Page 68 of Texas-Sized Secrets

Deputy Phillips walked out of the bank, followed by his partner. He pulled the radio from his belt and pressed the side. “We need an ambulance at the Prairie Rock Bank. Got an apparent suicide. One man down, no other casualties.”

Mona leaned against the side of the building, fighting off a wave of nausea.

While Deputy Phillips asked her questions and wrote down her statement, an ambulance arrived. The same one that had taken Patricia Teague earlier. Had it really been over an hour since that incident? Mona stared at the bank’s digital sign, blinking ninety-four degrees and eleven o’clock, the message repeating every twenty seconds.

Was that it? Another man dead, a woman on her way to the nuthouse and Mona still didn’t know who’d been rustling her cattle or killing people right and left. Where was Reed? “Are you through with me?” she asked Deputy Phillips.

“Just a minute more. Sheriff Lee wanted to have a word with you about Mr. Kuhn. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her it was lunchtime. Not that she felt like eating, but if she didn’t, she’d get dizzy and nausea would surely follow. Shouldn’t Reed be back by now? “Damn.” She’d told Catalina that she’d be at the library. “Can you tell the sheriff I’ll be at the diner?”

“I suppose. But don’t go too far. He insisted he wanted to question you himself.”

“Fine.” Not that she’d have anything different to say. If he wanted to talk to her, he could come find her.

When Mona left the bank, she was still shaking. But she decided to swing by the body shop to see if Wayne and Les had ever shown up. She didn’t plan on stopping. Not without her backup, Reed. But at least she could tell him whether or not they were there and she could come back when she had more support with her. As she rounded the street corner, Wayne’s one-ton pickup, hauling a trailer loaded with three four-wheelers on the back, spun out of the gravel parking lot headed out of town.

“Damn!” Mona’s foot hesitated between brakes and the accelerator. She couldn’t let them get away, but she couldn’t go it alone. Reed had to know where she was going and why.

She fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone, dropping it on the floorboard on the opposite side of the truck. “Double damn!”

Lifting her foot from the accelerator, she reached as far as she could, but the phone was out of reach. She’d have to park to get to it. In the meantime, Wayne and Les had pulled way ahead of her on the highway leading out of Prairie Rock and toward Palo Duro Canyon.

Should she stop and lose sight of the two? Or follow them long enough to get an idea of where they were going? After all the trouble these two had caused, she’d be damned if she let them go now. But she’d be stupid not to call.

Two miles out of town, Mona pulled to a stop in the middle of the empty road and crawled across the seat to the cell phone. Unfortunately, when she flipped it open, she had only minimal reception. Probably not enough for a call. She dialed Reed’s number anyway, hoping she could at least get a message to him.

She almost jumped with joy when it rang, her joy evaporating when the phone went immediately to his voice mail. The static in her ear didn’t bode well for leaving a message. She tried anyway. “Reed, I’m on the highway headed toward Palo Duro Can—” A siren sounded behind her, making her jump.

Sheriff Parker Lee stepped out of his unmarked black sports-utility vehicle and ambled her way. Good, maybe he could help.

She hurriedly added to her message, “Les and Wayne are in front of me with the four-wheelers. The sheriff’s pulled up behind me, but get here soon!” Well before her words ran out, the static disappeared and the call died. How much of the message he could decipher, she didn’t know. A quick glance at the phone confirmed all reception was lost.

“Mona, Mona, Mona.” The sheriff opened her truck door, a smile tilting his lips. “What are you doing way out here by yourself?”

Mona practically fell out of the truck. For the first time since their disastrous lovemaking, she was happy to see the man. “Parker, you have to stop them.” She pointed toward the disappearing truck and trailer.

“Who?” He grabbed her arms and held her still. “Who do I have to stop, Mona?”

“Les and Wayne. I saw them with a trailerload of muddy four-wheelers. They have to be the ones who were in on the cattle rustling. Hurry, or they’ll get away!”

“I’ll take care of it. Come on, you can ride with me.” He shut her truck door and led her to his vehicle, opening the back door to let her climb in. “I’d let you ride up front, but with all the new computer equipment, there’s just not room.”

Not until Mona climbed in and the door was shut did she get her first inkling that something wasn’t right. Starting with the sport-utility vehicle. She’d seen it over an hour ago in Les and Wayne’s body shop covered with tape and drop cloth. But all the tape had been removed and the grille’s paint was dry. “Did you have this car in the shop for repairs?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

To the grille. Theblackgrille. Didn’t Catalina say that Gil Deiner’s car had been run off the road by a vehicle that left black paint on the bumper? A cold chill slithered down her spine and the baby slammed a heel into her rib cage.

“That Les and Wayne do good, fast work when they have a little incentive.”

She was afraid to ask but couldn’t stop herself. “Incentive?”

“Yeah, incentive.” Sheriff Lee glanced at her in the mirror, his brown eyes almost black, like a devil’s fathomless pit. “Yeah. Let’s hope your boyfriend figures it all out fast, or you’ll die. I call that incentive.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Patricia Teague was partially right. Because of me, her marriage never lasted.” Sitting across the kitchen table in her little cottage on the edge of Prairie Rock, Reed’s mother looked as pale and fragile as when she’d been released from the hospital following her stroke.

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