Deadly Texas Summer

by Colleen Thompson

  “I just—I need that gun,” she stammered, “to take care of this. To finally end this when he comes back for me.”

  Beau was shaking his head before she’d finished speaking. No way could he be a party to anything like that. “That’s not going to happen. For one thing, that gun’s evidence.”

  “Evidence for whom? The sheriff? Because that’s who we’d have to call on this.”

  “It is Wallace’s jurisdiction,” Beau said uncertainly. “But you’re right. We can’t trust him not to make it disappear. Especially if he figures it might somehow implicate his friends at Green Horizons.”

  “So what, then?” she asked. “Surely, Jeremy will come back for these things. Those things he brought to hurt me.”

  “First off, he’s not hurting you again. We’ll see to that, I promise, one way or another.”

  She released an audible breath and nodded her agreement, though the apprehension in her eyes said she didn’t quite believe it.

  “Secondly,” Beau continued, “if he does come back, I have an idea...an idea that might even help Fernando and his son pull their family back together.”

  To Beau’s relief, both of the Galvez men were able and willing to pitch in, recruiting Fernando’s elder sons, trusted friends Beau had grown up with, to assist with the round-the-clock stakeout of the weapons—though he’d used a bandanna to remove the revolver’s bullets. Beau insisted the men work in pairs, and that they photograph the approach of any individual—and if they could safely do so, detain him and call Beau.

  “We’ll have to notify the sheriff, too, of course,” Beau explained to Emma as they finally headed for the turbine about twenty minutes later, the ATV rattling on its trailer behind the truck. “But first, we’ll get some answers of our own—and record whatever he’ll tell us.”

  When she only continued staring out the window, he prompted, “Sound good? Are you going to be all right?”

  “To tell you the truth,” she said, “I feel sick, seeing that photo and all those awful weapons.”

  “I’m sure it has to be unsettling, especially after everything that’s happened.”

  She sighed. “I’ve been getting by these past few days by convincing myself that whoever’s tried to hurt me, whoever’s killed Russell, must have moved on by now. But this—this looks and feels too personal to me to be anyone who’ll give up. Or anyone but him...”

  The man she blamed for the loss of her child. No wonder she looked so pale and shaken.

  “No one would think any less of you if you went home,” Beau told her as they came around a curve and Turbine Number 43 loomed high above them.

  “It’s what everyone expects of me,” she said, her voice so low, he had to strain to hear it. “What everybody wants.”

  “The question is, Emma, what do you want?” he asked. “And where, if anywhere, would you feel safe?”

  He pulled up in the shadow of the turbine, which remained shuttered and motionless, despite the steady coastal breeze. From where he parked, he could see that the padlocked chain remained in place, too, as he knew it might for months, or even permanently, depending on the outcome of both the safety and any further criminal investigations.

  Emma released a shaky breath, but her voice sounded strong when she said, “Let’s focus right now on why we came here. If there’s another camera anywhere, that’ll be a whole lot more helpful than running and hiding from the problem.”

  “What about a sandwich first? I know it’s gotten kind of late, but—”

  She speared him with a look. “You go ahead if you want, but I’m not in the mood to make a picnic of a murder scene. Or a search for evidence, especially with Jeremy somewhere close by.”

  “As long as we stay hydrated, I can wait to eat, too,” he said. “And I didn’t want to make you nervous earlier, but you need to know I didn’t bring you out here unprotected.”

  Opening the console between the seats, he pulled out a pistol. “I’ve got a rifle in a case in the back seat, too. If push came to shove, do you know how to shoot?”

  “The handgun for sure. I’ve never fired a rifle.”

  “With any luck, we’ll have no reason to worry about either.”

  For the next two hours, they searched without interruption, the wind depositing sand over every inch of flesh grown sticky in the heat. But for all their hopes and preparations, the effort proved fruitless. Other than the one camera Emma had found and stripped of its memory card the night she’d been out here alone, they located only one additional game camera—only to find its inner compartment hanging open and its contents missing, too.

  “The question is, who took this one?” Beau asked Emma. Back in his MP days, he would’ve called in an evidence team, but at this point, all he could do was photograph the find and leave it in place.

  “Whoever forced Russell up that turbine would’ve certainly had a motive.”

  “Sure,” he said, “but if it was really your ex-husband, acting on some jealous obsession, how would he have known to look for the cameras? How would anyone unless he’d had some knowledge that Russell had set them up?”

  “You don’t know what Russell might’ve told him as he was being forced to climb that turbine. He had to have been desperate, willing to do or say anything that might save his life.”

  She was right, he realized, but her certainty that her ex-husband was nearby didn’t rule out someone Russell may have threatened to expose as a suspect. Someone who might feel that the woman who’d worked so closely with the dead man also constituted a threat.

  Finally conceding defeat, he cranked up the engine and started the air-conditioning for Emma while he loaded the ATV back on its trailer. Once inside the truck, he passed her some fresh water. “I’ll drop you off at home to get cleaned up for dinner before I take the MULE back to the storage unit.”

