Chapter 6

"Holy shit." Vic dropped her bag on the floor just inside the room and looked around with her hands on her hips. "This place is really nice."

I threw my own duffle bag over my shoulder and looked around. I had to admit, she was right. We were on the fifth floor of the Armory Hotel Bozeman, in a room with enormous, west-facing windows that framed twilight over the distant mountains like a hyper-realistic painting. It was spacious, done up in muted grays and whites, presumably so that the décor wouldn't detract from the landscape. It was a little modern for my taste, but Vic had been sold as soon as she read about the heated rooftop pool.

Vic took a skipping step and launched herself into the middle of the king-sized bed that took up the middle of the room. "Oh my god, this is amazing," she said. She rolled over and stretched, arching her back and striking an interesting pose that made me forget about the landscape entirely.

I dropped my bag next to hers, set my hat on the desk with the brim up, and came to stand next to the bed. "You're being very distracting right now."

She smiled up at me without opening her eyes. "Oh yeah? And what are you going to do about it?"

Unable to help myself, as was so often the case when it came to Vic, I bent down and kissed her. Her lips were warm and soft, and I could feel her smile as she kissed me back. She reached up and tangled her fingers in my hair, humming softly in the back of her throat in a way that made heat shoot through me like an arrow. I braced my arms on the mattress next to her and deepened the kiss with my tongue in her mouth.

She broke away with a gasp and then laughed softly against my jaw, her fingers trailing down the back of my neck. "How about now?" she asked, the smile still evident in her voice. "Still distracted?"

"You could call it that," I said, sounding breathless even to myself.

"Good," she said, and rolled away from me. "I'm going to go take a shower."

I stayed there like that, frozen in place with my arms braced on the bed, as she disappeared laughing into the shower. Then I dropped like a rock onto the mattress and rolled into the spot she had just vacated. "That was downright dirty," I said to her over the sound of the shower spray.

"You can get me back later," she called back cheerfully. "Find us a good place for dinner, will you? I'm starving."

In the end, we decided to kill two birds with one steakhouse, and made our way across town to the Bozeman Roadhouse, which is where I hoped to find both a ribeye and Janelle, or at least someone who could give us an idea of where to find her. She was our first step in tracking Brian back to his last known whereabouts, and I had to admit, I was kind of hoping that we would know where he was before dessert.

In a city that prides itself on the width and breadth of its culinary options, the Roadhouse was less of a white-napkins-on-the-table and more of a peanut-shells-on-the-floor kind of establishment. Which suited me just fine. We were shown to our table by a waitress with a nose ring and the unlikely name of Trixie embroidered on her t-shirt.

She waited until we were seated and then handed us each an oversized, laminated menu with a trio of Red Angus cows on the front cover. "Welcome to the Roadhouse. My name is Trixie, and I'm going to be your server tonight." She rolled a heavy silver tongue ring around in her mouth when she spoke, which made it difficult to concentrate on what she was saying. "Can I get y'all something to drink?"

I felt Vic kick my ankle sharply under the table, which suggested that I might be paying a little too much attention to the tongue ring, but she smiled up at the hostess. "Two iced teas, please."

"Sure thing," Trixie said. "The specials tonight are the 10 ounce ribeye and the chicken – but don't get the chicken. It's only on special because Derrick ordered too much, and it's closing in on its 'best by' date, if you know what I mean."

"Appreciate the warning," I said, amused by her candor.

"I'll give y'all some time to look at the menu and be right back with those iced teas." She flashed us her tongue bar one more time before she turned and headed for the kitchen.

Vic kicked my ankle again. "Think I should get my tongue pierced?"

"I was just wondering if she's ever chipped a tooth with that thing."

"I hear they're good for other things – you know, heightened pleasure and all that." Vic caught her own unpierced tongue provocatively between her teeth and arched an eyebrow at me.

"I like your tongue just the way it is," I assured her. I opened the menu and began perusing the available options which trended heavily towards steak, steak and more steak. "Besides, heightening my pleasure any more than you already do would probably kill me."

Vic leaned back in the booth and grinned at me over the top of her menu. "That might be the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me."

"I've been told that I have soul of a poet."

Vic snorted and turned her attention to the other servers who ebbed and flowed from the surrounding tables like a flotilla of determined tugboats. "See anyone that looks like the piece of ass in question?"

