In Plain Sight

The smell of mud and rain came into the bus as Bill Monroe stepped inside. Sheridan gasped as he raised the rifle and pointed it at the face of the driver.

“This is where you get off,” Monroe said.

Beside her, Sheridan heard Julie scream.

A HALF-HOUR LATER, the phone rang at the Longbrake Ranch. Missy was having coffee with Marybeth and reading the Saddlestring Roundup. Marybeth was ready to go to work. Joe was in their bedroom, doing who knows what.

Missy answered, said, “Hi, honey,” then handed the phone to Marybeth. “It’s Sheridan.”

Marybeth frowned and took the phone. Sheridan had never called this early because she shouldn’t be at school yet. Maybe they had canceled school after all, Marybeth thought. Maybe Sheridan needed someone to meet them on the highway so they could come home.

“Hi, Mom,” she said.

Marybeth sensed something was wrong. Sheridan’s voice was tight and hard.

“Where are you?”

“I’m on the bus. I need to ask you a question. Is it okay if Lucy and I go out to Julie’s house after school tonight?”

Marybeth paused. The scenario didn’t work for her. She asked Sheridan to repeat what she had said, and Sheridan did. But there was something wrong in the tone, Marybeth thought. There was something wrong, period. What were Julie and Sheridan cooking up? And why would they want to include Lucy in it?

“You know I don’t like it when you spring things like this on me,” Marybeth said. “What are you girls scheming?”

“Nothing,” Sheridan said. “We just want to hang out. There probably won’t be practice.”

“You want to hang out with your little sister?”

“Sure, she’s cool.”

“That’s a first,” Marybeth said. “Let me talk with her.”

“Just a minute.”

Marybeth could tell that Sheridan had covered the mouthpiece of the phone so she could discuss something that her mother couldn’t overhear. Marybeth sat forward in her chair, straining to hear. She could sense Missy looking at her now, picking up on her alarm.

“She can’t talk,” Sheridan said, coming back. “She has food in her mouth.”

“What?”

“She’s eating some of her lunch early,” Sheridan said. “You know how she always does that? Then she doesn’t have enough to eat at lunch and she has to mooch from either me or the other kids?”

“Sheridan,” Marybeth said, dropping her voice to a near-whisper, “Lucy has never done that. She brings most of her lunch home with her, and you know it. If only I could get Lucy to eat. Now what is going on? Where are you calling from?”

“The bus,” Sheridan said, too breezily. “On my cell phone.”

“On your cell phone,” Marybeth repeated back. “Your cell phone.”

“That’s why you got it for me,” Sheridan said, “for emergencies like this . . .”

Suddenly, the call was disconnected.

Marybeth felt as if she’d been hit with a hammer. Sheridan had been trying to tell her something, all right.

“Oh my God,” Marybeth said, standing, dropping the phone on the table and running out of the room while Missy called after her to ask her what was wrong.

“JOE!”

JOE WAS NOT in the bedroom, but in Bud’s cramped and cluttered home office. He had recalled his conversation the day before with Tony Portenson’s office, how he’d requested a fax be sent to him. But since he wasn’t at his house to see what had arrived, he had called again that morning and asked Portenson’s secretary to fax the information to Bud’s home office instead.

He stood near the fax machine, watching the paper roll out.

SHERIDAN SAT WITH Lucy on the bus. Julie was in the seat behind them. Bill Monroe had taken the phone and dropped it in his pocket and had returned to the driver’s seat, saying, “I hope you didn’t just do something there that will fuck us up.” His eyes were pulled back into thin slits and his jaw was set. He needed a shave and he needed to clean what looked like blood off his hands and shirt.

The bus shuddered as Monroe worked the gears and did a three-point turn and the bus almost foundered in the ditch. But he got the bus turned around, and it picked up speed, and Monroe clumsily raced through the gears with a grinding sound.

They were headed for the Thunderhead Ranch.

Sheridan held Lucy, who had buried her head into her chest, crying.

MARYBETH FOUND HIM in the office, holding up a sheet of paper.

“Joe,” Marybeth said frantically, “I think something has happened to the girls. Sheridan just called me and said she was on the bus, but I don’t know where she really is. Or Lucy, either. She said she was calling from her cell phone. Something is horribly wrong.”

The look he gave her froze her to her spot. He held up the sheet of paper and turned it to her. It was the mug shot faxed by Portenson’s office.