Then Jason made a gesture to the random pieces of paper on the table. “Do you see what these actually are?”
“No. They looked like receipts, but it didn’t make any sense.” Skye wrinkled her nose. “Why would your mother have receipts wadded up in her purse for surveyors and such? Surely she doesn’t handle that kind of thing? Right? Doesn’t she have people to do that for her?”
“The address on this is the main house,” Jason agreed. “And no. There would be no reason for her to have a survey done of that property. The five acres that the house sits on is part of a subdivision and that stuff is completely settled unless there is a sale coming on, which there isn’t.” Then Jason tapped the center of the page where the surveyor had scribbled something else on the lines below the word Description. “But this is for my father’s land. This is a survey of the hundred acres that my family still owns outside of Dallas. It’s probably worth a lot of money, but it’s also been passed down for generations in the King family and my mother is not a King.”
“Wait.” Skye realized that this could actually be huge news. “So your mother is trying to get surveys and appraisals”—Skye picked up another paper—“and potential bids from what? A developer?”
“It would appear that she is.” Jason sounded grim. “It looks like my mother is attempting to either sell our land outright or to develop it into a bunch of condos that she can then rent out for a good chunk of cash.”
The importance of this discovery was actually horrifying to contemplate. Obviously the land meant something to the King family. The expression on Jason’s face was enough to tell Skye that. So why would his mother want to sell it? Why would she want to develop it?
“Wait a second,” Skye whispered. Her brain was spinning and it was currently making connections that were pretty darned alarming. “Is this the place where your father had his supposed hunting accident? The place you guys refer to as the ranch?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think he found out about what your mother was doing?” Skye was getting excited. She sat straight up in her seat and started to bounce just a little. “What if your father discovered what she was doing and put a stop to it? If she had already gotten some kind of a bid and she was looking forward to all of that money, it might make a pretty strong motivator for murder.”
There was a long pause and then Jason exhaled. “I hate to say it, but you might be onto something there. My mother is absolutely the kind of person who would think that it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
“Was he sick?” The words just sort of slipped out. Skye held up her hands. “I’m sorry. I know you said there were secrets or something and I told myself that I would leave it alone. But for some reason I’m just getting more and more curious. It’s like a disease.”
“Dying of curiosity?” Jason teased. “Yeah. I’ve heard of that one. And no. My father wasn’t sick. But I can tell you that if my mother was arranging to have that land sold, it was absolutely because of the—well, the reason.”
“You mean the big secret.” Okay. Skye was absolutely dying to know what this was. What could possibly make a woman like Tisha Olivares-King go behind her husband’s back and attempt to sell his family land? It was preposterous! “Do you think she could have done it without his signature? Surely no real estate agent would have sold off a hundred-plus acres of land without talking to the person who was on the deed.”
“It’s kind of hard to say.” Jason was murmuring and slowly turning his ceramic coffee cup around and around on the tabletop as though his mind were very far away from this moment. “Think about it. If you were a real estate agent, would you ask to see credentials from someone like my mother?”
“Oh!” Skye nearly bounced up from her seat to her feet. “That sort of situation should leave a record!” She laid her hand on the receipt for the surveyor. “If I call and pretend to be the executive assistant or something I bet I can get them to tell me the name of the person who ordered the survey. Maybe it was an agent!”
“Good thinking.” Jason looked impressed.
It was really silly, but Skye felt a jolt of pride at his praise. Maybe she was being dumb. Or maybe she was just fooling herself. But right now it kind of felt like the two of them were in this together.
Chapter Thirteen
Jason listened to Skye impersonating his mother’s personal assistant and wondered if she did this sort of thing all the time. She was really quite good at it. To Jason’s knowledge his mother had never had a personal assistant, but it would not have been out of the ordinary for a woman like Tisha Olivares-King to hire one. At the moment, Jason figured his mother was probably regretting that she didn’t have a PA since all of her appointments and such were in her phone and this black appointment book that she had left behind in the coffee shop. The calendar alert currently displayed on the phone screen told him that his mother should have been at her manicure appointment fifteen minutes ago. If the multiple calls and texts on the phone in the last few minutes were anything to go by, Tisha had forgotten all about that appointment.
“Yes, sir.” Skye was nodding and scribbling on a pad of scratch paper as she talked on the phone. “And the agent’s name is Reese Herrera? Thank you so much.” There was a pause. “Oh, for sure. It’s going to be a little crazy around here until Ms. Olivares-King either finds her phone or gets a replacement. All of that data! But you’ve been so helpful, Erik. Thank you!” Another pause. “Uh huh. Interesting. All right, I will make sure I tell her right away. Thank you, good bye.”
That did not sound particularly good. At least not for Jason and his brothers and their land. A wave of morose feelings swept Jason as he considered the possibility that the land might actually be sold already. Had there been a buyer? Had someone forged his father’s name on a contract even though there was no way that the man would have ever agreed to sell that land? It seemed absolutely ridiculous and yet there was no doubt in Jason’s mind that his mother was capable of that and so much more.
