned closer and whispered, “It’s a thousand-dollar gift card.”
Ronnie frowned down at the card Sadie held between them. A thousand dollars, huh? She could buy a good amount of clothes with that in Tucson, including a few nice pairs of shoes. Maybe even something sexy to keep Grady’s focus on her and not his damned ex with all of her curves and cute blond hairdo.
She started to reach toward the card, but then paused. Then again, good deeds were done from the heart, not for money. If she were going to try to clean up her act for the sake of Grady’s future as the county sheriff, she needed to act like he would in this situation. He would never take money for saving a life. No, that was his job every day—helping citizens stay safe.
Shaking her head, she pushed Sadie’s hand away. “I told you before, I don’t want a reward for saving your mom. I’m just glad I was there to help.”
Sadie growled, rolling her eyes. “You’re a real pain in my ass, Veronica.” She pocketed the card. “There must be an amount that would change your mind.”
“No.”
“Two thousand?”
That would buy her even more much-needed clothes. “No money.”
“Five thousand?”
Now Sadie had to be messing with her. Ronnie laughed. “You’re funny.”
“I’m serious.”
“Yeah, right.” Ronnie patted Sadie on the shoulder. “I gotta go.” Mindy Lou would be waiting for her by now. She pushed her cart toward the cashiers.
“Veronica,” Sadie called after her.
She looked back as she rolled along. “Call me Ronnie. And tell your mom I hope she’s doing well.”
Sadie scowled after her.
While the cashier rang up her goods, she took another glance at her phone and breathed a sigh of relief at a lack of any more messages.
Outside in the parking lot, Ronnie rushed to Grady’s pickup, breathing easier after she’d closed and locked herself inside. The cab smelled like him—a hint of bay rum with spicy undertones. His scent calmed her nerves, but her hands still trembled when she grabbed the steering wheel and turned out of the parking lot.
I’ve been looking 4 U. Now U R mine.
Criminy, who in the hell had texted her that message? Should she try calling the phone number back and see who answered? She glanced in the rearview mirror a few times as she turned right and then left on her way to pick up Mindy Lou, checking to see if anyone was following her. The street was mostly empty behind her, none of the vehicles taking the same route as she was.
She checked the phone when she paused at a stop sign, reading the cryptic message again. Was it really meant for her? It could be a message for whoever had this phone number before her. She’d only had it for a little over a month. Or maybe the sender had texted the wrong number by mistake.
Should she show it to Grady? God, he had so many things on his plate already. She hated to add to his load if this was simply a wrong-number text. She could show Mississippi. Right, and then send the FBI after some poor person who didn’t mean to text her number. Their life would become a nightmare. She knew that from her own experience with the FBI and some of their initial false accusations.
Maybe she should start with Claire and Katie and see what they thought. They might know how to find out more about where that text came from without making a big deal out of something that could be nothing.
Mindy Lou was waiting under a patio awning next to Penny’s front door when she pulled into the drive at the address Grady had written down for her this morning before he’d headed in to work. The girl stood up from a wicker chair with orange cushions, grabbing a travel drink cup from the ledge of the stucco wall surrounding part of the patio.
Ronnie had never been to Penny’s place before. It was a cute adobe mission-style house with a yard that looked like a desert garden. Ocotillo, cholla, and prickly pear cacti were mixed with a couple of mesquite trees and boulders placed here and there. The windows had deep red shutters on both sides with yellow sunflowers painted on them. The patio’s roof and columns looked like they were of the same wood as the beams sticking out of the stucco walls.
Mindy Lou pulled open the pickup door, smiling at Ronnie as she climbed inside and clicked into her seatbelt. “Thanks for taking me to work.”
Ronnie spared one last look at Penny’s house, wondering if it was as stylish on the inside as the curb appeal hinted. She backed onto the street, checking again for any suspicious vehicles, seeing nothing but the usual sort—older pickups and dusty cars.
