“That sounds like a pretty personal beef to me,” agreed Ty, “exactly like something that obsessed SOB might do to try to terrorize his ex. The only trouble is, I just got word that he was picked up about eleven thirty last night and thrown into an Austin drunk tank.”
“What? You’re sure it’s him?”
“Sure sounds like it considering the guy was carrying Jeremy Hansen’s ID, matches the guy’s description and was hassling one of Emma Copley’s students for information on her.”
“Well, hell...” Beau said as he tried to make sense of that information. “So if it wasn’t him here last night, he must not’ve been the one who murdered Russell.”
“I’m not so sure you can rule that out completely. But I am sure that Jorgenson had other enemies. And Emma Copley, too.”
“Emma saw some evidence, before it was stolen, that Russell was preparing to expose someone for tampering with the results of their study. She thinks he could’ve been upset enough about it to confront the guilty party. Or, hell, maybe he was up to blackmail. Why else keep what he was doing secret from her?”
“Why, indeed?” Ty rasped. “Listen, Beau. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I have reason to believe that your new friend, Dr. Copley, knows a hell of lot more than she’s saying. That’s why I really called so early. To warn you, right away, to get her out of your house.”
Beau swore under his breath.
“And your bed, too, man. I’m saying this as a friend.”
Jolted, Beau asked, “How did you—”
“I hear it in your voice, man, and in the way you’re clearly taking things she’s told you at face value. Besides that, I know you, what you’ve been through these past few years. And how vulnerable that sort of thing can leave a man to a hot, smart lady who plays her cards close to her vest.”
“I’m no freaking fragile flower, Pirate, and she damned well hasn’t played me.”
“See if you still think that after you check out the attached files on the email I just sent you.”
* * *
Emma stirred sleepily, her eyes cracking open to the sound of the bedroom door closing shortly after she’d been roused by the muffled ringing of a cell phone. Blinking in confusion, she took in her surroundings, dimly lit by what looked like early-morning sunlight filtering past the edges of the windows’ slate-blue curtains.
Memories had anxiety ripping through her: the intruder escaping her room into the darkness, the snakes he’d left to terrorize her, Beau’s gun blasting in the guest room’s close quarters.
But afterward, he’d brought her up here. To his room, his bed...
Her body tingling with the thought, a shy smile tugged at her lips as she relived the way he’d driven every other worry—every other thought—from her head to coax and tease and tempt her body to wave after wave of splintering pleasure. But it was the passion in his gaze as he’d looked down into her eyes, into her soul, when their bodies had finally joined, that made her shiver...and reach beneath the covers to feel the spot he’d just vacated, still warm from his body and smelling of the man she wanted.
Cuddling his pillow, she drifted off again. When she next cracked her eyes open, she noticed that the light was brighter. Beau, now fully dressed, stood nearby, threading a belt through his jeans. As he finished buckling it, he paused, freezing as he noticed her smiling up at him.
“Hey,” she said, her voice a sleep-warmed rumble as she reached toward him.
Ignoring her proffered hand, he frowned at her. “It’s high time you got up and dressed and out of here. I don’t want my sons confused or frightened.”
At the chill in his voice, her stomach plunged. “Frightened? What on earth is wrong?” she asked. “Beau? Has something happened?”
He turned away, but not before she caught the mixture of fury and regret hardening his handsome face.
Shoving back the covers, she stumbled from the bed and walked up behind him. Ever atom in her ached to touch him, to soothe whatever hurt was making him act this way.
She had nearly reached his shoulder when she recoiled, her hand dropping to her abdomen at the thought of the last time Jeremy had looked so upset—and how he had reacted to her touch.
Backing off, she looked around for something to cover her nakedness until she found what must be his bathrobe draped across a nearby chair. She shoved her arms into the sleeves and tied it tightly around her shaking body, too bewildered to care that it was ridiculously large for her.
He flickered a look in her direction before ordering, “Now go to your room and pack your things. My boys are early risers, and I need you out of this room, this house, before they’re up.”
“I’ll leave, Beau. I can do that,” she said. “But what I can’t and won’t do is pretend that last night never happened. Or that it meant nothing to you.”
“I never—I damned well never said it didn’t, Emma. That’s why this hurts so damned much. To know that you’ve been playing me. Playing every one of us for fools.”
“Playing? What are you talking about? And why on earth would you imagine, even for a second, that I’m the kind of woman who would play with—with my own damned heart, my body. Because—Beau, you might not believe this, but other than my husband, you’re the first, the only man I’ve ever—”
“The time for lies is over. Thanks to Ty’s hard evidence, I know exactly who you are now. What you are. And I won’t have a killer in my house for one more second than I absolutely have to, so if you don’t want to be here when the sheriff comes to take you in, I suggest you get out while you can.”
* * *
Less than thirty minutes later, Emma sat in her Jeep, which one of his men had delivered, her hands clenching the wheel as she pulled over outside the ranch gate and stared in a state of shock at the dusty road ahead. Though her injured right leg ached with the strain she was putting on it, she almost welcomed the physical discomfort. Anything to distract her from the searing shock of Beau’s betrayal and his utter refusal to listen to anything she had to say.
