Lone Star on a Cowboy Heart Read online

  Table of Contents

  Lone Star on a Cowboy Heart

  Book Details

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Sam, a sheriff’s deputy in a small Arizona town, is off-duty when he finds himself in the middle of a hold-up at a local diner. He makes it out alive only because of Montgomery, who shoots the robber that attempted to kill Sam—but in the fallout, the second robber gets away.

  In the aftermath of that ugly night, Sam is determined to get to know Montgomery better, while Montgomery is determined to find the man who escaped. He’s also dead set on avoiding the sheriff, having secrets of his own he doesn’t want out.

  But loneliness is hard, and Montgomery can’t resist the companionship Sam is offering—the companionship he’s always wanted, but could never find. If they’re going to explore it, however, first they’ll have to stop the growing threat of the robber who got away…

  Lone Star on a Cowboy Heart

  By Marie S. Crosswell

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Laura Garland

  Cover designed by Natasha Snow

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition Month 2016

  Copyright © 2016 by Marie S. Crosswell

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781620047903

  Print ISBN 9781620047910

  CHAPTER ONE

  Prescott, Arizona

  September 2014

  Sam Roswell stops for dinner at The Dog Bowl Diner in his civvies, his department-issued sidearm at home. He chats up his waitress because eating alone in public makes him lonely, and he doesn’t have any friends in town yet. He watches the other people in the diner as he eats, feeling half cop on the lookout for mischief and half looking for someone to meet. There’s a young family with a couple of restless kids who can’t stay seated longer than a minute, an old husband and wife tucked into a two-person booth, three men and a woman side by side at the counter, and some teenagers hanging out. They’re all on the opposite side of the diner, far enough away that everybody’s within Sam’s view.

  Two men wearing black knit masks over their faces come in, each of them carrying a gun.

  The man in a long-sleeved navy blue t-shirt moves into the populated section of the diner and says, “Everybody take out your wallets, now!”

  The man wearing a dark red t-shirt under his jacket goes up to the counter and points his gun at the first employee he sees. “Open the register! Open it!”

  The blonde waitress with big hair hurries to the register positioned at the right end of the counter and tries to obey, hands twitching and eyes panicked. Her first attempt fails.

  “Hurry up!” Red Tee yells, steel revolver gleaming in the white lights screwed into the ceiling.

  The register drawer clicks and slides open, and the waitress starts to yank the stacks of bills out of their compartments, dropping them on the countertop.

  “Put the money in a bag! Put it in a fucking bag!”

  She scrambles for the cash with one hand and clutches it as she looks around for the plastic take-out bags hooked onto the counter’s interior. She finds them, tears one off, and sticks the money inside. Red Tee grabs it out of her hand and gives the bag to his accomplice, who shoves it at the family.

  “Put your wallets in the fucking bag and pass it on,” Blue Tee says to the room.

  One of the children starts to cry in soft whimpers.

  A boy sitting at the table of teenager’s bolts for the door, but Red Tee gets hold of the hood on his sweatshirt and pulls him back.

  “Where the fuck are you going?” Red Tee shouts, wrapping his free arm around the boy’s neck and pressing his gun into the boy’s head. “Huh?”

  One of the teen girls yelps in horror.

  Sam stands up and makes for Red Tee, plucking his badge off his belt as he goes. His pulse is fast, and waves of adrenaline start to wash through him. He’s not thinking about what he’s doing any more than he does when he drives a car, his body drawn to the trouble like a piece of metal to magnet.

  “Hey, hey,” he says, soft-spoken. He holds the badge in his hand before him, so everyone can see it. “Just calm down now. The kid’s not going anywhere. Send him back to his seat, and you and your pal can get out of here.”

  “A cop, huh?” Red Tee says, arm still wrapped around the teenager’s neck and the gun unrelenting on his skull. He raises his voice. “We got us a fucking cop in here.”

  Blue Tee glances over at Sam, still following the bag of money around his section of the diner as it changes hands.

  “Where’s your gun, asshole?” Red Tee says to Sam.

  “Let the boy go,” says Sam. “You got your money. You don’t have to hurt anyone.”

  Red Tee stares at him through the eyehole in his mask, silent for a long beat, then shoves the teenager away from him. He points his gun at Sam’s chest. “Maybe I’ll kill you just to be on the safe side.”

  “He don’t even have a fuckin’ gun,” says Blue Tee, the bag of money in his hand as he steps closer to the two other men. “Don’t be stupid, let’s just fucking go.”

  Sam’s standing with his hands up in front of him, badge in the left and his right palm facing out.

  Red Tee doesn’t budge, staring him down with the revolver.

  “I said, let’s go,” Blue Tee says, raising his voice.

  “Fuck this cop,” says Red Tee and cocks back the hammer on his revolver with his thumb.

  BANG!

  The right half of his skull blows apart in a spray of blood, bone, and brain, and he drops to the floor with his gun still in hand. A few of the women scream, and Sam flinches away and covers his head with his arms, then looks again at where Red Tee had been standing.

