Dace? Joanna Dace? Tom said he’ll be out in a few minutes if you want to wait.”
He had to be joking. “Won’t he be going to the emergency room?” she asked. “He could barely walk.”
The cowboy hooted. “Naw, he’s okay. If you’ll follow me...” He showed her where to climb down at the end of the aisle and led her through the clanging confusion of the pens and chutes being dismantled. The last bulls were disappearing toward the stock trucks waiting outside the Garden when her guide stopped outside the locker room.
“I’ll tell him you’re here,” he said before he disappeared inside.
She backed against the wall to make way for men dragging heavy electrical cables and pushing massive sound equipment crates. Several other women waited nearby, some with small children who ran forward yelling “Daddy!” as their fathers emerged. The hallway gradually emptied and she waited alone, shivering in an icy draft from some unseen door left open.
A slight man in khakis and a distressed leather bomber jacket hesitated at the locker room door. The light caught his face and she recognized Tom Cameron from the scar on his cheek. He saw her at the same moment and said “Miss Dace?” just as she spoke his name. They both laughed.
“I have to ask,” he said. “Are you Joe Dace’s daughter?”
The pain and anger brought on by hearing her father’s name hadn’t died over the years, but it rarely ambushed her as it did now. “Yes,” she said. “I’m named for him. You must be an auto racing fan.”
“Not so much now, but I got to meet him when I was eleven or so—the biggest thrill of my young life. My brother and I sneaked under the fence at the speedway when my mom took us to visit her grandmother in Talladega. He autographed my cap—I still have it. I wonder if I saw you there.”
“You might have—Mom and I traveled with him whenever I wasn’t in school.”
“When I heard about the crash, I felt like I’d lost kin. Kids take things like that hard.” He flushed. “Stupid thing to say, like you wouldn’t know.”
“It’s okay—ancient history,” she said, keeping the anger out of voice. “Should you be standing around like this? You took an awful hit.”
“Not so bad—just knocked the wind out of me and scattered my chickens some. My dad will have me out hauling feed and riding the fence line when I get home tomorrow. Which reminds me.” He took his phone from his pocket. “Excuse me—I need to do this right away.” He tapped in a quick text and stuck the phone back in his jacket. “Sorry—today’s event won’t be broadcast until this evening so I always let my folks know Luke and I are okay.” He grinned. “But I don’t give him the results.”
“Where did you finish in the event?”
“Second in the event, but I’m still leading in the overall standings. I haven’t got Gunslinger’s number yet—maybe next time.” He looked at his watch. “I have to be at the airport in a couple hours, but I always treat myself to a piece of real New York cheesecake after the last go-round. Want to join me?”
She agreed, and he led her out a back exit just as the last cattle truck pulled away. A few fans had lingered; one teenage girl squealed and pointed. “Tom! Can we get a picture?”
He shrugged an apology to Jo and put his arms around the shoulders of the two girls while a third took their photo.
Jo tapped her arm. “Want to be in the picture?” She captured a shot of Cameron with all three and handed the phone back as a young couple with two boys asked for a photo, as well.
Ten minutes later Cameron waved goodbye to the fans and rejoined Jo. “Sorry,” he said, “but I can’t just walk on by when folks wait out in the cold.”
A few minutes later he ushered her into a booth at the Tick Tock Diner two blocks from the Garden. “Okay,” he said after they had ordered cheesecake and coffee. “What can I do for you?”
Now that she had Tom Cameron seated across from her, she hesitated. He seemed so self-contained that her usual pitch to vanity seemed superficial. Because her father linked them in even a small way, she honored him with the truth, or most of the truth.
“I’m a freelance journalist,” she said. “I grew up on the stock-car racing circuit, and I’m still trying to figure out what motivates competitors like my dad. He saw friends get killed—he knew it could happen to him. I’ve interviewed athletes in other high-risk sports and followed them around and written about what I learned. I’d been planning to do a profile on a mountaineer who climbs ice cliffs, but he broke his leg...” She grinned in spite of herself. “He fell off a ladder stringing Christmas lights on the roof.”
“Ain’t that just the way,” he said. He touched the scar on his cheek. “Nothing to do with bull riding. I was mending fence a year back when a rock turned under my boot and the barbwire whipped me across the face.”
He laid down his fork. “So your mountain climber got shot out from under you and now you want to dissect a bull rider instead.”
She winced at his turn of phrase. “To explore bull riding from one cowboy’s perspective. A guided tour, so to speak. After watching today, there’s no question in my mind it’s the most dangerous competitive sport going. This was my first event, but if today was typical—”
He laughed. “Actually, today was pretty tame. Cory Brennan—he’s the rider who got carried out—he’ll be good to ride next weekend. But why did you pick me?”
“Two reasons.” She ticked off points on her fingers. “You’re leading in the current season after coming in second for the championship twice before—I figure that makes you hungry. Plus your brother’s being one of the bullfighters is a great angle. I saw him up close when you got bucked off. Are you twins?”
“We get asked that a lot,” he said. “Luke’s just eleven months older than me.” He scraped up the last fragments of cheesecake. “Okay, send me a list of questions—”
She shook her head. “I do in-depth research, more than just asking questions.” She took a manila envelope from her purse. “I’ve printed a couple of my features to give you an idea of how I work.” She leaned forward and gave him her best smile. “I promise I’m not planning a hatchet job on bull riding.”
He frowned. “This doesn’t really sound like my kind of thing—”
“Just think about it, okay?” She took a fresh card from her wallet and wrote on the back. “Here’s my personal email address and phone number. Please read what I’ve given you and then decide.”
TOM STUFFED HIS carry-on into the overhead bin and eased into his aisle seat. He’d downplayed his wreck to Jo Dace, but the bruised back muscles would probably seize up during the long flight from New York to Albuquerque. With luck, he’d be able to loosen them up in the hotel’s hot tub before he and Luke drove north to Colorado the next morning.
Luke stuck the in-flight magazine into the seat pocket. “Deke told me you left the Garden with a woman—you gotta be careful with these big-city girls.”
Tom
