“Oh, I hear you. But how on earth could I ever forget a man with a name like Bump and a mustache like that? So, I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you come with me peacefully and turn yourself into our deputy, and then you can explain to him why you like shooting bulldoggers so much?”

  As soon as the last word left my mouth, Bump launched at me. Fortunately, what I gave up in size, I made up for in quickness and in fighting experience. I deftly moved out of the way and held out my foot perfectly. Bump went flying face-first into the dirt.

  There was only one problem.

  Bump Kreisel, all six foot three and two hundred fifty pounds of him, was not Gemima Clark or some of the other women I’d kerfuffled with through the years. He was a full-grown cowboy, and I really wasn’t sure of my next move.

  He climbed to his feet and rubbed his hands together as he looked in my direction.

  “Last chance to walk away,” he said. “To leave this alone. I don’t make a habit of fighting girls, so I suggest you take it.”

  The thing was, I believed Bump. I think he really was trying to give me a way out of an impossible situation. But there were two problems. One—this guy almost killed Alex. My Alex. And two—my name is Hope Walker. I am the granddaughter of the toughest woman who has ever lived. And that means that I not only have an impossibly smart mouth, but it also means that I never, and I mean never, back down from a fight.

  “And I’m giving you one last chance, Bump. To do the right thing. To turn yourself in. To tell your side of this story. And if you do, I promise to help you.”

  “Help me how?”

  “Whatever prison you go to, I promise to tell the warden to do what he can to help you keep that glorious mustache.”

  He launched at me again, and when I stepped to the side, he was prepared. He grabbed hold of my arm with his left hand and then swung a roundhouse right at my head, but I ducked just in time and countered with an uppercut of my own. I connected right on the button, my fist crushing into the bottom of his chin. It was a perfect punch. If I’d landed this punch against a woman, it would have been lights-out, Irene.

  But like I said, this was no woman. And though the punch caught him by surprise, it really had no effect on him other than to make him laugh as he rubbed his chin.

  “You hit pretty good for a girl.”

  It was a dumb insult. The kind of thing kids sling at each other on the playground. And yet, it still found its mark on my fragile pride. I boiled with rage as I charged at him while throwing a sloppy haymaker with everything I had.

  This time, it was Bump’s turn to duck, and I missed wildly. Before I could regroup, his fist caught me square in my jaw, and as my whole face exploded in pain, I was lifted off my feet and landed so hard on my back that the wind got knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe and so I panicked, fearing what the large cowboy would do to me next.

  But nothing did come next. As I struggled on hands and knees to catch my breath, I heard the roar of an engine and looked up in time to see a pickup race away from the rodeo grounds. And that’s when I realized just how much my face was throbbing. I got to my feet, but wobbled like a boxer struggling to get up after a brutal knockdown. I collapsed back to the ground face-first into a big pile of mud.

  At least, I thought it was a big pile of mud. Oh, dear God did I wish it were. It’s a funny thing, really. You don’t go through your life wishing you’d fallen into a pile of mud until one day when landing in a pile of mud would be so much better than your reality. You see, it had the same texture and consistency, but as I soon discovered, it was so not mud.

  I jumped to my feet, feeling a traumatic level of disgust. By some miracle, I was no longer concerned about what Bump’s concrete-like fist had done to my face, and suddenly my legs didn’t feel wobbly at all.

  But my stomach sure did.

  I looked around frantically for something, anything that could get this not-mud off my face, and I spotted someone I actually knew. It was Austin Dix, the man I was supposed to meet up with at the concert tonight. He was headed for his jet-black badass trailer.

  Maybe he would have something I could use to clean off. And there might be a bonus. It was hard to imagine even a player like him hitting on me while I smelled like the inside of a sewer pipe, and then he could let me know if he’d been able to dig anything up.

