Authors: Meg Muldoon
The photo dropped out of my hand and blew away in the wind.
I slid down against the brick wall as the vision came at me with all the force of a freight train bound for hell.
Chapter 61
The parking lot of the rodeo fairgrounds is almost deserted. Half-eaten containers of nachos and soft drink cups litter the ground. The empty lot has the hung-over silence that comes after the Saturday night parties have all come to an end.
It’s very late. Or very early.
But one car remains. A brand new shiny Ford truck that looks like it just came off some expensive car lot.
Two teenagers sit in the truck bed, sitting close, yet awkwardly apart at the same time. A young Dale is wearing the same dust-stained shirt he wore when he was holding onto that bronco. She’s wearing the same black outfit she had on while standing in the crowd, watching him embrace the other girl.
He talks to her in hushed, regretful tones. She’s biting her lip and listening quietly.
Her heart shatters a little more with each word.
“It was my fault,” he says. “I drank too much that night. It was wrong, and it shouldn’t have happened. It’s my fault, Annie. It’s my fault.”
She looks away.
“But you… you told me you loved me,” she says, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You told me that all along, you loved me. That Courtney was just—”
“I can’t be with you, Annie,” he says, looking down ashamedly.
She reaches for his hand.
“But I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
He pulls away.
“It was wrong what we did. Do you know how much it would hurt Courtney if she found out? I mean, she’s your own—”
“I don’t care about her,” she says. “I loved you before she would even give you the time of day. I believed in you when nobody else would. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
He rubs his face.
“I know you love me, Dale,” she says. “I know you meant what you said to me. If you could just give me a—”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re wrong. You… this was just a...”
His voice shakes when he says it, and he has trouble getting that last word out.
Mistake
.
Because he knows it’s a lie.
“You’re just a coward,” she says. “I’m not popular enough for you, is that it? Not pretty enough for the rodeo star? You’re afraid of what people will think, aren’t you? You’re afraid of what your friends will say when they find out about us.”
He doesn’t answer. She looks in his direction.
“Well? Aren’t you going to answer me?”
He looks down again.
She’s right
, he thinks.
“Say it to my face, coward,” she says.
Dale looks up, a flash of anger in his eyes. He meets hers, and says the words that ruin everything she is.
“I don’t want to be the laughing stock of the whole town,” he said. “All of this was a huge mistake. I’m never going to love you, Annie.”
She’ll never forget the words.
After a few moments of stunned silence, she slides out of the truck bed, and staggers away into the early-morning darkness, her sorrow and pain turning into something else.
He’s not going to get away with this,
she thinks
.
I’ll burn the whole world down if I have to.
You’ll never be free of me, Dale Dixon.
I can tell by the feeling of hate in her thoughts. She’s not bluffing.
Chapter 62
I sat against the brick wall, shivering, my hair soaked through with melted snow.
The girl’s last thoughts echoed in my mind.
He’s not going to get away with this.
And he hadn’t.
That girl in the vision, Dale’s real soulmate, had been his demise.
There was no evidence, nothing to tie her to Dale’s death.
But I just knew it in my gut.
It had been her. She had murdered him.
These visions couldn’t be for nothing.
But who was she?
I didn’t have much time to think about it. The sound of glass breaking and then screams erupted from inside the bar.
It snapped me out of the trance.
I got to my feet, dusted off the snow that had accumulated on my clothes, and rushed inside. My head was still pounding with the pain of the migraine, but I didn’t let it stop me.
The screams got louder as I ran down the hallway and then out into the bar.
My heart pounded hard in my chest.
What if she…?
But it only took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t. It wasn’t her.
“You get off of me,
bacon
!”
A huddle of people surrounded them. Kirby Carruthers wriggled and howled and screamed. Someone had pinned the greasy gas attendant down on the floor of The Cupid.
“Now what was that you were saying you were gonna do to Courtney?” Raymond said, leaning harder on Kirby.
He grunted.
“This don’t concern you,” he squeaked.
Raymond leaned even harder and Kirby squealed just like a little girl. I thought his big large cow eyes might just pop out of his skull.
“My hearing must be bad,” Raymond said, looking around at the crowd. “What was that again?”
Kirby didn’t say anything.
Raymond eased up.
“Now, what was it you were going to do?” Raymond said again.
“Ain’t your concern…” he started mumbling.
“I can’t hear you,” Raymond said, laying the pressure on.
“Dammit,” Kirby squeaked. “It’s just business. Dale owed the people I work for, that fool having been on such a losing streak right before... The people I work for would just like the money their owed, simple as that. But Courtney hasn’t paid up. Hasn’t given them a single dime.”
Kirby let out a sharp cry as Raymond dug his knee into his back.
“These folks don’t like being ignored,” he squealed.
Raymond grabbed a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket. He slapped the bracelets on Kirby’s thick wrists.
I noticed that Kirby’s hands were covered in black paint.
The graffiti earlier. It must have been him who put it there.
“Kirby Carruthers, I’m arresting you on suspicion of assault and conspiracy to commit murder.”
“Conspiracy to commit murder? What in the… that ain’t right!” Kirby protested.
Raymond got up, dragging the big gas attendant to his feet and then pushing him through the crowd toward the doors.
I went after them, trying to get Raymond’s attention.
The vision was still vivid in my mind, and even though Raymond probably wouldn’t believe me, he needed to know.
The murderess was still out there.
“There’s something I have to tell you, Officer Rollins,” I shouted, pushing through the crowd.
Raymond looked back, and our eyes met for a brief second.
