Deployed by Mel Odom Page B

friend, Bekah. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to figure that out.”
    The phone clicked dead in Bekah’s ear.
    Angry and frustrated, Bekah looked at the phone and thought about calling back. But she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Connie had already chosen her path through the current mess. There was nothing she could do to change her mind. Feeling down and whipped, Bekah retreated back into McDonald’s.

7
    THE NEXT DAY, Bekah parked her twenty-year-old Chevy pickup out behind Hollister’s Fine Dining. The day’s heat had already started to kick in, but the Chevy’s air-conditioning had played out a couple years ago and she hadn’t wanted to replace it because it was so expensive. She drove the pickup with the windows down, but that didn’t help much except to give her a driver’s tan, left arm darker than the right.
    She listened to the last bit of one of her favorite Kellie Pickler songs, then shut off the radio and picked up the brown waitress apron with Hollister’s Fine Dining in gold thread across the bottom. At least Hollister’s allowed casual wear while waiting tables. She wore jeans, tennis shoes, and a kelly-green blouse. As she walked around the restaurant, smelling the burgers and fried onions, she tied the apron around her waist.
    Hollister’s wasn’t “fine dining,” but the small brickrestaurant was the place in Callum’s Creek where all the locals came to eat when they were tired of eating at home. Or Sundays after church. The church crowd was always good, but the servers had to dress up a little better then. It was not a hardship to Bekah. She liked the energy that filled the restaurant on those days. Things just seemed more positive.
    She’d worked there since high school. Her grandpa, though she hadn’t known it at the time, had arranged her job through Mr. Evan Hollister, the original owner. Grandpa had always looked out for her, and it was embarrassing when Bekah found out a couple years later. But Grandpa had meant well, and Mr. Hollister had been a good boss, training her on everything.
    The present Mr. Hollister—the original had died a few years before Grandpa—wasn’t so good. Dwight Hollister was in his forties and tight with a penny, and he made sure every employee he had worked hard for their wages. He could call the shots on that because there weren’t too many places in town where high school kids—and single moms—could work flexible schedules.
    The jobs at the Beep ’N’ Buy got handed down by the Morton family, and they were picky about whom they hired. The rest of the work around Callum’s Creek was all ranch and farm related. Nobody wanted to work at Fancher’s pig farm. The smell lingered even miles away. The only other choice for work was Murchison, which was a seventeen-mile drive, one way. The cost of gasoline would eat into whatever check she brought home.
    The bond money, which she had insisted on paying back to her granny, had cut deeply into Bekah’s savings, and finding a lawyer to represent her at trial was going to be even more costly. She’d gone to bed with that in her mind last night, and it had been the first thing she’d thought of this morning.
    Things were bad enough that she was beginning to hope her unit might get activated again. The increase in pay would be awesome, but she would have to be away from Travis again for God only knew how long.
    Who are you kidding? God doesn’t see you. You’re invisible on that particular radar screen.
    Drawing a final breath, looking forward to the air-conditioning inside, Bekah pushed the door open and walked in. The restaurant was casual—tables and chairs that mostly went together, checked curtains that were faded but regularly cleaned. The concrete floor had wear patterns between the tables and booths, but the restaurant still smelled like home cooking: chili and cornbread and fried chicken.
    She inhaled, remembering those cold nights in Afghanistan when all she’d had to eat was an