Page 28 of Never Stay Gone
Their second time, that same night, was slower. More kisses. More gazing into each other’s eyes. More hands on skin, and this time the thrusting had more purpose. More intention behind it, like they knew what they were doing and what they wanted to say with their bodies, with their fingers, with their lips. Shane came inside him again, and Dakota felt Shane’s heat rising all the way to his heart.
They made love a third time as the sun rose. After, they saw the hickeys they’d left on chests and collarbones, the dried come smeared all over each other’s skin, and their tousled, sex-wild hair. They giggled themselves into howls of laughter and then lay naked in the bed of the truck until the sun forced them to move and head back to town.
He held Shane’s hand on the drive, held it all the way down Main and up the farm road to his parents’ trailer. He held Shane’s hand until he had to let go as he slid out of the truck. If he could have, he’d have cut his hand off and left it in Shane’s hold forever.
Shane blew him a kiss before he drove away.
Three weeks until graduation. Six weeks until Shane had to drive to college and start summer football camp. Dakota would go earlier, right after school let out. Start working at the ranch, save up every single cent, and wait for Shane. He’d packed his bag already: a few T-shirts, a pair of jeans. His work shirts. Good gloves.
His life with Shane was about to start, and he was so fucking ready for it—
* * *
Someone was shaking him.Dakota jerked away from the grip on his shoulder and slammed into the passenger door of the sheriff’s truck. His hat fell forward, and he grabbed it and sat up, grunting as he rubbed his thigh. Rehab notwithstanding, sleeping sitting up didn’t do anything good for his leg.
Bleached desert and dust-choked concrete blurred outside the windows.
“We’re here,” Shane said.
Chapter Eight
Once,Presidio was a thriving town full of small business commerce moving north and south. Down the river road, which traced the tumbling flow of the Rio Grande southeast through two hundred miles of rugged country, there had been sprawling farms on both sides of the US–Mexico border: fields of strawberries and groves of fruit trees and long lines of maize and artichokes and spinach. Farmers waved over the river to each other every morning and made afternoon crossings on treefalls or hopping on low rocks beneath the burbling, muddy waters.
Decades of tightening security choked that commerce to death. Farms shriveled and were abandoned when checkpoints cut off foot traffic. With no one to buy, there was no reason to grow, and those who could packed up and left. After decades of neglect, all that was left of the once-bustling town were abandoned storefronts and a handful of people who refused to let go of a life they wanted back.
Dakota guided Shane up and down the potholed streets of Presidio, searching the addresses Bennet had texted him from Amber’s file.
All they found were abandoned houses, some of them long collapsed in on themselves, now nothing but piles of weather-weary wood and discarded rattlesnake skins.
Finally, Dakota had Shane pull up to the Presidio bodega, the only living place in the town anymore. The old wooden building had been there since the 1880s and had been a waypoint for smugglers bringing everything from booze to candelilla across the border over the last hundred years. Now it most definitely was a stop for drug runners, and the border patrol and DEA both tried to pull information out of the patrons—without success.
The bodega—El Rojo—sat back from the road, surrounded by a gravel parking lot strung with naked light bulbs. Broken beer bottles, cigarette butts, and a few discarded condoms littered the edge of the lot.
Dakota had Shane park hard by the front door, sending gravel against the barred front-facing windows and showcasing the Big Bend Sheriff’s Department logo on the side of the truck. Dakota told Shane to wait, then sat staring up at the sun from behind his shades for ten minutes before he led the way inside. The ceilings were low, like those of most old buildings, and both he and Shane had to duck to get through the front door.
As Dakota expected, most of the tables were empty. A few held groups of old men hunched over bottles of cerveza who squinted up at Dakota and Shane from beneath ratty straw hats. Dakota tipped his own hat to them and counted the empty tables holding abandoned bottles of beer, still-smoking cigarettes left behind in ashtrays. More than one of those cigarettes was marijuana, based on the odor.
He nodded to the bartender and worked his way to the wide bar set in the back of the building. He kept his hands on his hips, putting his weapon on prominent display.
The bartender, a big bear of a man, easily six foot five and over three hundred pounds, stared him down.
“Hola,” Dakota said. Shane came up behind him on his left side, his back to Dakota’s back.Not bad, Deputy. “Name’s Dakota. This is Deputy Carson.” He jerked his thumb at Shane.
“Ranger,” the bartender said. He nodded to Dakota’s shirt and the gold Texas Rangers star pinned over his chest.
“Yep, I am. And I’m here to ask you a few questions, señor.”
The bartender shook his head. “Got no answers for you.”
“Aw, c’mon. After I was all nice and gave your boys time to get out the back door? This ain’t a raid. I’m here about a murdered girl.”
Finally, the bartender’s eyes shifted, and something other than hard, deadened malice looked back at Dakota.
“What’s your name?”
“Ramón.”
“Ramón, you hear about the grave the sheriff found up north, out in the deep desert?”
