Her new clothes were clean and waiting for her outside her hotel room door. She showered, did a bit of work on her computer, and was at the hospital when the doctors made their first rounds of the day. She was there when they suctioned out his breathing tube and when they restrained his hands and feet and brought him out of sedation for a brief time. They told him where he was and what had happened to him. They told him that Sadie was there.

“I’m here, Daddy,” she said as he pulled at the restraints holding his wrists. His blue eyes, wild and confused, rolled toward the sound of her voice. A distressed moan rumbled his throat as the ventilator forced air into his lungs. Suck it up, Sadie. “It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay,” she lied. As they put him back under, she leaned close to his ear and said, “I’ll be here tomorrow, too.” Then she wrapped her arms around herself and walked from the room. She held herself tight, just like when she’d been a kid and there’d been no one there to hold on to. When there’d been no one there to hold her whenever her life felt like it was coming apart. She moved toward a set of windows at the end of the corridor, and she looked out at a parking lot and some palm trees without seeing a thing. Her body shook and she squeezed herself tighter. Suck it up, Sadie. Big girls didn’t cry, not even when it would have been so easy. So easy just to let it out rather than push it down deep.

She took a deep breath and let it out, and when she entered her father’s room again, he was resting quietly.

The next day was much like the day before. She spoke with the doctors about his progress and care, and like the day before, she forced herself to stand by his bed as they brought him out of sedation. She was her father’s daughter. She was tough, even when she was falling apart inside.

A week after the accident, Sadie had to adjust her work schedule. She talked to the broker and had all her clients moved to other agents. She had to face the fact that there would be no miracle recovery for her father. He was in for a long recovery, and she was in for a long absence from her real life.

Each day, he spent a bit more time off sedation, and they started the process of weaning him off the ventilator. When she entered the room a week and a half after the accident, the ventilator was gone, replaced by a nasal cannula. Her father lay in bed, asleep. A little touch of relief lifted her heart as she moved to the side of his bed.

“Daddy?” She leaned over him. He was still hooked to monitors and bags of saline and medication. His skin was still pale and drawn. “Daddy, I’m here.”

Clive’s eyelids fluttered open. “Sadie?” His voice was a painful rasp.

She smiled. “Yes.”

“Why . . .” He coughed, then grabbed his side with shaky hands. “Son of a bitch!” his croaky voice swore. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary! My goddamn side is on fire.”

Yolanda, of the smiley rainbow scrubs, was back on duty. “Mr. Hollowell, do you need some water?”

“I don’t need”—he broke into another coughing fit, and Sadie cringed—“any goddamn water. Goddamn it!”

Yolanda turned to Sadie as she poured the water anyway. “Some patients wake up cranky,” she warned. “It’s just stress and confusion.”

No. It was just Clive Hollowell’s natural disposition.


The Monday after the ridiculous fuckery at the wedding palace from hell, Vince called a bank in Amarillo and made an appointment to talk to a business loan officer in two weeks’ time. Years ago, he’d borrowed money to buy a Laundromat, and he knew the drill. This time, though, he wouldn’t be using the VA loan program. This time he’d need more cash than the half-million-dollar cap.

In anticipation of the meeting, he got the names of a commercial inspector and appraiser and set up appointments with both. He wrote out a business plan and got his financial documents in order. Everything from his banking history, retirement savings, and stock accounts. He got the financial records for the Gas and Go for the past five years, and he had his sister go to his storage shed in Seattle and send him his tax records for the past two years. For some reason, she’d also sent a few boxes of personal stuff. Loose photos and medals and patches and commendations. The Trident Wilson’s mother had given him on the day he’d buried his friend.

By the time he walked into the bank with the appraisal and inspection in hand, he was prepared. Just as he liked to live his life. Prepared. Not like a Boy Scout. Like a SEAL. If anything was going to hold back the sale, it was Aunt Luraleen’s loosey-goosey way of keeping records. Her assets and liabilities sheets were a mess, but the Gas and Go had passed inspection with flying colors. Luraleen’s financials might be lax, but she was in complete compliance when it came to environmental infractions. The building itself might need some attention, but the fuel tanks were solid. And the fact that Luraleen was offering the business several hundred thousand dollars below appraisal made Vince fairly confident that the loan would be approved. Of course, there were always unknowables that could stall the process.