  “Dinner? I thought you’d want to take me to Nadine’s right away, get me away from here, especially since it looks like Jeremy’s been hanging around the ranch.”

  “For all we know, whoever was hiding in the storage area was scared off days ago.”

  “So he could he could be long gone?”

  “That would be my guess. Maybe he caught wind that you were in the hospital and then skipped town. I can’t think he’d want to risk hanging around here, where my men would surely recognize a stranger if they saw him, very long.”

  “I don’t know. It’s not that far from the house. If he comes back to get his things...”

  “That’s why I have my best vaqueros, friends I’d trust with my life, watching for him. You’ll be safe here, one more night. I promise,” he said, “Stay. Please.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I’m grilling steaks this evening,” he rushed to add, “and it’s an unwritten rule that you can’t leave this ranch without a bellyful of good Kingston beef.”

  “Really?” she asked. “What about your vegetarian guests?”

  “We’re polite that way and humor ’em, but they don’t know what they’re missing.”

  “All right, then,” she agreed. “But only because I’m too hot and tired to argue and I feel like I’m carrying around half the outdoors on my body.” Wincing, she waved a hand to indicate her tangled hair and sweat-stained clothing to her dusty boots. “It’ll be such a relief to get it off.”

  Grimy and windblown as he felt himself, his brain went there anyway, picturing that gritty ribbon of sand sluiced from her body and circling the drain. Imagining using the shower wand to rinse it from her, then soothing her sunburned skin with cooling cream...before heating it again with nips and kisses, forgetting for a short time—making both of them forget—the grief and stress they lived with and their uncertain futures.

  Stifling a groan, he hurried back to the house, the trailer skipping sideways as he took the turn too quickly.

  “Are you all right?
” Emma asked him, glancing over with a strained look.

  “Just hot and hungry myself,” he admitted, looking straight ahead as he pulled up to the mansion.

  Because if he looked her in the eyes, he feared, she’d know damned well how close he was to admitting that she was what he hungered for.

  * * *

  “I can’t believe he’s taking another call from that fool lawyer over dinner,” Aunt Alicia complained as they sat around the table later, where Emma had just polished off a grilled veggie skewer, a helping of potato salad and the most amazing rib eye steak she’d ever eaten in her life.

  The older woman, dressed in cheerful multicolored pastels this evening, frowned at the half-eaten remains of an even heartier dinner on her nephew’s plate. “Now it’s gotten all cold. And Leland, you hand over that skewer right now, young man.”

  Sticking out one gnarled hand, she fixed the younger boy with a look she’d given him and his brother earlier, when they’d been badgering Emma to come to the pool with them later or let them show her the frog pond in the morning.

  Leland caved to his great-aunt’s stare, surrendering the makeshift sword he’d been using to poke at his brother under the level of the table’s edge.

  “Sorry, Aunt Alicia,” he said glumly.

  “Sorry, Cort, you mean,” she said with a sniff of disapproval.

  “Don’t worry. I have my trusty shield,” his freckled brother held up the book—something with an armored knight on the cover—he’d been reading whenever he thought no one was watching.

  Emma, who had gotten into trouble for doing exactly that as a girl—though she’d preferred horse stories at that age—had caught him at it earlier and given him a wink of approval.

  “I’ll take your skewer, too, sir,” Aunt Alicia said, apparently deciding on a course of prudence. “Then if you two are finished eating, you may be excused now.”

  “But what about—” Leland shifted a reluctant look toward Emma. “Isn’t there going to be dessert?”

  “Maybe some chocolate ice cream later,” his great-aunt allowed. “For now, though, why don’t you take the dogs and play ball in the courtyard before it gets too dark?”

  After the boys had gone, Emma and Beau’s aunt talked for while longer, each occasionally glancing to the door behind which Beau had disappeared. At times, his raised voice could be heard, its harshness making Emma’s stomach clench.

  Though Emma tried to keep the conversation light, focusing on the ranch, the boys and possible rain in the forecast, Aunt Alicia continually peppered Emma with polite but increasingly probing questions about her background and upbringing in suburban Houston.

  “And your father, what was it he did? Your real father, I mean?”

  As much as she understood the woman thought she was looking out for her beloved nephew, Emma felt her patience fizzling at the awkwardness of this obvious vetting process. She began to sympathize with why Beau had said what he had earlier to put her off the scent.

  “My father’s been gone twenty years now,” she said, injecting a note of surprise into her voice. “I can’t imagine why such a thing would matter.” She still remembered that agonizing day he’d been struck by a car while running with the track team he’d coached for the local high school. The idea of having his career—a career her family and the community she’d grown up in took such pride in—judged, and most likely found wanting, by a woman born into a fortune had Emma losing patience.

  “I also gather,” Beau’s aunt said in hushed tones as she glanced from door to door to be sure she wasn’t being overhead, “there’s been a divorce in your past? Only the one, I take it? You’ll forgive me for asking, but in this day and age, a person can’t afford to assume—”

  Shaking her head, Emma said, “Thank you for the lovely dinner, but this inquisition ends now. Beau might not have mentioned it to you before, but I’ll be leaving the ranch first thing in the morning. I appreciate the hospitality, but you need to know I won’t be back.”

