Chapter 2
Beau was as surprised as Emma Copley looked by the words he’d blurted. Most days, he did a better job keeping the painful memories of Melissa’s death three years before locked down tight. Lately, he’d had an easier time of it, so busy raising two lively young boys and running the ranch his father had left him to dwell on things that no amount of self-recrimination would ever change.
But there was something about the fresh wound of this woman’s devastation that brought it all back. Something that made him want to assure her that no matter how horrific or overwhelming things seemed, it was possible to go on breathing.
“I didn’t kill him,” Emma protested, a tear breaking free from long, damp lashes to track its way down a face he found lovely, despite its current grief-blotched puffiness. “I would never think of hurting anyone.”
He wanted to reassure her that that wasn’t what he’d meant. But instinct had him saying nothing, sensing there was more to come. Feeling it in the same way he might anticipate the next move of a flighty half-broke filly he was gentling or a spooked calf trying to charge around his mount to race back to its mother. To give her space to breathe, he grabbed his own dog’s lead from the cab, found tucked beneath his youngest’s booster seat, to lend her.
When Beau looked again, Emma’s thin shoulders slumped, and he heard the faint sound of her sigh.
“But I do think—” she said, pushing back bedraggled tawny hair behind her shoulder. Like the rest of her, her once-white V-neck T-shirt and olive cargo pants bore a thick layer of grime. “I believe my ex-husband’s done this because he thought—He’s dangerously unstable.”
“You said ex-husband, didn’t you?”
She nodded stiffly. “I had to divorce Jeremy, for everybody’s safety. Not only mine, but everyone I knew. Something happened to his mind.” She shook her head. “I’ll never understand what went wrong, but he wouldn’t listen to reason, wouldn’t let me get him help.”
In her pale green eyes, Beau saw that she was haunted, just as he was, by the choices she’d been forced to make.
“Sounds like he didn’t leave you much choice,” he said.
“I thought—I thought divorce would be the end of it, that we could both move on with our lives. But lately, he’s started up again with all the same old nonsense. Forget the no-contact order.”
“But what makes you think that this—” Beau nodded in the direction of the turbine’s base—and immediately regretted inadvertently directing her attention to the spot where two of the firefighters were moving a sheet-draped body on a stretcher to a gurney. “What makes you think your ex-husband could’ve forced a grown man up there? Or shoved him off the top? If he’d wanted your assistant dead, don’t you think he would’ve found some simpler way to do it? One that didn’t involve two people climbing all those ladders?”
Her hand rising to cover her mouth, she watched the scene beside the turbine unfold. Not hearing a word he said, if he was reading her correctly.
“Look at me,” Beau directed. “Or better yet, focus on your dog here. It’s River, right?”
She didn’t answer.
“Come on, Dr. Copley,” he coaxed. “Emma?”
Her gaze snapped to meet his before her eyes narrowed in a look of fierce concentration. “The sheriff never went up.” Color flamed in her cheeks, and her voice shook with anger. “He couldn’t have, so quickly. And neither of the deputies is wearing a safety harness, either. Which means your cousin didn’t take me seriously. Didn’t even bother investigating to see if this could’ve been a murder.”
Beau looked around and saw that she was right. Wallace was leaning his lazy ass against his vehicle, talking on his cell phone while using his free hand to mop sweat from his forehead with a wadded handkerchief.
Beau noticed, too, a couple of men he hadn’t spotted earlier emerging from the turbine’s base, both wearing green-embroidered white coveralls identifying them as Green Horizons technicians. He’d bet his last heifer that they, likely the only experienced climbers on-site knowledgeable about the company’s equipment and procedures, had been the ones who’d actually gone up to get the body.
“Hey, wait up,” he called as Emma made a beeline straight for Wallace, her head lowered and arms swinging. With the still-untethered dog bounding after her, Beau followed, too, adding, “Hold on, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
She stopped abruptly and pinned him with an annoyed look. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your help before, but I don’t remember asking your opinion.”