"Not so far," I said. I closed my menu and looked around the increasingly crowded restaurant. The wait staff were all identically dressed in black Roadhouse T-shirts and jeans, but from there the similarities ended, and evidence that we had washed up in a college town began. Tattoos, piercings, various sized ear gauges and hair colors most decidedly not found anywhere in nature were the rule, rather than the exception, and I couldn't help but think there was a lot of middle-aged regret on the horizon for most of these kids. But then, maybe I'm just getting old. Eventually, I spotted a familiar face picking up a drink order from the bar. "Thar she blows."

Vic followed my gaze. "Never ever let that child know that you referred to her by using a Moby Dick reference. Especially that one."

"Duly noted."

"Also," Vic returned her attention to her menu. "Dinner first, interrogation second."

We ordered our steaks rare with a baked potato on the side – neither one of us was taking any chances with the chicken. The restaurant grew noisier as the evening crowd came in and activity around the bar picked up. Rather than compete with the ambiance, Vic and I ate in companionable silence. My attention was focused primarily on my steak, but I also kept an occasional eye on Janelle as she went about her work. She was a petite brunette with her hair pulled back into a conservative ponytail that hung down between her shoulder blades. Her tables were too far away to eavesdrop on, but she seemed to interact cheerfully with both the patrons and her coworkers, and I noticed that she smiled even when she didn't have to.

"Does she strike you as the thrash metal music festival kind of girl?" Vic asked as she pushed her plate aside and wiped the last of the steak sauce off of her lips. "I mean, I know appearances can be misleading and all that, but she's literally the only one in here that isn't pierced and tattooed within an inch of her life."

"I was kind of thinking the same thing," I said.

"Shall we go say hi?"

I pulled money out of my wallet and dropped it on the table as I stood. "I was kind of thinking the same thing."

We ran our quarry to ground at the bussing station behind the bar where she was busily tucking silverware into cloth napkins, expertly rolling them into neat little packages and then adding them to a growing pile for the hostess collect on her rounds.

"Excuse me," I began. "Are you Janelle?"

"That's what it says on my shirt," she said, and then looked up from her work. "Can I help you?"

Vic was ready with the photo already pulled up on the screen of her phone. "Is this you with Brian Many Bridges last week?"

Janelle drew back slightly and frowned. "Who are you? Why do you have that picture?"

I held my hands up and tried to look as nonthreatening as a man more than a foot taller and a hundred plus pounds heavier than her could look. "My name is Walt Longmire, and this is Victoria Moretti. She's a sheriff's deputy in Absaroka County, Wyoming. We're in town looking for Brian. Do you have any idea where we might find him?"

Color flooded the girl's cheeks, but she just snorted and went back to rolling silverware. "I really don't know, and I don't care to."

"Listen, Miss…?"

"Stephens," she said without looking back up. "It's Janelle Stephens. But I don't know where he is."

"Miss Stephens, we just wanted to ask you a few questions – "

"I don't know where he is," she said again, this time a little more emphatically. Her cheeks were as pink as the shutters back at the Running Feet house. "And I don't want to know where he is. He's an asshole that ghosted me, and almost got me fired from my job." She dropped another roll of silverware onto the pile. This one wasn't done as neatly as its predecessors, I noticed. "I only ever met him the one time. He said he was going to call me, but he never did." She reached for another cloth napkin.

I exchanged a look with Vic. "Miss Stephens," I continued. "Janelle. I really am sorry to bother you with this, especially while you're at work. The last thing I want to do is get you in any trouble. But Brian is missing, and we're trying to find him. His mother is really worried about him. Is there somewhere that we can talk for a few minutes? Or maybe we could plan to speak at another time that is more convenient?"

"We just have a couple of questions, and then we can get out of your hair," Vic added.

Janelle looked back and forth between us, and then sighed and let her shoulders drop. "Fine. Just let me get someone to cover my tables for a few minutes and I'll meet you outside by the side entrance."

The night was cool, but not cold. Nevertheless, Vic kept her shoulder and back pressed into my chest, sharing warmth while we waited for Janelle under the lights outside the restaurant's side door. The bank next door was closed, but the red Xs that indicated that the drive-thru lanes were closed still glowed, lighting the space between the buildings like something out of one of Dante's slightly less dramatic circles of Hell. The traffic noise was dim this far from the main road, but the wind coming down off the distant mountains carried a low tune of its own.

"You think she slept with him?" I asked.

"Oh, absolutely," Vic said. "That whole tirade had 'a woman scorned' written all over it."

I nodded. "Let's just hope it was more scorning, and less disappearing off the face of the planet."

