Page 70 of Knox
“Is what—”
“My layers. Mycrazy layers.”
Glo turned, took her hands. “No crazier than the rest of us. Sure, you have some darker baggage, maybe, but I’m guessing that everyone thinks their baggage is dark. So, no.”
She sighed. “I’m tired of the baggage.”
Glo nodded. Her phone vibrated, and she picked it up. Read the text.
“Is it from Tate?”
She nodded. “He says, ‘I’m doing my job. Don’t round up the posse just yet, Woody.’” She looked at Kelsey. “Why is he calling me Woody?”
“As in Buzz Lightyear and Woody,” Gerri said, walking up to them. “Tate’s favorite show when he was a kid. Although I think he wanted to be Buzz.”
“I’ll remember that,” Glo said as she pocketed her phone.
Gerri set down a couple pairs of gloves on the counter. “You two girls up for taming some wicked thistles in the garden?”
Glo reached over and grabbed the gloves. “Yeah, but you’ll have to show us what the thistles look like.”
“They look like two grown men who sneak off into the night.” Gerri winked, kidding, but the comparison stuck around as the day drew out with no sign of Knox. Or Tate.
Not even a text.
And that night, his absence turned downright prickly as Kelsey headed downstairs, turned on the television, and watched a hockey game. It brought back old memories of her father watching the Minnesota Wild.
The next day she brought her guitar out to the porch and started to work out some lyrics that had gotten tangled in her brain.
What if I let myself love you
What if I called this home.
What if my heart said forever
And never let my love roam…
No, that sounded silly. But she kept scrawling until she put down something that made more sense.
A ballad, really, about the unexpected turns of life. And love, perhaps, waiting at the end of the road.
“Still no word from Tate?” Kelsey asked that night as Glo was typing an email.
Glo shook her head.
Which really, was why the next morning, when Carter called, when he suggested the gig up in Mercy Falls, a mere two hours from the ranch, when he dropped the name Benjamin King and told them about the invitation to sing at King’s rising star venue, the Gray Pony, and when he said that King wanted to meet with them about recording for his label, she didn’t hesitate.
In fact, she didn’t even ask Glo.
“We’ll be there.”
“You going to be okay?”
Tate stood outside the bathroom stall of the Twenty-Fourth Precinct. He was probably leaning against the sink, arms folded, but Knox had heard his brother stifling his own nausea when Detective Rayburn finally showed them the file.
Thank you, Katherine Noble, whose NYC connections had opened the doors Knox needed to track down Vince Russell, including a meet-and-greet with not only the prosecuting attorney for the case, but the detective who’d tracked down the three gang members who had jumped Clinton and Rebecca Jones and their fourteen-year-old daughter at 11:00 p.m. near 105th Street in Central Park twelve years ago.
They’d also attacked a handful of other people, but their terror spree culminated on the three tourists from Minnesota.