Kate snarled. “I told you to stop calling me that or I’ll violate you in the middle of the night.”
“Oh yeah, sorry.” Claire mimed zipping her lips and shut the door after her sister.
She rounded the back of Mabel, Gramps’s 1949 souped-up dark blue Mercury with flames painted down her sides. He’d named his car after his first wife, Claire’s grandma, and regarded the piece of steel with almost as much love and care.
“Where’s your car, Katie?” Gramps asked as Mabel rumbled to life.
“Still at the grocery store, I think.”
“I hope you two learned something from this,” he said.
“We sure did,” Kate said, sneaking a bite of pizza. She leaned closer to Claire and breathed pepperoni and mozzarella cheese all over her while whispering, “We learned that Deputy Dipshit has a big problem coming his way. That man should not have messed with the Morgan sisters.”
Claire sighed, shaking her head. “Kate, I’ve spent enough quality time with you in jail to last me a lifetime.”
Her sister’s eyes glittered with a hint of madness as she chewed, looking at least a half bubble off-plumb, if not a whole one. “Don’t worry, Claire. Next time, we’ll be on the other side of the bars looking in at Ernie.”
Claire closed her eyes and groaned. They were going to need to lock Kate in the basement for the next five months.
Chapter Two
“I’m standing in the middle of a stampede,” Ronnie hollered above the madness of The Shaft’s Friday lunch crowd. For a bar and grill located in a lonely valley littered with tumbleweeds and cacti, the dusty pit stop was packed with hungry customers.
Mississippi Brown chalked his pool cue. Dressed in black from head to toe, including cowboy hat and boots, the long-legged FBI agent assigned to keep an eye on Ronnie scouted the bar with his usual squint. “Do you mean a literal or figurative stampede?”
She smirked. “Both. What can I get you to drink?” She flipped through her order pad, looking for a clean sheet.
With Butch home visiting his family, and Claire tearing up the rotting back deck at the RV park where she played handywoman for Gramps and Ruby, Ronnie and Katie were trying to keep up with the busy tables on their own. Too bad their cousin, Natalie, who’d rolled into the park last night after a long drive south from Deadwood, didn’t have much experience with waiting tables or pouring drinks. They could have used the extra help. Maybe Ronnie would have to give Natalie a little training session this evening when she showed up for a drink.
“Iced tea,” Mississippi said above the din.
“No beer today?”
Mississippi preferred local brews over national brands most days when he was babysitting Ronnie at The Shaft. He’d been assigned to keep an eye on her months ago after the last two FBI buffoons had come swaggering into the bar wearing Urban Cowboy costumes with the price tags practically dangling off them. Claire had sniffed out their fishy fake identities within an hour of their arrival at the bar and had chased them out with plenty of snarling, landing a bite or two in the process. A couple of days later, the buffoons and their black sedan were gone and Mississippi had taken their place with his burly pickup, well-worn pair of shit-kickers, and titanium backbone.
His green-eyed gaze snapped back to her. “I need to stay sharp.”
She took a step closer to him so she didn’t have to talk so loudly. “Please tell me you have a yearly employee review coming up and this isn’t about someone new coming to Jackrabbit Junction to try to kidnap, torture, and kill me for my ex-husband’s supposed stash of stolen riches.”
“So, you want me to lie, then?” He grinned. “And here I thought you hated it when the FBI blew smoke up your dress.” His focus drifted downward. “Nice polka dots, by the way. You trying to be Marilyn Monroe?”
More like Lucille Ball with the way Ronnie’s morning was going so far. She’d left the dress on because she planned to work on bookkeeping for Butch today. The fact that Grady might be stopping by the bar later instead of the RV park to deal with her jailbird sisters might’ve played a tiny part in her choice of clothing.
Or maybe not so tiny.
But she switched the high-heeled red shoes for her favorite boots before coming to the bar. There was only so much torture she was willing to endure when it came to trying to convince a man that she could be as polished and compliant as any other wanna-be county sheriff’s girlfriend.
“Not quite. I don’t have Marilyn’s curves or hair color.”
“True. You have more of a skinny Jane Russell look, minus the pointy bra.”
Ronnie took a step back, pressing her hand to her chest. “Is that an actual compliment, Mr. Brown?”
He shrugged, glancing over her shoulder. “You’re nicer than you are ugly, if that counts. And I like your boots.”
She laughed at his backward compliment. “And here I thought they didn’t program flattery into you FBI robots at the academy.”
“They don’t. I’ve gone rogue.”
“I guess there’s hope for you yet.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” His eyes creased in the corners. “Most of the time I still can’t pass muster, not even with a ten-day head start.”
Ronnie jotted down his drink order on her pad. “What do you want for lunch? Your usual? Or does staying sharp mean going hungry?”
“My usual is fine.”
Burger and side salad it was. “Do you want it at the bar?” The tables were full, so a bar stool was his only option.
“No. I have a good vantage point here.”
Ronnie stuffed her order pad in her apron pocket, taking a moment to scan the room. “What are we watching for today? A mob goon, a hit man, or another black market mule?” she joked, but not really thanks to her ex-husband, who it turned out was never legally her spouse. Apparently, the law allowed him to be married
