“Meds for fever,” Freddie said, and pulled the covers over his head to keep away the dive-bombing bats.
“Like hell,” Everett muttered and went to the kitchen to investigate. A bottle of acetaminophen was sitting beside a glass of water, but there were only three of the four Ayas he dumped there last night before he put their clothes in the laundry. Freddie was riding an ayahuasca high. Hallucinating at the max, and now Everett didn’t dare go back to bed for fear of what Freddie might do to himself before it was over.
Frustrated beyond words, he ran the last three Aya pills through the garbage disposal, pulled the quilts off his bed and headed for Freddie’s room, only to find an empty bed. He looked under it, then in the closet, then heard water running in the bathroom, dropped his quilts, and ran.
Freddie was standing under the shower in his pajamas and picking at a loose tile on the shower wall.
“Bugs crawling in my hair. Someone in the wall trying to tell me something.”
Everett rolled his eyes. “Don’t pick at the walls. You’ll let the bad guys in. Don’t forget to use soap in your hair,” then walked out into the hall and turned up the thermostat. Their inheritance was farther away now than ever. This was going to be a long-ass day.
* * *
It was nearing eleven o’clock when the Kingstons headed down the basement stairs with the metal detector. Never had the basement looked as huge as it did at that moment. It was like standing before an enemy they weren’t sure they could defeat.
“Do we start at the back and work forward, or start where we stand?” Dylan asked.
Asher turned around and pointed. “We start beneath the stairs, and keep our sweep path four bricks wide, from east to west. We know it won’t be beneath the shelves, because they’re only six inches above the ground. She could never have dug beneath that. We’ll move the stuff stacked on the floor as we go.”
“Got it,” Dylan said, then walked beneath the open stairwell and began the sweep.
Ash and Gunner were responsible for clearing the pathways, moving crates of Jacob’s special whiskey orders. Moving boxes of Christmas décor, remnants of Jacob Kingston’s life. There was even a box of their old toys.
It was heavy work and slow going. Nearly two hours later, they were nearing the back third of the basement when Asher called a momentary halt.
“I hear something going on outside. I need to make sure it has nothing to do with the Tumbleweed,” he said, and bolted up the stairs with his brothers behind him.
Asher ran into the bar and immediately saw the issue. Someone had sideswiped a truck pulling a bull hauler, and there were longhorn bulls about the size of yearlings running in every direction.
Some were in the Tumbleweed parking lot. A couple of them had cleared out the people at the gas pumps, and some were already running past the Yellow Rose, across the highway, and out into the land on the north side of Highway 86.
One man was sitting in the open doorway of the truck cab holding his head. The hood was up on the car that sideswiped the hauler, with steam spewing out of the radiator. There were people coming out of the Rose, and from the gas station, trying to help round up the runaways.
“What a mess,” Asher said. “Grab your coats. They’re going to need all the help they can get.”
Chapter 12
A couple of minutes later, they came out the front door of the bar, locking it behind them. Someone had opened a gate to the fenced-off area across the highway, and they were trying to herd the runaways into the enclosure.
Ash and Dylan took off east, blocking the escape of a pair of runaways, while Gunner took off after a solitary bull, hoping to at least get it off the highway before it was hit by oncoming traffic.
Before long, traffic was blocked from both directions, while the echoing sound of sirens warned of a highway patrol car approaching from one direction, and an ambulance coming from the other.
But what soon became apparent to the people caught in the traffic jam, was the race between Gunner and the longhorn he was chasing. The young bull was in panic mode as it darted in and out between the vehicles, but it was the man chasing after it who caught their attention.
A trucker stopped on the highway, got out of the cab, and began filming the race, and a pair of teenagers abandoned their truck for the truck bed for a better view, watching the tall, long-legged man chasing after that runaway. What was shocking to the onlookers was that he was gaining on it.
* * *
It was midafternoon.
Nora was sitting within the silence of her house, going through another box of old photos, when she heard a loud boom, followed by a screeching of brakes. She’d heard that too many times in Fort Worth not to recognize the sounds.
Someone had just had a wreck!
She ran to the window, saw smoke rising above the rooftops, heard a lot of shouting, then the sound of cattle bawling. She put on her coat, then grabbed her phone and keys and locked the door on her way out. She ran down the steps and then into an alley that came out onto the highway between the gas station and the Yellow Rose Café.
What she saw was chaos. The front end of a semi was crushed and smoking. The trailer of the bull hauler it was pulling had broken away from the cab, and the young longhorns they’d been hauling were out, and running in every direction.
