* * *

   The Silver Spur clothing store wasn’t all that far from the Feeding Trough barbecue restaurant, but it still took me twenty minutes to get over there, mostly because I had to stop, smile, and simper for more stupid pictures. Was I the only saloon girl in the entire theme park that people wanted to pose with? Maybe it was the bloodred dress, making me stand out in a sea of pale pinks, greens, and blues. I was sick of smiling for the camera, so I ducked into the restaurant before anyone else could waylay me.

   Since it was late afternoon, the dinner crowd hadn’t ramped up yet, and only a few folks were inside. Even better, most of them were in costume, with the cowboys, gamblers, and gold miners chowing down on barbecue sandwiches, cheeseburgers, onion rings, and fries before going back to their stations.

   The only costumed folks out of place were the three truckers.

   They all had on brown work boots, dark jeans, and puffy red vests over red plaid shirts. Gray trucker hats with the words Cypress Mountain Shipping stitched across the tops in red were pulled down low on their foreheads, and all three of them had their noses buried in their menus. Despite their disguises, I still recognized them.

   I sashayed over to their table. “Y’all care if a poor, simple, hardworking saloon girl joins you?” I simpered in the same syrupy-sweet drawl I’d used on Brody earlier.

   “Get lost, toots,” one of the truckers growled. “We’re waiting on someone.”

   “Why, Silvio,” I chided, “is that any way to talk to your boss?”

   The trucker who’d spoken looked up. My assistant had gone all out with his disguise. In addition to his trucker outfit, he was also wearing a shaggy gray wig, and an equally shaggy gray mustache covered his upper lip. It looked like a woolly worm had crawled up there and died.

   Silvio squinted. “Is that you—”

   A waitress was walking by on her way to another table, so I pulled out a chair and sat down next to Silvio. “It sure is, sweetheart. Sassy Scarlet at your service.”

   I batted my lashes at him, then turned and looked at the two other people sitting at the table—Lorelei Parker, also sporting a trucker’s hat, and Phillip Kincaid, with a hat and a bad fake dirty-blond mustache.

   Phillip’s blue gaze swept over my blond wig, the black beauty mark, and the bloodred saloon-girl dress. He pulled out his phone, held it up, and pointed it at me. “Say cheese, Scarlet.”

   It would have looked suspicious if I didn’t, so I leaned in next to Silvio, put my arm around his shoulders, and smiled. “You know, I was going to graciously thank you all for coming, for wanting to help, for risking your lives for our friends. The whole nine yards. I had a speech prepared and everything. It was beautiful.”

   “And now?” Phillip murmured, angling his phone for a better shot.

   “And now, I want to stab you with my fork,” I said through gritted teeth.

   He snickered and took two more pictures.

   “Send me those,” Lorelei said.

   Phillip nodded and hit some buttons on his phone. “Done.”

   I glared at Lorelei too, but she gave me a sweet smile in return.

   “And just think, those suckers are in the cloud now, Gin,” Phillip said in a gleeful tone. “Where they will stay and be seen forever.”

   I rolled my eyes, then glanced around the restaurant. “Where’s Ira?” I asked in a low voice.

   “Mr. Morris was waiting for us at the main park entrance,” Silvio said. “He took care of getting our supplies into the park and told all the guards that we were friends of his. They looked Lorelei up and down pretty good, thinking that she might be you, but they finally let us in. Mr. Morris was going to come here with us, but he got a text from Roxy, saying that she was at his cabin, searching for you. So he went to deal with her, while we came here as planned.”

   I nodded. Ira had said that Roxy would get around to checking his cabin sooner or later. I was glad that it was later, and I wasn’t there to cause him any more problems.

   “So what’s the latest?” Silvio asked.

   I started to answer him, but a waitress chose that moment to come over and take our order. The others requested sweet iced teas, along with bacon cheeseburgers with all the fixings, while I opted for a strawberry lemonade, barbecue-chicken sandwich, coleslaw, baked beans, fries, and onion rings.

   “Hungry?” Phillip asked after the waitress had scribbled down my order and walked away.

   I shrugged. “Just building up my strength for tonight. Besides, it’s not like I had a very satisfying lunch.”

   While we waited for our food, I told Silvio, Phillip, and Lorelei everything that had happened while I’d been skulking around.

   “So Hugh Tucker set this whole thing up and lured you all down here to do his dirty work for him,” Phillip mused. “He went to a lot of trouble for some pretty rocks.”

   Even though they were stuffed down into my corset, I could still hear the gemstones proudly singing about their own beauty. “Not just some pretty rocks,” I said. “Millions of sparkling carats’ worth.”

   The waitress returned with our food, and we all dug in. The grub was much better than it had been the last time I’d eaten here a few hours ago. The fries and onion rings were golden and crispy, while the coleslaw had a nice vinegary bite to it. The barbecue-chicken sandwich and the baked beans were disappointing, though, since the sauce on both of them didn’t have the spicy cumin and black pepper kick that Fletcher’s secret sauce did back at the Pork Pit. And best of all, my lemonade wasn’t laced with sedatives.

   While we ate, I kept an eye on the windows, watching the ebb and flow of people out on the sidewalks. Every few minutes, a couple of giants would walk by, clutching my Wanted posters in their hands and scanning the crowds for me. They even stopped and looked through the windows several times, peering into the barbecue restaurant. But I was just another lowly saloon girl, chowing down on my dinner before I went back to work. Yep, hiding in plain sight was still one of the best tricks around. Thanks for the reminder, Mama Dee.