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CHAPTER 50

“CAN I ASK you a question?” Megan says.

It’s been about an hour since I woke up. Megan made fajitas for lunch while I took a shower and threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. We’ve just finished eating at a little two-seat table nook in the same room as the TV and couch.

“Shoot,” I say.

“Interesting choice of words.”

“What do you mean?”

She gestures over to my shirt hanging by the window, sunlight streaming in through the hole.

“Is that a bullet hole in your shirt?”

I nod, wondering what she’s thinking. The prospect of dating a Texas Ranger always sounds good to women until they realize they could lose you at any time. Willow always had a hard time dealing with it.

Megan places a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“I’m here for you,” she says. “If you need to talk, we can talk. If you want to do something else to take your mind off of everything you’ve been through, we could watch a movie or sit around reading books. Whatever you need.”

Megan looks beautiful with the bright sunlight pouring onto her skin, which doesn’t have—or need—a stitch of makeup on it. Her blue eyes catch the light and shine like the cobalt surface of a beautiful mountain lake.

I’ve never really been one to open up about what I’m feeling, but Megan’s sincerity prompts me to start talking.

“On the drive last night,” I say, “I was thinking about Wyatt Earp. You know who he was, don’t you?”

“He was a gunfighter from the Wild West, wasn’t he?” Megan says. “Kurt Russell played him in a movie. Or maybe it was Kevin Costner.”

“Both,” I say. “He was a lawman. He might not have been much better than some of the outlaws he went after, but he has a legend that follows him, a mythology that makes him a hero in everyone’s mind.”

Wyatt Earp was on my mind because of the TOMBSTONE hat I borrowed from Ava, but on the drive I started thinking about how there was a famous gunfight in which his coat was shot through on both sides with buckshot, yet somehow none of the rounds hit him. It reminded me of my shirt, where the bullet passed through the front and the back on the left side. It looks like the bullet would have gone right through me, but that’s only because the shirt was open and hanging at the time my attacker squeezed the trigger.

I rise and examine the hole in my shirt. The shot was so close that there are burn marks around the entrance hole.

“Wyatt Earp never got shot once,” I say to Megan. “Not in his whole law enforcement career. People he rode with got shot or killed. His brothers did. Doc Holliday did. But he didn’t.” I put my little finger through the front hole, the edges crisp from the scorch marks. “Supposedly, shots passed right through his coat without hitting him. Bullets went through his hat. One even hit his boot heel, they say. His saddle horn was shot off, I think. But he was never hit. Never so much as a scratch.

“I don’t know for sure,” I add, “but I get the feeling that at some point Wyatt Earp figured he’d used up all his luck. He hung up his gun and retired from law enforcement.”

Megan listens without interruption. I meet her eyes.

“I’ve had some close calls,” I say, pointing to the shirt as if she needs a reminder. “I feel like I’ve used up all my Wyatt Earp luck. One of these days, a bullet is going to find its way home. I’ll be either hurt or killed. I’ll be in a hospital, or I’ll be in a casket.”

I walk back over and sit next to Megan, who keeps her ocean-deep eyes fixed on me.

“Unless I hang up my gun and call it a career,” I say, “that’s where I’m headed. My parents will have to go to one of those Medal of Valor ceremonies and accept the award on my behalf. Posthumously. My luck’s run out. I can feel it.”

“Do you want to hang up your gun?” Megan asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe getting kicked off the task force is the sign I need. I don’t seem to fit in with the way things work these days. My help isn’t wanted. I’m fighting the good guys as much as I am the bad guys. Maybe it’s time for me to call it quits. Maybe it’s time for me to ride off into the sunset.”

Megan encourages me to give it some thought, not rush into any decisions.

“The thing is,” I say, picking up my tin star from the coffee table and looking at my distorted reflection in the metal, “without this badge, I’m not sure who I am.”