Something Wilder(44)
“Yeah, you’re reading that right,” he said, meeting her eyes squarely. “I didn’t want you alone at the jukebox.”
She put a hand flat on his chest and hesitated for a conflicted handful of seconds before forcing him back a step. “Well, knock it the fuck off.”
Lily stepped around him, but to his relief she didn’t walk to the bar; she went to her backpack, digging for more quarters. Slowly, he exhaled. That could have gone much worse. He knew better than to follow her again, though, and figured it couldn’t hurt to cool down. With Bradley’s knowing smirk trailing after him, he moved past the table and toward the men’s restroom.
It was dark inside the cramped room, from the heavy grained wood to the dim bulb that glowed overhead, and it took his eyes a few seconds to adjust. An exposed pipe sagged from the buckling ceiling. The sink leaked and stood crookedly in the melancholy half-moon of a rust-colored stain on the floor. The urinal was in a disconcertingly damp corner, looking like it could be dislodged from the wall with only the vibration of a heavy truck rumbling past, with a lone framed photo above it. He’d take a moment to appreciate the luxury of indoor plumbing, but he wasn’t all that confident it actually worked. With his tangled thoughts full of Lily and the renewed, familiar fire burning in his blood, he stared, dazed, at the wall in front of him.
Slowly, the photo came into focus. It was old and yellowed at the edges, with scribbled handwriting in the corner. A structure… scraggly trees… a man. Leo arched a brow, amused—Duke must have made quite an impression on the bar owner if even the john was a shrine to him. In this photo, he was far younger than when Leo had known him, but the mustache, dark hair flattened by the trademark Stetson, the cocky lean: it was definitely Duke, clear as day.
Realization felt like a shot of adrenaline as the words from the riddle crashed into Leo’s thoughts: So, search the stump of Duke’s tree at the belly of the three.
He leaned closer still. Down in the corner, almost too faint to make out, were two words scribbled in pencil. Duke’s Tree.
Holy shit.
Chapter Fifteen
LILY LOOKED UP from the jukebox to find Leo Grady, whose weirdly possessive self had left her only minutes ago looking chiseled and gorgeous in soft worn jeans and a white T-shirt, emerging from the men’s room looking like a… a goddamn sandwich board. And wet.
“What on earth?” she mumbled, trying to decipher the object shoved beneath his damp shirt.
Hair dripping, Leo hurried toward her, grinning as he opened his wallet and threw down more than enough money to cover a handful of beers.
“What did you—?” she began.
“Lads, Nicole,” he called to the group, walking briskly. “We’re leaving. Quickly.”
Smoothly, he dug his hand into the front pocket of her jeans and tugged the car keys free, spinning them on his finger and winking as if he knew exactly how the brief intrusion into her pants sent an electric thrill sparking between her legs. Tossing the keys to Bradley’s waiting palm, Leo grabbed her wrist and pulled her behind him toward the exit.
As he dragged her out the door, Lily looked back over her shoulder in time to catch a thin trail of water silently seeping beneath the men’s room door.
“Leo, what’s under your sh—?”
“Get in the car,” he said, cutting her off again. “All of you. Now.”
Scrambling, they shoved a bewildered Walt into the rear cargo area and tumbled into the back seat while Nicole and Bradley jumped into the front.
“What happ—?” Bradley began as the bartender ran outside, shouting.
“Just go,” Leo urged, slapping the back of the driver’s seat headrest. “Go, go, go.”
Without needing further instruction, Bradley turned the engine over and peeled away with a roar. “This is it!” he yelled, rolling down the window. “This is the shit we came for!”
Specks of dirt swirled into the Jeep, orbiting like stardust, and a wild energy took over. Nicole reached to crank the radio playing crackly honky-tonk. “I don’t know what that was about,” she said, “but goddamn if I don’t feel like an outlaw.”
Lily turned in her seat to face Leo, ready to demand he explain precisely what the fuck that was all about, but he beat her to it, already pulling the item from his sodden shirt. For a handful of seconds, words fell away, and she held her wind-whipping hair from her face as she stared down at the framed photo in his hand. The glass of the frame was streaked with water, but the image inside was protected. It was a photograph of her father, standing outside a tiny one-room cabin. The tilting wooden structure itself was flanked by two trees, and a brown-haired, bushy-mustached Duke leaned against the tree on the left, holding a beer and smiling easily at the camera.
“Duke’s tree,” Leo said proudly, tapping the words scrawled beneath the glass with an index finger. “?‘So, search the stump of Duke’s tree at the belly of the three.’ If we can figure out where this photo was taken, we won’t even have to bother with the riddle. This is it!”
Lily would have sworn the breath was being slowly pulled from her lungs. “I know where this is.”
Leo stared at her. “Wait—seriously?”
“I think so,” she said, nodding. “The few times Duke took me with him on cartography outings, we’d stop at this little cabin down in the canyons. Well, more shack than cabin and I haven’t been there since I was little, but…” She chewed her lip, mind spinning. “I think I know generally where it is.”