“Happy to give you a lift. I usually need one myself.”
“You don’t have a car?”
Ronnie shook her head. “I’m saving up for one, though. Most days I hitch a ride with one of my sisters or your uncle.”
Mindy Lou took a drink from her cup. “I lost my license for six months for driving without insurance after an incident with an old broad. Then the bank came and towed my car away because I hadn’t made any payments in a while. So, I’m starting back at square one.”
“What a coincidence, I just recently made it up to square one from deep in a hole. We can move forward together.”
“Deal.” Mindy Lou reached forward and turned the radio dial from Willie Nelson’s song about a train called The City of New Orleans to Bad Company going on about … Well, being bad company. Ronnie could relate these days.
“You really like Uncle Grady, don’t you?” Mindy said, out of nowhere.
Ronnie’s cheeks warmed. She hadn’t expected to talk about Grady this morning, certainly not with his niece. “Sure. He’s a great guy.”
“Yeah, but a little bossy.”
Ronnie chuckled. “More than a little sometimes.”
“I think that comes with the badge.” Mindy Lou took a sip from her cup, staring out the windshield. “Do you love him?”
Wow. So, they weren’t going to dawdle with weather talk this morning.
Ronnie weighed her answer, not sure how much Grady had told his family about her or their relationship. Sure, they were sleeping together, but it wasn’t like she’d moved in with him or they’d discussed future co-habiting arrangements. Although he had offered to let her stay at his place on a more permanent basis after Gramps’s Winnebago had burned up, Ronnie had resisted committing to anything on that level. Once she moved in, there wasn’t an easy way to back out if she needed to make a run for the hills emotionally.
She supposed if she’d gone to his mom’s birthday party earlier this month when he’d asked instead of chickening out, she would be more comfortable with telling his niece the truth this morning.
“Well, we haven’t really … ” Ronnie paused, not wanting to say something that could get back to Grady and cause her even more problems. “I mean, we’ve really only been together for … ” She shifted in her seat. “I don’t know if he would like … ” She corralled her bumbling tongue and took a breath. Fuck it. “Yeah, I love him.”
Mindy Lou grinned at her. “Good. He deserves someone better than that rich bitch.”
“You mean Elizabeth.”
“Yeah. What she did to him was so wrong.”
“I agree. My ex royally screwed me over, too, so I get how that feels.”
“My great-aunt, Millie, thinks you’re pretty badass.”
“She does?” That was quite a compliment from Millie, who was the ringleader of her own band of ass-kickers.
“She said you have a posse.”
Shazbot. Millie needed to keep that under wraps. Grady got squinty-eyed whenever anyone brought up the posse.
“Well, my sisters and I and a couple of others formed one when we were kids, but it was just for fun. Sort of like a club, you know.”
“That’s not the way Aunt Millie described it.”
Ronnie gripped the steering wheel tighter, imagining how lined Grady’s forehead would be if he were listening in on this conversation. “She’s exaggerating. Your aunt Millie is a real cutup.”
“That’s true.” Mindy Lou leaned back as they headed out of Yuccaville and hit the open desert. “You’re gonna need more help, you know.”
“What do you mean? At the bar?”
“No, with taking on that cheating bitch. Elizabeth’s family practically owns half of the town. They’ve been here for generations and multiplied like jackrabbits.”
Ronnie growled under her breath. Jesus, she didn’t need to deal with this right now. Not when she was getting creepy texts and watching in the rearview mirror all of the time for someone hunting her down.
“You have any advice for keeping Elizabeth at bay?” she asked Mindy Lou, forcing a smile. She would keep her shit together, dammit, come hell or hired hitmen or rich bitches.
“I sure do.” Mindy smiled back, only hers had a sharp edge of malice. “You need to let me join your posse crew. After spending a few months down and out with other gutter dwellers, I know some people who might be able to help you take Ms. High-and-Mighty Elizabeth down a few notches.”