Page 52 of Midnight Ride

“Don’t go, Tam. The county is crawling with hunters. Strangers you can’t trust.”

She ran out the door of the roadhouse and me and Virge had no choice but to leave our beer on the table and follow her. She was our sister.

Black as pitch as me and Virge ran along the shoulder of the highway trying to catch up to Tammy. Me and Virge both shouted out to her.

“Tammy, come back. Don’t go off alone. Come back.”

“Where’d she go, Harlan? I can’t see her up ahead.”

“Neither can I. We need a set of headlights. I’m calling Dad.” I called and Travis answered right away.

“Harlan? Hang on. Billy and I will be back to the roadhouse in five minutes.”

“Make it faster than that, Dad. Tammy is so pissed at you, she’s run off on foot up the fuckin highway and we can’t see her in the dark. Hurry the fuck up.”

“Yep. Coming now, son.”

Me and Virge stood on the side of the road waiting for headlights coming our way and a minute later, Travis and Billy pulled up. We hopped in the back of the squad and Travis took off heading north.

“How long has she been gone?” asked Billy.

“Only a few minutes,” I said. “We ran out of the Run right behind her, but we couldn’t see her in the dark.”

“We hollered for her to come back,” said Virge, “and she wouldn’t answer us.”

“She say she was going home?” asked Travis.

“Yep. She said she wasn’t waiting for you, wasn’t speaking to you for maybe a month and she was going home.”

“Aw, shit. Bears and hunters…aw, fuck… Tammy. Don’t do this to me.”

Cruising along at ten miles per hour looking for Tammy, it took us almost an hour to get to the ranch. Travis hopped out of the squad and ran inside the dark house.

No lights were on, so I figured she wasn’t inside. And anyway, she couldn’t have walked that far as fast as we got here.

Travis flicked all the lights on and checked every room. “Check the barn and the bunkhouse, boys. Be quick.”

“Yep.”

Me and Virge ran out the back with the dogs and checked everywhere Tammy could be hiding. She wasn’t anywhere.

“She never made it home,” said Virge. “Somebody grabbed her and tossed her in a pickup.”

“That your guess?”

“She wouldn’t go off the road, climb a fence and start running through fields and bush in the pitch fuckin dark, Harlan, and she wasn’t on the road. We went slow and covered every fuckin inch. What does that tell you? Use your fuckin head. Some asshole took our sister.”

“No. I don’t want that to be true.”

“It is true. Face the facts and treat it as a fuckin crime. Let’s go in the house and see what the plan is. Dad must have one by now if he hasn’t lost his fuckin mind.”

“Wait a minute, Virge. I’m gonna puke.”

Travis was hollering when we ran in the back door. “Me and Harlan will take the bikes. Virge and Billy each take a truck and we’ll search the road again all the way to town and back. We might’ve missed something.”

Chapter Eleven

Thursday, September 12th.

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