Hot on the Trail. Vicki Tharp

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СКАЧАТЬ point checking the bathroom, Kurt wasn’t there. The air was too still. Still, like he hadn’t been there for a long time. Still, like he hadn’t spent the night in his unmade bed. Since his bed was never made, though, that didn’t tell her anything.

      Where was he if he wasn’t with Hank and Mac? Even though Kurt had his problems, in the four weeks he’d been at the ranch, if he was going to be on time for anything, it was for the work sessions with the mustangs or riding out with Alby and Santos. His disappearance baffled her.

      Dink backed out of the cabin, having never gone fully inside. Jenna left as well, pulling the door closed behind her, not bothering to lock the door.

      She retraced her steps. Rechecked the barn and the makeshift firing range. The parking area for tractors and trailers. She checked the junkyard where the grass had grown high around rusty old implements and dilapidated tractors, then back up toward the hay barn.

      The whole time she searched, Dink never left her side, his head Velcroed to her jeans. She tripped over his paws. At the hay barn, there was nothing except row after row, stack after stack, of round and square bales of hay.

      Still no Kurt.

      Sidney had finished up with the mustang, so Jenna headed back to the round pen. She glanced down. Dink was gone. Turning and walking backward, Jenna spotted her dog digging a hole beside the hay barn.

      “Come on, Dink. Give the rats a rest.”

      Dink didn’t stop digging. He didn’t even slow down.

      “Dink!”

      If the hay barn had had a concrete floor, Jenna would have left him there, but her grandfather would take both their hides if Dink tunneled under. She jogged back to the barn, a rooster tail of dirt flying out from between the dog’s legs. Jenna tapped him on the back. The darn dog kept digging. She grabbed his collar and tugged. He struggled free and kicked dirt up into her mouth. She spat it out.

      She jerked him back. “Dink. Sit!”

      Dink sat. Dirt crusted on his nostrils, his whiskers, his toenails. Tiny clumps of mud clung to the hair at the inner corners of his eyes, and dust coated his lolling tongue.

      “Stay.”

      He squeaked out a whine.

      Jenna dropped to her knees in front of the hole. He’d dug fast and furious and had burrowed under the outer wall. She pushed handfuls of dirt into the hole to fill the void.

      Her hand brushed against something.

      Not hay. Rat? She couldn’t leave a dead animal there to rot. Jenna grimaced. Dink crawled on his belly to the edge of the hole and whined again. Jenna scooped out the dirt, her face butted up against the wall, and snaked her arm through. She patted the dirt, trying to locate the object.

      Her hand landed on it. Soft like fabric. Like flannel. What the—?

      She tugged, and it fell into the hole.

      Fingers.

      A scarred hand.

      Kurt’s hand.

      * * * *

      The sheriff showed up with the light bar on top of his pickup flashing, the siren blaring, the ambulance a hundred yards and a dust cloud behind. Jenna glanced over from her seat in the cab of the John Deere and saw Lottie run out to greet him, then refocused on the levers.

      Her heart thrummed, and her fingers shook on the tractor’s bucket controls. Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, don’t be dead. The round bales were stacked high and deep. If by some miracle Kurt was still alive, she couldn’t risk a thousand-pound bale rolling and crushing him.

      Their best option was to remove the metal sheeting on the sides of the barn, and without a ladder tall enough, they’d improvised. Which meant she operated the tractor and Boomer removed the screws, balancing with his blade prosthetic on top of the six-foot ladder, on top of a sheet of plywood spanning the width of the tractor bucket. A tractor bucket currently extended to its maximum height.

      OSHA would shit a brick if they saw that.

      OSHA would have to revamp their manual to cover this level of stupidity if they saw that.

      OSHA would levy such a massive penalty that her grandchildren would still be paying the debt a hundred years from now if they saw that.

      But she didn’t care about OSHA. All she cared about, all anyone on the Lazy S cared about, was getting to Kurt.

      After Boomer had removed the last of the screws, he climbed off the ladder and made a motion with one hand, telling Jenna to bring him down. She backed the Deere, lowering him as she went.

      The sheriff and the paramedics didn’t waste any time moving in. The metal sheeting was grooved, and the men fought the overlap to pull the panel free. Jenna killed the engine and jumped down as the men yanked the metal clear.

      For a split second, Kurt’s body hung in the air, defying gravity. Head down, eyes open—face, blue-gray and livid with blood. Then his rigid body crashed to the ground. He didn’t flip or flop or grunt or groan.

      You didn’t do that when you were dead.

      Her heart stopped beating. One second it raced in her chest, and the next…nothing. This void, this vacuum in the center of her chest where her heart used to be, was sucking the blood from her cheeks, the strength from her muscles, the hope from her soul.

      She sank to the dirt. The hard-packed earth jarred her spine. She stared out at the scene in front of her. The sheriff speaking into the radio on the shoulder of his uniform. Boomer with his arm around Sidney, holding her close to his chest. The paramedics backing away. Lottie, with her arm wrapped around her waist, a hand to her mouth, her cheeks stained with tears.

      A deputy with a camera snap, snap, snapped. Photos of Kurt. Of the side of the barn. Of the gap in the siding. She sat in the dirt, too stunned to move. Sometime later, Sheriff Elmore St. John approached her with a couple of clear bags in his hand. “I need to show you something.”

      He was a tall man. Somewhere between her dad and Boomer, his features hard beneath the brim of his tan cowboy hat. A muscle twitched at the corner of his right eye. He held out his hand and helped her to her feet. Her legs were numb, unsteady, as she took one tentative step, testing.

      They hadn’t covered the body yet. The sleeve of Kurt’s red flannel shirt was buttoned around his right wrist; the one on the left, shoved up above the elbow. The sheriff turned her and helped her over to his truck with a hand on her elbow.

      He sat her in the front passenger seat. Her boot slipped on the step rail, and she grabbed on to the handle to haul herself inside. After she had settled, he gave her two sealed clear bags. Inside the first was a spoon with the handle bent back, the bowl black with soot. In the other, a syringe, the skinny kind, the kind diabetics used—or junkies.

      “No.” The word wheezed out of Jenna’s mouth. “He…he’s clean. He was clean. His test came back a couple days ago. He wasn’t using. I don’t understand.”

      “I need to ask you some questions.”

      “O-okay.” СКАЧАТЬ