Everything I need to know, he’d said icily, came from the trash folder of your own email account. For future reference, the next time you want to cover your tracks, you’ll want to empty that, too. Oh, and use a way more secure server.
I have no idea what you’re talking about, she’d responded, but do you honestly imagine, even for a moment, that I could’ve murdered anyone, much less my own student? Surely you can’t think that was me with the gun in that photo—or that I could have—
I don’t know about your accomplices, Beau said, and right now I don’t want to. I only want you gone from my sight, before I do something I regret.
Behind her in the back seat with Emma’s luggage, River stood and whined, circling repeatedly and looking back over her shoulder.
“Sorry, girl. We can’t go back. Not ever,” said Emma, wiping away her tears. “Now settle down. That’s right. Lie down. Stay.”
Because talking to someone, even the dog, felt good, she added, “I shouldn’t even be surprised he wouldn’t listen.” Because when it came down to it, men didn’t ever, did they? Or at least the men Emma had made the mistake of falling for—and she’d fallen hard and fast for Beau. “He was just waiting for an excuse to turn against me.”
But what had been the trigger, transforming his caring and protective nature into a cold fury that had left her half-afraid he’d knock her off her feet?
One thing was for certain. She couldn’t rest until she understood what had happened. And whether, somehow, Jeremy could have been behind it.
But where could she possibly look at those emails Beau had mentioned? She tried checking on her phone but quickly realized she would need her laptop and a decent Wi-Fi connection to get into the folders he had mentioned. This would mean a drive back into town, but there was no way she was heading to Nadine’s place, since Beau might well have ca
lled to warn his friend not to harbor what he now thought of as the enemy.
Remembering the public library, where she’d worked this summer when the motel’s Wi-Fi was on the fritz, Emma fought to compose herself as she drove. She headed into Pinto Creek and pulled into the nearly empty parking lot of the café. There, she took out a still-restless River before limping inside to pick up a large to-go coffee.
“You can’t have that animal in here,” the curvy brunette with the cat’s-eye makeup behind the counter scolded.
“Please,” Emma said, all too aware that her own eyes were red and swollen. “I couldn’t leave her in the car, and if I don’t get some caffeine, my brain’s going to melt into a puddle.”
“Aren’t you—?” The waitress sniffed. “I thought I heard you were a guest out at the big house these days?”
“Where on earth did you hear that?”
“Guess he’s still pining for the dead wife after all.” Malice sparkling in her brown eyes, she leaned in to whisper, “The way I heard it, it was him that killed her anyway. Yanked the wheel into the truck’s path so he wouldn’t have to share his millions with some drunken who—”
“Yet from what I overheard out of your own lying mouth before,” Emma fired back, enraged by the woman’s cruelty, “you’d hop into his bed in a second for half a chance to cash in on the exchange.”
As she fled with River, the waitress screeched in her wake, “Did you hear that? That little witch all but calling me a prostitute?”
An older man who’d been sitting nearby said, “I don’t believe anybody caught it, Margie, but we did hear you runnin’ that nasty mouth of yours again like always.”
Shaking from the encounter—Emma still couldn’t believe she’d stuck up for Beau like that—she drove to the historic one-story stone building that housed the library. Mindful of River’s presence, she pulled into an area of the parking lot where she’d learned from working here this summer would offer her a strong enough signal to use the laptop from inside her vehicle.
Once more, River whined behind her, restlessly circling in her seat.
“For heaven’s sake, girl, knock it off,” she urged, realizing her dog was missing the chance to burn off energy with the Kingstons’ puppy and the two boys she’d grown so attached to. Two boys that Emma ached to realize she might never see again.
Unzipping her day pack, she pulled out River’s toy duck and gave it to the dog to chew and nuzzle. Then Emma shook two tablets from a small bottle of over-the-counter painkillers and choked them down without water to ease the pain in her leg, which ached from the drive.
After taking out her laptop, she glimpsed a sheriff’s department vehicle gliding down the street. The flash of silver hair and fishhook-shaped scar had her ducking low in her seat. Her heart pounded as she imagined Deputy Kendall arresting her. Could Beau have reported the emails he’d been sent already?
But as she peered over the level of the door, she saw the deputy fiddling with his radio. He glided past without glancing in her direction. Sighing with relief, she fought to stop herself from shaking.
She sat up and forced herself to breathe again. Once she opened her computer, she quickly connected and logged in to her email. It took a minute to change the program’s password. She hesitated, her finger vibrating above the laptop’s trackpad. Her stomach cold and quivering at the thought of what she might find inside the trash folder Beau had mentioned.
Hard evidence. His contempt echoed through her memory, deepening the fault lines in her fractured heart. I won’t have a killer in my house for one more second...
“Whatever it is, it isn’t real,” she whispered to River as she double-clicked the icon. “We both know it can’t be.”