The side door squeaked as the exit bar was pressed open from the inside. Janelle stepped outside and brought the scents and sounds of a busy restaurant kitchen into the alleyway with her. She eased the door closed behind her so that it wouldn't lock shut, and the sounds muted, though the smell of cooking meat held in the air for considerably longer.

"Jess is watching my tables for me, but I only have a few minutes. George is still looking for a reason to fire me." She crossed her arms over her chest against the chill in her short-sleeved shirt, covering up the embroidered cow and the script that spelled out her name.

"We'll try not to take up too much more of your time," I said. "Can you just give us a quick rundown on where you met Brian?"

"Here," she said, gesturing to the building behind her. "He and his friends were sitting at one of my tables. We flirted a little bit back and forth while they were eating. And then, before they left, he invited me to go to the music festival with them." She looked away, embarrassed. "I mean, it's not really my scene, you know? I don't even like that kind of music, but I thought, oh what the hell. Live a little. Do something crazy for a change." She shrugged and rubbed her nose. "So, I rode out to the festival with them – his friend Ryan had a van – and we just hung out and went to the shows."

"About what time was that?" Vic asked. "When you left here?"

"Probably around six-thirty. It was just before the dinner rush. George was pissed when I told him I was leaving."

"Is George your boss?"

She nodded. "Restaurant manager. He said if I left, I shouldn't bother coming back. That if he couldn't depend on me to work my shifts, he didn't need me here." She snorted. "Like he doesn't spend half the night in his office, playing Candy Crush on his phone."

"So, you left here and went straight to the festival?"

"Yeah – well, sort of. They parked the van at a little campsite down the road from the festival and we walked from there."

"How long did you stay with them?"

She shrugged again, but I could see the color come back into her cheeks, even in the dim light. "Two days." Then she hastened to add, "I've never done anything like that before. I swear. I mean, I don't usually just go off with strange people I've never met. But Brian was cute and funny, and he seemed really sweet."

Vic spoke up again. "It doesn't sound like you feel that way anymore though."

Janelle shot a look at her. "Yeah, well, he never called, did he? So, it ended up that he was just another jerk of a guy who lies to get what he wants." She tightened her arms around herself and looked away. "I really need to get back inside."

"You've been very helpful," I said. "Just a few more questions. When did you last see Brian?"

"Four days ago," she said. "Down by the lake near the campsite. It was after the festival was over. The friends he rode in with had already lit out, so Brian and I walked back to the campground after the last act was over. I don't know how he was planning to get home, honestly. But he said he wanted to stick around and get to know me better." She made a disparaging sound in the back of her throat. "What a laugh. He was all sugary sweet and lovey-dovey after they took off. But as soon as his other friend came by he was like, 'see ya'!"

Vic perked up next to me.

"What friend was that?" I asked. "Not one of the guys you had already met? Not Ryan Running Feet, Donny Black Feather or Shane Parker?"

"No. Brian didn't tell me his name." She looked thoughtful. "Actually, now that I think about it, it was the other guy that said he was a friend of Brian's. I didn't think Brian looked all that happy to see him, really. But he still basically told me to get lost. He was being a real dick, but I didn't have a ride, so it wasn't like I could tell him to fuck off right then, you know? So, I went back to the campsite to wait for him, only he never came back."

"How long did you wait?"

"Maybe forty minutes? The festival was over, so most people were packing up and driving away, and I didn't want to be the only one there at a campground in the middle of nowhere, you know? So, I thought maybe Brian was waiting for me back at the lake, but when I went back down there, he was gone." The anger was back in her voice now. "I ended up having to call my roommate to come out and pick me up. Traffic was so bad, it took her nearly two hours to get there, and by then it was starting to get dark, and it was just me and one really creepy couple who kept offering to give me a ride home. And then I had to come back here and beg George to let me keep my job. So, yeah. No offense to his mom or anything, but I really couldn't possibly care less where Brian Many Bridges is."

Vic patted Janelle gently on the arm. "He's an asshole," she said. "But he's an asshole we still need to find." She reached up into my jacket pocket and pulled out the pen and notepad I always carry with me, flipped to an empty page and clicked the pen open. "Where would we find this campground?"

Back at the hotel, Vic talked me into going up to the rooftop pool with her. Not that it required a lot of convincing. I'm not much of a recreational swimmer, but watching Vic do anything in a bikini is one of my favorite pastimes.

"You really aren't going to join me?" Vic asked. She was shoulder deep in the faintly steaming water with her arms hooked over the side of the pool, her hair slicked back and dripping.

