Wild Horse Springs. Jodi Thomas

taken a wrong turn. All he was trying to do was help out, and somehow it ended him up here.

      He’d seen a frightened little girl no bigger than Lillie, Charley’s daughter, had been when he’d met her. The girl had on an old red coat that was way too large for her and was trying her best to lug a big backpack along the muddy side of the road.

      “Who wouldn’t help?” he murmured to himself. But somehow it had all turned bad, and he couldn’t figure out how to get out of trouble without bringing harm to the little red riding hood.

      Lauren and Tim took turns lecturing him after the sheriff left last night, but nothing they could say was as bad as what he was yelling at himself inside. He had his future all planned out. He was focused. He’d saved enough for the first year of college, even though Charley Collins had said he’d pay.

      Thatcher had Kristi waiting for him to get to Texas Tech. He figured if he got to Tech and studied hard, she’d plan the rest of their lives. Marriage, a couple kids, maybe a farm.

      He looked around, hoping Lauren would bring her phone up and he could call Kristi back. Man, she was mad at him. Like this was all his fault.

      The sheriff’s daughter was still somewhere beyond the doors of his prison, and Tim seemed busy writing notes. He’d mumbled that he had to get inspiration down when it hit. Thatcher had read a few of his books, and apparently inspiration came to “Hemingway” more as a dribble than a solid hit.

      Maybe they’d left him alone to think, but Thatcher had given up on that, too. What good was it doing him? He might as well become an outlaw. Too bad it wasn’t the Wild West, where a man lived by a code and his Colt. Where right was right and wrong was wrong.

      He wished it were that simple now. When he’d stopped to help the little girl, she’d run away from the truck stop, and he knew she’d stolen the food in the old backpack that looked like it weighed as much as she did. It took him ten minutes to get her to trust him enough to talk. He’d taken her to not much of a home, parked way back in a junky trailer park. The run-down model home was in a cluster of others that looked to be in the same shape. She said she lived there, but it didn’t look like any kind of place a child would stay. No toys or bikes. Only old loading crates and empty beer cans.

      He talked the girl into letting him take the canned goods back, even gave her a twenty to buy food. But as he stood to leave, a man inside spotted him looking in the trailer window and threatened to kill him for trespassing. A few of his drunk buddies spilled out behind him, offering to help with the murder.

      Thatcher took off with them yelling what they’d do if they ever saw him again. The leader even threatened to hurt the kid if Thatcher ever spoke to her again.

      The worst part of it all for Thatcher was the shame he felt. There might have been five or six of them and only one of him, but he felt like a coward running and leaving her there. She wasn’t his kin. He had no right to interfere. But somehow it didn’t seem right leaving her there.

      Then, when he was thoughtful enough to take the stolen food back, Luther accused him of stealing the cans. Like he’d drive two miles out of town to shoplift beans probably two or three years out-of-date.

      Thatcher had had enough and he’d swung, not so much at Luther, but at the whole world.

      Now, he stared into the night as if he could find an answer. So much for being a Good Samaritan. He knew how it felt to be hungry. He’d wanted to help. Now one good deed might just screw up his whole life.

      He’d told people that he wanted to major in criminal justice. Maybe be like the sheriff. Only that was a pipe dream now.

      Word was that there was a real hero living around the Panhandle of Texas. A Texas Ranger who’d survived a gun battle on the border. He’d been dealing with genuine bad guys and not some bum smoking pot in a trailer with his buddies while his little girl had to shoplift to eat. Thatcher wanted to fight for right, but yesterday he’d had his chance and ran.

      Why couldn’t his life be exciting like the ranger’s? It must have been something to be in a real fight against drug runners. Thatcher guessed he already had most of the skills to be a lawman. He was fast, and much stronger than most gave him credit for. He’d been shooting game for food since he was nine.

      Only, people with a criminal record didn’t become rangers or sheriffs. They didn’t become anything Thatcher wanted to be.

      Tim must have finished writing his thoughts because he walked to the other side of the cell, the free side, and joined Thatcher.

      “I think it’s creepy out on nights like this,” he said, as if he thought Thatcher would welcome conversation. “Town’s growing so much it seems brighter than it used to.”

      “Tim, stop talking like you were born before electricity. You’re twenty-five.” Thatcher hated how Tim—and Lauren too—both thought they were so much older than him.

      “I know, but the town’s growing. There are two whole new blocks of houses behind the church and half a dozen new cabins out by the lake.”

      Thatcher decided he must be brain-dead, because he started talking to Tim. He pointed toward the building project in the empty space between the two main streets. The city council said it would look like a grand town square when they finished, but the land was cut by roads into a triangle and who ever heard of a town triangle? “Does that look like a bandstand or a gazebo to you?” he asked Tim, hoping to avoid talking about jail for a while.

      “Nope.” Tim tilted his head one way, then the other, as if the question would make more sense that way. The framed-out bandstand was covered in snow. “It reminds me of a ten-foot-high white spider now, with legs that stretch out thirty feet.”

      “You’re right.” Thatcher wouldn’t have been surprised if the monster lifted one of its legs and began to walk. “You think it’ll look any better when they get it finished? Folks say there will be grass and benches and maybe even statues.”

      Tim nodded as if finding a topic to discuss. “Sheriff said the construction companies brought in crews to build it and the new baseball field with under-the-stands locker rooms at the high school. Everyone claims the construction crews have caused more trouble than they’re worth. Most of the workers moved into trailers behind the gas station, and word is there’s a party out there every night. We got a crime scene waiting to happen out there. The foreman from across the street complained to the sheriff that his crew either shows up drunk or high.”

      Thatcher almost said he knew that for a fact, but telling Tim anything would be telling him too much. He simply wanted to forget what he saw yesterday when he looked in that trailer window; what was going on in there had nothing to do with the trouble he was in now. He shouldn’t have hit Luther.

      Thatcher tried to reason it out, but he swore his fist was flying before his brain had time to think about the consequences.

      His momma always told him to stay out of other folks’ crimes unless you want to be a part of the next one they commit. She was right. Of course, she also told him she could see him from wherever he was because they shared the same color eyes.

      “Mom, if you’re watching now, you might want to look away,” he mumbled to himself. Tim was too busy talking to notice.

      Lauren finally came back and Tim abandoned talking to Thatcher, so he moved over to his bunk and tried to sleep, but questions kept running through his brain. Why’d he get involved yesterday? Why didn’t he just mind his own business? If he hadn’t tried to help the little girl. If he hadn’t followed the kid home. If he hadn’t taken the food back, he’d be out at the Lone Heart Ranch eating supper with Charley and his wife and Lillie. He’d be teasing her, calling her Flower and she’d be talking back calling him “That.”

      Thatcher smiled. Life hadn’t given him many breaks, but meeting Charley’s family made up for that. Lillie was nine now and thought she knew everything. Only once she’d been small like the kid he’d tried to help yesterday. That thin little girl was vulnerable. She didn’t have parents who cared if she ate,