“He grabbed you,” Beau reminded her, “drew his gun.”
Her brows rose. “Honestly, I hadn’t thought that mattered to you half as much as your grudge.”
“Why do you think I came running? He might have the voters around here fooled—” Beau’s own father had had a hand in that, ignoring Beau’s opinion to support his nephew’s campaign to unseat the former sheriff “—but my cousin’s a damned hothead, and he’s hated dogs ever since he got torn up by a stray back as a kid. Had to go through rabies shots and everything.”
“Maybe you’d better hold River, then. She’ll be fine with you. I just have to make Sheriff Fleming understand that he can bluster all he wants to. I’m not going to sit down and shut up while he takes the path of least resistance on this. And there’s no way I’m letting my ex-husband get away with murder. Or sitting around and wondering who’ll be next.”
Leaning forward, Beau told the dog, “It’s okay, girl.” When her trusting brown eyes turned to him and her tail waved at his reassuring tone, he snapped the leash onto her collar and told Emma, “I’ve got her. Now you’d better get a firm grip on your temper. My cousin most likely isn’t going to shoot you, but unless you wanta get bit, I’d suggest you treat him like a bear with a bad toothache.”
“You mean the way you did?” she asked irritably.
“Only because as much as my cousin would probably love to shoot, I’m the one who got the Kingston name, not him.”
“So that’s, like, what around here? A big, gold-plated get-out-of-jail-free card?” she asked.
“It has its benefits,” he admitted, liking that as an outsider, she had no idea how unlikely a recipient he was of family legacy. And no clue that his old man, wherever he was, was having the last laugh imagining the surprise Beau had gotten when he’d found the ranch’s second set of books...
The real books, which showed a number of dubious investments in the years prior to his father’s death and a shocking amount of debt. Debt that made the income from the new turbines to be constructed next spring—an expansion that Beau himself had negotiated with the company in exchange for Green Horizon’s prepayment of the thirty-year lease money—absolutely crucial to ensuring the ranch’s survival.
“Okay, okay,” said Emma, drawing herself to her full height—which couldn’t be more than five six—as she visibly struggled for control. “I might not have the Kingston name in my back pocket,” she said, “but I’ve navigated enough male egos in academia to know how to make my point without leaving too many footprints on their fragile feelings.”
“Not on a day as upsetting as this one, I’ll bet you haven’t,” Beau said before movement attracted his attention. It was followed by the solid chunk of Wallace’s Tahoe’s door as the sheriff slammed it and then spun on his heel to face them.
“Hell’s bells,” Beau burst out, recognizing the hard set of his cousin’s jaw as he pocketed his phone and strode purposefully in their direction. “Looks like I won’t have to worry overmuch about you agitating Wallace. Whatever he’s heading here to tell us, that bear looks good’n poked already.”
* * *
“Hold her tight,” Emma urged Beau as River lunged forward, her deep barks ringing as the sheriff zeroed in. Emma could hardly blame her dog since the stern set of his jaw and his reddened face had her own heart pounding.
&nb
sp; “That’s enough. Sit, River,” Beau kept his voice low and his grip firm on leash.
The dog responded to his assertive tone, dropping to her haunches. Still, she was quivering with energy, her gaze latched onto the lawman.
“Stay,” Emma added, worried that not even the strong rancher could keep the seventy-pound retriever from lunging if the sheriff made any threatening moves.
“Thought you oughta know,” Fleming said, his gaze burning into her. “I just spoke to your husband out in—”
“My ex-husband,” she pointed out.
“Your ex-husband then,” Fleming continued, scowling at the interruption “In Waco—and he didn’t seem one bit surprised you’d try to push this off on him.”
She recoiled, her cheeks blazing. “What?”
“His boss told me the same thing.” The ever-present toothpick tilted, caught up in a smile that didn’t touch the sheriff’s hard blue eyes. “Says it’s just another of those divorce deals. Woman scorned and all that, you’re desperate enough to make up any kind of nonsense just to get back at him.”
