We fell back into her car, and Adriana drove down a few streets branching off the town square, where she pointed out City Hall, the local dive bar, a books-and-plants-and-giftsshop, and a hair salon to avoid at all costs unless I wanted to walk out bleach-blonde.
“Okay, tell me about Bravetown,” I said when we were done with the Wild Fields tour after all of ten minutes. “I haven’t really paid a lot of attention to Sinan’s stories over the last four years.”
“We can talk aboutyouif you want.”
“Nope.” I chuckled as I threw her response back at her. I didn’t think she’d be the kind of person to throw shade at me, but I’d gotten plenty last night and didn’t care to repeat that. I was just going to ignore Noah Young’s presence. He no longer existed in my world. I was manifesting a blissfully dreamy summer where opinionated, controlling, gossiping assholes had no air to breathe.
“Fine,” she smirked. “The most important thing for you to remember about Bravetown is that it belongs to Wild Fields. There’s no big corporation or random gazillionaire behind it. If you don’t work in the park yourself, you have a relative who does. Farming isn’t as lucrative as it once was, and the alternative would be commuting into the city every day. But the tourism around Bravetown brings in enough money to keep the whole town afloat. It’s beloved because it kinda belongs to everyone a little bit.”
“I’m sorry, who went ‘we hate commuting, so let’s build a theme park’?”
“It’s a whole thing. I’ll send you a video.”
I’d treated myself to exactly one thing at Bart’s Mart– my favorite Reese’s (the mini cups)– and crawled into bedwith my strictly rationed portion of three of them at the end of the day. This wasn’t half bad. I had the best chocolate and a nice, firm mattress. Sure, my room was nothing but a shoe box with a twin bed, a sturdy chest of drawers that creaked every time you opened it, and a tiny desk that currently functioned as my laundry hamper, but I’d spent quite a few nights sleeping in my car on the way here. This was already an upgrade.
After Adriana took me back to the staff housing complex, my last day off had passed in a blur, sorting away my groceries and unloading everything that I had stuffed into my car.
I wasn’t on full duty yet. I had two weeks to learn the ropes before the big summer-season opening weekend. Not ropes. Reins. They’d put me on a horse. I really should look up this whole Annie Lou showdown thing.
Opening the link Adriana had sent, I propped the phone up against my pillow and let the video play. It was an old news report on Bravetown’s first anniversary. The colors were too bright and too dull all at once in that 2002 way reserved for old sitcoms.
The video showed a reporter in a crisp white shirt paired with a bolo tie standing beneath Bravetown’s wooden arch, the cowboy statue right behind him.
“I’m standing at the entrance to what may look like a Clint Eastwood movie but is actually the gate to the thrilling adventure that’s Bravetown, an Old West theme park, just an hour and a half outside Nashville. The history of this park is quite unique,” the reporter said, big microphone up to his nose, “because it starts with a last wish. With us here, to share this inspiring story, is Bravetown’s park director, George Barlow.”
The camera zoomed out to show the man standing next to the reporter. George Barlow was an old white man in a suit. He wasn’t distinctive beyond the bright-red cowboy hat on his head and the tiny round glasses on his nose, the lenses the size of a dollar. Doing some mental math, I figured he had to be Renee’s father or uncle, or something along those lines.
“Thank you,” he said, holding his own microphone low enough for his voice to crackle. “We are so proud to celebrate one year of brave guests at the park, and it’s all thanks to a man called Bob Horton. There are some people who leave a lasting impression in your life, and Bob was one of those. He had a big heart. He was like Wild Fields’ honorary uncle. He was at all the birthdays, all the graduations, all the weddings. He had no family of his own, but everyone knew him. Everyone loved him. You saw his bright-red hat from a mile away.” George tapped the brim of his own hat. “His passing left a hole in all of our lives. Little did we know that he had big plans for our small town. You see, he had all this farmland that he left to the city, along with more money than any one person could spend. None of us knew that he’d won the lottery in the eighties. Bob was the type of man who wore the same shoes until they came apart at the seams.”
The video showed some grainy pictures of a brightly smiling man in a red cowboy hat and a variety of denim shirts.
“And he left his estate to the town of Wild Fields with a stipulation, didn’t he?” the reporter asked, clearly guiding the park director to his point.
“He did, indeed. Bob’s will stated that we had to use hismoney and his land to create a place where people would gather and have fun. He wanted to bring people together. When we cleared out his house, we found hundreds upon hundreds of these old pulp Western novels, and that’s how the idea for Bravetown was born. A place that honors Bob and his last wish.”
“Let’s take a look at what the brave people of Wild Fields have created in his honor,” the reporter said, and the camera swiveled over to the Rattlesnake Saloon.
Now Adriana’s words made sense. Bravetown belonged to Wild Fields. It had started with one person who loved the town and its people enough for them to build a whole theme park in his honor.
I was going to skim the comments for some gossip on that backstory but one of the suggested videos caught my eye.Ace Ryder vs. Kit Holliday– The Showdown.Dated one year ago. I clicked on it and threw another peanut butter cup in my mouth.
The video started with a shot of the Bravetown entry sign, then cut to two men in some sort of duel. One of them was the guy I’d met on my first day in the parking lot. Same exact costume. White hat to white shoes. The other appeared to be the bad guy, dressed in a black hat, black leather coat and a dark bandana drawn over his nose. The clips were edited to a fast-paced country-rock song, cutting back and forth between the two.
It was over in less than a minute before the next video started on auto-play. That one was all about Ace Ryder, the lawless cowboy. The guy dressed in black. It showed clips of him in the park from all sorts of angles, all grainy, clearly filmed with phone cameras that weren’t meant tobe zoomed in that much. It also showed him riding after a girl in a familiar blue dress and whisking her on to the horse mid-gallop.
I was so not up for that. No matter how hot a villain was doing the whisking.
Chapter Five
ACE RYDER
THE LAWLESS COWBOY
Ace Ryder is an infamous bandit known for his silver tongue and his quick draw. With a heart as cold as the night, he robs banks with his gang of outlaws and vanishes into the shadows on his black steed before the sheriff can catch him.
Will you be brave enough to face him?
NOAH