“I’ll be back soon, Loretta,” he said. “Soon as I take care of this piece of—”
“It’s important, Raymond.”
“I’ll be extra fast, then,” he said, looking back at me again. “But first things first.”
Everyone watched as Raymond pushed Kirby through the front doors, and the two of them disappeared outside into the storm.
A momentary silence settled in over the room.
Then all at once, everyone started talking again.
I went around behind the bar, my nerves all shot to hell. I looked around and noticed that Courtney had come out of the office, and looked as though she’d been trying to fill the drink orders that had piled up in my absence. Her face was red, like she was ashamed. It must have been embarrassing: the entire bar hearing about her money woes.
But right now, there were more important things that needed to be attended to.
The last words of the girl in my vision replayed again in my head.
I’ll burn the whole world down if I have to.
“Courtney, I need to talk to you,” I said.
She had a metal shaker between her hands and was tossing it up and down furiously.
“It’s important. It’s about Dale,” I said.
I lowered my voice.
“I think I know who killed him, Courtney. I think you might know who she is, too.”
Her mouth dropped open for a split second in surprise when I said
she
.
Then the shaker’s lid popped off, and the contents of the
Cupid’s Slingshot
she was making sprayed everywhere, drenching her silk blouse, and about four customers at the bar.
She looked at them and then back at me with that same expression of shock.
And then I saw it.
Something in her eyes… just snapped.
She dropped the shaker, and it hit the floor with a loud metallic ring.
“That’s it,” she said. “That’s the last goddamned straw. I can’t do this anymore!”
Everyone in the saloon looked in her direction.
“I’m done with this hell hole!”
She pushed her way past me and around the bar. She fought her way through the crowd of people, throwing herself forward like a bowling ball.
“Courtney!” I yelled after her. “Courtney, wait!”
But she didn’t want to hear what I had to say.
She busted out of there like she wasn’t ever coming back.
Dry Hack left a few seconds later after her.
Chapter 63
We closed the saloon down early.
Or more accurately,
I
closed the saloon down early, being that there was no one else left to do it.
But with the storm raging on outside, and that dangerous feeling still hanging in the air as thick as cigar smoke, closing down seemed like the prudent, responsible thing to do.
I kicked everyone out, to a round of grunts and protests. I knew most of the folks at The Cupid would have rather passed the rest of the blizzard inside of the bar, drinking themselves silly until the middle of next week.
But it was practically a one-woman show now, and this woman was almost dead on her feet.
When they left, I started cleaning up the empty place. I put some Dwight on, and ran around the saloon, collecting sticky beer bottles, sweeping up broken glass, and flipping chairs upside down on the tables, waiting anxiously for Raymond to get back so I could tell him what I knew.
I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the vision.
About that girl in black.
About the pain she felt. The phantom pain that I could still feel, that was so strong, it brought tears to my eyes just thinking about it.
The girl had suffered.
She had truly suffered, in the kind of way that was hard to understand unless you felt it yourself.
Which I had.
But what made her dangerous was that she wasn’t the type to just sit back and do nothing about that suffering.
It was all becoming clear to me now.
The girl in black, up in the stands, in Dale’s truck bed… She was Courtney’s—
Just then, I felt the buzzing of my phone in my jean pocket. I put down the bar rag, reaching for it, my stomach lunging as I read the words “Sunny Banks Nursing Home” on the screen.
Lawrence.
Were they calling me because something happened to him?
I answered before it got a chance to buzz a second time.
“Hello?” I said, nervously.
“Bitters?”
Lawrence’s old voice cracked over the line.
“What’s wrong, Lawrence?” I said. “What are you doing up at this hour?”
“Bitters… I think I might know who did it,” he said, his old voice cracking again. “She said something. Something that ties her to—”
Just then, the front door swung open, and a cold burst of air whipped through the bar, making the back shelves tremble and the glasses clink together like wind chimes.
I squinted at the door, unable to make out who was standing there in the dim lights.
“Just a second, Lawrence,” I said, holding the phone to my neck.
“I’m sorry, but we’re closed,” I said.
The woman walked inside like she didn’t hear me.
“We’re clos—”
“Aw, c’mon, hon,” she said. “It’s been a long day. Listening to that old man talk on and on the way old Lawrence does sure takes a lot out of a girl.”
She smiled, the crow’s feet at the edges of her black eyes rippling with the effort.
Lawrence’s voice came in small and faded from the phone speaker.
“She did it, Bitters,” he said. “She killed Dale.”
I looked over at Belle, horror coursing through me like a virus.
Each thud of her boots against the creaky wood floor sent a wave of shivers down my spine.
“I’m just dying for a drink,” she said.
Chapter 64
I placed the phone on the back counter, but I didn’t hang it up.
Belle took off her jacket. She wasn’t in her kitten-dotted nurse outfit anymore. She had changed to an all-black look.
She took a seat at the bar.
I wiped my sweaty hands off on my jeans, realizing that her full name was
Anabelle
.
Belle.Anabelle.
Annie
.
My mouth went drier than a wagon trail during an August drought.
“Sure, Belle,” I croaked out. “What, uh, what are you drinking?”
“I think I’ll have one of them
Cupid’s Slingshot
s,” she said. “Always wanted to try one of those. It’s such a good name for a drink. Did you come up with it?”
I nodded silently.
“One
Cupid’s Slingshot
coming right up.”
I gathered together the ingredients, making slow, calculated motions. I added ice to one of the shakers, measured out the whiskey, cherry juice, honey simple syrup, and lime, and shook it until the outside was icy cold.
The whole time, I kept stealing glances at Anabelle.