Sounded more sexy than cute to me, but I smiled and nodded anyway. I had to get in good with the locals if I wanted to get this mess taken care of ASAP.
“That where you’re from?” asked Hannah. She set the coffee pot down on the counter in between us. “Florida?” She was ignoring at least three people waving at her for more of the caffeinated goodness.
I nodded. “Yes, I live there. I’m just here for research.”
“Long way to come for research when you could-a just called,” she said, chewing her lip like she was trying to figure me out. It made me nervous to think that Diner Barbie was hot on my trail of lies. I was getting the distinct impression she’d be really happy to bust me.
“Yes, well, I tried to call but the MacKenzie group is hard to get in touch with that way, apparently.”
“Who’d you try to call?” she asked.
Her questions were taking on an intense mood to them that made me less inclined to share. “I can’t remember. I don’t have my notes with me.” Lies, lies, and more lies. The leather messenger bag at my feet had exactly one troll doll and everything I’d been able to find on the MacKenzies. Unfortunately, all I had for an address was a post office box in the middle of town and a phone number nobody ever answered.
“Why are you looking for Gavin?” she asked. Her tone had taken on a proprietary air, and I realized I could very possibly be looking at Gavin’s other wife, since apparently only special people called him by his given name. What are the chances that I’ve stepped right off the plane into a pile of horse shit? I looked at her slightly mutinous expression and knew the answer. Out here, probably good. Checking her finger, I saw no ring there. I let out a slow breath of relief, hoping she and the man-bear-pig still behind me wouldn’t notice now nervous this conversation was making me.
“I’m headed out to the MacKenzie place if you want to hitch a ride,” said the grizzly man.
I turned back around to face him, but not before catching a scowl move across Hannah’s face.
“Really? That would be great. I could follow you in my car.”
He looked out the front windows of the diner directly at my Smart Car.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” he said simply.
I imagined myself trapped in a vehicle with this man and decided there were certain risks I was willing to take and others I just wasn’t. “I’ll be fine. That little car has a lot of spunk … you’d be surprised.”
“Whatever floats your boat. You ready to go now?”
“But she hasn’t even finished her coffee,” said Hannah. She sounded very upset about it, too.
“I can wait,” said the man.
I stood. “No need. I put too much sugar in it anyway.” I put some money down on the counter, enough to cover the coffee and a generous tip. “Thanks, Hannah.”
She frowned at me. “How’d you know my name?”
I looked pointedly at her name tag. “Uhhh, I guessed?”
“I got my eye on you, Abbie,” she said in a threatening tone, narrowing her eyes.
“That’s Andie.”
“Let it go, Hannah Banana,” said the man-bear-pig, sighing at the end of his plea.
“Shut up, Boog! You don’t tell me what to do anymore, got it? And stop calling me that name.”
I picked up my satchel, very happy to be leaving the unhappy Hannah Banana behind. She obviously had an issue with strangers, so it was time for me to leave. Besides, if I could get lucky and find this MacKenzie place before dinner, I could very possibly be home by noon tomorrow. A grin spread across my face as I pictured myself sewing this little problem up and tucking it away in a little box no one would ever find.
“Come on, follow me. I’m in the blue truck out there. We’ve got about a thirty minute drive ahead of us.”
I stopped walking as his words sank in. “Thirty minutes?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He just went out the door of the diner, leaving me to follow.
Chapter Seventeen
THE FIRST PART OF THE trip was a breeze. Fifteen minutes of smooth driving and beautiful weather had my windows down and my voice soaring out into the wind. Walking On Sunshine came on the radio, and I yelled the lyrics as loud as I could, rejoicing in the seratonin that was bleeding into my brain. Life is good! Life is awesome! I was on the road to traveling towards my lifeplan again! I pictured myself on the plane with my signed annulment papers in my lap and a smile on my face. There was even a cocktail on my tray in this vision of glory. Maybe I’d even upgrade to first class.
