Page 13 of Gourd Enough To Eat
I frowned, raking my knuckles through my hair and tugging the ends. “Wait, Whaddaya mean she’s not where she’s supposed to be?”
“Well, the mechanic you sent her car to?—”
The glitter van,” I corrected.
“Yeah, that. He called earlier. said it was all done and good to go. So I went to go get her. She wasn't in the apartment, and she’d left a note on the door to the shop saying she’d gone to get the van.” His voice held a heavy note, as though he was trying to tell me something.
A message that my sun-addled brain refused to process.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “So maybe she’s hitched a ride to go get her van?” I damn well hoped not, because we’d find out if either of us had a spanking fetish if she had.
“She left the note and was gone over an hour before the call came through on your phone that the van was ready.”
“And..?” Damn, I was moving at a snail's pace today. Maybe sex was bad for my brain after all.
“Damnit, Elijah. Did you give the mechanic her number or not?”
What he was saying dawned on me. “No, I didn’t.” And while the Bare Bear was beautifully branded by my glitter bomb, her booking system appeared to be an online process, not an on-call one. To save her time and not interrupt when she was with clients, I assumed. But that really did beg the question… who the hell had called her and where had she gone if she thought the van was ready before it had been?
“I’m gonna call you back,” I said tersely, ending the call before he could get out another word. I dialed the mechanic.
Ash sent me a hard look across the mess we’d started cleaning up. He hefted a round and tossed it onto the back of the truck. “Anything I can do to help?”
I held up a hand as the call picked up. “Hey, have you still got the pink glitter van in there?” I listened to the man talk about how well the repairs had gone, and paid with my credit card over the phone, promising I’d come and get it later. I hung up, disquiet roiling in my stomach. Ash still watched me. I looked up at him, my throat tight. “Something’s wrong.”
“So go get her.”
I stared at him. “I thought we just had a talk about not leaving the ranch til last.”
He sent me a frown that might have bordered on an upside down grin. “If my woman is in trouble, and she causes plenty ofthat,” he said wryly, “then I’d be out to get her as soon as I could. Go, Elijah. The ranch will wait.”
I stared at him a moment longer, then my feet were moving. My truck rumbled beneath me as I backed up and headed out toward the main road, away from the ranch, leaving for the first time without wondering if I would come back or not.
Because if I didn’t have Cadance, then none of it was worth anything.
“Cadance?” I called, taking the stairs to the bedroom where I’d left her asleep the night before three at a time, knowing full well that Declan had already checked and that she wasn’t there. “Glitter bomb. Tell me you’re hiding back here somewhere?” She wasn't, so I checked the shower, then the street.
Declan watched me with his arms folded over his apron as I paced both sides, annoying other people's customers until I reached him again. “What did she do while her van was in the shop and I wasn't here?” I didn’t think Cadance was the sort of girl who would sit about doing nothing.
He grinned. “She set up shop out of a kit on the sidewalk with a folding table and called customers to her like a magnet. Damn, it was magic.” Declan was one of Forest Grove’s best sources of information. He listened to every rumor that came in and was excellent at telling what was utter rubbish and what consisted of true intelligence.
I scrubbed my face with my hands. “You said you were worried. Where is she?” I didn’t bother keeping the begging note out of my voice.
The smile fell off his face. “You said she was a flight risk, right?”
I raised both eyebrows. “You think she’s run off, left her van, her main source of income here, and somehow disappeared into the aether without anyone seeing anything today?”
That was too far a stretch for me to believe, or maybe I didn't want to believe it. I’d talked to everyone I came across and no one saw a damn thing. No mechanic came down the street, no one saw her get into a car, truck or onto a bike and drive away. No buses came through town today, so it wasn’t that either. No one had seen her at all.
Declan’s eyes darkened. “You think it’s the ex?”
I’d told him about the knife incident when I explained what I was using my half of my savings for, rather than investing it into the business for the quarter. Declan thought I was crazy, but seemed to understand, at least since she kept coming round even though I didn't think they’d met yet.
“Yeah, I think he might have tracked her.” I matched his expression. “Not that the soft man she described seemed like a tracker. But still, obsession drives a man.”
Declan nodded. “Where would he take her?”
I closed my eyes. “Home? Out of state? Fuck, anywhere.” Desperation brewed in my gut as I paced the sidewalk again.
