JESSE AND KEEGAN FOLLOWED Echo back to the store in their separate vehicles, then stood on the sidewalk at her elbows, like a pair of Secret Service agents flanking a First Lady. The instant she opened the front door, she knew something was wrong.
The breeze, which should have been coming from behind her, cooled her face and raised the small hairs on her forearms.
She took a step inside, dropped her handbag on the floor. “Avalon?” she called, thick-throated. Then, remembering, “Snowball?”
No answering bark.
The rear door slammed. An engine revved, then backfired.
Her intuition, already in overdrive, kicked in big-time.
“My dog!” Echo yelled, bolting for the storeroom, behind the stairs. “He’s stealing my dog!” “He,” she knew instinctively, was Bud Willand.
“The alley,” she heard one McKettrick man say to the other.
“Snowball!”
Tires peeled out on hard dirt, flinging gravel, though Echo, in mid-dash, couldn’t be certain whether the sounds came from the front of the shop or the back. Or both.
The alley door, padlocked since she’d taken possession of the property, stood gaping. She bolted through the opening, fists clenched at her sides, ready to fight.
Sure enough, an old truck careered along the narrow passage between the back of Echo’s shop and someone’s detached garage, on the other side, hurling up so much dust that Echo could barely make out the figure of her dog, sitting stalwartly in the back.
Echo ran after the truck.
Meanwhile, a second truck, Jesse’s, screeched to a halt at the end of the alleyway, broadside, blocking the first truck’s escape. Keegan covered the only other escape route, parking his Jag and hitting the ground running.
He went by Echo, who was running at top speed, as though she were standing still, but even before he reached the scene, Jesse had wrenched open the door of Bud Willand’s truck and dragged him out by the shirt.
“Chill, man,” Willand blustered. “I was only taking back my own property!”
Jesse flung Willand hard against the side of the truck. “I’d shut up if I were you,” he said.
Willand sank to the running board and sat with his head in his hands.
Meanwhile, Echo tugged at the tailgate, trying to free Snowball, who leaned over the top and laved her forehead with a sandpaper tongue.
Keegan eased her aside, opened the latch on the tailgate and lowered it, before lifting Snowball in both arms and setting her on the ground.
Echo dropped to her knees and put her arms around Snowball, their foreheads touching.
“Damn piece of shit dog bit me,” Willand complained.
“Just goes to show how glad she must have been to see you,” Jesse said. “And I told you to shut up.”
Keegan, meanwhile, was on his cell phone. “Wyatt?” he said. “Keegan McKettrick. We’ve got a case of breaking and entering and burglary in the alley behind the Curl and Twirl.”
“McKettricks,” Willand muttered. “Christ, if it weren’t for shit-luck, I’d have no luck at all.”
“Keep talking,” Jesse said. “I have a penchant for violence.”
Echo got back to her feet, wobbling a little. She wasn’t a runner, and besides, her shoes were all wrong. “Thank you,” she said as Keegan flipped his cell phone shut.
He gave her a tilted grin and nodded. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, though now that the adrenaline rush was subsiding, she thought she might faint.
The legendary Wyatt Terp, whom Echo had never met but had heard about from Cora, arrived at Jesse’s end of the alley in record time, with siren blaring and light-bar spewing splashes of official blue and red.
“What happened here?” Wyatt asked, sprint-trotting toward them.
“This man,” Echo said, pointing at Bud Willand’s cowering bulk, still quivering on the running board, “broke into my shop and stole my dog.”
“Give me a break,” Willand said.
“Can I hurt him?” Jesse asked Wyatt.
“No,” Wyatt responded with a note of unmistakable regret.
Wyatt ambled back to the rear of Echo’s shop and inspected the damage. “Breaking and entering, all right,” he said, returning. “You want to press charges, miss?”
“Yes,” Echo said staunchly.
“Let’s see your ID, buddy,” Wyatt told Willand.
Grumbling, Willand fished out his wallet, extracted a driver’s license.
“Expired,” Wyatt said.
“The shit-luck just keeps on comin’,” Jesse philosophized.
Willand was handcuffed and hustled to the end of the alley.
The sweet sound of Miranda rights trailed back to Echo, Jesse and Keegan.
“Phew,” Echo said.
Jesse and Keegan walked back with her, Snowball trotting along in front as cheerfully as though dog-napping and subsequent heroic rescue were a regular part of her experience.