I smiled down at her. "I didn't bring a bathing suit."

"So? I'll take off mine if you take off yours."

"I think I'd rather watch you swim."

"Voyeur." She stuck her tongue out at me and pushed away from the wall, gliding backwards into the center of the pool.

We were alone on the rooftop, most of the Armory's other guests having the sense not to go swimming at night when the temperature was dipping down into the forties. A set of patio heaters kept the worst of the cold at bay, so I settled back in one of the lounge chairs and enjoyed the relative warmth while Vic pulled herself down the length of the pool and back with long, powerful strokes.

After a half dozen or so laps, she pulled up in front of me again. "What do you think our chances are of finding Brian tomorrow?"

I grimaced. "Not great. He either left with whoever it was that showed up at the lake, or he didn't. Either way, there's no telling where he might have gone next."

"I hate going home empty handed."

"Me, too." I looked out into the night. The mountains were invisible in the dark, but Bozeman itself was lit up both beneath us and above, the city lights trying their best to compete with the millions of stars that frosted the heavens. I sighed and wished I was back in Durant. "We'll see if there are any surveillance cameras in the area. Maybe we'll luck out and catch a glimpse of Brian or his friend."

"Ever the optimist," Vic said. She braced her arms on the side of the pool and levered herself out of the water, pausing long enough to towel off and wring out her hair before she padded barefoot over to me across the wet cement.

"You ready to go in?" I asked, as I started to rise.

"Not just yet," she said, and planted a firm hand in the middle of my chest to keep me seated. "Right now, I want to not think about missing people, and instead think about you. And me. And you in me." She straddled my knee, the wet and warmth of her soaking into my jeans and making my heart rate kick up a notch. She was breathing heavily from her exertions in the pool and I was transfixed by the sight of her breasts rising and falling beneath the white bikini top she was wearing. Almost as if she were reading my mind, she reached one hand behind her back and released the clasp of her top, letting the scrap of fabric fall away so that she was wearing nothing but the moonlight.

"Vic –" I started to protest, but she only smiled and pushed me more firmly back into my chair.

"Shhhh," she said. "It's just us."

"That could change at any minute," I said, but I didn't push her away as she pressed herself against me, the damp of her body soaking into my shirt. I should have been chilled, but instead I felt nothing but warmth.

She laughed into the hollow of my throat. "No one else is coming up here tonight, Walt. Don't be such a chicken."

I pulled her in for a kiss. Her lips were cold, and her back was prickled with gooseflesh when I drew my arms around her. "You're cold. Let's go back to the room."

She shook her head. "We will, but not yet." Without another word, she shifted until she was kneeling on either side of my legs, then made short work of my button and zipper. Pausing only long enough to free me from my jeans and undershorts, she tugged her bathing suit bottom aside, rose up, and sheathed me in her warmth all in one smooth motion.

The sudden rush of pleasure nearly took my breath away.

Vic gasped, and then smiled, her dark eyes locked onto mine. "Still want to go inside?"

"Not just yet," I managed with difficulty, and she laughed. I tightened my arms around her and pulled her in for another chilly kiss. "Are you ever going to stop surprising me?"

"Not if I can help it," she said, and moved.

We were quiet, our breathing the only sound other than the regular hum of the heaters that warmed the night air around us. Steam rose from her body in wisps as she rose and fell above me, almost as though she were turning to vapor before my eyes. I had little leverage pressed back as I was in the lounge chair, but I made a valiant effort to stay involved, slipping my hands beneath the curve of her breasts and brushing my thumbs across the cold, pebbled surface of her nipples. She hissed in a breath, and, without once upsetting her rhythm, pulled my face forward with the fingers of one hand tangled into the hair at the back of my head. Obligingly, I opened my mouth and warmed first her right nipple, and then the left. She made a low guttural sound, and ground her hips down onto me, hard, as she tumbled over the edge and took me with her.

Afterwards, Vic lay collapsed against my chest with her eyes closed and a drowsy smile on her lips. I brushed my fingers down her spine while I tried to get my breathing back under control. She shivered, and then raised up to look at me. "Can we go inside now? I'm freezing my tits off out here."

A/N: Man, I've missed these guys. The original date on the file for this chapter is over a year and a half old, if anyone was wondering how long it has been since I last worked on it. In my defense, I have been working full time and going to school part time, and I'm old, so I'm like really really tired a lot. I remain determined to finish this story despite all evidence to the contrary. Maybe now that I've graduated, *again* I will have time to write?