Page 629 of Love Bites

It took all of about fifteen minutes to shower, change my clothes and pack an overnight case. I didn’t want to stay longer than a day or two. When I got back downstairs, I found Billy Bob and the sheriff in the kitchen. The back door was still open. One glance out the back door confirmed that the body had been removed. But the blood-soaked dirt remained. A terrible reminder of the carnage.

Crap. Jo Jo was supposed to open in the morning to prep the food. Over the past year, he’d become a very competent sous-chef. I made a mental note to set my phone alarm so I could call him in the a.m. before he came to work.

Silently, I handed the paper bag to the sheriff. Billy Bob stared at my overnight case and frowned.

“You got enough for a few days?” Billy Bob’s low baritone voice sent a shiver through my belly to my girly parts.

Oh, Lord, going to spend the night at his place was such a bad idea. “I have everything I need for a short stay.”A very, very short stay.“Sheriff, do you want me for anything else?”

“Come down to the station in the morning and fill out a witness statement. You two can go.” The sheriff cast a furtive glance at Billy Bob then me.

“Am I missing something?” I asked, suspicious. What was this all about?

“No, ma’am,” Sheriff Taylor said. “You all have a safe drive,” he added.

My left shoulder ached, the one that had been ripped from its socket and left to mend out of place. My body held too many reminders of being tortured by my kidnappers. I switched the small suitcase to the right hand. Billy Bob reached out for it, but I stopped him. “I’m not an invalid.”

His brow wrinkled with irritation, but suddenly, his gaze landed on mine, and his face softened. He nodded. “Let’s get going then.”

* * *

The ridein his half-ton truck was like sitting in a Jon boat as it crossed a choppy wake. “Jesus, Doc. You ever heard of shocks?”

“This beauty is reliable.” He patted his dashboard, his gray eyes shining as moonlight streamed into the cab. “I can count on it to get me where I’m going.”

“Yes, but can you count on it to get you there free of hemorrhoids?”

He smiled, and my pulse quickened. It made me stupidly happy to see the corners of his lips tug up. “I heal fast.”

I laughed, the repulsive image of the skinned corpse fading with each minute in Billy Bob’s presence. “You’d have to.”

He chuckled. My lady bits clenched. Ugh.

“How have you been?” he asked.

His concern flattened my woo-woo feelings, and my lady bits unclenched. “Fine.” My throat was tight. “Are you going to do the autopsy on the body?”

“Yes,” he said. “Mark Smart will transport the victim to the clinic.”

“Tonight?” I hadn’t thought about where or when Billy Bob would examine the body, but when he’d asked me to stay at his house, I’d just assumed it would happen tomorrow.

“I need to identify him.” He shook his head, his eyes tight at the corners. “For his family. It’s not fair to let him go unclaimed by his people.”

My stomach hurt. For too long, my younger brother Judah and the other victims of those insidious hunters had gone unclaimed. I remember what it had been like for the two years before we discovered why my brother had disappeared. I’d never stopped wondering or worrying. My emotions had run the rainbow of anger to grief to hope to denial and back to anger. I didn’t want another family to suffer the same experience. Not even for a day.

I nodded sharply. “Good.” I swallowed. The heat of anxious energy burned in my gut.

Billy Bob put on his blinker before turning up his long driveway. We passed his sweat lodge. I couldn’t buy into all his shaman bullshit. Yes, we had the ability to transform into animals, but that didn’t mean every type of magical crap out there was real. When we crested the hilltop, his house appeared. It was a large, one-level ranch home with the clinic attached on the nearest side.

The outside lights were on, illuminating the large front porch that stretched the length of the house, maybe sixty feet long and eight feet wide. The place had two front doors about twenty feet apart. One was Billy Bob’s private entrance to his home, and the other was the public door to the clinic. A van was parked near the clinic door, the lights off.

Billy Bob turned the truck off. “Smart is here with the…” He looked at me.

I swallowed the knot in my throat. “Do you need help?”

His expression flashed with surprise. “Are you sure you want to help?”

What he was really asking was,Can you handle it? I nodded, telling myself to woman up. “I’m tough, Doc.”

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