Page 41 of The Wrangler and the Tenderfoot

She pulled her glasses off and wiped the lenses on her shirt, put the glasses back on and looked me dead in the eye. “I broke into the office at the Coleman house last night. I ran the safe. I didn’t open it, just powdered the keypad and got the digits. I have the possible combinations.”

She waited, not breathing. I counted to three and then shrugged.

“Okay,” I said. “Why are you acting like I’ll be mad?”

A flicker of surprise crossed her face. She'd been braced for a fight, not an assist. “Because I think there’s something in there that’ll blow this open. And I didn’t want to move on it alone. And also—” she shifted, mouth twisting, “if I go missing, I want someone to know where to start looking.”

That made sense. “Next time, wake me up before you decide to rob a bank. I could at least drive the truck.”

She laughed, quick and loud, then covered it with her hand. “I’ll consider it.”

My coffee maker still had a cup’s worth in it. I poured it for her without asking and handed it over. “You got plans today?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Not till late tonight, when the house is asleep again. I’ll try to get in the safe.”

I checked my phone, thumbed off the lock screen, and shot a text to Calder.

You need me today? I’d like to take Jennie to the fair.

He replied within seconds.

Go for it. We’re fine here.

I put the phone face down.

“Want to get out of here?” I asked. “I know a place.”

“Where?” she asked.

“It’s a surprise if you’re up for it,” I said.

She was quiet for a second, then grinned and said, “As long as it’s not within fifty miles of the Colemans.”

“Done.”

We left her rental behind and took my truck. I topped the tank at the only gas station in town, and pointed us northwest, away from the valley, the ranch, the entire county if we felt like it. She didn't ask where. Good instinct.

We drove with the windows down for an hour, passing nothing but scrub and barbed wire and, every so often, a mailbox with the name half worn off. She watched the land more than the road, taking mental notes even when she didn’t have a pen in her hand.

At some point she said, “What’s the farthest you’ve ever driven in one shot?”

I considered it. “Once made it to Idaho for a cattle run. Didn’t stop for anything but fuel and breakfast. Got out of the truck with a numb butt.”

She nodded, filing that away. “I did Flagstaff to Tallahassee once, three days, no sleep. Had to bribe a gas station clerk in New Mexico to let me use the shower in back.”

We didn’t talk after that for a while. When we hit the county line, I turned north on 87 and pointed at a billboard for the county fair. “Ever had real peach preserves? Like, not from the grocery store?”

She shook her head. “Never.”

I turned off the main road, and we took the back way, past a bleached-out brick high school and a cemetery with the names worn off the headstones. The market was just as I remembered, two rows of cars and pickups, every vendor under a white tent, the air sweet with fruit and sweat and diesel from a generator that sounded one bad morning from dying. There weren’t any big crowds yet, but enough people that we didn’t stand out. It’d get busier on the weekend.

We walked the line of stalls. There was produce, tomatoes with dirt still clinging, peaches soft enough to eat with a spoon. There was honey, goat cheese, tamales, jars of moonshine marked “for novelty use only.” A kid with a BB gun shot balloons for tips. The guy at the end sold birdhouses he made himself and couldn’t stop talking about the difference between cedar and pine, long after I’d stopped listening.

She liked the tamales. We split one, steaming hot, the pork inside delicious. She moaned, scarfed it and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“This is the best meal I’ve had in I don’t know when,” she said.

“Then you’ve never had the hot sauce,” I said, and led her to a table with twenty small bottles in a row. The vendor was a woman in a tank top with boxer's arms and a voice that sounded like she smoked two packs a day.