Ransom Canyon. Jodi Thomas

she found Lucas’s hand. She didn’t look at him, but for the rest of the ride, her fingers laced with his. They might never talk of this night again, but they both knew that a blood debt bound them together, and sometime in the future she’d pay him back.

CHAPTER FOUR

      Yancy

      THE GREYHOUND BUS pulled up beside the tiny building with Crossroads, Texas, United States Post Office painted on it in red, white and blue, and Yancy Grey almost laughed. The box of a structure looked like it had been rolled in on wheels and set atop a concrete square. He had seen food trucks at county fairs that were bigger.

      This wasn’t even a town, just a wide spot in the road where a few buildings clustered together. He saw the steeples of two churches, a dozen little stores that looked as though they were on their last legs framed in the main street, and maybe fifty homes scattered around, not counting trailers parked behind one of the gas stations.

      A half mile north there stood what looked like a school, complete with a grass football field with stands on either side. To the east was a grain elevator with a few buildings near the base. Each one was painted a different shade of green. Yancy couldn’t see behind the post office, but he couldn’t imagine that direction being any more interesting than the rest of the town.

      “This is the Crossroads stop, mister,” a huge bus driver called back to Yancy from the driver’s seat. “We’re early, but I guess that don’t matter. Post office is closed Sundays anyway.”

      Yancy stood and moved down the empty aisle as the bus door swished open. He’d watched one after another of the mostly sorry-looking passengers step off this bus at every small town through Oklahoma and half of Texas. He didn’t bother to thank the driver for doing his job. Yancy had been riding for ten hours and simply wanted to plant his feet on solid ground.

      “You got any luggage?” the driver asked. “It’s been so long since Oklahoma City, I forgot.”

      “No,” Yancy answered as he took his first breath of the dawn’s damp air. “Just my pack.”

      “Good.” The driver pulled out his cigarettes. “Normally I stop here for breakfast. That café across the street serves an endless stack of pancakes, but since there are no cars out front, I think I’ll move on. I’ll be in Lubbock next stop, and that’s home.”

      Yancy didn’t care what the driver did. In fact, he hoped the fat guy would forget where he left off his last passenger. All Yancy Grey wanted was silence, and this town just might be the place to find it.

      For the past five years in prison he’d made a habit of not talking any more than necessary. It served no purpose. Friends, he didn’t need, and enemies didn’t bother chatting. He kept to himself. The inmates he’d met and got along with weren’t friends. In fact, he’d just as soon never see any of them again. One of them, a dead-eyed murderer named Freddie, had promised to kill him every time he’d passed within hearing distance, and another who went by “Cowboy” would skin a dead man for the hide.

      And the guards and teachers for the most part were little more than ghosts passing through the empty house of his life. He had learned one fact from every group-counseling session he’d attended, and that was if he was going to stay out of prison, he needed to plan his life. So he’d taken every course offered and planned how not to get caught when he next stepped out into the free world.

      He dropped his almost empty backpack on the post office steps and watched the bus leave. Then, alone with nothing but the sounds of freedom around him, he closed his eyes and simply breathed for a while. He’d known he was low-down worthless since he was five, but now and then Yancy wanted to forget and just think of himself as a regular person like everyone else who walked the planet.

      At twenty-five, he wasn’t the green kid who’d gone to jail. He was a hardened man. He had no job or family. No future. Nowhere to go. But, thanks to positive-thinking classes, he had goals.

      The first one was simple: get rich. After he got past that one all the others would fall in line: Big house. Pool. Fast car.

      On the positive side, he had a lot going for him. Without a plan, he didn’t have to worry about holes in his strategy. He wasn’t running away from anything or anyone, and that was a first. He’d also learned a little about every trade the prison tried to teach.

      Yancy had bought a bus ticket to a town he’d once heard his mother say was the most nothing place on earth. Crossroads, Texas. He figured that was where he’d start over, like he was newborn. He’d rebuild himself one brick at a time until no one who ever knew him would recognize Yancy Grey. Hell, he might even give himself a middle name. That’d be something he hadn’t had in twenty-five years of being alive.

      Sitting down on the steps, he leaned against the tin door of the twelve-foot square post office and looked around at a tiny nothing of a town that sparkled in the early light. He might not have much, but he had his goals, and with some thinking, he’d have a plan.

      He wasn’t sure, but he thought his mother met his dad here. She never talked about the man who’d fathered him except to say he’d been a hand on one of the big ranches around. She’d fallen in love with the hat and boots before she knew the man in between. Yancy liked to think that, once, she might have been happy in Crossroads, but knowing his mother, she wouldn’t be happy anywhere unless she was raising hell.

      Yancy warmed in the sun. The café would probably be open in an hour or two. His first plan was to eat his fill of pancakes, and then he’d think about what to do next. Maybe he’d ask around for a job. He used to be a fair mechanic, and he’d spent most of his free time in the prison shop. There were two gas stations in town. One might have an opening. Or maybe the café needed a dishwasher? He’d worked in the prison kitchen for a year. If he was lucky, there would be a community posting somewhere around for jobs, and he’d bluff his way into whatever was open.

      If nothing came up, he’d hitch a ride to the next town. Maybe he’d steal enough lying around here to hock for pocket money. Six years ago he’d caught a ride with a family in Arkansas. By the time they let him out a hundred miles down the road, he’d collected fifty dollars from the granny who rode in the back with him. The old bat had been senile and probably wouldn’t ever remember having the money in the first place. That fifty sure had felt good in his pocket.

      Another time, when he was about sixteen, he’d hitched a ride with some college kids. They’d been a fun bunch, smoking pot as they sang songs. When he’d said goodbye, they’d driven away without a camera that was worth a couple hundred. Served them right for just wandering around the country spending their parents’ money. No one ever gave him a dime, and he’d made it just fine. Except for one dumb partner and one smart cop in Norman, Oklahoma.

      Yancy pushed the memories aside. He had to keep his wits about him. Maybe try to go straight this time. He was halfway through his twenties, and hard time would start to take a toll on him soon. He’d seen guys in prison who were forty and looked sixty.

      Taking a deep breath, he let the air sit in his lungs for a minute. It felt pure and light. Like rain and dust and nothing else.

      A few cars passed as the sun warmed, but none stopped at the café. Yancy guessed the place might not open until eight or even nine on Sunday. He’d wait. With twenty dollars in his pocket, he planned to celebrate. Maybe if they had pie out early, he’d have it for breakfast.

      One man in a pickup stopped and stuffed a few letters in the outside drop. He tipped his hat in greeting, and Yancy did the same with his baseball cap. It had been so long since he’d been in the free world he wasn’t sure how to act. He needed to be careful so no one would recognize him as an ex-con. Most folks probably wouldn’t anyway, but cops seemed to have a knack for spotting someone who’d served time.

      Yancy went over a few rules he’d made up when he was thinking about getting out of jail. Look people in the eyes but not too closely. Greet them however they greeted him. Stand up straight. At six-one he wasn’t tall enough