Just as my song was finishing, the man-bear-pig, a.k.a Boog turned off the two-lane paved road and onto one with only a single-lane of dirt. Calling it a road was generous, though. It was more like a path than anything else. It made me happy I was driving a clown car when I saw his big tires going off into the weeds on both sides.
That happiness faded quicker than I would have thought possible. My life went from smooth-sailing to Nightmare on Elm Street in five seconds flat. Literally flat. Like, flat-tire flat. I was so busy trying to see Boog through the cloud of dust his giant truck was kicking up, I didn’t see the huge pothole in the road. My tire fell into it and then didn’t want to come out. The whole vehicle was sitting off-kilter, the passenger-side lower than the driver-side.
I pressed on the gas pedal and the car rocked a little, but then nothing but the sound of spinning wheels greeted my ears. The clown car and I were done.
Looking up, I saw Boog’s truck getting smaller and smaller in the distance. He didn’t seem to consider the craters in the road a reason to go any slower than he’d been traveling on the highway. I pressed on the clown car’s honky-horn several times to get his attention, but he didn’t seem to hear it. He soon disappeared in a cloud of dust.
I got out of the car and walked around to the other side of it. The front tire was flat and resting deep in the hole. “What the hell!” I screamed, kicking it and hurting my toe in the process. “Ow-ow-ow-ow-OW!” I yelled, hopping around on one foot, now worried that I’d broken not only the car but a toe, too. I was jumping around like a lunatic yelling cuss words when a horse and rider appeared out of the nearby trees and bushes.
Chapter Eighteen
“LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE IN SOME trouble,” said the man on the back of the horse.
I couldn’t decide which of them was prettier. The horse was a patchwork of colors and the man was broad-chested and thick in the thighs, wearing a pair of those leather pant cover thingies that cowboys have on over their jeans in commercials. If I were to guess, I would have said he was younger than me by a few years. He reminded me of someone I’d seen before, but who it was exactly escaped me. It crossed my mind that it was some movie star I’d seen in some indie film a while back, maybe. This would be a good place for celebrities to hang out. No paparazzi would bother coming all the way out into this wasteland for a stupid photo.
“What kind of car is that, anyway? Is it electric?” He rode the horse up closer, walking around to inspect my clown car.
“It’s not electric. It’s a Smart Car. Are you from the MacKenzie clan by any chance?”
“Could be,” he said. “Depends on who’s asking.” He got down off his horse and walked over to stand by my out-of-commission tire, crouching down and putting his hand on it.
“My name’s Andie, and I’m here to find Gavin. Is that you?” I was fairly sure it wasn’t him. Surely I would have recognized something about the man I allowed into the golden palace and married, for God’s sake. This man was a stranger to me.
He stood, still looking at the tire but shaking his head. “Nope. I’m sure as hell not Gavin.” He got back up on his horse in one smooth maneuver, swinging his leg over the saddle like he did it every day of his life. With a creak and shift of the worn leather, he used the reins to turn the beast’s head in the direction Boog’s car had gone. He make a clicking sound with his tongue and jabbed his boots into the horse’s sides. It moved off with a flick of its tail.
My mouth d
ropped open as my brain computed what my eyes were seeing. Is he…is he leaving me? I couldn’t believe he was actually riding away, but that’s exactly what he was doing, without even a backward glance.
“Are you just going to leave me out here?” I asked in a raised voice.
He didn’t answer, so I started running after him. “Hey! I’m talking to you! Are you just going to leave me out here to die?!”
“House isn’t that far,” he said calmly, not looking back. “You won’t die.”
His horse’s giant ass-end was the last hope of transportation I saw on that road for the next hour. It wasn’t, however, the last living thing I saw on that road.
“Ack! Jesus!” I yelled a half hour later, jumping to the side at the sound of rattling coming from a pile of rocks about five feet from the side of the road. My voice became a half screech, half whisper when something moved out from a crevice and started slithering towards the road. “Rattlesnakes?! Are you kidding me?!” My heels were the world’s worst running shoes, but running shoes they became. My satchel banged against my hip as I took off sprinting down the road, heedless of the rough terrain and my sore toe, thinking only how I’d definitely miss my wedding if I was chock full of snake venom. I could totally picture myself a bloated, poisoned mess on the side of this road, and that vision gave me a speed I hadn’t known I was capable of reaching in three-inch heels.
