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Her eyes cut between Ryder and me. “If y’all are finished trying to outdo each other in pissing me off, somebody put a dollar in the jukebox, and put Chuck out of his misery.”
“I heard that,” Chuck croaked from the piano, not missing a single off-key note.
“You were meant to,” she snarled.
As if the sky agreed, a gust of wind slammed against the windows, rattling the panes in their frames. Rain pelted the glass, and The Hollow seemed to pause for half a breath, putting everyone on reset. But a moment later, they all carried on louder, like the storm had given everyone permission to get wilder.
Kelsey reappeared and slid a beer in front of me. I took it with a muttered, “Thanks.”
Someone near the jukebox must have dropped a dollar in, because the first twang of George Strait cut across the room, mercifully drowning out Chuck’s off-key funeral march.
The song caught in the back of my mind for a second. My mother used to play it when I was a kid. I took a slow sip of my beer and let the thought drift away before it could settle.
Ryder dragged a stool out from the bar, and the wood scraped across the floor. He leaned back, elbows braced, scanning the bar like he was cataloging who might be his next arrest.
“You hear anything from Jett this week?” I asked.
“He’s riding at that Vander event up north,” he said. “Told me he broke Jenkins’s nose yesterday. Not over rodeo—Jett was scouting the area, looking for some guy he’s…looking for.”
I took a slow sip of beer, hiding my grin. Look for was Ryder’s polite way of saying it. Jett made his living as a bounty hunter finding people who didn’t want to be found.
A useful skill for our shared…pastimes.
“So he’s doing well,” Ryder added, like that passed for good news.
“As well as Jett ever does,” I muttered, thinking about the last of our little trio. The three of us were all running from our own demons. Jett was just a little bit better at following his out of town.
Movement flickered at the edge of my vision…Kelsey, working up the nerve to try her luck with me again. I braced for the singsong purr, the leaning-too-far cleavage act.
But before she could pounce, a loud crash split the night outside, violent enough to silence the room again. Every head in The Hollow turned toward the door.
That hadn’t sounded like thunder.
I was already on my feet, leaving the bar, with Ryder close behind. I shoved the door open and stepped into the wind.
Rain pelted my face like gravel, dripping off the brim of my hat in steady streams. The streetlights blurred through the downpour, the water making them look like they were flickering.
Through the sheets of rain, something massive filled the middle of Main Street. Big Hank. The metal steer that had guarded Blackwood since before I was born was lying on the ground like a toppled king.
Face down. One horn splintered. A leg tucked under like a ballerina mid-fall.
And jammed against its ribs was a silver car.
Blackwood’s fiercest bull had been taken out…by a Prius?
The hood was crumpled like tinfoil, steam hissing from underneath. One lonely windshield wiper kept dragging pathetically back and forth, even though the front of the car looked like it had lost the will to live.
A gust of wind tried to rip my hat off, and I caught it with one hand, my eyes fixed on the wreck in the street. Ryder stepped up beside me, then stopped short.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “Somebody killed the town mascot.”
“Looks like it.”
The car door groaned open, its hinges screaming in protest.
From the driver’s side of the Prius, a woman stumbled into the storm. Rain swallowed her in seconds, plastering dark blonde hair to her cheeks, soaking the jeans that clung to her legs. An oversized hoodie sagged heavy on her frame, water dripping from the sleeves.
She looked wrecked. Not fragile or delicate. Just wrecked in that way people only get when life’s been taking swings at them and they’ve stopped ducking.