  At least that’s what I thought was going to happen until I spotted another woman also heading for Austin’s trailer. It was none other than Lizzy Tepka, and from what I could tell in the moonlight, her face did not appear to be covered in horse manure, which meant she was heading to Austin’s for a different reason. I hid behind a neighboring trailer and peeked around the corner as I watched her open the door and disappear inside. Then I tiptoed up to the trailer and found what I was looking for—a partially open window. I pressed myself against the trailer to hear as best I could.

  “You’re sure?” Austin asked.

  “Relax, cowboy,” Lizzy replied in a flirtatious voice. “There’s no way this can be traced back to you.”

  “It better not, Lizzy. This is my career we’re talking about.”

  “Your career?” she snapped back, her voice suddenly taking on an edge. “This is both of our careers.”

  “Right . . . of course. That’s what I meant.”

  “It better be, Mister,” she said, the flirtatious voice back again. “Big things are ahead for us. Both of us. All we have to do is follow the plan.”

  “If you say so.”

  “You’re darn right I say so.”

  “In that case, what’s the next step?” Austin asked.

  I inched closer.

  “It’s a contest, really. A who-can-get-out-of-their-clothes-fastest sort of contest.”

  The talking ended and the, um, contest began. As much as I wanted to interrogate both of them about what big plan they were talking about, interrupting people during such contests wasn’t really my thing, and I did not need that sort of headache. But I did need something. Something that could not be found at the rodeo.

  I drove back to Main Street and parked in the back alley behind the Library. The first thing I did was call Deputy Kraft and explain what had happened between me and Bump. He was annoyed to hear I’d confronted the big cowboy all by myself and extremely annoyed to find out what kind of head start Bump had gotten on law enforcement. Nevertheless, he was going to do everything in his power to track our shooter down.

  Once the call ended, I snuck into the Library through the back entrance and made it upstairs to my apartment and proceeded to take the grossest shower of my life—even longer than the one I’d taken after Alex was shot. I lathered up, rinsed, and repeated a dozen or so times and wondered if taking sandpaper to my skin might help remove what I feared would be a permanent odor. I thought about Katie making fun of me about it, and I imagined her calling me “the wench with the stench” until the day we died. When I finally ran out of hot water, I decided the odor was probably gone, but I noticed the alarming pain in my jaw.

  I’m sure it had been there from the moment Bump hit me, but once I nosedived into the horse manure, the pain disappeared. It’s a strange sort of Maslow’s hierarchy of things that bother us. Like, when you get a paper cut, you think it’s the single worst thing in the world until you stub your toe, and then it’s like the paper cut never happened. It appeared that smelling like horse poop overshadowed acute pain. I imagined Granny loving this particular conversation I was having with myself and could imagine her extending the idea to all sorts of real-world applications. Think you need an epidural to push that ten-pound human out your yoohoo? No way. Just rub a little poop on your face and thank me in the morning.

  But I was not about to take this—pardon the pun—crappy advice. Nope. I was going to address the growing ache the way any mature woman would—with a very large glass of wine. I threw on my most comfy sweatpants, a raggedy old sweatshirt, put my hair into a ponytail, and went to pour myself a glass of wine. But then I realized a most unfortunate reality.

  I was all out of wine.

  For the record, I don’t drink every day. Not even most days. I do like drinking from time to time, but I don’t have to drink. Except on those occasions when a professional cowboy punches my lights out and I fall into a big pile of horse poop. Holding that empty bottle made me so sad, I was reminded me of that famous Air Supply song that people would play on the Library’s jukebox when I was a kid. “I’m all out of wine—I’m so lost without you. I know you were right here, but Katie probably snuck up to finish it off just to spite me.” Or something like that.

  I really needed a strong drink, but that meant going downstairs to the bar. The bar Katie and her whole family were now running in Granny and Bess’s absence. The whole thing was almost certainly a catastrophic mess, and after everything I’d just been through, I really didn’t want to be a part of such a mess. I glanced at the mirror and caught sight of the ugly black bruise that was starting to form under my right eye, and it seemed to highlight the scars that still lingered from my battle with Ms. Jones on Christmas Eve. And as I looked at my beaten and bruised face, I had my answer. I was definitely going to need that drink.

