Did everyone survive BLACK Friday? Have you met Loki, my BLACK cat? Or my BLACK Ops soldiers? Or read THAT OL’ BLACK MAGIC? You’ve guessed it, the THEME for Twitter’s #1lineWed is **BLACK**. While this snippet isn’t the BLACK moment of the story, it does introduce one of my new favorite characters. Jack gets his own book in 2021. And he might wear a BLACK hat, but he’s definitely not a BLACK knight. 😉
****
The man he’d confronted about the girl threw a punch in Pops’s direction, missed, and went down. Both he and the deputy pounced on the guy, holding the asshole down until he was cuffed.

“Drunk and disorderly for sure,” the deputy said.

“And he offered to let the kid use his phone if she gave him a blow job.” Pops ground out the words, watching as the deputy jerked back.

“No shit?”

“No shit.” That’s when Pops realized the girl was fighting to free herself from the DFPS woman while Elena shouted.

“Let me go,” the girl screamed. She jerked and flailed. “Let me go. I can’t go back to them. I can’t!”

Pops understood two things—the girl was beyond panicked at the thought of returning to whatever people she had in San Antonio, yet at the same time, she was trying very hard not to hurt the woman latched onto her. Odd.

“It’s okay, chiquita,” Elena soothed. “I’ve got this. I’ll take care of you.”

“This isn’t your case, Ms. Rodriguez.”

Que? They’d worked together three years and Pamela was getting all proper? Two could play that game, Elena decided.
“She’s not yours either, Ms. Byrd, so let her go.”

“I will do nothing of the sort. She’ll just run again and I do not feel like chasing down the little bi—”

“Yeah, you will, ma’am.”

The females froze at the sound of the gravelly voice. Three pairs of eyes tracked to the man who stepped up beside
Pops. Tall and lanky, his jeans were worn, his boots scuffed, his plaid shirt faded from hundreds of washings, and his black Stetson was a bit dusty. “I’m Jack Riggs. Y’all wanna explain what’s goin’ on here?”

“This is none of your business. Just mosey on down the road, cowboy.” The DFPS woman made a shooing motion with her free hand, while her other continued to grip the girl’s arm.

Pops snorted out a laugh and stared down at his boots. Granted, more than a few women had mistaken Jack for a Hollywood star who made a lot of western movies, and the man could sit a horse with the best of them, but he was most definitely not a cowboy.

Jack whipped out his badge and held it at eye level so the woman could read it. “Let me amend that, ma’am. I’m a Texas Ranger and yeah, I do believe whatever’s goin’ on here is my business.”

The DFPS lady paled a bit but she swallowed, lifted her chin, and launched into a loud explanation. She got maybe a sentence out before Ranger Riggs interrupted. “I do believe I told you to release the girl, ma’am.” There was no coaxing in his voice. Only a complete idiot would fail to recognize the order.

Even so, that Byrd woman was slow and very reluctant to remove her hand. When she did, the girl immediately rubbed at the spot. Yeah, Pops decided, the kid would probably have bruises in the morning and that pissed him right the hell off. The deputy had the male on his feet and after a hurried explanation to his boss, made in a low voice, he hustled the guy away. Pamela Byrd continued to jabber, the girl continued to look freaked out, but she was also moving closer to Elena. That was good. Pops always had a good sense of people and Elena was good people.

“There’s an easy way to settle all this, Jack,” Pops interjected when the Bryd woman paused for a breath.
The ranger nodded. “Yup, I think we’re on the same page, Pops.”

He smiled. Jack Riggs was nobody’s fool. He might come across as a good ol’ boy, but more than one city slicker who’d made that assumption discovered that doing so often bit them in the ass.
****
Hope you enjoyed it. Ignore typos and weird stuff because this is still first draft territory. It’ll be all cleaned up and ready to go by February 2020. What about y’all? Writers, any black words to share? Readers, what book has a black moment that stuck with you long after finishing the book?