The Cowboy Way: A Creed in Stone Creek / Part Time Cowboy

Again, Melissa shook her head. She’d gotten a scare, and she’d scraped her knees, but she wasn’t seriously injured. At home, she’d shower and, if it turned out she’d broken any skin, she could apply antibacterial ointment and bandages.

None of which meant she was going to let the incident pass without comment, however. Yes, she should have watched where she was going, should have looked before sprinting across the alley. Yet that old car had been going way too fast.

“Who was driving?” she asked, looking from Byron to Andrea.

A flush of color moved up Byron’s neck, and he shoved a hand through his hair.

“I was,” Andrea said, a mite too quickly. “It’s my car.”

Melissa wasn’t convinced that Andrea had been behind the wheel, but she’d made her point, and no laws had been broken, after all. She bent to pull the torn fabric of her sweatpants away from her knees, and the burning sensation made her wince.

Byron started to move, hesitated, and then took a resolute step toward her. “You might be hurt,” he said.

A swift and wholly unexpected rage swelled within Melissa in that moment, stealing her breath away, no doubt triggered by the near miss she’d just had. Her mind flashed on the photos of Chavonne Rowan’s small, broken body, taken at the medical examiner’s office in Flagstaff. And those images were still vivid in her recollection; as if she’d seen them only moments before.

You might be hurt.

Hurt, indeed. The way Chavonne had been hurt?

“At least let us give you a ride home,” Andrea pleaded, her expressive eyes brimming. “Please?”

Melissa paused, then nodded. Her house wasn’t far away, but the rain was coming down harder now, and the flesh on her knees burned and she felt mildly sick to her stomach.

Byron didn’t actually take her arm, though that had probably been his original intention. Instead, he just sort of herded her toward Andrea’s car, opening the heavy door on the passenger side and waiting for her to get in. Andrea scrambled behind the wheel.

Melissa noticed that Andrea had to scoot the seat forward to reach the gas and brake pedals, but she didn’t remark on it. She noticed a lot of things—being detail-oriented was part of her nature as well as her job—but even so, she tended to take most observations with a grain of salt. It was too easy to jump to conclusions.

Andrea’s car was practically a relic, she reminded herself, and it was possible that the seat had to be adjusted every time she sat in it. Big John had owned an old rattletrap of a work truck like that once, back in the day. The seat had had a mind of its own and needed constant adjustment.

Andrea tightened her grip on the steering wheel and glanced at the rearview as Byron got into the back.

Melissa, understandably distracted, finally got it then. Byron had spent the night with Andrea, in her little apartment over the Crockett sisters’ garage, and whoever had been driving had been in a hurry because neither of them wanted the elderly ladies to know about the rendezvous. Chances were, Velda wouldn’t be thrilled that her son had pulled an all-nighter, either, especially so soon after getting out of jail.

It was no wonder the kids were rattled. They’d nearly flattened the county prosecutor under the front wheels.

“I’ll be at work on time,” Andrea told her boss a couple of minutes later, as she pulled the car to a stop at Melissa’s front gate.

“Fine,” Melissa said, shoving open her door to climb out. Since she was in good shape, it surprised her to discover that she was stiff all over, sore and achy.

Byron got out, too, and stood waiting on the sidewalk, the rain making his hair curl, watching her intently.

Melissa felt a sudden need to reassure him. Maybe it was that he looked so young, standing there, and so vulnerable, a regular Lost Boy.

“You did a great job with the yard,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said, and she realized he was waiting to walk her to her front door.

Melissa waved to Andrea and turned to go through the gate, only to find Byron one step ahead, holding it open for her. Her skeptical side—after all, she was a prosecuting attorney—warned her not to be too trusting. Being softhearted too often translated to being soft-headed, in her experience.

It might well be true that Byron was basically a good kid who’d made a serious mistake and paid the price for it. On the other hand, he could be putting on an act. The next drug fix, the next tragedy, might be right around the corner.

Rain slid off the roof over Melissa’s porch, and she and Byron ducked through, like people passing beneath a waterfall.

Melissa wore her door key on a chain around her neck when she ran, and she pulled it out through the neck of her sweatshirt then, her hand still slightly unsteady. She’d gotten a powerful jolt of adrenaline a little while before, and it hadn’t completely subsided.

Gently, Byron took the key from her hand, inserted it into the lock and opened the door for her, handed the key back when she turned on the threshold to meet his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely.

Melissa nodded. “Be more careful next time,” she said.

He nodded. “You’re sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’m sure,” Melissa replied, because she was. Growing up on a working ranch, she’d been thrown by horses and stepped on by cows. She’d fallen out of hay mows and off the backs of trucks and tractors, all with relatively little damage.

By comparison, this was nothing.

“Byron?” she ventured.

He still looked miserable. “Yeah.”

“Choose your friends carefully. Nathan Carter is bad news, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Byron absorbed that, his face pale and taut. “Right now,” he answered, quietly and at some length, “I can’t afford to be that picky. A guy needs friends, and right now, Andrea and Nathan are the only ones I have.”

Sadness pinched the back of Melissa’s throat. She said nothing more, but simply nodded in response to Byron’s words.

Fifteen minutes later, having showered and gingerly dried herself off with little dabbing motions of her towel, she’d forgotten the brief conversation entirely. There were small cuts on both her knees, but they weren’t deep, and the bleeding had stopped. The rest of her body felt bruised, though, as if she’d actually been struck by Andrea’s car.

After bundling herself into a robe, she padded along the hallway to the kitchen, whipped up her protein smoothie, and gulped down a couple of over-the-counter pain pills with the first sip. In another few minutes, she told herself, watching dully as water sheeted down outside of the window over the sink, she’d be right as—well—rain.

Dressing took twice as long as usual, since every motion made some joint or muscle ache, but Melissa remained undaunted. She got herself into a pink-floral print skirt and a long white sweater, summer-light, and flicked on a few swipes of mascara and lip gloss.

Between the rain and her recent shower, her hair had frizzed out, and she was in no mood to spend half an hour taming it with a blow-dryer and a brush, so she clamped the stuff into a loose roll at the back of her head with an enormous plastic clip and called it good.

Tendrils drifted down around her cheeks and her neck—the look was softer than her usual tailored approach, more Ashley’s style than her own, but it pleased her, nonetheless.

While she was inside, the rain had stopped, and the sun was out, bright as polished brass.

When Melissa limped into her office, just before nine, Andrea was already there, standing in the middle of the floor like a sentinel and grasping a plain glass vase containing a huge bouquet of purple and white irises, most likely appropriated from the Crockett sisters’ garden, in both hands.

“These are for you,” Andrea said anxiously.

Melissa smiled, took the flowers and started to go around the nervous young woman, toward her own office. “Thanks, Andrea,” she said. “But you shouldn’t have. It really wasn’t necessary.”

“You could have been badly hurt,” Andrea burst out, “or even—”

Melissa paused, frowning. “I’m all right, Andrea.”