Page 4 of When The Dust Settles

“We’re fixin’ to stop by Caffrey’s and pick you up a hat for work tomorrow.”

She was in my lap then, sobbing into the side of my neck, and I figured we were never getting out of there if I just didn’t leave her where she was.

We drove away fast after I took a breath and my heart started pumping again.

BACK AT work an hour later, I had Eric and Jamal rig up a makeshift shower so Josie could take one. She needed to get all the fine little hairs off her body so she didn’t scratch herself to death. Kevin used the clippers we had in the office and evened out what was left of her hair, shaving it all to the same one inch off her scalp. On the way to The Bronc, we had stopped and picked up three long scarves for her to tie around her head, a cowboy hat for work, a pleated purple cap, and a pale blue Army hat with silver stars on it. We also bought neon blue hair dye so what fuzz there was, was at least an interesting color.

After a thorough inventory, all of Josie’s things were accounted for, the guitar and amp being the most important of all. She must have thanked me about nine hundred times when I had carried her out of my truck, her arms and legs wrapped around me as though she were a young child and not a seventeen-year-old girl.

The boys attached a hose to the sink in the employee bathroom, ran it out the back door, and because a lot of the girls sunbathed on the roof before work, they had towels to hold up to give Josie some cover. It took time, but finally with her body washed and clothed, hair dyed, makeup applied, then being fed and hugged over and over, she stopped shaking and breathed. I realized I finally could as well.

I got a call from a sheriff’s deputy because the Barnes’ swore out a complaint against me.

“So what’s our next step here?” I asked him,

He cleared his throat noisily on the other end of the line. “Nothing at all,” he informed me, sounding nervous as hell. “Just—if you might see your way clear to letting Rand know that we let this whole incident drop…then that would be good.”

“Yessir I will,” I replied, putting the drawl in my voice. “He’ll be mighty pleased I reckon.”

His exhale was audible.

People living in deathly fear of Rand Holloway was working for me.

By eleven Josie was taking a nap on the couch in my office while I sat at the bar and talked to Kevin, Callie, and Marco. I closed up early at midnight instead of two in the morning and had everyone on the floor in the employee break room a half an hour later. They were all looking at me.

Two days.

You wouldn’t think the place could go completely to shit in two days, but it most certainly had. Without me there, my restaurant exploded in anger, frustration, name-calling, and backstabbing. And while I was glad to finally know all of what was going on and have everything that was bubbling below the surface out in the open, I could have done without the drama.

I really hated drama.

“If one person doesn’t pull their own weight,” I said, addressing my staff, “the whole team gets dragged down.”

The room exploded in noise. People turned on each other, there was pointing, there was yelling, and I let it go because I could feel the tension in the room dissipate with just the volume.

Kevin walked over to me, and after a minute I nodded and he blew the air horn, which startled the hell out of everyone.

I stood, lifted my hands, and told them all to shut the fuck up. Once I had silence and fixed stares, I started again. “Why didn’t anyone tell me that JT was bangin’ every single woman that came in here?”

Abruptly, no one could look me in the eye.

“He’s gone.”

And that fast, everyone was back to looking at me, suddenly hopeful, and of course I understood why. JT had been taking my money and doing no work for it, and they’d all thought he’d had my blessing to be that way, when the truth was far more ridiculous. I’d had no idea. I’d thought he was a good guy, but it turned out he was lazy and cruel and a total womanizer. When Kevin and I busted him in my office having sex with a guest from the hotel, I fired him on the spot. Jamal and Eric really enjoyed carrying him out the back. Callie Pena, my office manager, had his paycheck under his windshield wiper, calculated out to the penny.

She was thorough like that.

They waited.

“To replace him, as of today, Kevin has been promoted to manager,” I told them. I then tipped my head at Bailey Kramer, who was sitting in the back holding Josie’s hand. “Bail, you’re the new assistant.”

She was stunned, and the smile I got, slow, sheepish, spreading over her features, showing off rows of perfect white even teeth, made me break into one too.

“So now we’re good,” I announced. “Marco is taking over the head bartender spot.”

There was applause as he stood and bowed, promising he wouldn’t let me down. This was his home. After prison, a lot of people wouldn’t take a chance on him. The fact that I had gambled meant the world to him and his family.

It was the same for many of the people who worked for me. My head chef, Javier Garza, was—they said—let go from his last position for stealing and—he said—for being Mexican. The reality was that his changes—brisket in pecan and mesquite marinade and turkey legs for the kids added to the steak plates and hamburgers we started with made us crazy successful in a very short amount of time.