  A tall man who Sam didn’t notice earlier comes down the path splitting the diner in half, leading to the bathrooms in the back, aiming a pistol in his right hand at Blue Tee. He’s lean and long-limbed, a wavy lock of dark hair hanging over his forehead, eyes gray and hard like stone.

  “You motherfucker!” Blue Tee yells, looking at his dead accomplice bleeding on the tile and aiming his own gun at the stranger.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” the stranger says, his voice dark and slow like raw maple syrup. An accent that could be Texas or mid-South. “This cop here is going to call his buddies now. The sooner you get, better chance you have of not being found. Or I can kill you. Save them the trouble of chasing after you.”

  Blue Tee looks at him, hesitating, the bag of money still clutched in his hand.

  The stranger blinks at him, lazy and calm.

  Blue Tee runs out of the diner.

  Sam follows him as he hears the engine in a vehicle start, watches as the pick-up truck squeals out of the lot and down the road southbound. The red taillights glow and fade into the night.

  He goes back inside, his nerves frayed. Somebody, a woman or a kid, is crying.

  The stranger looks across the diner at Sam, unruffled, dark eyes slanted, and says, “What’s a sheriff’s deputy doing withou
t his gun?”

  Sam swallows and doesn’t answer. The truth would sound stupid.

  The stranger looks over at the blonde waitress cowering behind the counter. “Better call 911,” he says.

  She picks up the old landline phone attached to the wall near the kitchen doorway, like she needed someone to tell her what to do. When she starts talking to the emergency operator, her voice sounds like it’s been shredded through a grater, high-pitched and borderline hysterical.

  The stranger makes for the door, stepping over Red Tee’s corpse in his cowboy boots like the dead man’s a puddle of spilt milk. He tucks his gun into the holster on the back of his waistband and passes Sam without another word or look.

  Sam doesn’t think to stop him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two weeks go by, before Sam sees the stranger at The Bird Cage Saloon, drinking alone at the end of the bar. He doesn’t notice him until after the people sitting between them leave. He’s into his first beer and looks over to his right. He almost doesn’t believe it. Nobody could tell Sam who the stranger was when he asked around, after the shooting. Not the sheriff or other deputies, not the diner employees, nor any of their friends and family. Sam resigned himself to the likelihood that the stranger didn’t live in the area and was probably gone for good, back to whatever state gave him that accent. He didn’t have a signature on a receipt or a license plate number. All he had was the slug dug out of Red Tee’s body.

  The stranger’s wearing a black cowboy hat, hunched over with his arms resting on the bar top and his boot heels hooked over the lowest rung of his stool. He’s thinking about something or maybe nothing at all, listening to the bluesy country song playing through the speakers.

  Sam gets up, taking his beer bottle with him. He’s slow to approach the stranger, like he’s coming up on a rabbit or a deer that’s sure to run away if he isn’t careful. He stops at the stranger’s left shoulder, pauses, and says, “Hey.”

  The stranger turns his head to look at him, and his eyes brighten with surprise.

  “I’m Sam Roswell, the sheriff’s deputy from The Dog Bowl.”

  “Yeah, you are,” says the stranger.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Sam says. “It’s been bothering me ever since that night, not being able to thank you—for saving my life. Probably the lives of the other people there, too.”

  The stranger shakes his head. “I don’t need to be thanked.”

  “Well, you gotta let me buy you a drink. I insist.” Sam sits on the stool next to the stranger. “I never found out who you are,” he says, after a moment.

  The stranger doesn’t answer at first. “Name’s Montgomery. Montgomery Clarke.”

  “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “No, sir. I live in Skull Valley. From South Texas, originally.”

  “Skull Valley,” says Sam. “I’ve never been.”

  “Well,” says Montgomery, “not much there worth seeing. Ranches and farms, mostly. Windmills.”

  “Do you own one? A ranch?”

  “Nope. I’m just a hand. I work Bill Barbee’s ranch.”

  Montgomery drains his beer and sets the bottle down across the bar. He makes eye contact with the bartender, who comes over to him.

  “Another one?” the bartender says.

  “Make it a whiskey,” Montgomery says. “Bulleit, please.”

  “I’m buying,” says Sam.

  The bartender pours a couple shots of Bulleit into a lowball glass and passes it to Montgomery.

  “Anything for you?” he asks Sam.

  “Another beer, please.”

  The bartender moves back down to the other end of the bar for the cooler and comes back with an uncapped bottle of the beer Sam’s drinking.

  Sam waits until he’s out of earshot again to say, “You haven’t asked about the men in the diner.”

  Montgomery sips on his whiskey, eyes climbing up and down the wall behind the bar. “Maybe because I’m not interested.”

  Sam fidgets on his stool and finishes his beer, trading the empty bottle for the second. “The man you shot was Ed Decker, from Dewey-Humboldt,” Sam says, lowering his voice. “He had a wife and three kids. I went down there to talk to her, after she identified the body. It sounds like they were having some financial difficulties.”