“She’s not really my dog, you know,” Echo confessed when they were all inside.
Jesse and Keegan exchanged glances.
“She belongs to some people named Ademoye. Herb and Marge. They’re on their way to get her right now.” Tears welled in Echo’s eyes, and she blinked them away.
“What’s with the redneck?” Jesse asked, cocking his thumb in the direction Bud Willand and Wyatt had gone.
“He tried to claim Snowball once before,” Echo explained, still a little dazed. “He was really quite intimidating. But Rance made him leave.”
Rance. Just thinking of him opened a trap door in the pit of Echo’s soul, and she thought she might retract to a speck and fall right through, into oblivion.
By then, Keegan was examining what passed for a padlock. “Hell,” he said. “My ten-year-old daughter could have broken this thing.”
Snowball/Avalon gave Echo’s hand a lick, then went off to climb the stairs, no doubt headed for her airbed.
Jesse proceeded to the front of the store. “This one isn’t much better,” he called back to Keegan, while Echo stood in between, like a net at a tennis match.
“Hardware store,” Keegan decided.
“Big time,” Jesse agreed.
“I probably should go over to the police station and sign a complaint,” Echo said, just to be part of the conversation.
Jesse nodded.
“You hold down the fort,” Keegan told his cousin, talking over Echo’s head. “I’ll go get the locks and a few tools.”
“Tools,” Jesse said, with a deliberately idiotic grin, and made a Tim Allen, Home Improvement kind of sound, which Keegan dutifully returned.
Echo went upstairs, told Snowball she’d be safe with Jesse, downed two glasses of water to rehydrate herself, and headed for the cop shop.
Bud Willand sat in the front office, his greasy head down, hands still cuffed behind him.
“You’re not really going to do this, are you?” he asked plaintively when Echo appeared.
“You’d better believe I am,” she answered.
He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Please,” she said, straightening her spine and lifting her chin.
Wyatt Terp, watching the whole exchange from the water cooler, smiled and approached.
“Look,” Willand pleaded. “I’m not a criminal. Just an ordinary guy, trying to make his way.”
“You know what?” Echo responded. “That’s what the loser who tried to mug me said one night in Chicago, when a passerby turned out to be a plainclothes detective. I think a forensic scientist could still scrape bits of his DNA up off that particular sidewalk—the mugger’s, I mean. He’s doing three to five at Joliet.”
“I guess that means you’re going to press charges?” Willand ventured.
Echo widened her eyes. “And I thought you were terminally stupid,” she said.
Wyatt laid a form on the desk. The pertinent details were already filled in.
Echo found the appropriate line and signed with a flourish.
Willand groaned. Then, a beat too late, his gaze turned shrewd. “I’ll be out on bail, you know,” he said. “Most likely before morning.”
Wyatt leaned in. “Are you threatening a citizen of my town?” he asked very quietly.
“Who are you kidding?” Willand retaliated, but he shrunk a little inside his filthy, wife-beater T-shirt. “This is the McKettricks’ town—everybody knows that.”
The lawman smiled and beckoned to a passing deputy. “Mr. Willand is weary of our company,” he said to the other officer. “Why don’t you tuck him away in a nice, quiet cell.”
The deputy nodded and hoisted Bud to his feet. Shuffled him through a rear door that whooshed hydraulically and closed with an authoritative snap.
Some of Echo’s bravado drained away. “Do you think he’ll bother me?” she asked, looking not at Wyatt but at the door through which Willand and the deputy had disappeared. “He’s probably right about making bail before morning, you know.”
Wyatt smiled again. “He’s right about something else, too,” he said.
“What?” Echo asked, turning to go.
“This is the McKettricks’ town.”
Echo wondered, as she left the police station, if Wyatt had meant that statement to be reassuring.
RANCE WAS IN AN AFTERNOON meeting when his cell phone vibrated in his shirt pocket. Frowning, he extracted it, looked at the caller ID panel, recognized Keegan’s mobile number, and just about had a heart attack.
Stateside calls were routine, of course, but they always came from the San Antonio offices, the Indian Rock branch, or one of the houses on the Triple M.
A series of possible tragedies reeled through Rance’s mind, and he broke out in a cold sweat. He excused himself with the obligatory bows of the head, and made for the corridor.
“Rance,” he barked into the cell phone, bracing himself.
Maeve. Rianna.
