Sunrise Crossing. Jodi Thomas
Читать онлайн книгу.
lab partner in college didn’t remember knowing a Parker Lacey.
Her college roommate was eight months pregnant with her fourth kid and said she didn’t have time to chat.
Two old lovers wouldn’t take her call.
Her former boss had died two years ago.
The only neighbor she knew had moved a year ago, and Parker hadn’t noticed.
Parker paced the room like a caged lion. Surely, in thirty-seven years, she’d made one friend. She didn’t need a kidney; she only needed a favor. Someone to loan her a car or pick her up from the airport after one of her staff thought they were taking her to catch a plane.
Someone she could trade IDs with, maybe? No, that would be too much like a spy novel.
Even someone to give her a ride would be nice. Surely she knew a friend who would do a favor without asking too many questions.
As the days passed she realized she was being watched. If she didn’t plan carefully, she’d lead the FBI—or worse, the press—right to Tori.
Only Tori wanted her to come. Parker had to find a way. Once they were on the farm, they’d talk. Parker would help Tori plan; after all, planning was what she was good at.
Parker thought about how the brooding cowboy on the adjacent farm would react if press crews pulled up next to his land. He barely talked to her—or anyone else—the day she’d bought her farm.
The good thing about living next to a loner like him was that she didn’t have to worry about him spreading rumors of someone living at her place. She doubted he’d even noticed Tori there. If he had, he would have thought it was none of his business.
That one trait just might classify him as a friend in her book.
GALEN STANLEY PULLED the truck he’d rented in Liberal, Kansas, into the motel just outside Crossroads, Texas. The twilight rain was threatening to freeze over. He’d been driving for hours and was ready to stop.
The trail was cold.
His body felt every bit of his almost fifty years as he climbed from the huge rig. He could have slept in the back of the cab, but tonight, this close to the town he grew up in, he needed silence and a roof over his head.
He’d taken this assignment not because it was easy or had much chance of being successful, but because when he’d seen one of the locations he’d be checking out, he knew it was a sign telling him it was time to go back.
Back to the place he’d run from over thirty years ago. He’d been a traveler ever since.
As much as he hated to admit it, his gypsy blood sometimes whispered through his veins. He believed in signs and curses. In the past thirty years, he’d cheated death one too many times to not know that it would eventually find him. Maybe this place where it all began would be the place it all ended.
The loneliness that always weighed on his broad shoulders seemed heavier tonight. Maybe it was the knowledge that there would be no one to come home to. Not before, not now, not ever.
When he walked into the motel lobby, a sleepy old man in overalls climbed out of his recliner and limped the five feet to the counter. He didn’t look too happy at being pulled from his TV program.
“You got a room?” Galen didn’t bother to smile.
“Sixty a night for truckers. Breakfast is included.”
Galen nodded and pulled two hundreds from his wallet.
“Name?” The old man moved to a computer that looked twenty years old. “And I’ll need ID, address and an email if you got it.”
“Gabe,” Galen lied, as always. “Gabe Santorno.” He passed him a driver’s license with that name, along with an address in Denver that was simply a mail drop.
“One night, Mr. Santorno?”
“No. Two.” He hadn’t been this close to Crossroads in years. It was time he stopped working long enough to look around.
The old man chuckled. “You planning to take in the sights, stranger?”
Gabe raised his head and looked directly at the man. His gaze hardened. Fear flashed in the clerk’s eyes.
The old man lowered his gaze first. “Just making conversation, mister. Your business is your own.”
Gabe took the key and rolled his shoulders, forcing himself to relax. “Call me Gabe,” he said in a low tone. “And no, I don’t want to take in the sights. I just want to sleep. Tell the maid to skip my room.” The place didn’t look like it would have turndown service anyway.
“Then have a good night, Gabe.” The clerk was trying to act as if he wasn’t bothered, but he kept his head down. “If you sleep through breakfast, there’s a café in Crossroads a few miles down the road that’s worth eating at. Some say it’s got the best chicken fried steak in the state.”
“Thanks. I’ll remember that.” Gabe turned to leave, then added, “Old man, you were smart not to reach for that gun you’ve got beneath the counter.”
“What makes you think I’ve got a gun?”
Gabe smiled. “You’d be a fool not to out here on this lonely stretch of highway, but I mean you no harm. I’m just a trucker passing through.”
As he walked away, he heard the old guy whisper, “You’re a hell of a lot more than that, Mr. Santorno, but it’s none of my business.”
Gabe parked the truck on a side lot and walked back to his room with his one suitcase. All he owned, all he needed was in one bag. It had been like that since he was seventeen. He’d wanted it that way.
Once inside, he locked the door and checked the windows. Then Gabe tried to relax. He stood in the shower until the water turned cold. He had a week’s worth of stubble, but he didn’t bother to shave. A man with a bit of scruff is more forgettable, he decided. And that was exactly what he wanted to be. Forgettable.
Standing wrapped in a towel, he forced himself to stare into the mirror. Scars crossed over his body like lines on a road map. Some were more than thirty years old, and some were from his army days. One, on his left shoulder—a souvenir from his last job—wasn’t quite healed. He didn’t care about any of them. He’d given up caring about anything or anyone years ago.
An army sergeant told him once that he fought like a warrior angel in a hurry to get to the afterlife. Maybe he was, but hell didn’t want him and heaven didn’t seem ready to take him in. He’d be fifty on his next birthday, and his black hair was salted with gray. One day soon, he’d lose his edge and the warrior would fall.
Gabe laughed. When that day came, he wanted to be buried in the Crossroads cemetery. Maybe that’s why he took this assignment. Maybe it was time to visit what would someday be his last resting place.
He slept until ten, then dressed in black and slipped from the back window of his motel room. The rain had stopped but the road would still be slick. As he jogged the two miles to the little town, Gabe tried to push aside the last time he’d been in Crossroads, but the memories kept flooding back.
He’d been barely seventeen and dumb enough to believe in love. Jewel Ann Grey had been a year younger and even wilder than he was. He’d loved to say her name as if it were one word.
Even though there had been bad blood between the Stanleys and the Greys for years, he and Jewel Ann had run away together one night, full of dreams for their future. Their only crime that night was loving each other.
A few hours later, her father, leading a small caravan of pickups, caught up with them. He’d brought a truckload of relatives set on teaching Gabe a lesson for thinking a Stanley