At that moment, a pickup truck turned off the highway into the parking lot, its headlights sweeping across the wall, then in their eyes as it began to make a U-turn, and their first thought was that they’d been made. When the truck suddenly sped away, they immediately assumed they’d gone to call the cops.
“We gotta get outta here!” Everett shouted, and started running for the door, with Freddie right behind him, running through broken glass, and leaving the door ajar. They jumped in the Mustang and gunned it, spinning out on the graveled lot as they drove away.
* * *
Pearl Fallon not only owned and operated the Yellow Rose Café, but she also lived in the apartment above it. Every night when she closed down the Rose, she set the security alarm, then went upstairs and locked herself in for the night. It was the sanctuary where she could indulge in aquiet bubble bath, watch her prerecorded shows, or eat a whole pint of rocky road ice cream if she wanted.
She hadn’t planned to live a solitary life, but it’s how her journey was turning out. Fate had given her an accidental daughter when she’d taken an abandoned teenager under her wing years earlier, and now her accidental daughter, Magnolia, had married a famous bull rider from the rodeo circuit, and they became the family Pearl never birthed. Having a famous artist for a daughter now, and a world-famous rodeo star for a son-in-law, had enriched Pearl’s world. She was about as happy with herself as she’d ever been.
Even though the nights were getting colder, Pearl still liked to sleep with her bedroom windows open. She liked hearing the traffic going by on the highway outside, and she liked sleeping in fresh air, instead of the lingering scent of whatever she’d cooked that day wafting up from the kitchen below.
She’d gone to bed around ten, but was awakened sometime later by the sound of a gunshot. The moment she heard it, she flew out of bed and ran to the window just in time to see a black truck driving past the Rose. It went all the way to the Tumbleweed, then made a U-turn in the parking lot and drove back toward town. But it was the white sports car that shot out of the parking lot seconds later that gave her cause for concern. She watched it heading west at a high rate of speed, and then glanced at the clock.
It was just after midnight. Jacob closed the bar at midnight. Maybe someone tried to rob him? Maybe he took a shot at them? But with no police presence at the Crossroads, people here had learned to look out for each other first and call for help later. She was thinking of Jacob as she grabbed her phone and pulled up the number from her contact list, and called him. When it rang and rang with no answer, she got worried.
She slammed the window shut, pulled the shades, and turned on the lights to get dressed, yanking on blue jeans and a heavy sweatshirt, then socks and shoes, before calling Jacob one more time. When he didn’t answer, she grabbed her keys and her phone and took off down the stairs with a flashlight in her hand.
Unsure of what she might be walking into, she took her shotgun from beneath the counter, disarmed her security system, and let herself out the front door, locked it behind her, and took off running down the highway toward the bar.
The air was cold on her face and her heart was pounding as she ran, but when she reached the parking lot and saw the front door ajar, and the glass broken out of the window in it, her heart began hammering even harder.
She ran into the bar, flipping on lights as she went.
“Jacob! Jacob! It’s Pearl! Are you okay? Where are you?” she shouted, but he didn’t answer.
From where she was standing, she saw the door leading into the house was open, and she began running toward it. That’s when she caught a glimpse of a body on the floor behind the bar and skidded to a halt.
It was Jacob, lying in a spreading pool of blood.
“No, no, no,” she muttered, and ran to his side, frantically feeling for a pulse. To her undying relief, it was there.
She made a quick call to 911, then laid the phone on the floor and began grabbing clean bar towels from a shelf.
She stuffed a handful beneath his back at the exit wound, and then folded some more into a pack and put it on the entrance wound and pressed down hard, still trying to stop the flow.
She looked at his face, once so dear to her, and began talking, begging, threatening him, hoping he would fight to stay alive.
“Jacob, this is Pearl. I don’t know if you can hear me, but help’s coming. Stay with me. Just stay with me. Damn it, don’t you dare die on me. After all these years, I don’t want to lose you again,” she said, and swallowed back tears.
The dispatcher was still talking. “Ma’am. Ma’am. Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here. I have towels on the wound. I’m applying pressure, but he’s going to bleed out. Just hurry. Please hurry.”
“We’ve dispatched Texas Highway Patrol, a LIFESTAR chopper from Amarillo, and the Briscoe County Sheriff’s department. Help is coming. Is he conscious? Is he still breathing?”
Pearl kept applying pressure to the makeshift pad. “No, he’s not conscious, but yes, he’s still breathing. Just tell them to hurry… Please tell them to hurry.”
* * *
At that same moment Pearl was talking to the dispatcher, Sonny Bluejacket woke and sat straight up in bed. His wife, Maggie, rolled over, saw the look on Sonny’s face, and knew he was having a vision, something that he’d begun experiencing after dying twice on the operating table a few years ago. He’d come back from the dead with a gift they no longer ignored.
“Sonny! What’s wrong?”
He blinked, then wiped his hands over his face, as if he was trying to remove what he’d seen.
“Somebody shot Jacob Kingston. Pearl’s at the bar covered in blood. I don’t think it’s hers.”
Pearl had become the mother to Maggie that she’d never had, and the thought of her in danger was horrifying. “Oh my God, Sonny. I have to go,” Maggie said.
