Here Comes the Night Read Online Free PDF

together in a crowd. Stuff
that could get her arrested too if she was with him. Those things ate at her
conscience, but today he’d really crossed the line.
    If they weren’t out in the middle of nowhere, she’d walk
away right now and go home. As soon as they got back to the city, that was
exactly what she would do. He could find somebody else to get into trouble.
    While he waited on her, Tony used the opportunity to rifle
through the rest of the glove compartment. In the still country air, Steve
Earle wailed about how the rains had come down somewhere in Texas.

Chapter 18
    Just over the hill above the parked Mustang, Oklahoma’s next
teenage rodeo star was riding horses with her boyfriend. Only seventeen, Candy
Myers had already blown everybody away by breaking a national barrel racing
record at the Lazy E Arena in Guthrie. Replays of the breathless performance
had made her an instant celebrity in the rodeo world.
    Now in serious training for the Grand Finals in Las Vegas,
she had saved a precious hour to see her boyfriend, Mickey Mullin, the only kid
from her high school who’d ever had the nerve to ask her out. His only bragging
right was raising blue ribbon Angora sheep with the Future Farmers of America,
yet he’d somehow found the guts to blurt out an invitation to a dance, and
they’d been inseparable ever since. Except, of course, for her non-stop
training schedule.
    “Slow poke,” she teased him.
    “I’m just gettin’ warmed up. Are you kidding?”
    They slowed their horses and pulled up side by side, facing
one another.
    He could smell honeysuckle around them, and then her sweet
gardenia perfume. That was always like a little secret between them, the
fragile scent of her skin, just waiting under the smells of shined leather
boots and chaps.
    Mickey wrapped his hand around her neck and pulled her
close. He always wanted to kiss her, but it was sweeter out here, where they
were completely alone. It was a long, lingering one.
    Candy sighed as they parted. “I’m mud puddle crazy about
you, you know.”
    “Yeah, you say that now,” he teased her.
    Then, all the while knowing he’d lose to her again, Mickey
gamely challenged her to a sprint up the long hill that led from her house in
the valley up to the paved highway. Candy patted her quarter horse’s
butterscotch neck and grinned at him.
    “Sure your nag is up to it?” she grinned.
    “Been waitin’ all day to strut her stuff. We’ll see how well
your little prima donna can climb,” Mickey yelled back. In an instant he
managed to get a quick start, leaving Candy to make up the difference.
    Not that it would be a problem for her.

Chapter 19
    By the time Erika got back in the car, Tony had figured out
how to patch everything up. He even let her abruptness pass without comment
when she said, “Let’s just go back to the city, okay?”
    “Hey, I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “Sometimes I…I know I get
wild. But I really need you…so much.” Erika searched his face, wanting this to be
true. Then he slipped something into her hand. “I want you to have this. It’s
not much.”
    Erika opened her hand to find a delicate chain holding a
pale coral cameo. She wondered where he’d stolen it. “Where’d you—?”
    Tony took her hand. “It was my grandmother’s.”
    “It’s really nice, Tony,” Erika said, slipping the necklace
on. She knew it was too nice, too convenient. Besides, he had said he didn’t
have any family. She smiled at him, but knew it was useless for him to bother
keeping his lies straight anymore. Best if she broke it off as soon as they got
back to the city.
    “We’ll head back home. Just one more drag, okay?” Tony
grinned, and before she could say anything, he’d cranked up the sound system,
floorboarded the accelerator, and they were screaming up the steep hill in
front of them, fishtailing and kicking up gravel.
    Candy and Mickey heard the mega-volume music from the
Mustang before they actually saw the car. Her