“We’ve got you, honey. Take deep breaths and relax. You’re going into shock. Forget the chair. Let’s get her on the bed,” Joan said, and then pulled up the guard rails while Peggy went to get the doctor.
Joan had a pan of water and antiseptic, and was washing off the blood and dirt from Nora’s hands and fingers when Dr. Sherrod walked in.
“Peggy tells me your name is Nora. I’m Dr. Sherrod. You’ve had quite a nasty fall. Let’s see what we can do about fixing you up, okay?”
Nora couldn’t stop the tears, and was afraid to open her mouth for fear she’d choke on the sobs she was suppressing, so she just closed her eyes and nodded.
She felt the burn when they removed the glass, and heard the warning that the shots to numb her hand might hurt. She shut her mind to what they were doing and saying, and kept telling herself it would soon be over, and thought about Asher.
The man he’d become was intimidating. A beautiful face of planes and angles. Eyes long since adapted to squinting against the sun’s glare, the wind, and the heat. Tall enough to see what was coming, and hard-headed enough to face it head-on. And when they made love, it was like flying and falling, and still wanting more.
The Kingstons were West Texas born, like her and her people. They were used to the hardscape of High Plains living. Never quite enough grass and water. Sunsets unlikeany place else on earth. Blizzards that killed men and cattle alike. Snakes in the grass, and snakes wearing boots. Few stayed by choice, and only the hardiest survived.
This little cut on her hand was nothing to the scars life had left on her heart. She kept telling herself she needed to stop crying. That this was ridiculous. But this was one unexpected pain too many to let go.
* * *
It was nearing noon by the time the brothers got to the Tumbleweed Bar. Seeing the parking lot empty at this time of day was weird, but seeing the piece of plywood nailed over the front door where the window used to be made them sick. As usual, they drove around to the back to park, then grabbed their bags as they got out.
“I’ve got my key,” Asher said, unlocked the back door, and entered the house and into the kitchen with his brothers behind him.
Clearly, the forensic team had been through here, but nothing had been broken, and things were mostly still in place. He quickly turned up the thermostat to take off the chill.
“You two take the extra bedrooms. We’re all too big to sleep together anymore. I’ll sleep in Dad’s bed for the duration,” Ash said, and dumped his stuff in Jacob’s room, while his brothers went further down the hall to leave their bags, then met up in the living room.
“You ready to do this?” he asked, and when they nodded, Ash opened the door leading into the hall between the residence and the bar.
The first thing they saw was the plywood over the missing window in the door, but as they moved into the bar, their eyes immediately went to the bloodstained floorbehind the bar.
“Ah, God,” Gunner muttered. “Hell of a thing for Dad to walk in on when he re-opens.”
“I can get some stuff to take that up and replace the glass,” Dylan said.
Asher walked all the way to the front door, taking care not to crush any more glass shards into the floor, and then turned around and looked back at the crime scene.
“They came in fast. If Dad made it into the house, then by the time he heard the glass break and came running back for the gun, they were already inside and set up to take him down,” Ash said. “But there’s something off. If he was already in the hall, they would have seen his silhouette from the glow of the nightlights. Right? He was a big target in their sights. Why wait to shoot him until he was back in the bar?”
Gunner’s eyes narrowed. “Good eye, Ash. Maybe they never planned on encountering him? Everyone knows he lives in the attached house.”
Asher frowned. “Then why make all that noise coming in?”
“Stupid thieves?” Dylan offered. “We get break-ins at job sites all the time. They see the security cameras. They see the posted signs if there are guard dogs on the premises at night, and still try it anyway.”
Asher turned around, opened the front door, then looked at Dylan, who was still standing at the bar.
“From where you’re standing, what do you see?” he asked.
“The parking lot,” Dylan said.
“The truck that made a U-turn!” Gunner said. “That’s what spooked them! They were already inside. They’d already shot Dad for whatever reason, but they didn’t take anything, because the headlights from any car making aU-turn would have swept through the bar like a searchlight.”
Asher nodded. “It’s a theory, but it’s the only one that makes sense with the little we know. If we could only find out who was driving that truck, maybe they saw something and didn’t realize what they saw meant anything.”
“But how do we do that?” Gunner muttered. “Go door to door?”
Dylan frowned. “No. Go to the Rose. Talk to Pearl. She’s the witness. Ask her what the black truck looked like, too? What? Don’t look at me like that.”
Ash grinned. “We weren’t looking at you like anything… Just proud of you for seeing the obvious when we were still looking at maybes.”