Vince hated unknowables even more than he hated owing anyone anything.

While he waited to hear from the bank, he learned as much as he could about running a convenience store. He met the store’s suppliers and Luraleen’s two employees, Patty Schulz and George “Bug” Larson. Both seemed capable enough, but nether struck him as particularly having a fire in their bellies for anything. Except maybe jalapeño cheese dogs. If and when he took over the Gas and Go, Patty and Bug were going to do more for their ten bucks an hour than sit on stools and ring up cigarettes and beer. He was going to make other changes, too. First, he would take a sledgehammer to the place. As a member of the SEAL teams he’d been an insertion specialist, but he did love to demo. Second, when he reopened, the Gas and Go would close at twenty-four hundred hours. Not twenty-two-hundred or whenever the mood struck Luraleen.

His second week in Lovett, he took over his aunt’s night shifts and the responsibility of closing the place. And over the next few nights he discovered that the people of Lovett gossiped like it was a natural reflex. Like breathing and saying y’all.

One night over a Snickers and a cup of decaf, Deeann Gunderson told him that Jerome Leon was “skirtin’ around” behind his wife’s back with Tamara Perdue. Deeann owned Deeann’s Duds and was a pretty thirtysomething divorced mother of two. She let him know she was interested in more than a candy bar and gossip and that she was free every other weekend. As long as she wasn’t looking for a daddy for her kids, he might take her up on it. He didn’t have anything against kids. Just mamas who wanted a new husband.

He heard that someone ran over Velma Patterson’s little dog, and that Daisy and Jack Parrish were expecting a baby girl. He learned that Sadie Hollowell was in Laredo with her sick father. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about the Hollowells in general and Sadie in particular. Some, like Aunt Luraleen, thought she was an ungrateful daughter. Others that her father was neglectful, more concerned with his cattle and horses than his own child. Whatever the opinion, they all loved to talk.

Like Vince gave a shit.

Besides the average customers who just stopped when they needed a fill-up, the Gas and Go had regulars. People who stopped in every day or so at the same time for a fountain Coke or gas or beer.

One of those regular customers who stopped by for a nightly fountain Coke turned out to be Becca Ramsey. Which he did mind.

“Vince!” she’d shrieked as if they were old friends the first time she’d seen him in the Gas and Go. “Are you stayin’ in Lovett?”

He wondered if he could get away with lying to her. “For a while yet.” After that, she came in for a pack of gum, a candy bar, and a Rockstar on her way home from the Milan Institute in Amarillo. Apparently young Becca was going to beauty school, and for some reason thought Vince gave a flying fuck.

“If I have to give one more old lady a perm,” she said, her words drawn out, “I swear I’m goin’ to flip the freak out!”

“Uh-huh.” He rang up her energy drink.

“I saw Slade drivin’ around in that slut Lexa Jane’s truck. He’s so broke down he can’t even afford his own vehicle.”

He felt a sudden stabbing pain in his left eye. Like a nail driven into his iris. The next day, she stopped in to tell him she’d cut her first wedge. Apparently it was a type of woman’s hairstyle, and for the first time in six years, he could imagine an upside to his hearing loss. Maybe if he turned his bad ear toward her, he could block out her voice. Or maybe she’d run out of words and shut the hell up.

“And she didn’t look like she had dog ears when I was done.” She laughed. “You just can’t believe the number of girls who can’t cut a wedge.”

No such luck. Vince had been trained by the finest military in the world on how to escape and evade. He could get out of tight spots, but there was no way to E and E Becca without putting her in a sleeper hold.

“Next week I’m having a birthday party.”

“How old are you going to be?” he asked as he rang up her Big Hunk. Vince would guess, barely legal. Some men might find a young, attractive girl fair game. Vince wasn’t one of those guys. He liked mature women who didn’t weep all over him.

“Twenty-one.”

When he’d been twenty-one, he’d just finished SQT and was headed to the teams. He’d been full of himself and riding high on testosterone and invincibility. He’d been arrogant and tenacious with a full bag of skills to back it all up.

“You should come and take shots with me.” She dug in her wallet and handed him a five.