Bo sat on his front porch, gravely quiet. Staring out at the landscape, he wondered what to do. Normally Luke wasn't falling for a girl who was nothing but trouble. Normally Bo wouldn't have to be the voice of reason, and at the moment Bo was speechless.
"Honey, what's wrong? You've barely said anything since we brought Luke home," Daisy commented, sitting down next to her baby cousin.
"I just don't know what to tell Luke," he confessed. "He keeps asking what happened, and I just don't know how to tell him."
"Well tell me what happened and we'll figured it out together," she offered.
"Daisy, we only escaped because one of Boss Hogg's men let us go."
"What's so wrong with that?"
"It was Ellie Beth."
"What?"
"She works for Boss Hogg Daisy, and I don't know how to tell Luke."
"Are you sure he doesn't know?"
Bo shook his head. "Luke would never be with someone who works for Boss Hogg. He's too level headed for that."
She sighed. "Luke's crazy about her, it's gonna break his heart."
"I know."
They sat silently, both imagining the worst of Luke's temper, when a police car rolled into their dirt driveway. Bo stood quickly and bonded down the stairs, feeling a sudden urge to protect his home.
Ellie Beth stepped out of the squad car, and looked a little worse for the wear. Her dress was dirty, blood stained it, and her face just looked tired.
"Hi Bo, how you feeling?" she greeted sheepishly.
"You've got a lot of nerve showing your face around here," Bo started.
"So I guess the dinner's off, huh?" she mumbled.
"Damn right it is. I don't know what kind of con you're trying to pull on my cousin, but stop it. I want you to leave and not come back."
"Bo, I'm not trying to con anyone. I care about Luke, that's why I'm here, I want to see how's he doing," Ellie Beth defended.
"Then why don't you tell him what you do?" Bo suggested, and headed towards the house. "I'll go get him right now and you can explain all about it."
"Bo please," Ellie Beth began, but stopped when she saw Luke at the screen door.
"I thought I heard yelling," Luke explained and then smiled at Ellie Beth.
"Luke, you're okay," she cried and ran up to him. Throwing her arms around him, she buried her face in his chest, feeling reassured by feeling his once again sturdy body against hers.
"I'm fine" he assured her, enclosing her in his arms too. He glanced at his two cousins. "You didn't have to go and tell her I got hurt, I'm fine."
"We didn't have to tell her," Bo mumbled as Daisy approached the couple.
"Luke, sugah, maybe you should go lay down," she suggested, placing a hand on his shoulder, trying to guide him away from her.
"I'm fine," he stated, shrugging off the hand.
"Ellie Beth was just leaving anyways," Bo explained, grabbing a hold of Ellie Beth's shoulders and ripping her away from Luke.
"Bo, what do you think you're doing?" Luke roared as Bo pushed her toward the patrol car. He went to hold Ellie Beth again, but Bo blocked him.
"She isn't welcomed here, she needs to leave," Bo stated firmly.
"Bo, what is you're problem?" Luke snapped, pushing Bo.
"She works for Boss Hogg," Bo yelled back. "She is probably his spy, reporting back to him about everything we do. It's just another scheme and you're falling for it!"
"No it's not! I know how JD would react if he found out I was dating anyone, so he doesn't know about Luke," Ellie Beth defended. "I don't want him to get hurt."
"See, she doesn't even deny working for Boss Hogg," Bo pointed out.
"You're talking a lot about something you know little," Luke warned, flexing his hands.
"I was there Luke, she works for Boss Hogg. Those guys knew her, they called her EB and she was ordering them around. She was going to take us to Boss Hogg."
Luke sat down; his head pounding again from the information Bo had just given him. "Can someone just explain what happened?"
Suddenly they swarmed around him, shooting question about his well being at him, only making his head worse. Ellie Beth pushed her way through the blood relatives, and he smiled at her as he sat next to him. "Hey you."
"Hi stranger, you doing okay? Do we need to get the doctor?" she asked softly, stroking his head.
He shook his head, and repeated, in a kinder tone, "I'm fine, just please tell me what happened."
Glancing up at the other Duke, she asked, "Where do you want to start Bo?"
"How about the part where that psycho wanted to shoot me and Luke?"
"I'm sorry about that, Vin was out of line. I'm going to make sure nothing like that happens again," she told him.
"How? What exactly do you do for Boss Hogg?" Bo questioned.
