Catch Her If You Can Read Free

Springs, Texas. Dry Springs is the closest human habitat to my team’s isolated test site. We deploy there once a quarter to test weird inventions like Snoopy SNFIR. And while we’re at the site, we deploy to Pancho’s every chance we get.
    Aching for something tall and cool, I swung my leg over the back of the ATV and dismounted, Texas-style. Sergeant Cassidy did the same with considerably more grace and coordination. What can I say? He spends his free time working out. I spend mine watching TV or perusing glamour mags.
    Or otherwise occupied with the studly Border Patrol agent I’ve been seeing for a little more than eight months now. I was thinking that I only had three days left at the test site before I returned to El Paso and the arms of Macho Mitch when I noticed Snoopy banging his snout against a Dumpster off to the side of the dirt parking lot.
    “Noel! You’d better corral that thing before he climbs in and we have to dive in after him.”
    Sergeant Cassidy pushed his patrol cap back on his sweaty forehead and played with the controls. He got Snoopy aimed away from the garbage and zooming in the opposite direction. That’s when the omnivorous little critter went for the pickup.
    It was dusty and dented, much like the other vehicles driven by the customers who patronize Pancho’s. From where I stood, I could see the truck bed contained a jumble of shovels and steel pipes caked with mud. Also the dented beer cooler I mentioned earlier. I assumed a construction crew had stopped at Pancho’s to gas up and/or chow down. Snoopy obviously assumed they’d brought him lunch.
    He kept trying to mount the pickup’s rear wheel. Or hump it. I wasn’t sure which as he charged the tire, backed up, and charged again. Several times.
    “Oh, for . . . !” Totally exasperated, I flapped a hand at Sergeant Cassidy and hurried over to the truck. “Shut him off before he does something that embarrasses us.”
    Noel duly killed Snoopy’s engine and I bent to pick him up. The whole course of history might have changed if I’d gotten a good grip on his shoebox frame. But I didn’t, and Snoop slipped out of my arms. He bounced off the pickup’s side rail and thumped down on top of the beer cooler.
    I leaned over to retrieve him and had him tucked under my arm again when the door to the bar side of Pancho’s establishment slammed back on its hinges. The bear of a man who burst through it came at me in a dead run.
    “What the hell you doing?”
    “Huh?”
    Not the most intelligent response, I admit, but I was so startled by the unexpected attack it was all I could manage at that moment.
    “Get away from my pickup!”
    I found my voice. Or more correctly, the smart mouth my mother claims I sprang out of the womb with.
    “Cool it, pal. I’m not trying to steal your muddy pipes.”
    “What’s that under your arm?”
    “Nothing you need to get excited about.”
    Either he wasn’t listening or he didn’t believe me. Thrusting his hand under his shirttail, he whipped out a vicious-looking semiautomatic.
    “What the fuck have you got under your arm?”
    My heart jumped into my throat. My stomach took a simultaneous dive to the toes of my combat boots. Feeling nothing but icy emptiness in between, I held up my free hand and backed away.
    “Nothing of yours. I swear. This is . . .”
    That’s all I got out before Sergeant Cassidy revved his ATV to full power. I hadn’t seen him leap back into the saddle, but I certainly saw him tear across the parking lot. Head down, he aimed right for the Bear.
    “Noel!” I screamed at the top of my lungs to compete with the ATV’s roar. “Look out! He’s got a gun.”
    What happened next took five seconds. Ten at the most. But they were the longest seconds of my life!
    The Bear spun around. Spotted Noel. Pumped off two shots. The second was still reverberating in my ears when the bar door crashed open again and Pancho let loose with both barrels of the sawed-off shotgun he kept