Echo.
“Everybody’s okay,” Keegan said immediately.
Rance nearly collapsed against the corridor wall. “Damn it,” he rasped, shoving his free hand through his hair. “It must be the middle of the night over there—I thought—”
“I know what you thought,” Keegan answered, “and I’m sorry. It’s not ‘the middle of the night,’ it’s ten o’clock. I thought you’d want to know there was some trouble at Echo’s place earlier in the evening.”
Rance’s gut seized, hard. “What kind of trouble?”
“Take it easy,” Keegan counseled. “Jesse and I handled it, with some help from Wyatt. Some yahoo broke in the back way, while the three of us were having dinner at the Roadhouse, and took her dog.”
Rance felt the blood drain from his face. Hell, from his whole body. He wouldn’t have been surprised to look down and see the stuff lapping at his shoes. “Is she all right?”
“I said we handled it, didn’t I?”
“What about the dog?”
Keegan chuckled. “No damage,” he said.
Rance ran a hand over his face. He needed a shave. “You said Wyatt was involved?”
“He made the bust. The guy’s in jail. Jesse and I replaced the locks on the shop doors, front and back.”
Rance was both relieved and a little annoyed that his cousins, not him, had been there for Echo when the proverbial chips were down. “Thanks,” he said.
Keegan chuckled again. “I can tell you’re thrilled.”
“So the three of you had dinner together,” Rance said.
“Yeah,” Keegan answered, a little smugly, and there was a smile in his voice as big as the ranch. “I don’t mind telling you, if you’re not interested—”
“Stop right there,” Rance warned.
Keegan laughed. A couple of Taiwanese businessmen came out of the conference room, gave Rance sidelong glances of polite curiosity and headed for the men’s room. “According to the lovely Ms. Wells, there’s nothing going on between the two of you.”
Rance remembered the way the headboard had slammed against the wall while he and Echo were making love. He’d be lucky if he didn’t have to spackle and repaint, just to hide the evidence. “That’s right,” he said, biting the words off as if they were chunks of beef jerky well past the sell-by date.
“You are so full of shit,” Keegan said.
“Did you call me to say that?” Rance snapped.
“Hallmark didn’t have a card, so I had to relay the sentiment via satellite,” Keegan answered. He paused, the way he always did when he was about to deliver a zinger. “Listen,” he said at last, “if she says there’s nothing going on between you, and you say there’s nothing going on between you, what’s to stop me from turning on the charm?”
“My fist,” Rance said, serious as the heart attack he’d fully expected to have in the conference room a few minutes before.
“We may have to settle this behind the barn,” Keegan answered mildly. And then, just like that, he rang off, leaving Rance standing in a foreign corridor, holding a cell phone suspended in midair and blowing fire from his nostrils.
He shrugged, bowed to the next executive escaping the conference room, and calmly keyed in another number.
“McKettrickCo, San Antonio,” said a smiling female voice from halfway around the world.
“This is Rance,” he said. “I want the jet.”
THE SHOP TELEPHONE RANG first thing the next morning, before Echo had even opened for business. She’d slept with one eyelid raised, terrified that Bud Willand would make bail and come straight for her, and now she felt frazzled, so she might have been just a touch on the snappish side when she said, “Good morning. Echo’s Books and Gifts.”
There was a moment of silence.
“This is Marge Ademoye,” Snowball’s true owner said tentatively.
“Marge,” Echo said, sighing the name. “Hello.” She looked down at Snowball, who gazed up at her with the usual fathomless devotion. Then she swallowed a lump. “Hello,” she repeated.
“How is Snowball?” Marge asked, sounding relieved.
“She’s fine,” Echo answered, because Snowball was fine, thanks to Jesse and Keegan. No sense in worrying the Ademoyes with the Bud Willand story, when they were still on the road and helpless to protect their dog.
“We made it as far as Boise,” Marge said. “Then Herb had a little incident with his pacemaker. It might be a few more days before we can get there. I could send you something for taking care of Snowball—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Echo broke in gently, ashamed of the surge of relief that made her lean against the counter’s edge and lower her head. Poor Herb had pacemaker problems in Boise and she was relieved? “She’s no trouble at all.”
“You’ve become attached to her, haven’t you?” Marge asked, with a tenderness and perception that took Echo completely by surprise. After all, the woman was a complete stranger, hundreds of miles away, and they weren’t on picture phones.