She glanced between Bo and Luke, trying to figure out what would be the best answer. Everything in her was guiding her to tell Luke the truth, but lie to Bo. However, she had to pick one option, and she wasn't concerned with what Bo thought of her. "I do everything. Drive the car, talk the con, and finish the job. My main job though is to manage the jobs, and make sure the jobs get done. So I get called whenever there's a snag, like you two were a snag today."
"So basically you're like a mini Boss Hogg," Bo sneered.
"No, I am not like JD. I'm a completely different person," she snapped at him.
"Elizabeth, it's okay," Luke assured her, rubbing her back.
"No it's not. Luke, didn't you just hear her, she works for HOGG!" Bo shouted at him.
"I heard Bo," Luke roared and then winced from the flash of pain located in his head. "Just finish telling me what happened!"
"Fine, they called EB, to come take care of us. She showed up and came up with the plan to take us to Boss Hogg," Bo started.
"I wasn't really going to take you to JD, I just wanted to get you and Luke out of there and back into town," Ellie Beth interjected.
"Alright, what happened after that?" Luke asked, sighing.
"That psycho-"
"Vin."
Bo glared at her. "That psycho said he didn't trust her to go to Boss Hogg alone, so he was going to have to come with her. And when we were driving she had me grab the wheel so she could crash the car."
Bo stopped there, and looked at Ellie Beth. She had crashed her own car, just to give him and Luke a chance of escape. In fact, she had even arranged for Cooter to be there to give them a ride to the doctor. Bo glanced down guilty, suddenly aware of what Ellie Beth really did for them.
"You crashed your car? Are you okay?" Luke asked, frantically checking her over for injury. It was then he noticed the three stitches, hidden by her hairline but still there. His hand traced the cut, but she did not noticed, she was lost in her own world.
"I crashed Davis," she whispered, snapping out of her trance. She glanced at Luke and repeated, "I crashed Davis, and I don't know what happened to her."
"Ellie Beth, it's okay," he told her, stroking her hair. "It's alright, you're safe."
Standing, she moved away from his grasp towards the police car. He stood after her and called, "Elizabeth, wait."
Quickly she turned back to him, and gave him a quick kiss. "Stay with your family, feel better. I'll be back, eventually."
"Elizabeth," he tried again, but she was already walking away.
"Enos," she called, and the deputy sheriff poked his head out of the driver's window. "I need to get to Cooter's, now."
"But, uh, Miss Ellie Beth, Boss Hogg said to bring you back to the house, we shouldn't even be here," Enos reminded her.
"It's fine, I'll deal with him," she told him, as she slid into the passenger seat.
"But Miss Ellie Beth, he was pretty adamant about bringing you straight to his house," Enos tried again.
"Enos, if you don't take me to Cooter's right now, I swear I will get out of this car and walk there myself," she snapped at him.
"You heard the woman Enos, get," Luke stated, slipping into the backseat.
They both turned and surprised at what they saw. Luke grinned at Ellie Beth, and she smiled back, never taking her eyes off of him, even when Enos said, "Alright, but I'm warning you two now, nothing but trouble is gonna come from this."
Little did those two know that Enos was right, keeping Ellie Beth away from Boss Hogg would not end well.
The squad car rolled to a stop and Ellie Beth burst out, barely giving Luke time to catch up. She ran in the garage, he was on her heels the whole time, and they were greeted by a grim looking Cooter.
"EB, I know how much that car means to you, but it's just a car, the important thing is you're okay," Cooter reminded her.
She looked at him, meet his eyes and stated, "She's totaled."
"I haven't looked her over completely yet, so it's too early to tell," Cooter started, but Ellie Beth was looking past him already, at the crumpled remains of her car.
She walked around him, and stepped lightly towards her motionless vehicle. Her passenger side was crushed in, headlight gone, probably left on the side of the road to mark the crash, and the body frame was twisted underneath itself. The engine was hidden but she didn't want to see it.
Luke came up behind her, in time to catch her as she dropped. Her knees had given out and she was fighting his grip, struggling to get away.
"No, no, no, no, no," she cried, and finally gave in to his strong hold.
His grasp around her, tightened and he brought her closer to him. "It's okay, it's gonna be alright. Everything is going to be okay."
"I had her since I was fourteen, fourteen! I can't believe I crashed her. I totaled her! She was the only thing I had, the only thing I could count on," she sobbed into his chest.
"Shh it's okay, it's okay," he repeated, kissing the top of her head. "You've got me. I'll be here for you. You can count on me."
He felt her body press closer to his and the sobs died off quickly. Reassured by this he added, "And you know, maybe there is something Cooter or I could do to fix her up. She might be able to be fixed up."