“Well.” Skye exhaled a long breath. “That was very enlightening.”
Jason looked around. Other than the trio of old men in the corner nearby the coffee shop was absolutely deserted. That was probably because it was three in the afternoon. Jason was a bit surprised that the place wasn’t closed. But with a manager and one employee on duty, perhaps it was just as worthwhile to stay open while they did the usual chores and cleaning items on a list of necessary jobs that kept a place like this running smoothly.
“I almost don’t want to ask.” Jason took a sip of what had to be his fourth cup of coffee. The stuff was growing on him to begin with, but it was also a bit comforting to drink coffee. It was just one of those drinks. And the idea that he could sit here and just try to relax while his whole world seemed to be falling down around his ears was not a bad thing.
“Are you all right?”
Her words drew him out of his slump. Jason sat up and stretched and tried to seem fine. It wasn’t really working though. “I’m just a bit pissed off at my mother. That’s all.”
“Are you sure you can’t tell me what’s going on?” Skye sounded hesitant, but he could also hear a twinge of that rabid curiosity behind her words. There was a reason the woman had gone into journalism and that was probably it. “I realize that it’s a sensitive topic for some reason. But sometimes when something is bothering you it helps to share it. And really, how bad could it be?”
Jason snorted. In any other situation he could have absolutely agreed with her. Really. How bad could someone’s skeleton in the closet be? It wasn’t like Jason and his family had murdered family members and buried them on that land. At least not that he knew of. But there was absolutely no way that it was appropriate to just casually tell this woman that he came from a long line of shifters and that he and his brothers and their father before them were able to shift from their human bodies to a wolf body pretty much anytime they wanted. Even though it was possible that by telling her the truth it w
ould make the entire situation clear as a bell, there was still that whole telling her the truth about the shifter thing that got in the way.
“Okay.” Skye held up her hands. “Enough about the secret. It’s getting bigger and badder in my head as we speak. So let’s just talk about the surveyor, who said to tell your mother that the developer is getting cold feet because of Mac King’s death. They’re a little confused as to how this deal is going to happen when the land will be tied up in probate.”
Jason felt a huge wave of relief. So the land wasn’t sold! It wasn’t gone. There was still a chance of stopping whatever plans his mother had for the old acreage where he and his brothers had been running since they were cubs. Jason didn’t want to lose that and the more he thought about it the more he realized that this was far more important to him than the company.
“Jason?”
“We need to talk to the real estate agent, don’t you think?” Jason nearly stood up. He was feeling such a huge press to get this moving and to tell that agent that his mother was a big fat liar.
“A few more things first,” Skye insisted. She actually reached over the table, grabbed his arm, and pulled him back to his seat.
Until right then Jason had not realized that he had half stood up. “Sorry. What else did you need to say?”
“For starters, you need to know that your mother wasn’t selling the land.”
“Excuse me?” All of that earlier relief he’d been experiencing seemed to evaporate. “How can that be? You said developer. You said that the developer is getting cold feet about the sale.”
“No.” She shook her head and a strand of red hair fell over her forehead. She swiped it behind her ear with a gesture that was so feminine that for a moment he was utterly distracted. Then she reminded him that assumptions were always bad and he had assumed that the deal meant sale. “The deal is a development deal. The developer is worried that the land will be tied up in probate and therefore the rentals won’t be able to be leased. I guess the plan was to have the place fully leased before the building was even completed.”
“How is that possible?” Jason asked weakly. “She’s hiring someone to build condos or something? And then she’s going to rent them out? The bitch!”
Jason stood up and pushed away from the table so hard that what little coffee was left in his mug sloshed out onto the tabletop. He stabbed his fingers through his hair and tried to imagine what that would have done to him and his brothers and his father. It wasn’t like they didn’t know that their mother didn’t support them as wolves. She hated shifters and she wanted them to leave that part of their life behind.
“Jason, what’s wrong?”
He leaned down and did not bother to hide from Skye just how angry he was in that moment. “My mother is trying to force my brothers and I to deny our heritage. She wants to force us to pretend that we’re just plain human. That’s what! My father would have never allowed that. He knew what we were. He taught us to be better men because of it. We’re shifters. We’re not humans and no matter what happens we’re not going to just turn our back on our shifter heritage and pretend that we’re something other than we are!”
It took about five seconds for what Jason had just said to sink into his brain. It could have been the expression of mingled shock and confusion on Skye’s face, but it was likely the fact that she did not seem able to respond right at the moment. Her mouth would open and then close and then open again as though her nervous system was trying to speak but could not come up with any words to say.
Jason cleared his throat. This was so awkward. The worst sort of awkward too. “So,” he finally began. “I guess you might have a few questions for me now.”
She was staring at him as though he’d grown a second head. Or perhaps she just expected him to somehow morph into a wolf right there at the table. And then he realized that he’d not been really specific with her on what he shifted into. He had just used the word shifter. Maybe she would just think he was referring to something else entirely.
