Page 39 of Knox
Fell.
Screamed.
Knox sat straight up in his bed, his heart a fist against his ribs, beating to escape. His entire body slicked with sweat, and he ran his hands through his hair, gripped his head.
The moon hung low, the night waning, and beams of soft light glazed his wooden floor, across the rug, and his knotted covers.
He kicked them off, set his feet on the floor, then got up and reached for a pair of faded jeans draped over his nearby easy chair.
Outside, the starlight turned the yard to silver. He leaned on the window frame, his gaze on the barn. Maybe he’d check on Daisy Duke and see if she was near delivery. Hot Pete’s first—and now only—issue. The thought pumped a knot into his throat.
He grabbed a T-shirt and pulled it on, stopped by the bathroom to splash water on his face, chase away the dream, and brush his teeth. Then he headed downstairs. Flicked on the overhead light in his mother’s expansive kitchen. Granite countertops, new stainless steel appliances. The kitchen his father had always wanted to give her. Knox had it remodeled last year for her 59th birthday.
This year, he hoped they could afford a cake.
No, they weren’t that broke, and with the insurance on Hot Pete, he’d be able to buy Calamity Jane, add the pedigreed cow to his stock of breeding cows. But he’d counted on Hot Pete’s ongoing purse, and later his straws, to grow and strengthen their line.
He poured in grounds to make coffee and glanced at the clock. Four a.m.
While the coffee brewed, he wandered into his office, just off the kitchen. No, his father’s office. The family Christmas picture taken the summer of Reuben’s senior year still sat on the worn oak desk. The entire family sat in front of the soaring stone fireplace in the great room—
Everyone smile, when I tell you to—that means you too, Knox. Tate, enough with the bunny ears—Ford, scoot over. I’m going in next to you. Rube! Stop laughing! Oh Wyatt, seriously, you had to show up in your hockey jersey?
Ruby Jane’s bossiness as she set up the timer on her Nikon.
Even now, the motley picture made him laugh—his big brother, Reuben, looking fierce and bold in an ugly Christmas sweater. And yeah, Wyatt, two years younger than Tate and just starting to contend for his place on a serious hockey team, wore his favorite jersey—the Minnesota Blue Ox. Ford and Ruby Jane, fraternal twins who wore the same mischievous smile. He always thought they could read each other’s mind. And right in the middle, Troublemaker Tate. His hand was caught mid-sabotage over Knox’s head.
Flanking them on one side, Gerri and Orrin Marshall. His father always reminded him of Tom Selleck, with a full head of black hair and a mustache. Big hands, a hearty laugh, and the kind of faith that seemed embedded in his bones.
Wow, Knox missed him. Especially when he sat in the faded leather desk chair. Or traced his name written in the top of the desk, an early crime with a pocket knife. Funny that his dad had never sanded it off.
Knox had changed little when he took over the office. Kept the furniture, the Charles Russell print hanging on the far wall, his father’s complete collection of Louis L’Amour in the bookcase. Had even reinforced the note his dad had taped to his desk, handwritten lyrics from his favorite hymn.
Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art;
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night;
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
He was trying, oh, Knox was trying.
He reached for his computer and opened it, the light illuminating the entire room. The news article about the NBR-X bombing came up, and he read it again, although he knew every line.
Arnie Gibbs, from Lubbock, Texas. Deceased at age 41. Body found in the rubble of the bombing. Investigators had found the ingredients for a bomb at his house, but even Knox had fertilizer in his barn. It didn’t make him a terrorist. Of course, Knox wouldn’t think of mixing the ammonium nitrate with fuel oil, boosting it with C-4, and adding a blasting cap. Gibbs had wrapped it all in a plastic bag and dropped it into an empty water bucket in the temporary stock holding area in the arena.
Only the fact that one of the stock handlers had moved it over to the dumpster area protected the arena from more lethal devastation. The blast had been localized to one area, secured inside what effectively acted as a cement bunker.
No one had answers to what Gibbs had been doing in the stock area, lingering for his own demise, a glitch Knox simply couldn’t get out of his brain.
But it wasn’t his puzzle to solve. Nor was figuring out who the two cowboys were in the picture, and what connection they might have to Gibbs. He’d called Torres, but the man gave him a total of two-point-three seconds, just short of hanging up on him.
Yeah, so maybe he should just let it go.
Except every night Kelsey kept slipping out of his hands. And every night he heard himself say,I told you, I’m going to get you out of this.
And he had,hello.