Two men walked up behind Fleming, the first deputy she’d spoken to and one of the Green Horizons techs.
Refusing to give either a chance to interrupt, Emma said, “First off, Sheriff.” Her voice vibrated with humiliation. Fury. Frustration at his ready acceptance of a man’s, a stranger’s, word above her own. “I was the one to divorce Jeremy Hansen, the one to ask for and receive a no-contact order after he—”
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” the sheriff said, signaling the two newcomers to hold up for a minute, “to get into the sordid details of your marriage here, Miz Copley.”
“Doctor Copley.” Though Emma wasn’t normally one to pull the PhD card, she wasn’t about to let this man shame her into silence. “And these are hardly irrelevant trifles.”
“Whatever you want to call yourself,” he said dismissively, “what we need to focus on right now is what happened today with your assistant.”
“You can look it up yourself,” she said. “There are police reports, court records. Jeremy’s on probation for assault and terroristic threats against people that I’ve worked with. And he called me again this morning, sounding drunk and angry, shortly before I—before I found...” Her heart stuttered as she remembered that dizzying moment when she’d looked up, the world’s axis tilting slightly as the reality slammed down on her hard.
She hadn’t realized she was swaying until she felt a steadying hand on her shoulder. Beau Kingston’s hand, from where he’d moved up to stand behind her. Only his touch felt as big and firm and comforting as Fleming’s had felt wrong before.
A wave of dizziness followed; the sight of all the emergency vehicles, of the uniformed men—and one female EMT—washed over her like the hot and humid breath of August.
“He sounded stone-cold sober on the phone to me, Dr. Copley, so whatever you want to believe, you need to listen to me on this. Your husband wasn’t here. He couldn’t have been,” Fleming insisted. “I spoke to his boss, too, and he’s swearing they’ve been installing custom cabinets since first thing this morning, with at least three other witnesses—all of ’em willin’ to vouch that Mr. Hansen’s been there the whole time. Not making any nasty phone calls. Not going anywhere.”
“They’re lying,” she insisted, her vision hazing with tears. Because maybe, as Beau Kingston, who gently squeezed her shoulder from behind, had suggested, it was too much to believe that Jeremy had somehow driven here, onto her and Russell’s turf, and forced an athletic young man, an experienced climber, off a three-hundred-plus-foot tower. But that didn’t—couldn’t—mean that Jeremy was blameless. “He did call me. I swear he did. You saw it on my phone’s log.”
Fleming passed her back her cell. “I saw that someone called, sure. But you could’ve been confused about who it was,” he allowed, his tone softening, “overwhelmed by everything that’s happened. You’ve had a helluva day, after all. Once you’ve calmed down a little, had a little rest, might be you’ll remember things a little different.”
“I know my ex’s voice. I know it,” she insisted, looking around as her desperation grew to be believed by any of the men around her. “And even if he didn’t come here, who’s to say he couldn’t have arranged this, talked one of his crazy friends into driving down and taking out what he saw as the competition? Or maybe Jeremy scraped together enough money to hire some lowlife to do it for him. I’ve seen things like that on the news, where somebody gets caught on camera trying to have a wife or girlfriend or a rival murdered.”
“Do you hear yourself?” the sheriff asked. “Hear how much energy you’re willing to put into twisting facts whichever way you have to just to pin what’s sure to be an accident on a man that any fool can see you’ve got a grudge against?”
She blinked, her heart jackhammering against her rib cage. Had she pushed things too far, looking for an explanation that meshed with the instincts screaming that Russell’s accident, as Fleming was already putting it, on the heels of Jeremy’s phone call, had been anything but a coincidence?
The other deputy looked down, while the Green Horizons technician in his coveralls blew out a deep breath and looked away when she tried to catch his eye. A glance back at Beau, at the chagrin, the even more distressing pity in his dark eyes, confirmed her worst fears.