  CHAPTER 21

  Iopened the back entrance to the bar only to discover that the half of the people who hadn’t attended the rodeo concert had come to the Library for a different type of performance. The bar was as full as I’d ever seen it, and by the sound of things, just about everyone was singing along to “Low Places” by Garth Brooks. But even though I could faintly hear the country legend crooning his fan favorite through Granny’s old jukebox, Mr. Brooks wasn’t the main star on this particular night. Nope, the voice carrying most of the tune was oh, so familiar. Once I got through a cluster of cowboys to where I could see what was going on, my suspicions were somewhat shockingly confirmed. Standing on top of the bar with a smile on his face, a microphone in one hand and a cocktail in the other, was none other than Dominic Rodgers, Katie’s seven-year-old son. He was singing his heart out about how beer chases the blues away, and he looked to be having the time of his life.

  I found my way next to Katie, who was behind the bar enjoying the performance along with everyone else.

  “You want to explain what’s going on here?” I asked.

  She turned and looked at me. Immediately, her gaze drifted to the right side of my face, and her eyebrows arched.

  “You want to explain what’s going on there?” she replied.

  “Would you believe I’m testing out a new technique where I only apply mascara to one of my eyes?”

  “Nope. It would be easier to believe that you just don’t know how to apply mascara at all. Since you don’t. That goes for all makeup, by the way.”

  “That’s kind of rude,” I said.

  “But true. Every time you try, you end up looking like one of those women with the pink Cadillacs.”

  “Fine, I’ll tell you about my eye if you tell me about all this,” I said, pointing to her son as he led the crowd through yet another verse.

  “In a word? Celia,” Katie said. She pointed to her left, and I couldn’t believe what I had failed to notice. There, snuggled in a Pack ‘n Play behind the bar, was none other than Celia Rodgers, Katie’s adorable little girl. And she was sound asleep.

  “I am so confused. I’m also counting all the different ways you could be thrown in jail after tonight.”

  “Well, don’t blame me. Blame my idiot husband and your manipulative grandmother for tricking him into this whole thing.”

  “Let me guess. This is the part where you don’t want me to hand out the kind of brilliant parenting advice single people are so famous for.”

  “Affirmative. Today has been, and I’m using this term correctly, a nightmare. And about thirty minutes ago, when Celia was tired and hungry and out of her routine and going bananas, I thought I was going to lose my marbles. And you’ve known me my whole life—I don’t have a lot of marbles to lose in the first place. This brain of mine is a very fragile ecosystem.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “So, right when I thought my head was going to explode, Dominic comes over and starts singing, and at first I don’t know what he’s doing. But then, just like that, Celia starts to calm down. Dominic tells me this is what he always does—whenever Celia is fussy or scared at night, he goes over to her crib and sings a song until she falls back to sleep.”

  “And you had no idea he did this?”

  “None whatsoever. I thought my little hooligan of a boy did nothing at night but dream up new ways to scare the poop out of me or take apart his father’s car or make inappropriate noises during church. Heck, the kid can’t spell his own name. I didn’t know he knew the words to any songs.”

  The song on the jukebox changed to something very, very different, and before I knew it, Dominic was belting out the words, “You are my fire, my one desire . . .”

  The entire crowd full of cowboys and cowgirls looked a little stunned and a lot uncomfortable, but that only lasted a few seconds. Within no time, little Dominic had them all singing along to Backstreet Boys, and Katie and I looked on in bewilderment.

  “By the way, how does he know the words to these songs?”

  Katie shrugged. “So far, they’ve all been songs I’ve played around the house. I guess he’s been paying more attention than I knew.”

  “You still haven’t explained how singing lullabies for his little sister turned in to headlining at the busiest bar in the northwest.”

  “You’ll have to blame that on Big Schnozz.”

  “Big Schnozz?” I asked.