She laughed; it was hollow and echoed with her fallen tears. "Luke, it's about four weeks till my birthday. She's dead and gone. I'll be surprised if you survive the birthday curse too."
"Nothing's gonna scare me away Elizabeth, not any old 'birthday curse'," he replied with smile.
"You don't know the power of my birthday curse," she stated glumly, looking over at her car.
Sighing, he stood up and brought Ellie Beth up with him. "Come here, we're going to sit down."
Grumbling, Ellie Beth allowed herself to be guided to a pile of tires, where they collapsed together. There they were in each other's embrace, but their view of the crumpled car was blocked by Cooter's truck. There he finally got Ellie Beth calm down and collected by changing the subject.
"You, you never did really explain why you got arrested," Like told her, his hand tracing up and down her arm.
"I stole a car," she replied.
"I know that. I meant why did you steal the car? Your reasoning."
"I don't know it was over a year ago," she stated.
"It must have been because we've known each other for about a year now," he told her.
"We have, haven't we?" He could hear the smile in her voice. "Well, I stole the car because my daddy got denied parole, again. I was angry and upset because I thought this year, since he already served ten years, they would give him early release. His sentence was only eight to fifteen years, so it only seems fair but they keep denying hoping he is going to roll on JD. He won't, so he's stuck there and it's not fair.
"Anyways, I was with my brother and didn't have a car, and after the news all I wanted to was drive down to see our uncle, and my brother wouldn't take me. So, I found a car, hotwired it, and started driving. I didn't stop till I was halfway through North Carolina and a cop was trying to pull me over for speeding. I remember thinking, as I saw the lights chasing after me that if I pulled over now, and let him arrest me it would all be over. And I just wanted it all to be over, so I stopped, got arrested, use my one phone call to tell my brother that I was okay, but in jail. And he called our uncle who got a lawyer and probably paid some people off to get me out.
"I was just sitting in my cell, when all of a sudden my uncle was there, the police were releasing me and I was over nine thousand dollars in debt. Together, my uncle and I figured it out, and I came down here to work it off. And then after a few weeks of working, I went to the Boar's Nest on my night off to get drunk and have some fun. And I ended up with you."
He chuckled at her sarcastic, playful tone and she rolled over to face him, grinning. He smiled back at her and she softly touched his face, asking sweetly, "How do you do that?"
"What?"
"Calm me down so easily," she told him. "I've never met anyone who could handle me so well. Not even my uncle has had your success rate."
"Oh you just probably needed a big strong man to handle you," he told her with a smirk and a wink.
"Excuse me? I am perfectly capable of handling myself. And I am strong," she defended.
"Oh, of course you are." With a smirk, he added, "Small fry."
"What? You take that back Luke!" she commanded.
"Sure I will," he told her. "You just have to do something first."
"What?"
Luke swept her up and threw her over his shoulder in a strong grasp. "Get yourself out of this."
"Luke, Luke, Luke! Let me down, right now!" she yelled, in a very uncomfortable position of being tossed over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
"I thought you could handle yourself," Luke replied with a grin. He loved it, having Ellie Beth in his grip. He could easily toss her petite frame around, him being almost a head taller than her and significantly stronger. However, he would admit that she was strong. He could really feel the punches in his back from her.
She started squirming, making it harder to keep his firm grasp on her. "Let me go! Luke, I'm warning you, if you don't put me down now, you're gonna be sorry!"
"Down?"
"Yes!"
"Gotcha." He hiked her up into the air and then dropped her on the pile of tires, and much to his delight, she let out a little scream. Laughing, he dropped down next to her and gave her a kiss.
"Thank you," she whispered, after the kiss broke and they were resting on each other.
"No thank you, Elizabeth," he responded, "for helping my cousin and me."
She looked up with him, her brown eyes soft and warm, and told him truthfully, "I'd do it again, despite what I lost."
"I want you to know something Elizabeth, I'm gonna be here for you, no matter what, okay? I love you."
"I feel the same way, and I'd do anything for you, you know that, right?" she asked.
"I know," he replied, and two remained in comfortable silence till their breathing synced and eyes shut for the night.
Morning came and the sunlight broke through the small windows in the garage, but this did not bother the two lovers. The sound of the door opening stirred the two, Ellie Beth more than Luke. She blinked and a familiar smell of smoke wafted through the air that awoken her more. It was then, before her eyes were fully open, she heard his sharp, strict tone. She knew it was bad, he was angry.
"Elizabeth!" Boss Hogg cried.
She glanced at him, her eyes wide open with fear, and greeted, "Morning Uncle Jeffie."