No one here believed her, nor were any of them likely to ever listen to anything more she had to say on the subject. To them, she was hysterical—a shrill, spurned woman who refused to accept their superior male judgment. Or to understand that all of Russell’s intelligence and training, strength and youth were no match against a moment’s inattention.
Even when her heart cried out that the sheriff—that everyone who’d gathered in this godforsaken hellhole—had the facts completely wrong.
Chapter 3
Five days later
As he sat seething in the third row of the local memorial service for Russell Jorgenson, Beau carefully uncurled his fist and fought to slow his breathing. With a glance to his left, he spotted the reproachfully arched eyebrow of his petite blonde aunt Alicia, whose many years spent looking after Beau had gifted her with the ability to foresee and head off trouble. The look served as a reminder that he hadn’t come this evening for the purpose of flattening his least favorite cousin. Or giving Wallace the verbal flaying he had coming, either.
But the sheriff’s smug expression as he strutted into the rear of a community center named for their common ancestor wasn’t making things any easier. Especially when he made a point of looking Beau straight in the eye and smirking, clearly reveling in the knowledge that, just this morning, Beau had been served with papers informing him of the lawsuit Wallace filed against him. A lawsuit that would likely expose Beau’s two sons, the small boys sitting to his right, to the same sort of name-calling and abuse that had made Beau’s own childhood a living hell.
No one wants you around. Don’t you get that, little bastard? Beau could still hear Wallace, the leader of the pack of blue-eyed cousins, could still see him sneering downward as if Beau were lower than a cockroach. With Beau’s older half brother, who’d considered him an insufferable pest but hated Wallace’s two-bit punk act more, away, Beau’s real friends, the Spanish-speaking hands’ sons, banned from the house, and his aunt inside wrangling sandwiches, there’d been no one to come to Beau’s defense. And no one to stop the teen, who’d had seven years and seventy pounds on the scrawny, deeply-tanned eight-year-old Beau had been back in those days, from shoving him, the way Wallace had shoved him so many times before. Except that push, beside the pool, had been hard enough to lift Beau from his feet and send him flying backward. Beau remembered his skinny arms windmilling as he’d come down on the flagstone—and then nothing after the back of his skull struck a landscaping rock. The incident had cost him more than twenty stitches and a week out of school before he’d quit seeing double. It
had also earned him, rather than his father’s sympathy, a look of pure disgust as he had told Beau, High time you quit whining like a baby and learned to stand up for your own damned self.
His own two boys, Beau swore, were never going to suffer like that. And they were never going to wonder for a single second if their father had their back. Or if a part of him—a part his own father would never admit aloud but had indicated in a thousand different ways—believed the rumors about the dark-eyed, raven-haired child his second wife had left him. The child that Beau’s mother, a sweet-faced blonde he remembered only from a few surviving photos, had told everyone who’d listen was the spitting image of her Sicilian grandfather.
This evening, as the reverend spoke from the podium of the promise of heaven, Beau shot Wallace a final look that foretold the personal hell Beau intended to rain down on him. Gratified when the jackass broke eye contact first, Beau turned to make certain that neither of the boys had found some mischief to get up to. Six-year-old Leland, who would soon start first grade, had disappeared into his own world, playing with a small toy car he’d discreetly pulled from a pocket. On the other side of him, eight-year-old Cort rested his elbows on his knobby knees and kept his dark head bowed. Like his brother, he was clearly marking off the seconds until he could finally escape this boring adult function and head over to the Crazy Cow—a new shop that was all the rage with the elementary set—for the ice cream sundaes they’d been promised if they could manage to keep still.
Beau smiled, relieved that the boys hadn’t seemed to equate the family duty they’d been dragged to this evening with the funeral they’d attended a few short months ago. There, the same minister, the distinguished-looking Reverend Turner, had spoken of their grandfather in equally solemn tones.
Deadly Texas Summer Page 3