  Katie pointed to the end of the bar at an old cowboy with a mug of beer in his hand, a salt-and-pepper beard, and—you guessed it—a very big schnozz.

  “He told Dominic that he’s got one helluva voice and that we oughtta let him sing for the whole place. To which I said, absolutely not. Right on cue, Celia really started going berserk, and Big Schnozz said people would pay big money to hear the boy sing. That’s when Lucy entered our drama.”

  Lucy was Dominic’s older sister by eighteen months. She was whip-smart, scary observant, and had a sneaky streak.

  “Lucy asked Big Schnozz how much people would pay. He said there’s only one way to find out. He grabbed an empty beer mug and stuffed some cash in it while Lucy handed him a microphone. Then he told the bar to shut their yappers and open up their wallets for the musical stylings of Dominic Rodgers! Lucy took the mug around to solicit donations while Dominic climbed up on the bar with the microphone. He was nervous as all get-out, and he leaned over to me and said, ‘Mama, I need a strong drink.’”

  “He didn’t,” I said.

  “He did. Yet another thing I blame Granny for. So, I told that boy of mine that under no circumstances was I going to give him alcohol. To which he laughed. He actually laughed at me. He said, ‘No, Mama, not to drink. To balance me out. Microphone in one hand, cocktail in the other. You know, like Dean Martin and the Rat Pack.’”

  “How does he know who Dean Martin and the Rat Pack are?” I asked. When Katie responded with nothing but a glare, I had my answer.

  “Oh, right. Granny’s a big fan of Dean, isn’t she?”

  “You know, the next time my son spends time with that eighty-year-old woman, I think she’s going to need some adult supervision. Long story short, my son has been delighting these rodeo folks for the last half hour, Lucy is raking in a bunch of cash, my husband is happier than a pig in slop, Celia never slept so soundly in all her life, and I am finally at a point where I don’t hate everything and everybody. Now it’s your turn.”

  “It’s nothing, really.”

  Katie had known me my whole life, which meant she knew better, so she just waited.

  “Fine. I may or may not have gotten into a fight with a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound cowboy named Bump.”

  “You did not.”

  “Unfortunately, I did.”

  “Any chance you won this particular fight?” she asked.

  “Nope. I did manage to trip him once, but that only served to piss him off. Fun fact—fighting big cowboys who are accustomed to wrestling steers is a much different proposition than duking it out with a bratty chick like Gemima.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “After he punched my lights out? Oh, this is where it gets good, and by good, I mean gross. I fell face-first into a steaming pile of horse manure.”

  Katie’s hand immediately went to her mouth as if she was in shock. And then the shock turned into something else. She started to laugh uncontrollably and that made me laugh, which really hurt the right side of my face.

  “It’s not funny,” I said.

  Katie was bent over now in a kind of giggling Katie and I had long ago defined as church laughter. By the time Katie had composed herself and was wiping the tears from her eyes, Dominic was on to his next song, “Karma Chameleon” by Boy George. The crowd sang right along with it. If I’d have told you that a crowd of hardened rodeo folks would ever be caught dead singing Boy George songs anywhere, let alone in public, you would never believe me. And yet, I was a witness to this historic event.

  “And may I ask why you felt it necessary to get into fight with a big ol’ cowboy named Bump?” Katie asked.

  “I found an eyewitness who identified Bump as the one who took a shot at Trevor Dawes tonight.”

  “Seriously? I heard about it from Big Schnozz. He said that Trevor must be the luckiest man in the world not to get shot two nights in a row.”

  “That’s certainly one way of looking at it. The way I see it, if Bump took a shot at him tonight, it stands to reason he’s the one who took a shot at him last night.”

  “Which means he’s the one who shot Alex?” Katie asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “And now I understand why you got into a fight with a big cowboy named Bump.”

  “I really thought I could take him.”

  Katie patted me on the back. “I know you did, Hope. The boys call that having beer muscles. But I think it was something else.”

 

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