“I know, but we have to. It’s the right thing to do, Gibs. We can talk to Sheriff Tucker first, but I really think we have to. It’s time.”
There was a lot about this I didn’t like. It was my job to protect her. Could I keep her safe if news of who she was carried all through Bootleg? I’d been hoping the Kendalls wouldn’t have to know she was here until the authorities knocked on their door to make an arrest.
But then again, if Bootleg knew, I’d have an entire town full of people watching out for her. Keeping their eye on Lee Williams. Usually, I didn’t like to rely on other people. That opened you up to disappointment. But maybe I wasn’t giving my town enough credit.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll call Harlan. Then Nadine. We need a secret town meeting.”
32
GIBSON
Old Jefferson Waverly’s barn was packed to the rafters with Bootleg Springs residents, most of them still nursing hangovers after last night’s Cock Spurs win. Wasted Wednesday had been interrupted by the call for a secret town meeting, the chain of communication kicked off by Nadine Tucker. We’d given them until six in the evening to recover, and true to form, everyone had turned out.
I sat on a crate up front, my back knotted with tension. Callie was tucked under my arm, her legs pulled in, like she was trying to disappear into me. We’d left Cash at home. There was enough to worry about without having our attention divided.
Callie and I had stayed home all day, relying on my family to be our eyes and ears in town. Lee Williams was definitely here. June had discovered that he’d taken a room in the shabby Bootleg Springs Motor Inn just on the outside edge of town. Jonah and Shelby had spotted him at Moonshine Diner around noon, having lunch. Leah Mae and Jameson had kept eyes on him while he wandered around downtown, acting like he was just another tourist. Everyone else had been on high alert, watching.
After that, our little team of Bodine-Tucker-Thompson-McAllister spies had lost track of him. Callie and I had spent a tense hour not knowing where he’d gone. Had he left town? Not knowing why he was here, or whether he knew about Callie, made it worse. There was no way he’d come back to Bootleg just for a visit. But without knowing why he was here, I didn’t know how worried we needed to be.
He’d turned up later, driving in from the other side of town. I had a feeling he’d been exploring the area.
It stood to reason he didn’t know Callie was here, and that the Kendalls didn’t know either. My family and I all had our ears open to the town gossip. Not a single person had been heard whispering that Maya was Callie. That Callie Kendall was back in town.
I figured Callie was right and a few people had figured it out. Or at least they had strong suspicions. But if they did, they weren’t talking about it yet. Not where anyone could hear them.
More lawn chairs scraped over the floor and people took their seats. My heart thumped, adrenaline making me jittery. I wanted to scoop Callie into my lap and hide her from everyone. Coming forward with the truth meant it was only a matter of time before the world knew she was here. The more people who knew a secret, the harder it was to keep. And we were about to share our secret with an entire damn town.
My family sat up front with us. Devlin, resting his elbows on his knees with Scarlett by his side. Bowie and Cassidy, hands intertwined. This might have been the first secret town meeting Cass had actually been invited to. We tended to hold these when we needed to do something just outside the law.
Jameson and Leah Mae sat beside Jonah and Shelby. Jenny was on Callie’s right, with Jimmy Bob Prosser on the other side of her. George took up space for two, as did his father. George and Shelby’s mom sat with them, as did June and Nadine. Harlan, too. Hell, it might have been Harlan’s first secret town meeting as well.
It felt good to have them all here, sitting together. We weren’t all related by blood. Some hadn’t been here that long. But I felt the force of their support. We were a united front, here for a