“Okay, so what is it that you shift into?” Skye finally managed to whisper the words. “Do you change into a bear or something? Or is it like a vampire thing? What happens and how does it happen and when did this start? Did you get bitten when you were a kid or something?” Her speech was starting to speed up. That was probably a good sign, but Jason could barely keep up. “Wait! You said this was your family. Your father, your brothers, all of you—did you guys have an industrial accident? Oh my goodness! That’s crazy. Are you like super heroes?” Her tone was now getting higher and higher and sort of disappearing as she ran out of breath.
“Okay, slow down. Please?” Jason shook his head. “You’ve completely lost me, I think. And considering I’m the one who shifts into a wolf I think that’s probably a pretty strange set of circumstance, wouldn’t you say?” He glanced over at the trio of men, but they were all immersed in their afternoon newspapers and did not seem to be paying them a bit of attention. At this point Jason wasn’t even sure that it mattered.
“You weren’t supposed to tell me,” Skye murmured. She was fiddling with her pen and staring at the words on the page and then she coughed and seemed to come to some kind of decision in her head. “Oh my God! Your mother isn’t a shifter.”
“No.”
“And you and your brothers and Mac King. You all turned into wolves?”
“Yes.”
She was bouncing in her seat again. “Okay, so what about Tex Johnson? Is he part of this too?”
“Nope. Regular human.” Jason shook his head. “He doesn’t know that we shift.”
“Whoa now, that’s impossible.”
Her words took Jason totally by surprise. It was like his brain actually stuttered. “What are you talking about? Why is it impossible?”
She held up her right hand and started ticking off the reasons on her fingertips. “Your father and Tex Johnson have known each other for a good thirty-plus years. The two of them went into business together a very long time ago. They spent a ton of time together in the beginning. I remember reading that in an interview a while back when I was doing some research on your family in preparation for the funeral.”
“Do you ever sleep?” Jason muttered. He was starting to think that the girl was a force of nature.
She shot him a dirty look. “Please. It’s basic stuff that every reporter should know about a subject. Don’t you think?”
“But they never do,” Jason pointed out. “And you think that just because my father and Tex spent a lot of time together that my father would tell him?”
“Yes.” She gave a sharp nod of her head. “And if by chance Tex didn’t know? That would make it easier for your mother to manipulate him.”
“How so?” Jason was starting to think that all of his preternatural senses did not even begin to put him on par with this woman’s quick thinking.
But Skye was already charging ahead. “Think about it! If a woman goes to a man’s business partner and tells him this sob story about a guy he’s known almost his whole life and how he’s really a werewolf—shifter, I know, but the dramatic angle, right? So she tells Tex the truth and then starts in on some story of how he’s being so mean and how he lies all the time and oh poor her!”
Jason was beginning to see the point she was suggesting. “And then Tex would be angry enough with my father to potentially start a scheme behind his back with Tisha to develop the land on the sly and pocket the money. And when my dad gets in the way, they what? Bump him off?”
“It’s possible, I think.”
Jason still had a very hard time trying to imagine Tex actually murdering his father. “I could see my mother putting out a contract on my dad’s life. She was so angry with him all the time and if she thought she might have to give up a ton of cash because my father was going to put a stop to this development deal, then maybe that would push her over the edge. But Tex was his friend.”
“Yeah, and no guy has ever murdered his friend after
feeling as though that friend had betrayed him first,” Skye retorted. She started pushing the phone, the notes, and the appointment book back into her messenger bag. “I think it’s time to go and find ourselves a real estate agent. We need to find him, nail him down, and force him to tell us the truth. If he thinks he might be in danger of some kind of litigation, he’ll crack.”
“Do you do this sort of thing often?” Jason wondered suddenly. “Not that I don’t appreciate the help, but still. It’s kind of disconcerting to think that you just run around trying to solve murders on the side.”
“Actually, I’ve never done anything like this before, but I’ve been dreaming of being an investigative reporter my whole life and in my mind this is what they do!” She was practically vibrating with the excitement of it all.
“Then I suppose it would be cruel to deny you this guilty pleasure, right?” Was he teasing her? It was hard to say. Right now Jason felt kind of flat inside. But for some reason that did not seem to affect how much he was enjoying being around Skye. “Thank you, by the way. I know I might seem flippant, but I really appreciate your help and your willingness to bend the rules a bit here and there.”
She paused and for just a moment he thought she might say something entirely different from the words that came out of her mouth. “It’s really no trouble. My pleasure, in fact. Completely my pleasure.”
Chapter Fourteen
The moment that Skye Kincaid stepped into the front office of The Herrera Home & Land real estate office, she knew that something very strange was going on. The office was in a huge strip of high rises not all that far from the downtown Dallas area. There were offices and apartments all around, but the ground floor of most of these buildings housed businesses of all kinds. Skye spotted several high-end boutiques as well as more than one bar. There were hair and nail salons and even a busy computer store to go along with what seemed like a dozen or more phone outlets all promising the best rate.
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 10
