“Josey!” he cried, grabbing her arms and pinning her down. “It’s me, Jack. You were having a bad dream.” He released one of her wrists to snap on the light beside the bed.
She squirmed under him, then seemed to focus on him. He felt the fight go out of her, but her face was still etched in fear and she was trembling under him, her body soaked in sweat.
He let go of her other wrist and eased off of her, sitting up on the edge of the bed next to her. He could hear her gasping for breath.
“That must have been some dream,” he said quietly, thinking of the rope burn on her neck. Whatever had happened to her was enough to give anyone nightmares.
“I’m okay now.”
He wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince him or herself. “If you want to talk about it...” He reached over to push a lock of dank hair back from her face.
“I can’t even remember what it was about.” She shifted her gaze away.
“That’s good,” he said, going along with the lie. He stood. “If you want I can leave the light on.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“No problem.” He doubted he’d be able to go back to sleep, but he returned to his chair, glad Enid had put them at the end of the wing away from everyone, so no one else heard the screams.
Josey turned out the light. He heard her lie back down. The darkness settled in. He listened to her breathe and thought about how a man would go about killing a bastard like the one who’d given Josey such horrible nightmares.
He also thought about how a man might go about keeping Josey in his life.
IT WAS WHILE he was eating in the kitchen at the house at Mobridge that RJ spotted the phone hanging on the wall.
He’d had to break into the house and had been surprised to find that it appeared someone still lived here.
That was good and bad. The good part was that they weren’t home and he’d been able to find some clean clothes, a warm coat, boots that were only a little too big and some drugs to tide him over.
He’d also been able to find food. Not much in the refrigerator so he suspected they’d gone into town to shop. He made himself some soup, ate the canned meat straight from the can along with the canned peaches he’d found, leaving the empty containers on the table. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t figure out someone had been here.
It appeared a man and woman lived in the house, both older from the clothing he’d found. He’d gone through the woman’s jewelry box. Nothing worth stealing. But he’d managed to scare up almost a hundred dollars from a cookie jar in the kitchen and the man’s sock drawer.
He got up, searched around for a phone book and finally found one in a drawer. It had doodles all over the front along with an assortment of numbers.
He pulled a chair over so he could sit and opened the phone book to Whitehorse, the town up the road in the direction the yellow Cadillac convertible had been heading when the driver picked up Josey. There were only a few pages, so it didn’t take long to find the numbers he needed. He started with gas stations. With towns so few and far between up here, the driver of the Cadillac would have filled up before going any farther up the road.
Three gas stations. He called each, coming up with a story about trying to find his brother-in-law. The clerks were all friendly, that small-town trust that he had a growing appreciation for with each call.
No luck there. He began to call the motels on the chance that the Caddie driver had dropped Josey at one.
He got lucky on his fifth call.
“I remember seeing a yellow Cadillac,” a clerk at one of the motels told him.
RJ tried not to sound too excited. “There at the motel?”
“No, over in front of the clothing store.”
RJ frowned. “You saw the guy driving it? Was there a woman with him?”
“No. Just a man when I saw him and the car.”
He was disappointed. Maybe the guy had already gotten rid of Josey. It just seemed odd the guy would be shopping for clothing, unless...
That damned Josey. She probably cried on the guy’s shoulder and suckered him in. RJ could understand being smitten with her. She was one good-looking woman. He’d wanted her himself.
Should have taken her, too, when he had the chance. He’d planned to, but Celeste had thrown a fit when he suggested the three of them get together. Once he’d given Celeste that engagement ring she was no fun anymore.
So let’s say Josey got the driver of the Cadillac to buy her clothes. Then what else would she get him to do for her?
He tried the last motel, convinced he’d find Josey curled up watching television and thinking she’d gotten away.
“I saw the car,” the male clerk said. “Sweet. One of those vintage restored jobs.”
RJ couldn’t have cared less about the work done on the Caddie. “So she’s staying there at the motel?”
“The woman with him? No.” The guy sounded confused. “I saw the car when I was getting gas at Packy’s.”
That was one of the numbers he’d already called. “Did you happen to notice if there was a woman with him? A woman with long, curly, reddish-blond hair, good-looking?”
The clerk had chuckled. “Good-looking, but she had short, curly, dark hair. And she wasn’t with him then. I saw her in the car later.”
“Wait a minute. So he didn’t have her with him at the gas station, but you saw him with this woman later?”
“That’s right. I passed the Cadillac. The cowboy was driving and the woman was in the passenger seat. I didn’t get a really good look at her. She was kind of slumped
