Safe With A Stranger. Linda Conrad

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      Josh Ryan wished he was well on his way to getting blitzed. He toyed with the idea of ordering a bottle of tequila, but managed to reject the thought. Just barely.

      It wasn’t only that he’d totally sworn off liquor sixty-three days, fourteen hours and twenty minutes ago. His grandfather had also recently died, and he was supposedly on his way to the funeral. It was a good five-hour drive there, and Josh had never been one for drinking and driving.

      So what the hell was he even doing in this seedy bar, with its smell of burned ribs, cheap beer and fries cooking in lard? Twice so far he’d been approached by women in skimpy leather outfits who looked hungry and suggestive in a cheap way. Both times he’d sent them about their business with cold, dismissive looks.

      If he’d been searching for oblivion tonight, he’d have found it by downing RedEye by the gallon and not with nameless, drugging sex.

      But if it wasn’t for booze or women, then why was he here? Apparently he was giving himself a test. Just to see if his new resolutions could stand up to the stress of the upcoming funeral. His life had become one big trial.

      So far, the civilian world hadn’t been what he’d hoped. Though he never would’ve re-upped—even if the army docs had said it would be all right. He wasn’t all right. In Afghanistan, his concentration had deteriorated to a point where he had managed to get a buddy blown to hell and himself shot up bad. Once or twice in the heat of battle, he’d even come to the point of considering the use of one of his grandmother’s so-called gifts. Amazing.

      The white coats in the evac-hospital had eventually given his mental state some medical-sounding nonsense of a name and DX’d him out of the Rangers, sending him stateside. But Josh knew better. Post-traumatic stress disorder, hell. He’d just stopped giving a crap whether he lived or died. His own life wasn’t worth another bullet. And he refused to be put back into a place where what he did or didn’t do meant someone else’s life.

      Never again.

      He stared down at the remnants of his brisket sandwich just as the jarring sound of a cue hitting a nest of pool balls cracked through the smoky air. A couple of cowpokes in the corner began to argue, while the laugh of an apparently very drunk woman tittered through the beer-soaked night.

      It was time to go.

      He paid the bill and shoved out the door into the parking lot. Even outside the night air was hard to take. Exhaust fumes and mesquite smoke mixed with the sulfur smell from nearby refineries over on the bayou. For the first time in many years, Josh was glad to be heading to deep south Texas.

      There were a million things wrong with the south Texas town of Zavala Springs and the Delgado Ranch. But bad air had never been one of them.

      The roadhouse parking lot was traffic central tonight. Pickup trucks of every size roared over the gravel. Giggly young girls squealed as their desperate-eyed oil-jockey dates grabbed their bottoms on the way to the bar’s door. There weren’t many like him who were leaving. But one or two Resistol-hatted twenty-somethings stumbled out the door on their way to the edge of the lot to puke their guts out.

      God, he was so tired. This was no night for anything but a long, careful drive back to the Delgado.

      Making his way to his old truck, Josh found he’d been blocked in by a brand-new Cadillac Escalade. He took a moment to wonder what the dude would do if he just backed into all that shiny black metal and made his own exit. Josh felt almost tired enough to give his family’s gifts a shot in order to free his pickup.

      Drawing in a breath instead, Josh went around the front of his truck and checked for another way out. It might be possible—if he went over an eight-inch-high curb stop. Then he’d be forced to drive over the next-door empty lot with all its broken glass and weeds growing upward through the old concrete. But damned if he didn’t know his fifteen-year-old Ford F-150 could get through much worse.

      He climbed into the pickup and started the engine. Rolling his front tires up and over the curb with minimum effort, he slowed as he realized he would have to gun it to get the back tires over, too.

      Sitting at idle, Josh opened his side window and double-checked the position of his wheels. Yeah, it should work.

      A high-pitched scream suddenly tore through the night air. The cry jolted him. Definitely coming from a female, it wasn’t at all like the flirty shrieks those young girls made when their dates groped them in the dark.

      No, this scream СКАЧАТЬ