I fell to my knees twice before I was hurt enough to have to slow down. I was being beaten to death by my own purse every time I bit the dust, which wasn’t helping. “Dammit,” I growled, bending down and holding onto my ankle as I tried to stand, while my bag once again whacked me in the side of the head. I’d twisted my foot good when the front of my shoe ended up balanced on a rock instead of the dirt road. I looked up through the strap of my bag and blew my hair out of my face. Everything was the same color out here - golden brown - and it was impossible to see what was rock, what was road, and what was a frigging pit to fall into.
“Ooohhhh mmmmm rrrrr.” I moaned like a wild woman, trying to force the pain out of my foot and into the atmosphere. It wasn’t working. I tried to limp with the shoe on, but that wasn’t working either, so I took it off. It wouldn’t fit into my bag, so I just held it. “Baker City sucks!” I shouted at the snakes and the spiders and the horses’ asses I’d met so far. “I can’t wait to get out of this hell hole and back to the East Coast where all the normal people live!” I pulled the troll doll out of the bag and looked at it. “You were supposed to be good luck, you little bastard.” I arched my arm back, ready to launch the little traitor out into the dust, but at the last minute I held back, thinking about how Ruby had looked up to the heavens when talking about the damn thing. She’d never forgive me. I started walking again, the troll doll gripped tightly in my hand.
The sun beat down on my head and neck, making me wish I’d brought sunscreen. I could feel my skin frying, the smell of my roasting skin nauseating for the pain I knew I’d be in later. I put my satchel on top of my head as a temporary shelter for a few minutes but eventually gave up. It was too heavy and I had my stupid shoe and the troll to carry, which left me one-handed. Eventually I gave up trying to carry the bag on my shoulder and just dragged it in the dust behind me.
It was when I’d reached the point where I’d estimated my chances of survival at less than twenty-five percent when I caught a glimpse of a building ahead. A house, maybe. Or a barn. It was tough to tell in the wavering heat with my blurring vision. Whatever it was, it had a roof on it and probably a faucet inside. “Water,” I said, holding my shoe out towards the house as I limped painfully along. I heard more rattling sounds behind and to the sides of me, but I could no more run from them than I could conjure an ice-cold lemonade out of thin air. Oh, what I wouldn’t have given for such a thing right then. I would have chugged it down and then thrown the glass at all the snakes probably right behind me on the road, a giant league of them just waiting for me to fall one last time.
I made it almost to the gate of the fence that circled a large plot of land around the house before I took my last trip down to face-plant alley. My toe caught another rock or pit or snake or something and the road rose up to greet me in a very unwelcoming way. I got a real up-close and personal taste of what Baker City, Oregon has to offer. I was spitting a mouthful of it out when I rolled over onto my back in the middle of the road.
Above my head was a giant archway of wood with a crest in the middle of it. There were flames and a rope carved into it, and above it all were three Latin words: Luceo non uro.
I whispered them aloud. “Luceo non uro. Shine, not burn.” I closed my eyes and drifted off, remembering a man wearing a cowboy hat and a pair of jeans with a brass-colored belt buckle riding around his waist. That phrase was the last thing I remember that cowboy saying to me.
Shine, not burn.
Chapter Nineteen
“WELL, PICK HER UP THEN, dammit,” said a woman’s voice. “What’s wrong with you, son, you know better than that!”
“Aw, she’s fine. She’s just being dramatic. What’s that thing in her hand?”
“Look at her dry lips, fool. She’s dehydrated and she’s hurt her ankle or her leg. Look at the bottom of her foot there. Tsk-tsk, that one without the shoe is bleeding.” The woman sounded very concerned and caring, unlike the male voice.
“Mack should be the one out here hauling her around. She came out here for him, not me.”
