Page 66 of Forget That Guy
That, and no tourists had been hurt.
Yet.
But the county did have to go onto that road at least once every other day to remove a boulder.
“She wouldn’t have taken it,” I agreed with Thumper. “She would’ve gone the long way like the rest of the locals.”
“If you ask me,” Bells said quietly in his melodic voice. “I think that Baron Kenswood has something to do with the disappearance.”
Brute grunted. “I don’t think…”
“I agree with Bells.” Thumper surprised me with a second agreement that night. “Guy’s shady as fuck. I think he had something to do with it.”
I reached over and lifted the gas pump off the holder and guided the nozzle into my gas tank.
I was running on fumes, and I was pissed that I’d had to stop looking for Holly.
When we’d gotten to the gas station, it was to find the others already there filling up.
Tack and Brogue came out of the gas station with a couple of bottles of water and handed them out to everyone.
I gave him a nod in thanks and sucked the one he’d given to me down.
When I was done, I tossed it into the trash, then hung the nozzle up and tightened the gas cap down.
The receipt printed, but I left it flapping in the wind as I remounted my bike and said, “Take a couple of hours to sleep. We reconvene in the morning. Tack, let the others know.”
Tack nodded once.
Tack, short for tackle, was his actual name.
His daddy had loved to fish. His mom had been in labor with Tack when she’d called her husband to tell him the news. Tack’s dad, in his haste to get home, slipped and fell, and conked his head on a rock and drowned in about two inches of water.
Tack’s mom had been broken, but she’d not been broken enough not to come up with Tack’s name.
He was sharp as a tack, too.
And sometimes, I wondered if he’d been named after the wrong thing.
I could tell that he was wondering why I wasn’t going to make the call.
“I’m not stopping,” I informed him.
He nodded once. “I think it’s good for the rest of us to have a couple of hours of rest. Or we’ll be useless in the daylight.”
Just then, Major came in on his own bike and pulled up to the pump opposite us.
When he was filling up, he walked over to us and said, “I think we need a couple of hours of sleep. I’m about to fall off my damn bike.”
“That’s what I was just telling Tack to do, call and let y’all know that we need some rest.”
He studied me, knowing that I wasn’t stopping, and nodded. “I’ll call the others.”
He did that, and I started the bike up and took off, not heading home, but to a place just down the mountain from where I’d been earlier in the day.
As I did, I noticed the number of vehicles that were coming and going from the property.
Not necessarily unusual seeing as there were a lot of rentals in this area, but not at this time of night.