Yet the three messages, ostensibly sent from her to Russell, were no less devastating for all of her brave words. Reading through tears, she cringed to see whoever had been impersonating her referring to a shadowy—and highly misguided group—called Animal Avengers, which had made the news several times in recent years, breaking into zoos and freeing animals from their enclosures, causing fatal traffic accidents after smashing down fences containing livestock, and breaching a cancer research facility, where a security guard had been shot down while attempting to stop the activists’ mission to liberate a host of white mice.
According to the overwrought messages, Green Horizons had earned a place on the group’s hit list for its casual destruction of protected birds. Determined to take down the company, Emma had supposedly conspired with Russell, whose responses were nowhere in evidence, to fake evidence to get the government to shut them down for tampering with the study.
The final message, dated the day prior to Russell’s murder, however, had the phony Emma raging, accusing Russell of “betraying the animals—and me” by instead using the data to extort money from the company. As the language turned more threatening, Emma closed the message window, a sick headache pounding in time with her heartbeat.
She didn’t need to read more to understand that failing to drive her away from Kingston County hadn’t been enough for her stalker. The scheming sadist clearly wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d cast suspicion on her for what he himself had done.
Chapter 18
For the past hour, Beau had been holed up in the den, obsessively rereading Emma’s trashed emails, along with a few other, unrelated messages that had apparently been accidentally copied with them. With every moment, his nausea built, along with the fear that Ty had been too quick to send the warning, out of fear for Beau’s safety. And that he himself—
What the hell have I done? Why couldn’t I just talk to her—or better yet shut up and listen?
He cursed himself for a fool and shoved away his tablet computer, knocking the letter tray off the desk’s edge and spreading important papers he’d been meaning to file everywhere.
Dropping to his hands and knees, he’d barely begun scraping together the signature pages from his lease deal with Green Horizons when his cell rang. He fumbled for the phone and answered without looking, “Emma, please come back. We have to ta—”
“Judging from the way she drove out of here,” said Carlos Galvez, who’d been keeping watch on the house, “I very much doubt she’ll be returning any time soon. But I’m pretty sure you have bigger trouble, jefe, heading up your driveway.”
“What trouble?” Beau asked, his gaze snagged on the list of signatories of the lease deal. A name there jumped out at him, a name that caught him by the throat, far too similar to be coincidental. Or was he reaching too far in his desperation?
But as Carlos began speaking, Beau realized that the question would have to wait for now.
Moments later, he was hurrying down the hall to find a set of windows that would allow him to check the front of the house. His jaw clenched, he cautiously peered out from behind the heavy drapery of a window in the formal dining room, looking for the threat his vaquero had described.
“Daddy, w-why? Why would you—?” asked a small, strained voice behind him.
Beau jumped at the sound, allowing the curtain to fall as he turned to face Cort, who stood with Maverick at his side, panting and drooling on the Persian rug.
“How many times have you been told,” Beau asked him sharply, “not to bring that dog into this room? Now take him up to your room—no arguments—and stay up there until someone comes to get you.”
Cort’s freckled face reddened, his brown eyes flaring at the unexpected harshness.
I’ll make this up to you. I swear it, Beau ached to assure him. But driven by a more pressing concern for what his boys might see or hear, he channeled his own late father’s stern tone. “Round up your brother, right this minute, and take him upstairs with you.”
Sobbing, Cort turned. But instead of fleeing, Beau’s normally soft-spoken son whirled and shouted, “She was going to be our new mom, but you ruined everything! We heard you!”<
br />
“What?” Beau asked before realizing that his sons must have been near the door of his bedroom this morning. And must have heard him telling Emma in no uncertain terms to leave. “Listen, Cort, you don’t understand, and there’s no time to explain.”
“You made her go away! I hate you! I wish she took me, too!”
“Your room, son. Move—and don’t forget your brother!” Beau shouted.
Cort gave him one last tearful glance, the pain and bewilderment in his small face reminding Beau of what he’d seen on Emma’s when he had turned so suddenly on her. God forgive me...
He forced himself to peer out the window just as the black-and-white SUV pulled up and Wallace Fleming climbed out. His wide jaw set in a look of grim determination, his hand rested on the butt of his gun as he strode toward the front door.
He really means to do it, Beau realized, reading the hostility radiating from Wallace’s stocky form, the sheer resentment as he pulled a pair of cuffs off his belt.
“Bad enough you’ve been plotting to steal this place your whole life,” Beau said. “But there’s no way in hell I’m letting you perp-walk me out of here in front of my family on whatever trumped-up charges you’ve invented.”
Ignoring the strong knock, Beau headed for the back door. As he grabbed his hat and keys, he heard movement from up near the front atrium, followed by his aunt’s annoyance. “Where on earth is everyone? Now hold your horses, Wallace, and give me a moment to unlock this.”
Beau cursed, hated the thought of leaving Aunt Alicia to deal with whatever delusional accusations Wallace was going to level. Surely she would order him to leave, and even as angry as he was, Wallace respected the woman too much to defy her. Especially once he realized that Beau had driven off in his truck.
He wasn’t going far, nor would he continue trying to avoid his cousin. If Beau wanted to fix the rest of his life—the mess he’d made with both his sons and Emma—he had to get the proof he needed that Ty had been right about this from the start. Many of his problems were related.
Deadly Texas Summer Page 22
