Page 17 of Her Cadillac Cowboy
CHAPTER FIVE
Wednesday night, Sara looked at the office clock. Midnight. She stretched in an attempt to ease the crick in her neck. She was no further toward understanding Carson’s financial tangle than she had been ten hours earlier. She lost a precious hour on the phone, trying to find Donny to ask a few questions that might clear up some issues. She spent another half hour talking to Carol, who called to leave a message that she was ill and wouldn’t be in on Thursday. Every time Sara returned to the accounting files, the figures never added up the same way twice, no matter which app she used or which sequence of numbers she input.
She shut down the files. Gene and the accountant could look at them again tomorrow. Maybe they could spot something that she’d missed. They wouldn’t have the memory of Josh’s kiss—brief as it had been--to distract them every time they entered a computation.
Heaven knew she’d rather not have that particular memory. The taste and flavor of Josh McKinley intruded on her work twice as often as anything else. She’d deliberately avoided eating to save time and because she didn’t want to wonder who he might have asked to dinner in her place.
Sara grabbed her keys and picked up her purse.
She locked the door to her office. Dim light in the hallway guided her to the stairwell; Carson’s never extinguished the lights completely. She exited the stairwell on the first floor and turned down the hall away from the showroom, toward the machine shop. She passed quickly through the familiar area and pushed through the back door.
Heat slammed into her. Midnight on the South Texas coast was a warm place to be in May. What a change from Alaska. The door shut with a sigh behind her. She gave a satisfied nod at the small snick that told her the automatic locks had engaged. That was a change too. So few people roamed the tundra, locking doors seemed ridiculous.
She set off across the lot, eager to get to the air-conditioned climate of her car. She still hadn’t had time or opportunity to exchange the rental for something sturdier from the dealership. With the key inserted in the lock, Sara reached for the door handle.
Off to her left, a sound scrunched. She glanced at the side view mirror. Dark shadows drifted through the gap in the backlot fence. No one else should be in the lot at this time of night. Thinking of potential damage to her cars, Sara let go of the rental car and gripped her purse in one hand. Then she set off in pursuit of the shadows, yelling at the top of her lungs.
Jesus on a Popsicle, why did I choose today to give in to vanity and wear heels? As she leapt through the fence opening and picked up speed, the flimsy shoes flew off her feet.
She didn’t pause in the alley to discover which way her quarry fled. She simply followed the thud of running feet. Air burned in her lungs, but she was gaining on one of them.
Suddenly a man’s huge outline emerged from the darkened wall of the warehouse, looming in front of the escaping shadow. Sara heard a yelp and saw the person she’d been chasing trip. The outline fell on top of the downed shadow.
Sara came to a halt. The grunting, seething heap at her feet turned out to be two people and a garbage bag. Winded, she heaved in gasps of fetid air. By the time she recovered her breath, it was clear that one of the persons on the ground was her business tenant.
He had the situation in hand, so to speak. The tussle was over, and McKinley straddled the body of a teenage male.
“Get off me, you two-ton, booger-effin’ bull. I’m gonna sue for police brutality. You got no right jumpin’ people in an alley. They’ll put you away for child abuse.”
Sara watched Josh lean over the boy’s ear. She couldn’t hear what he said, but the screaming stopped, and the teen’s body sagged on the pavement.
“That’s better,” Josh’s voice rasped in the stillness. He stood up, pulling his captive with him. “Now why don’t you tell me who you are and what you’re doing out here?”
Even in the dim light, Sara could see the boy’s defiant stance. They would get nothing from the kid. Her hands still shaking, she extracted her cell phone from her purse and called the police.
???
Lank, dirty hair, oversized jacket, shirt and jeans, and a pair of huge high tops covered the teen’s slight frame. Despite the firm grip Josh kept on the boy’s wrist, the kid’s stance screamed resistance and scorn. But behind the belligerent glare, Josh saw a glimmer of fear. The kid broke the stare first, glancing up the alley to where the others had disappeared.
“Your buds aren’t coming back.”
Expression unchanged, the kid turned his head toward Josh.
“They left you hanging, and you’ve only got one thing between you and the cops.”
The teen shrugged. “Yeah, what?”
“Me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Miss Rich Bitch with the Gucci bag and the slick tech over there already phoned home.”
Josh shifted his stance to include Sara in his visual field. She was slipping her cell phone into her purse. “Sara, did you just call the sheriff?”
“Yes, I did, and you’re welcome.”