  Montgomery doesn’t reply, taking another sip from his glass.

  “The other man, the one who got away, is Joel Troutman—one of Decker’s friends. We only know that because he’s been missing since the morning of the hold-up, according to his wife. So he’s our best bet.” Sam pauses, remembering the women’s faces. “They needed the money and didn’t know what else to do. They must’ve thought that holding up a place in Prescott was safer than doing it in their own town.”

  “You feel sorry for’em,” says Montgomery. “I don’t.”

  Sam looks at him. “I can hold them accountable for what they did wrong and still have compassion.”

  “You’re talking about at least one man who was ready to kill you, just for the satisfaction of it. Plenty of people got money troubles. Most of them don’t rob other people at gunpoint. Now, they’ve left their families worse off, without their earning power. Stupid.”

  Sam can’t argue with him, so he doesn’t.

  They’re silent for a little while, Sam’s elbow scraping against Montgomery’s every time he lifts his drink to his mouth and lowers it again. It’s half an hour to closing time and not too many people linger behind them and beside them at the bar. Prescott’s a quiet town on weeknights, when the tourists are few and the residents are in bed before midnight on account of work or old age. The bartender’s already wiping down the bar, at the other end, a heavyset man with a bald head and black mustache.

  “The sheriff’s office would appreciate it if you came in to give your statement,” says Sam. “About what happened at the diner.”

  “Is that why you’re sitting here talking to me?” Montgomery says.

  “No.”

  “You know what happened. So do the two dozen other people who were there.”

  “You killed a man. It’s not unreasonable for the sheriff to want a conversation with you. Anyway, I’m pretty sure he wants to shake your hand. Congratulate you for being a hero.”

  “I’m not a God damn hero. Nobody knows what the hell that word means.”

  Sam pauses and drinks, before changing the subject. “You live on the ranch where you work?” he says.

  “No,” says Montgomery. “I got my own place. Little house not far from Barbee’s.”

  “I’m guessing you come to Prescott to eat and drink sometimes, on account of there not being too many options in your neck of the woods.”

  “You guess right.”

  “Do you always carry a gun like that?”

  “It’s registered.”

  “I don’t know why a cowboy living in the boonies would need that kind of hardware.”

  “Snakes, cougars, and would-be cop killers. There’s three.”

  Sam can’t hold back a half-grin as he dips his head to drink.

  They fall back into quiet for a while, sitting side by side like they’re old friends used to companionable silence, ignoring the rest of the room. A few more people pick up their jackets and leave.

  Sam checks his watch. “Don’t you get up early for work?” he says.

  Montgomery looks at him. “Don’t you?”

  “Probably not as early as a ranch hand.”

  Montgomery looks away. “Tomorrow’s my day off.”

  Sam nods and doesn’t speak again for a minute or two, looking in the mirror at the hazy reflection of multi-colored string lights wrapped around the antlers of taxidermied moose and deer heads mounted on the wall. A few more stare blank-eyed directly above the men. Sam looks at himself sitting next to Montgomery, hazel eyes darkened in the dimness of the saloon. Montgomery has his head bowed, his face hidden under the brim of his hat, so Sam appraises himself the way he usually does i
n the privacy of his bathroom at home.

  Since moving to Prescott, he’s allowed his facial hair to grow in, though it’s too short to count for a beard. He’s not sure why. Maybe it’s part of starting over, changing himself as much as his life. His dark blonde hair is cut so short that he can barely run his fingers through it, messy on top and buzzed close to the scalp on the sides. He’s almost pale compared to Montgomery, who’s tan from working outside every day. When he’s off duty like this, dressed in civilian clothes, he blends right in with the Prescott locals. Not bad-looking but not someone who stands out either.

  Montgomery lifts his head, his face appearing next to Sam’s. He probably could’ve been a model in another life, though he’s too old for it now. “So tell me, Deputy,” he says. “Why didn’t you have your gun in that diner?”

  Sam drops his gaze to the bar top and pauses. “I don’t like carrying it around when I’m off duty,” he says. “Never have. Maybe it’s stupid of me to leave it at home, but…. I feel better when I don’t have to worry about it.”

  Montgomery doesn’t reply, just lifts his glass to his lips and drinks more whiskey.

  “Why didn’t you do something sooner?” Sam says.

  “What do you mean?” says Montgomery.

  “At the diner. Why didn’t you step in sooner—try to stop the robbery?”

  Montgomery doesn’t answer for a moment, peering down at the last sliver of whiskey in the bottom of his glass. “I was hoping they’d take their money and go, I guess. Didn’t want to make a bad situation worse.”

  “Guns tend to do that,” Sam concedes. “You know, I didn’t even see you there before you fired.”

  “Did you comb the whole building before sittin’ down?”

  “No.”

  The bartender comes back to the two men and says, “Closing time, fellas.”

  They dig their wallets out of back pockets. Sam leaves enough cash for his two beers and Montgomery’s whiskey.