Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(49)

“Fuck that.” That was Lilli. She had a death grip with both hands around Isaac’s wounded arm, but she was paying keen attention to their discussion.

Isaac gave her leg a flaccid pat with his good arm. “Not your call, Sport.”

Though she gave her old man the kind of look that should be registered as a deadly weapon, she shut up.

“Show?” Isaac looked at his VP.

Show regarded Badger with narrowed eyes, then sighed. “Yeah. He’s right. I’ll talk to him—warn the f*ck out of him—and we’ll take him home.”

“Okay. Wise man, Badge. This gettin’ shot business sucks ass.” Isaac closed his eyes just as Dom drove up with Lilli’s SUV.

They got Isaac in the truck with Lilli, Dom, and Double A. The rest of the Horde watched them hurry down the fairway, the crowd making way. Badger turned then, on his way to Adrienne, but Show blocked his path, towering over him. Badger looked up and said nothing. Show virtually never talked to him or acknowledged him at all anymore, even at the table. This interaction between them in the past fifteen minutes or so was more talking than they’d done since Show had thrown a table across the Hall to get to him.

“If Isaac dies, Mariano dies, too. Your ‘mercy’ ends there.”

Badger nodded.

Show continued to stare, and Badger continued to hold himself steady.

Then, with a single, abrupt nod, Show muttered, “Okay,” and turned in the direction of the women and children, where his pregnant old lady was waiting.

Not sure what was ‘okay,’ Badger turned in the other direction and went to Adrienne.




CHAPTER ELEVEN



Adrienne had crawled out from under the picnic table when the people around her had stopped hiding and begun to relax. But then she didn’t know what to do. She wanted to find Badger, but she was still afraid.

“Adrienne? Sweetheart?” She turned at the sound of Badger’s mother’s voice and ended up being swallowed in a hug. After a good, hard squeeze, Badger’s mom set her back and looked her over with a concerned mother’s eye.

Darlene Ness was tall and thin like Badger. Adrienne guessed her to be in her mid-fifties or so. A little older than Show, but not much. She had very wrinkled, leathery skin, as if she’d spent all her life in the sun —which she probably had—but even so, she didn’t look much older than what was probably her real age.

Her eyes—the same fantastical shade of green as Badge’s—were bright and lively, vivid with sweetness, and that was probably why she didn’t look older.

“Are you okay, sweetie? We saw you under the table. I know that was scary.”

“Yeah—scary. I’m okay. I’d like to find Badge, though.”

Badger’s dad stepped up. “Did he tell you to wait here?” She nodded. “Then best do so. We’ll wait with you. Looks like the excitement is over, at least.”

Broad, with a barrel chest over a beer belly, his grey crew-cut covered by a dirty cap, Hank Ness looked like ninety-percent of the men in Signal Bend. An aging farmer. But the Ness family had lost most of their land, Badge had told her, and now Hank worked another man’s farm. Darlene did housekeeping at the Millview Motor Inn to help make ends meet. They could not have been more different from her maximally-educated, cultured, world-traveling parents if they had been born on another planet. And yet, though she’d only spent a few hours altogether with them so far, they felt so much like a family, like her family, the way it had been when her mom was alive, that it made her ache all the way to her marrow with homesickness.

But she was trying not to think about her family these days. No point in being homesick for a place that wasn’t home anymore.

She looked up at Hank and met his eyes—which were just garden-variety brown, but crinkly and kind.

“Would it be wrong to ask what happened?”

“Not sure. Not much of a gawker, myself. Justin will tell us what he can, don’t you worry.” He nodded past her shoulder and smiled. “Here he comes now—and he picked up a tail.”

Adrienne turned and saw Badger walking quickly toward her, with a much broader, slightly taller man with short blond hair. Too happy to see Badger in one piece to be interested in the stranger, she ran forward, into her man’s arms. Her man.

“I’m okay, babe. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

“What happened?”

“Isaac’s hurt, but I think he’ll be okay. I’ll tell you what I can later.”

They had a lot of talking to do later, it seemed, what with the drama at the church quilts and now this.

But she wouldn’t push for more now. “Okay.”

The man who’d followed Badger was still standing there, and now he was grinning like an idiot.

Adrienne gave him a look to let him know he was being creepy, but then she noticed his eyes. Like Badger’s and Darlene’s. So the next thing Badger said didn’t surprise her at all.

“Adrienne, this is my brother, Jason. Jason, this is Adrienne.”

Jason smiled and held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, beautiful. I’ve been hearing about you for years.” He winked. He was blond and handsome, and probably flirted with women by default, accustomed to their interest.

Still creepy, as far as she was concerned. “Interesting. I think he’s mentioned a brother once or twice.”