A gnawing worry burrowed in my gut. Lula hadn’t wandered off again. Either something had scared her away—or someone had taken her.

Chapter Eight

After I took a picture of the lamp with my crappy cell phone, I extinguished the flame. The place looked even more abandoned in the dark, but I checked around the property just to be sure, even opening the outhouse door and nearly falling over from the stench.

I hurried back to the road, trying to figure out the fastest way to reach Marco. I considered making the call from the tavern, which would allow me to inform Max and Ruth of what I’d found, but I still needed to take Hank and the groceries home.

When I reached the car, I contemplated changing back into my ankle boots, but it was so cold and wet I decided to leave on my muddy snow boots.

“Did you find her?” Hank asked.

“No,” I said. “And it looked like she’d left without planning to.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

I told him what I’d found, and he frowned. “That don’t necessarily mean nothing. The girl’s not playin’ with a full deck.”

I thought about her many mistakes the night before, and while I suspected he was right, something felt off about this.

“What are you gonna do?” he asked.

“Take you home and call Marco.”

“You’re really bringin’ in the sheriff?” he asked in surprise.

“No, I’m calling my friend Marco, who happens to be a deputy sheriff. However, he’s on medical leave right now, so it will be one friend calling another.”

“Uh-huh,” he grunted.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“You can’t help yourself. You think she’s some poor dumb girl and you feel the need to help her.” When I started to protest—mostly because he’d called her dumb—he held up a hand. “It ain’t an insult, so calm down. You’re just like my Mary.” He paused for a moment, then added softly, “You remind me of her. You’re both so alike—headstrong but softhearted.”

“Thank you, Hank.”

“I didn’t say it was necessarily a good thing. My Mary got burned a time or two, and given this girl’s history, I’m worried you’ll get burned too.”

“All I’m doing is calling Marco,” I said. “We’ll see what he says and go from there.”

“Uh-huh.”

I didn’t think Marco could handle the case since he was on leave, but surely he could refer me to someone he trusted in his department. Although I’d downplayed the situation for Hank, I thought something reeked about this, and I intended to do what I could to make sure Lula was safe.

We headed back home, passing Wyatt’s garage on the way. An ache filled my heart, and I wondered how I’d let myself get so attached to him. What a fool. I needed to cut all ties so I wouldn’t be tempted, a difficult task given that we lived in a town with a population of about 2,200 people. My old car was still in the parking lot behind the building. “I need to ask Wyatt to sell my car for parts.”

“Or you could get Bingham to steal it so you can file an insurance claim,” Hank muttered, staring out the window.

“I thought Bingham was the local drug dealer.”

“Bingham believes in diversification,” Hank said. “He ran the chop shop before he took over the drug business. After I relinquished my business, he got himself a cook from Chicago, but he can’t grow weed like I could.” A hint of a smile lit up his eyes.

“A few weeks ago, Wyatt thought that Bingham had asked you to grow pot for him. Is that an issue for him?”

He chuckled. “He’s asked a time or two, but I always turn him down. I ain’t got the stamina for it no more.”

“Do you think Bingham will pressure you into it?” I asked.

“He ain’t got nothin’ to pressure me with. You and Wyatt are off-limits. I ain’t got nothin’ else left.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. Bingham had found a work-around with Hank’s grandson—he’d helped Seth spy on the rival drug dealers because Seth had come to him rather than the other way around—which meant he wasn’t above thinking outside the box. “Bingham was watching Lula last night, and not in a good way. Got any idea why?”

“You hear me, girly, you need to stay far away from Todd Bingham. You got lucky last time, but the next time might not end in a happily ever after.”

I laughed. “Are you callin’ this a happily ever after?”

“You’re alive, ain’t ya? That looks mighty happy to me.”

I had to admit that he had a point, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a fairy-tale ending. Not after my breakup with Wyatt. I needed to focus on more important things. “Back to Lula—”

“I ain’t got no idea why he was glarin’ at her. Rumor has it he’s got him some prostitutes. Maybe she worked for him on the side.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” I said. “Not with the hours Ruth and I work.”

“Then maybe it’s drugs. Like I said, the girl’s not right in the head. Maybe she tried to rip ’im off.”

“Maybe…” I mused. But that didn’t seem likely either.

“It makes no nevermind to you what he was glarin’ at her for. That’s their business, not yours.”

I disagreed with that, but I could see there was no convincing him. His only concern in this situation was my safety. “I’m just trying to figure out what to tell my friend Marco.”

Hank snorted so hard I thought he was going to spit out his tonsils. After that, I couldn’t get him to spill anything else about Bingham or Lula. Knowing him, I decided I’d just have to bide my time and ask him later.

When we got home, Hank went inside as I carried in the food and Target bags, leaving Ruth’s purchases in the car. Hank settled into his recliner and turned on the television, grumbling that he’d missed the first few minutes of Ellen. I made him test his blood sugar, and not surprisingly, he needed a dose of insulin, so I got him squared away before heading to the kitchen.

I found Marco’s phone number on my cell phone, which was pretty much a glorified phone book in the mountains, and dialed it into Hank’s rotary phone. Since the phone had a long cord that would allow me plenty of leeway to move around the kitchen, I started putting away the groceries while I waited for him to pick up.

Marco answered after a couple of rings, breathless. “Carly? What’s up?”

“You got a minute?” I asked as I put a container of almond milk in the back of the fridge, trying to hide it from Hank.

“For you? You bet.”

Marco and I had barely known each other before our big showdown with Carson Purdy. Beyond the fact that we were both around the same age, we didn’t have much in common—he was a good ole boy who lived to hunt and fish, and I was a former city girl who thought the outdoors was best observed through a window. But life-and-death situations had a way of bringing unlikely people together.

Marco had been shot twice by Carson in an attempt to protect me. I’d tried to drag Marco to the safety of his car. I hadn’t been successful, and Carson had nearly shot him again—we both had Jerry to thank for our lives—but Marco had claimed most people would have taken off and left him to fend for himself. I’d countered that if most of the people he knew would have left him behind in a life-or-death situation, then he needed to find better company. We’d been friends ever since.