Page 9 of Never Stay Gone
He’d had so many dreams, so much raw hope. His whole life, he’d thought, was laid out in front of him. How lucky he’d been to find the love of his life so young. All the years they were going to have together—
Dakota swerved onto the shoulder, dirt fantailing behind his tires as he slammed on his brakes. His brake lights shattered the dark night behind him. Red like a broken heart, red like lonely highway neon in the middle of nothingness. Was there anything more lonely than the color red? The color of stop, the color of goodbye. The color of Shane’s football jerseys and the sleeping bag they used to lie on in the bed of his truck. The color of ocotillo blooming in Shane’s hand, the color of his bee-stung, kiss-bruised lips after they’d spent hours making out.
Dakota bent over the steering wheel and closed his eyes, lay his forehead against the cool leather.
There were reasons he hadn’t gone back to Big Bend in thirteen years.
Every one of those reasons began and ended with Shane.
Chapter Four
Dakota hitthe outskirts of Rustler right as the sun rose. Dawn broke across the desert, suspending Big Bend like the region was encased in amber, trapped in time. Bands of coral and mandarin and salmon reached from one end of the horizon to the other, painting the town in glittering sunbeams.
Rustler was exactly the same as he remembered. The two-lane Main Street fronted with Western-style shops and hand-painted signs. The Get Go grocery. Jo’s Diner, where the football team used to eat before games, and where, after, the whole town seemed to go for milkshakes and ice cream sundaes, overflowing the joint until the night turned into a block party. Some of the ranchers used to park their trucks sideways across both ends of Main Street to block traffic—not that there ever was traffic in Rustler—and turn on their lights and radios until people started to line dance right there in the middle of the street.
An antique store, a bookstore that supplied all the textbooks and assigned reading for Big Bend High and ordered any book a student requested if it would interest them in reading. Hadn’t Heath Reed worked at the bookstore? Hadn’t he been sitting behind the counter, watching Main Street through that dusty glass window, when Shane and Dakota used to walk by?
Manuel’s Saloon was at the end of the block, looking like it had been transplanted through time, plucked right from 1881 to now. Manuel himself built the place in 1902, and it still carried his name. Weathered wood, swinging saloon doors, a wide plank porch littered with mismatched rocking chairs, like people had brought their own and left them behind. Dakota had been chased off the porch for being underage years before when he tried to poke his head in, curious about what all the music and noise beyond those swinging doors was about.
Well, he was old enough to go in now.
Six in the morning wasn’t time for a drink, no matter how badly he wanted to take the rawness out of seeing Rustler again. How could a place change so little? Maybe because he was a totally different person, he expected his hometown should be different too. Changed with him, worn down and rough on the edges, as loveless and aching as he was.
It wasn’t fair that the place where his heart shattered had carried on like nothing awful had ever happened. His life revolved around that day—and it had happened here, on Main Street. Parked in the shade of the desert willows planted around the courthouse, the little pink flowers falling from the branches like gentle rain.
He pulled his truck to a stop in front of the old courthouse, next to one of the Big Bend sheriff’s trucks, and threw it into park more forcefully than he intended. Those damn flowers were blooming again. There was a carpet of them all over the path up the steps, the curb, and even smashed into the cracked pavement beneath his truck tires. Damn it.
Hell, the town even smelled the same. Sweet sage and dust, and delicate desert wildflowers. Ozone too, from the sun and the summer rains, the monsoons that swept up out of Mexico in July and August.
Lights were on in the sheriff’s office on the second floor of the courthouse. The building was old, one of the first permanent structures built after the railroad camp the town had started as decided to turn itself into a settlement. Old West towns needed a bar and a jail, and Rustler had built both before they built houses. Over time, the jail was added on to, given a second story. Now it was the county seat, the sheriff’s headquarters, city hall, and a banquet room available for rent. When it rained, the high school held prom there.
He grabbed his hat and shoved it on his head, then made his way up the steps and tugged open the heavy wooden door. His hip was aching after the six-hour drive, and he limped as he headed for the grand staircase in the center of the building. His bootheels echoed on the treads, worn smooth after a hundred years.
Dakota followed the trail of light to the sheriff’s department, past the closet-sized reception area and into the bullpen. There was a narrow hallway that branched into holding cells on one side and interview rooms on the other. At the back of the bullpen was an open door and the light he’d seen from the street: Sheriff Heath Reed’s office.
Heath was staring at the far wall when Dakota’s shadow crossed his doorway. A deep frown creased his face, and his hands were clenched around the edge of his desk, fingernails chewing into the old wood hard enough to gouge splinters out of the oak.
“Knock knock,” Dakota said, sagging against the jamb.
Heath started. Wide eyes swung to Dakota. “Jesus,” Heath barked. He blinked, blinked again. A flush rose on his cheeks. “Caught me off guard. Embarrassing.” He rose, adjusting his gun belt and clearing his throat. “I didn’t realize you were the Ranger they were sending out. Dakota Jennings, right?”
Dakota took Heath’s hand and shook it. “I tried to call.”
“It’s been a long night.” Heath shook his head, and his long fingers pinched the bridge of his nose as he squeezed his eyes shut and stood. “I’m sorry. I’ve been swamped trying to organize our response. We don’t get a lot of murders out here, and this one… well, it’s shaping up to be a gradeA goatfuck.” He folded his arms over his chest and studied Dakota, giving the Texas Rangers star pinned to his jacket a long look. “I didn’t know you got into law enforcement, Dakota. In fact, I haven’t heard anything about what you’ve been up to since you split town.”
“Well, one thing led to another, and ’ere I am.” The less talk about him, and his past, the better. “What’s goin’ on with the crime scene? What kind of rapid response you put together?”
“El Paso’s forensic team hit the road about an hour ago. They’ll be here in three hours, less if they push it. As for a response, well, we don’t have much right now. This isn’t Dallas, or even Odessa. Best we could do tonight was preserve the scene and call it in. My chief deputy has been at the scene all night, and I was planning on getting him some coffee and breakfast and heading on out there.”
“I’ll come along. I need to see the scene as it is.”
“Well, I hope you didn’t come all the way out here to just clutter up my office.” Heath reached around Dakota and pulled his jacket and his hat off the rack. “C’mon. We’ll hit the truck stop on the way out of town. Only thing open ’round here this time of day.”
“I remember.”
Middle of the night, if he and Shane wanted chips or sodas or candy bars, their only choice was the truck stop by the highway. Usually there were a dozen sleeping truckers parked in the lot and a couple of ghosts wandering the aisles, trying to make the long haul across Texas in one night. After midnight, all the hot food went down to a dollar, and sometimes he and Shane would gorge themselves on old pizza and stale burgers that had been sitting under the heat lamps for hours. But, damn, they’d been happy as pigs in shit, eating on the truck’s tailgate, sharing a Coke, and just being together.
Heath led the way downstairs and held open the door for Dakota. “Been a long time since you were back.”
