Page 26 of Never Stay Gone
“Like I said, I need to run down Amber’s associates. She was picked up a few times in Presidio, right near the border. There are a few known persons named in her file that live down there. I wanna talk to them, find someone who saw Amber before she disappeared. Doc thinks she’s been in the ground almost four months. That’s a long time for a girl to be gone without anyone noticin’. Did Jalisco know she was gone? Do they have any idea who put her in the ground? Or any of the others?”
“Still think this could be drug related?”
“Amber and Libby were both connected to the drug trade.”
“A lot of people around here are. And an older woman smoking a little bit of pot to make her feet stop aching isn’t exactly part of the drug wars.”
“Maybe not, but what if she ran up too high a debt? It doesn’t sound like she had a lot of money. Did her self-medicating get out of hand? What did she do with the five hundred dollars you gave her? Right now, it sounds like she disappeared before she had a chance to make good use of that money. Did she buy gas? Or did she buy drugs?”
Shane’s gaze pinched.
“We run everything down, no matter where it leads.” Dakota slapped the hood of Shane’s truck. “You can take me back to Rustler, and I’ll pick up my truck from the courthouse—”
“I can drive to Presidio.”
Dakota hesitated.
“We can pick up 67 in a few minutes. It’s only a forty-five-minute drive to Presidio from here. It’s an hour to Rustler, and you’d just turn around and come right back this way.”
Yeah, but if they went to Rustler, Dakota could walk away from Shane.
Again. The thought tore him in half, part of him wanting to start walking then and there, turn his back on Shane and his lament about how his life had turned out, and part of him wanting to drop to his knees, beg Shane—
That train had left town long, long ago. “You wanna drive, that’s fine.”
They climbed into the truck, and even though there wasn’t another vehicle for a hundred miles, Shane turned on his blinker as he pulled off the shoulder and made a U-turn, pointing his truck south. He used to do that in the middle of the desert, too, signal their turn off the highway or when they’d veer down a draw into a canyon in four-wheel drive. He’d use his blinker in the school parking lot and the Get Go lot. Rule follower, always.
Dakota hide his fractional smile with a turn to the passenger window. All these memories he had of Shane, and they all meant nothing. If you knew this much about someone, weren’t they supposed to be in your life? Not be a stranger?
After twenty minutes of road noise and wind, Dakota reached for the dash. He was going to leap out of his skull if the tension between them grew any sharper. There was usually a Mexican radio station coming over the border they could pick up, if he remembered right. He powered on the radio—
“Don’t!” Shane barked. He lunged, jerking the wheel. Tried to intercept Dakota’s hand.
“Cowboy Take Me Away”belted from the speakers. A few chords, the wistful voice of Natalie Maines wanting a future she could see so clearly she could feel it in her hands.
Years ago, Dakota had seen, had felt, the same future: a man he loved, an open sky before them, all the days of his and Shane’s lives side by side, hand in hand. Nothing but them and the horizon and their love.
Shane slammed the radio off. Stillness filled the truck like a bomb of it had exploded, smearing the windows and the seats and both of them with sticky, terriblesilence.
Shane shifted, hands clenching on the steering wheel. Glared at the road and set his jaw. Dakota saw his artery pulse and pound, saw the muscle in his cheek flutter.
It don’t mean anythin’.
He’s engaged.
Dakota set his hat over his eyes and leaned back. “Wake me when we get there.”
* * *
When wasthe last time he had heard their secret love song? For thirteen years, he’d avoided it. Avoided all the songs they used to listen to in the desert, the ones he put on that CD.
Was there anything more romantic than a scratchy radio and a star-filled sky, the man he loved in his arms, sweat and kisses cooling on their skin? Every moment they managed to steal senior year, they were heading to their spot to kiss, make out, make love.
He still remembered the song that was playing the first time he worked up enough courage to blow Shane. Remembered the feel of Shane’s hands in his shaggy, wind-tangled hair and the sound Shane made when Dakota’s lips closed around him. Remembered the tremble of Shane’s thighs, the way his heels dug into the red sleeping bag they were lying on top of.
A week later, Shane kissed his way down Dakota’s body and gave Dakota his first blow job. Dakota had to rub away the tears that had slipped free from his eyes before Shane saw.
How could he ever have explained how goddamn happy he was back then? He didn’t have enough words, or enough oxygen, to tell Shane all the ways he loved him. He used to read Shakespeare’s sonnets in English class, trying to find something that came close to how he felt for Shane. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day…” “Take all my loves, my love…” “My love is as a fever, longing still…” He barely understood how he felt.
