Red Velvet Revenge by Jenn McKinlay

Author:Jenn McKinlay [McKinlay, Jenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 0425251381
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2012-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

“What?” he asked. “How did he…Was it that bull?”

Oz’s olive complexion faded as the blood drained from his face, and he wobbled in his size thirteens.

“Head between the knees, champ,” Marty said, and he eased Oz down onto a nearby bench and had him hang his head down.

“We don’t know,” Mel said. “Ty was found in the bull pen, and the bull was gone.”

“But why was he…?” Oz’s head came up and his bangs parted. Mel could see he was thinking of something but had cut off his words before he spoke them aloud.

“What do you know, Oz?” she asked.

“Me? Nothing!” he said.

He was protesting a little too quickly for Mel’s liking. When she was about to press, Tate and Angie joined them, interrupting the moment.

“You okay, O-man?” Tate asked.

“Yeah, I’m cool,” he said.

“He just heard about Ty,” Marty explained.

“Speaking of which, I’d better get this bull back down to the rodeo,” Jake said. “Thank you all for your help.”

He tipped his hat and headed toward the truck. They stood and watched him haul the behemoth bovine away.

“What will happen if they do discover that it was the bull?” Oz asked.

The rest of them exchanged a look over his head: Marty to Mel and Mel to Tate and Tate to Angie and Angie to Mel.

Mel got it. It was her job to break the bad news.

“They’ll probably have to put him down, Oz,” she said.

“So, my cupcakes led him to his doom,” Oz said. He shook his shaggy mane, and Mel felt helpless to console him. She didn’t know how these things worked.

“Now, quit with the crazy talk,” Marty said. “I got a nice close-up look at the bull, and those horns of his are clean. Don’t you think if he gored somebody to death, it’d show?”

“Marty’s right,” Mel said quickly. “He certainly didn’t look like he’d been in any…uh…incidents with his horns.”

Oz glanced up at Mel. She knew it wasn’t her best sell job in the world, but he seemed to accept it.

“I think we all need to get some shut-eye,” Tate said. “It’s been a hell of an evening, and who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

“Do you think they’ll shut the rodeo down because of Ty?” Angie asked.

Mel saw the line of customers outside of her cupcake truck disappear like a dust devil in a rainstorm. It was horribly selfish; a man had died, after all. She needed to get some perspective. But even as she chastised herself, she couldn’t help but lament that they had been doing a bang-up business.

Tate shrugged. “It’s up to the sheriff.”

It was a somber group that made their way to the Last Chance to try to sleep. The bar was full of people who had been out chasing the bull. Mel glanced around the room. Some were laughing and clapping one another on the back, but others were looking anxious, and she knew without being told that word of Ty’s demise was spreading through the room, moving amongst them like a cloaked specter of death wielding his scythe over all of their heads.

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