“Yes,” Echo admitted.
“It would be impossible not to be,” Marge said. “That dog is a saint. When Herb came home from the hospital, after his prostate surgery, she wouldn’t leave his side for a week.”
Echo looked down at Snowball, whose ears were perked, as though she could hear Marge’s voice, and maybe she could. Yes, Echo thought, it would be impossible not to become attached to this dog—unless you were somebody like Bud Willand.
She shook off the image of that odious man and fuel-injected a smile into her voice. “Would you like to say hello to Snowball?” she asked.
“I’d love to,” Marge said, and she sounded choked up.
“Give me a second,” Echo replied, and lowered the receiver to Snowball’s ear.
Marge spoke, and Snowball gave a little yelp, swishing her tail hard from side to side.
Echo crouched beside Snowball, stroking her.
Marge was just finishing when Echo put the phone back to her own ear. “And we’ll be so glad to see our sweet puppy—”
Echo waited a moment or two, then said, “She’ll be waiting for you, Marge.”
“Thank you,” Marge said, and promptly burst into tears. After a little recovery time, she apologized. “I’m sorry. It’s just that we’ve been so worried, and now there’s Herb’s pacemaker—”
“Take your time,” Echo told her. “Snowball misses you, but she’s fine, really.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” Marge said after one last sniffle.
There was a jiggling sound at the front door, and Echo’s gaze darted in that direction—she fully expected to see Bud Willand looming on the other side. Instead, it was Ayanna, with her key in hand, looking baffled.
Echo waved, said goodbye to Marge, hung up and hurried over to let her friend into the shop.
Burdened with two lattes, Ayanna stepped past her.
“I know I’m not on the schedule for this morning,” she said, “but this love-spell thing is heating up, and I thought you might need help.”
“Heating up?” Echo echoed, frowning. What with all that had happened the night before, and then the call from Marge, she was having trouble getting up to speed with current events.
“There could be a riot,” Ayanna confided, handing over one of the lattes.
Echo thanked her, breathed in the heady aroma of strong coffee, foaming with full-fat milk, and parroted stupidly, “A riot?”
She definitely needed a serious jolt of caffeine.
“I was at the post office, not twenty minutes ago,” Ayanna told her, turning to peer through the display window like a private eye suspecting a tail, “and I almost didn’t dare stop for this coffee.” She faced Echo again. “Jessica Borger’s mother was there. At the post office, I mean. Three boys asked Jessica to the dance before supper was on the table last night. Three of them. The kid’s probably at her computer right now, composing a testimonial.”
Echo beamed. “But that’s wonderful!” Her smile faded, as the possible implications struck home. “Isn’t it?”
“If you’re up for a stampede,” Ayanna answered, checking the sidewalk and street again. “Half the high school will probably be in here, demanding love-spells, once they wake up.”
Echo put a hand to her mouth.
“Then there are the old maids and the divorcées,” Ayanna went on. “They don’t sleep in, the way teenagers do.”
“Yikes,” Echo said, resisting an urge to fling herself bodily against the door. “What am I going to do?”
“I’d be for stuffing a boxcar-load of those little velvet bags,” Ayanna said.
Before Echo could answer, Cora bustled in.
“Whoop-de-do,” she cried jubilantly. “Nothing this big has hit Indian Rock since that time in the eighties, when we accidentally got a shipment of Cabbage Patch Kids bound for a Wal-Mart in Flagstaff!”
Echo could almost hear the hordes, thundering toward her. She’d be trampled. And, once these people came to their senses, run out of town on a rail. Maybe even thrown into Wyatt Terp’s jail for fraud. In the cell adjacent to Bud Willand’s.
She spilled her guts. “I get the bags from a wholesaler in Hoboken!”
Snowball whimpered, sensing disaster. Or perhaps, Echo thought wildly, with her superior canine hearing, she’d already caught the pounding of approaching feet.
“Lock the door!” Echo cried.
Cora stared at her. “Are you out of your mind, girl? They’d break it down. Besides—you’re in business. You’ve got to think about the bottom line!”
“We’d better start stuffing,” Ayanna said.
Echo dragged out the box of supplies from behind the counter, and the three women were on their knees around it in a heartbeat, jamming prayers, stones and feathers into little bags.
Maeve and Rianna soon arrived from next door and immediately started helping.