  * * *

  Before reentering the breakfast room, Beau fought to still the turmoil roiling inside him. Though he knew that everyone else would have finished and his dinner would be cold or cleared away, he’d lost his appetite only seconds into the call with his lawyer.

  “I’ve hashed things out with J. Armstrong Pinckney, and we can make this go away now, but only if we do it before the judge’s ruling,” Ed had rushed to say before naming a figure that Beau couldn’t believe he’d heard right. His father’s longtime attorney had gone on for some time, explaining the structured settlement that would cripple the ranch financially for decades and force him to sell off assets held intact for nearly one hundred fifty years.

  “If I agree to that, Ed, what the hell’s the point of anything?” he’d demanded, thinking of all the ranch’s history, a past built from almost nothing into a juggernaut that Beau’s father, the vaqueros who had helped to build it and the people of this community had always been so proud of, crumbling into dust on his watch. “If I take that deal, the ranch will be nothing but a shadow of its former self, one its debts will inevitably chip away at until, by the time my sons inherit, there’ll be nothing left at all.”

  “But you’ll still have years to enjoy it. Don’t you see that?” With the strain in his voice making him sound even older, Ed struggled to strike a consoling tone, as if he hadn’t just ripped Beau’s heart out. “A lifetime in the mansion your great-grandfather built, time to build memories with your boys at your side and to help your people transition into other fields. Or at least you’ll have that if you take this deal now. If not, you could lose everything within a few months, every dime, every calf and every acre. Not to mention what it’s going to do to you, watching Wallace Fleming take everything and run it into the ground.”

  “You really think I’ll lose it, don’t you? That the probate judge is going to overturn what we both know my father wanted.”

  “Did he?” Ed had asked pointedly. “Because I think if that were really true, he never would have drawn up a will naming Wallace as his heir in the first place. Or at least he would’ve fixed things legally after you came back home and resumed working on the ranch. He wasn’t a stupid or a careless man, your father.”

  Angered by his lack of support and dejected with the choice that Ed insisted he must make by morning, Beau had ended the call. But the atmosphere inside the breakfast room, where his aunt sat crying quietly over an empty table, seemed no less upsetting.

  “What is it? What’s wrong—other than my going missing through another meal?” After grabbing a box of tissues from the buffet, he hurried to stand beside her, where he laid a hand on her thin shoulder to still its shaking. Had she overheard part of his conversation? Did she guess the way of life she’d known since childhood was about to come to an abrupt end, all because his father hadn’t been able to overcome his fears that Beau was another man’s son?

  “I’m nothing but an old fool,” she cried. “I’m afraid I’ve said the wrong thing, peppering her with far too many questions. Now I’ve ruined everything. Your Emma’s leaving in the morning.”

  “It was nothing you did,” he assured her, though he knew all too well that his aunt could be like a dog with a bone once she got it into her head to start prying. “Emma was leaving anyway. She was always going to leave. I told you that from the start. I only wish you hadn’t gotten your hopes up so much.”

  He plucked a couple of tissues from the box and gently pressed them into her hand before kissing the top of her blond head.

  “Maybe it’s for the best, after all,” his aunt said as she daubed at her damp eyes. “We don’t need a girl like that, from heaven only knows what background. Certainly nothing she was willing to answer any questions about.”

  “I’m not sure we can hold that against her,” Beau said, “especially considering all the stress that she’s been under.”

 
“And when I asked about past marriages, you would’ve thought I’d put her on the rack.”

  “Aunt Alicia, her ex-husband—we think he’s been stalking her.”

  She straightened, her eyes widening. “Here, you mean? But I thought—didn’t Wallace arrest some dreadful deviant after she was assaulted?”

  “He’s not the man, it turns out, and I didn’t mention it before because I didn’t want you to worry, but that night when her Jeep stranded her out here, someone tried to run her over. For all we know, her student might’ve been deliberately killed by this same person.”

  Aunt Alicia gasped, her face draining of color. “And you brought this woman into this home with your sons? Whatever were you thinking, Beau?”

  “You were the one who insisted she stay, if I remember.”

  Anger burned in her blue eyes. “Only because you didn’t inform me that she could pose a danger to us all.”

  “If I didn’t think I could keep her safe—keep all of us safe—I would never have allowed it for a minute.”

  “You weren’t thinking at all,” she accused. “Certainly not with the head that’s on your shoulders, anyway.”

  He gaped, shocked by his normally prim aunt’s innuendo. But she wasn’t finished with him.

  “You’ve gone off to see Fernando, and then to San Antonio, leaving your family, your little children, alone with a woman whose very presence is a danger.”

  “I’m sorry.” She did have a point. He’d allowed himself to count too much on this house’s security, its history and the power of the family name to safeguard them. “I should have told you everything instead of trying to protect you by holding back the details.”

  Yet even as he said it, Beau found himself doing it again. Keeping what he knew of the ranch’s future, which seemed bleak no matter what his choice, from her for a little while more.