The volume of what Delbert was saying increased, but that was the only sign he’d even heard her.
“I’m going back to town to see if I can find him,” she reiterated. “Do you want to come with me? I’ve got Mike Hill’s little Nissan, which doesn’t have much room with Troy’s car seat in there, too. But I think you might feel better if you came with me.”
“He’ll be back soon. He said he’ll be back—”
“Delbert! I know you’re upset. But if you want to come with me, please answer.”
He shook his head, which meant her words had registered, after all. They just didn’t have much impact. Pulling away, he resumed his pacing.
“Okay. You wait for him here,” she said. “I’ll be back as soon as I know something.”
“Katie says to wait here,” he responded, adding that statement to his litany. “Booker will be back soon. He told me he’d be back. He said, ‘Sit tight, I’ll be home in a few hours…”’
With a sigh, Katie lifted Troy and headed out to the truck. Booker must’ve gone to the Honky Tonk, she decided. Where else could he be? It was nearly midnight. But with both his vehicles, as well as Hatty’s Buick, right here, how was he planning to get home?
An image of Ashleigh flashed across her mind, but Katie refused to believe Booker was with Ashleigh or any other woman. He wouldn’t leave Delbert at home, frantic. He’d have come back…if he could.
CHAPTER TWENTY
BOOKER COULD HAVE SWORN the little Nissan that passed him a few minutes earlier was the truck he’d seen Katie driving around town. But it had to be someone else, he told himself, most likely someone staying in the cabins farther up the mountain. Katie was probably at home with her new baby. She had no reason to be out in the middle of the night, no reason to be anywhere near the farmhouse….
Pulling up the collar of his leather jacket against the chill wind that whistled through the trees around him, he shoved his hands in his pockets and kept moving. He’d been walking for nearly an hour, but the passing miles had done little to soothe the old aches, the ones inside that he thought he’d outdistanced. He felt dark, sullen and, for the first time in a long while, he was craving a cigarette.
Headlights appeared as a vehicle came around the bend in the road up ahead. Booker hunched deeper into his coat and waited for it to pass. If it had been going the other way, he would have stepped off the road into the trees, as he’d been doing all night. He had no intention of drawing anyone’s attention. He was too angry to ask anyone for a ride, too angry to need anyone. He just wanted to be left alone.
The truck passed before he realized it was the red Nissan he’d seen earlier. Standing in the road, he turned to glance behind him. The person he’d briefly glimpsed behind the wheel had certainly looked like Katie….
Whoever was driving threw on the brakes. The truck came to a sudden stop, then the gears shifted and the engine whined as the driver backed up.
A moment later, Katie rolled down her window and stared out at him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, not at all sure he was happy to see her.
“What do you think?”
He didn’t know what to think. Katie hadn’t come to the farmhouse since she’d moved out. “Where’s Mike?”
“At his house, I guess.”
“And the baby?”
“In here with me.”
“Isn’t it a little late to be taking him out?”
“Someone had to find you.”
He zipped up his jacket. Now that he’d stopped moving, the air felt even colder. “I can take care of myself.”
She let her breath go in a dramatic sigh. “To be honest, I’m beginning to wonder about that, Booker. The ‘T’ in your middle name must stand for trouble.”
When she smiled, he felt a responding grin twitch at the corners of his mouth—but resisted the lightening of his mood. “You’re not the first person to draw the connection.”
She peered in her rearview mirror. “Are you going to climb in before I get rear-ended?”
The wind whipped his hair across his forehead. “I’m not good company tonight, Katie.”
“I’m not asking you to entertain me. I just want to know you’re home safe so I can sleep. And maybe I want to hear why the police think you’ve stolen another car.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Maybe?”
“If it’s not going to upset me.”
Booker’s momentary levity disappeared. “Are you afraid I did it?”
She seemed to sober, too. “I know you didn’t, or I wouldn’t be out here.”
She meant it—he could tell—and the fact that she trusted him seemed to press back the darkness and the cold.
“Why are you walking?” she asked.
“Let’s just say Orton wasn’t as excited about giving me a ride home as he was about hauling me down to the police station.”
“I don’t like that man.”
“That makes two of us.”
Headlights bore down on them as an approaching car rounded a bend farther up the mountain. “Someone’s coming up behind you,” he said. “You’d better get going.”
Katie gave the truck some gas, but only enough to pull over, out of the way. “Come on.” Her voice carried across the road. “Delbert’s about to have a nervous breakdown.”
Booker raised his voice above the engine of the advancing car. “He’s not asleep?”
“He’s pacing a hole in your kitchen floor, muttering over and over that you’ll be home soon.”
“Oh, boy.” Finally overcoming the stubbornness that had driven him all day—the last hour especially—he waited for the car to pass, then jogged over and climbed in next to Troy. Immediately the comforting smell of fabric softener and baby powder enveloped him and made him feel more like the man he’d been for the past few years than the angry child of the first twenty-five.
Maybe everything was going to be okay. Maybe he was what he thought he was and not what he used to be….
“Baby’s asleep, huh?” he said, staring down at the tightly wrapped bundle that was Troy.
“He likes the movement of the truck.” Katie turned the Nissan around and headed toward the farmhouse. After a few minutes, she looked over at him. “So where did the car come from?”
“What car?” he asked, stalling.