“We’ll hear all about that later, but right now I want her out of the sun and in the living room, pronto. And if you sass me again, you’re going to be on branding duty alone for the next three weeks.”
“For shit’s sake, Ma, you don’t have to get ugly about it! I didn’t say I wasn’t going to do it, I just said it should be Mack taking care of his problems, not me. I’m tired of taking care of his problems.”
The sound of a face getting slapped made me smile in my half-conscious state.
“Don’t you dare, Ian MacKenzie. You might think you’re a grown man, but I have absolutely no problem getting my spatula out and serving you up a heaping helping of bare butt flap jacks, you hear me?”
A loud sigh preceded a subdued, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Now do what I told you to do, and be nice to her. She’s going to think all the MacKenzies are a bunch of savage retards.”
“Ma!” said the man, trying to talk but laughing instead. “That’s not nice at all, is it? Calling your children savage retards… Jesus.”
“I call it like I see it. I’ll be waiting for you inside. Now get to it.”
The sound of gravel-crunching footsteps faded in the distance, leaving me alone with the savage retard, Ian MacKenzie.
“I see you smiling down there. You can stop playing possum with your little purple-haired friend and help me get your big butt up off the ground any day now.”
My eyes flew open. “Excuse me? Did you just insult my butt?”
He shrugged, zero expression on his face. “I call it like I see it and make no apologies.”
I wanted to get up now just so I could give him a heaping helping of whatever his mother had just promised him. “I don’t need your stupid help,” I said, struggling to stand. I slapped his proffered hand away. “Don’t touch me, you savage retard.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Demeaning people with handicaps by using their condition as an insult.” He backed away, giving me plenty of space. “Go ahead then, take care of yourself. I’ll just stand over here and shoot that rattler that’s behind you.”
I spun around, screaming, “What?!” I tried to back up at the same time as I turned, and the combination of movement I’m woefully not qualified to make while wearing one heel sent me once more to the ground. I crabwalk-dragged and scrambled my big butt across the road to put as much distance between me and the serpent as possible.
“Where is it?” I asked breathlessly, staring desperately first into the bushes and then up at him.
The bastard was laughing.
/> Realization dawned. “There wasn’t a rattlesnake there, was there?”
He shook his head while he laughed at me, tears coming to his eyes. “Damn, girl, you sure can scoot when you have to.”
I whacked him in the leg, making my hand sting from the slap against his leather pant covers. “Help me up, jerk. My ankle’s messed up and now my clothes are ruined too, thanks to you.” Not even crazy drycleaner magic was going to be able to save this suit. And I’d just bought it last month in my favorite store, too. They should put a slogan on the sign coming into town: Baker City, The Dustiest Place on Earth.
Ian bent down and grabbed me under the armpits. One smooth yank and I was on my feet in front of him. Damn, he was strong. His shoulders were about a mile wide.
“Put your arm over my shoulder,” he ordered, dipping it down a little and reaching his hand out.
“No.” I pushed his hand away.
He had been about to step forward with me next to him, but then he stopped. “Why not?” He turned to look at me. Up close I could finally get a good look at his face. He seemed so familiar. Must be because I’d accidentally married his brother.
“Are you and Gavin twins?” I asked, before I could put the brakes on between my brain and my mouth.
“Nope, not even close.” He ducked his shoulder again and forced it into my armpit. “Come on, I have to get you inside before my mom skins my hide.”
“Aren’t you a little old for the Aunt Jemima treatment?” I asked, deciding not to fight his help anymore. I really couldn’t walk without it. It wasn’t so much the twisted ankle as the possible sun stroke.
He chuckled. “You don’t know my mother, do you?”
“No, I don’t know any of you.” I limped along, appreciating his support but loathe to admit it out loud.
“If you don’t know any of us, then what are you doing out here asking for Gavin?”
I battled with myself, wondering if I should tell him the truth or go with my genealogy story. It made little sense that I’d be tracking just Gavin down for a family tree project, but the lie was easier to go with than reality. Even standing here on his family’s land within arm’s reach of my goal, real life was just too big and scary.