“I suppose you’re an immigration expert,” I said.
He shook his head. “No, but I am an expert on spic lovers. And you, my friend, are one.”
Heat flushed my face. The roof of my mouth itched. People with Jack’s way of thinking were part of the reason things never changed down here. I thought of a dozen responses and not all of them involved words. Finally, my eyes settled on the blonde at his side. “Your wife meet your new secretary yet, Jack?”
His face blanched and his mouth hung open for a moment before snapping shut. “You-”
“Wife?” the blonde screeched. “You have a wife?”
I turned on my heels and headed back to the bar.
Isabella stood in the corner at the cowboys’ table. She rested her palms on the edge and leaned forward coquettishly. A smile played on her lips. Both men bore huge grins. A small flare of jealousy burned in my gut as the song on the jukebox trailed off.
Pete was halfway from his barstool to the corner table when I walked in. He pushed up the sleeves of his jacket as he strode purposefully.
“Pete!” I barked.
It was a mistake, raising my voice like that. All eyes turned to me. Now if I gave Pete an order, he’d never live it down.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” I asked him, softening my tone.
Pete stared at me for a moment, then back at the table. I used the time to cross the distance between us, took Pete by the arm and led him outside. He pulled against me once, but I jerked his arm close to my body and kept walking.
Once outside the bar, Pete pulled away again and this time I let him go. We stopped a few paces away from the door. The odor of gas fumes from the parking lot and manure from the stockyards across the street replaced the bar smell of cigarettes and beer. All four smells burned my nose and would likely hang on my uniform for the rest of my shift.
Pete stood with his shoulders slumped, all hang-dog and pushing gravel rocks around in the dust with the toe of his boot.
“Those boys don’t need any trouble,” I said.
“Don’t reckon so,” he mumbled.
“And she’s just being friendly with the customers.”
“Bit too friendly, way I see it.”
“Friendly folks spend friendly money,” I said. “Isabella knows that.”
“’Spose.”
I hitched my thumbs in the front of my belt and appraised him. “What were you figuring to do, Pete? Take on both of them?”
He shrugged. “Guess so.”
“Not really a fair fight.”
He shrugged again.
“Where them boys from, anyway?”
“Over New Mexico way,” he said. “Leastways, that’s what Isabella told me.”
“See, that’s my point.”
He looked up at me quizzically. “What point?”
“They’re from New Mexico. Any Texan can whup at least three New Mexico boys. Not even close to a fair fight.”
Pete grinned grudgingly. “I ’spose not.”
I reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. “You just let things lie, all right?”
He pressed his lips together, but nodded. “Sure, Carl. It’s just hard, that’s all. She’s so beautiful, and…,” he trailed off.
“I know,” I said, and I did.
Pete sighed heavily. I gave his shoulder a squeeze. He turned and went back inside Tres Estrellas and I went back on patrol.
“Sam-25.”
I jumped. Molly’s voice from the radio surprised me. I’d been parked near the edge of town with my door swung open, staring up at the desert sky. The huge expanse of stars let me dream a world of possibilities and the clean desert air washed away some of the bar stink.
“Sam-25, go ahead.”
“Carl, you need to head over to the Tres right away. We just got a call about some arguing going on.”
I keyed the ignition and started the engine. “Talbott’s wife come by looking for him?”
“No,” Molly transmitted. “It’s Pete Trower.”
I cursed and hit the lights.
I skidded into the parking lot in a cloud of dust, jumped out of the police Explorer and ran toward the door. As my fingers wrapped around the handle, I heard two loud bangs. Gunshots.
I cursed again, released the handle and drew my.45.
The screaming started as soon as I went through the door. The shrill sound came from Miss Twenty-two. I moved deliberately in that direction, my gun at the low ready. Two steps further in, I encountered Jack pulling Miss Twenty-two along. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream and she jabbed her finger wordlessly toward the main bar room.
“Son of a bitch shot him!” Jack yelled on his way past.
As soon as I cleared the entryway, I saw the mess. Right in the middle of the bar room, a cowboy lay flat on his back. Isabella and the cowboy’s New Mexico partner knelt beside him. The partner held the wounded man’s head in his hands. The cowboy’s jaw was slack and his partner bore a look of disbelief while he muttered comforting words.
I scanned the room. No Pete. The back door beside the bar stood half-open.
“What happened?”
Isabella turned toward me, her expression tight but without any tears. “El lo mato,” she said simply. “Pete shot him.”
I didn’t need to ask why.
“That way?” I pointed to the open back door.
She nodded.
“Call an ambulance,” I told her and hurried to the back door.
I nudged it open carefully. I didn’t think Pete would shoot me, but I wasn’t so sure he’d recognize me in the doorway.
“Pete?”
I was answered by the sound of a dirt bike engine kicking to life about a hundred yards away. The sound came from the stockyards.
I ran around front just in time to see Pete’s blue denim jacket flash past me in the parking lot. I made a frantic grab for him, but he leaned away and gunned it, throwing a spray of gravel on my legs as he sped away.
I got in the Explorer, punched the lights and headed after him.
“Molly?” I said into the mike. “Get an ambulance over to the Tres.”
“Copy. What kind of injuries?”
“Gunshot wounds. I’m in pursuit of Pete. He’s on a dirt bike and wearing a blue denim jacket. We’re westbound from the bar.”
“Copy.”
Pete must have seen my lights and known that he couldn’t outrun the Explorer on the road, because he turned sharply north off the roadway and cross-country.
I slowed, and followed, keeping sight of the shadowy rider as he lanced through the night. I chased him with my spotlight. Unseen rocks and dips in the ground tossed the Explorer around and jostled me in the cab.
“This is bad,” I muttered.
For twenty minutes, I followed Pete, barely able to keep a visual on him. The spotlight bounced and jiggled as I drove over the terrain, and the red and blue rotators cast a surreal light onto the desert night. Pete used every obstacle that came along to his advantage, putting it in my way by going over it. As we neared the rocky foothills, I knew it was only a matter of time before he got away. My only hope was that he wiped out long enough for me to catch up to him and grab on.
It didn’t happen.
Molly called out the Chief and two other officers and kept feeding them my grid coordinates. When I finally lost sight of Pete, I stopped driving and waited for them.
The Chief arrived first. I filled him in while he stood rocking on his heels, hands resting on his precious silver-studded gun belt, and alternately spitting tobacco and wiping his drooping mustache. His.45 revolver hung low on his right side like an old-style gunslinger.
“I’ve been on the phone with Earl,” he said, when I was finished. “He’s at the Tres securing the scene. Apparently, Pete didn’t take too kindly to them New Mexico boys flirting it up with Isabella.” He gave me a hard look. “Says you were in there earlier tonight when a fight almost started.”
I swallowed. “Yes, sir, I was. I thought I handled it.”