The first onslaught came fifteen minutes later.
“I wonder what kept them?” Cora muttered, when no less than fourteen women blew in like a desert whirlwind, waving twenty dollar bills.
Ayanna manned the cash register, while Cora, Echo, Maeve and Rianna kept on stuffing.
They’d sold forty-seven, by Ayanna’s count, when the rush ended.
“Thank God that’s over,” Echo said.
“Over?” Cora challenged, still on her knees, amid piles of tiny velvet bags bulging with promises only Cinderella’s fairy godmother could keep. “By now they’ve called and e-mailed all their friends. Folks are probably hitting the road as far away as Phoenix!”
Echo paled. “No,” she whispered.
The first tour bus arrived at two-fifteen that afternoon.
At three-thirty, they closed the store to regroup.
“How could a tour bus…?” Echo began, shaking her head.
Cora gave her a congratulatory slap on the back, nearly sending her face first into the box of supplies, which was rapidly emptying. “What are you fretting about?” she asked. “You’re making a fortune!”
Echo sat back on her heels, utterly exhausted. She hadn’t even had a chance to walk Snowball, or call the jail and find out if Bud Willand was on the loose. “What’s going to happen when all those people decide they’ve been taken, and storm in here demanding their money back?”
“They won’t,” Cora said.
“Not all of them are going to find love before supper,” Echo reasoned.
“No,” Cora answered, “but they’ll be too embarrassed to ask for a refund.”
Since Maeve and Rianna were upstairs by then, watching fuzzy TV with Snowball, Echo felt safe in whispering, “Cora Tellington, that is devious.”
“Business,” Cora said, “is business. Keep on stuffing, ladies. That was just the first wave.”
THE COMPANY JET WAS TIED UP in New York, where Meg and her mother, Eve, were doing something vital to the corporation’s future, like shopping.
First class was booked solid on every airline flying out of Taiwan, so Rance sat in coach, on a red-eye, wedged between two women who kept passing a cookbook back and forth across his tray table. He couldn’t move his elbows, and the old rodeo injury to his right knee, dormant for years, chose then to kick in.
He was crazy, putting himself through this.
Plum loco, as old Angus might have said.
In two days, he could have had the McKettrickCo jet.
In one day, there would have been a first-class seat available.
But he couldn’t wait even that long.
Oh, no.
Because he, Rance McKettrick, was certifiable.
He rubbed his chin, not an easy thing, since his seatmates overlapped their assigned space on both sides. He was bristly as a pissed-off porcupine in mating season. He’d showered and changed before leaving his plush hotel suite, but shaving had slipped his mind. Unless he wanted to lather up and scrape in a restroom the size of a laundry chute, he’d just have to endure the itching—not to mention the way the cookbook women kept looking at him as though he’d just been released from a maximum security prison—all the way across the Pacific.
All because of Echo Wells.
Because Keegan might consider her fair game.
Because Bud Willand might have made bail.
Rance shifted until he managed to turn sideways and catch hold of the onboard phone imbedded in the back of the seat in front of his. More maneuvering followed, because he needed a credit card, and that meant getting his wallet out of his back pocket.
The cookbook women became thoroughly disgruntled.
Rance gave them both a Shawshank glare, no redemption included.
His wallet wasn’t in his back pocket. It was in his suit coat, which was wadded up and stuffed between a lot of carry-ons in the overhead compartment.
Honest to God, the stuff people brought on airplanes.
Since when did a bulging suitcase on wheels qualify as a “small personal item?”
The gourmet on the aisle wouldn’t let him out.
In desperation, he finally pressed the call button. When the flight attendant condescended to answer, he asked for his jacket, very graciously, too, if you overlooked his clenched teeth.
At last, he produced a credit card.
Snatched the phone from its holder, and went through the protracted and painful process of dialing in every number from his collar size to his great-aunt Nellie’s age on her last birthday.
The line rang on the other end.
“McKettrickCo,” Myrna Terp chimed.
“I want to talk to Keegan,” Rance said, trying to unclamp his jaws.
“Who’s calling, please?”
“Myrna,” Rance replied carefully, “you know damn well who’s calling.” This earned him more disparaging glances from the cookbook women. “Put Keegan on now.”
“Keegan McKettrick,” Keegan said a couple of moments later.
Rance resisted an urge to spread his elbows into flab territory. “Stay away from Echo,” he said.