by Rya Stone
He sighed, lolling his head against the rest behind him. “Is this what we’re doing? Make out, fight, make out, fight?”
“There won’t be any more making out. I need your signature, that’s it.” And way to blow the deal, genius. Would it have been so hard to hide her emotions for the time it took to sign the lease? As if that was a possibility. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Look…you knew what I was after the first time we met. It hasn’t changed. Despite your reluctance, I have to pursue every angle I can, dire warnings or not.”
He stared at her for so long her heart took up residence in her throat and the rushing of blood in her ears drowned out all other sound. The very real, very physical effects of one look had her wondering how she’d slipped up so badly. How had she ever entertained the idea she could love and leave this man?
“If you’re going to continue on your path of destruction here, we’re going to need conditions.”
She hesitated…for about as long as it took for her mother’s gaunt face to flash through her mind. “Name them.”
“Don’t come back here without me.”
“Your brother might be scary, but I seriously don’t think—”
“It’s not him I’m worried about.”
“Why won’t you just tell me what’s going on. The more I know, the safer I’ll be—”
Jase’s hand shot out. Wrapping it around the back of her neck, he pressed his lips hard to hers. It was chaste by textbook definition, but the ferocity behind the kiss had Cassie gripping his doorframe as she tried to still her racing heart. The somersaults in her belly? Neither hell nor high water could stop those.
“Tonight,” he said, still gripping her tightly. “I’m coming for you.”
“I—”
“Wear the jeans?”
“Finish reading the lease?”
“You’ve got a deal, Miss Mitchum.”
That smile. Jesus. That sexy little crinkle in his top lip, the way his hand drifted down her neck and over her collarbone. He wanted her safe. From what, she had no idea, but it made her heart slow dance in her chest. Heartache. All roads pointed to it, but she couldn’t tear her gaze from his as she backed away.
“Bye, baby.”
“Bye, Jase.”
As his tinted window slid up between them, she remembered Kyle and turned for the SUV.
“What the hell was that?” Kyle asked the moment she cracked open the door. “That was him, wasn’t it? Did he kiss you? Did you like it? Oh, my God, Cassie, I didn’t even catch a glimpse! You’re killing me. I—”
“Can it, Kyle. I don’t want to talk about it.”
…
Jase remained on the ridge, watching to make sure the little SUV made it across the creek without any trouble. Cassie coming out here? Oh, now that was trouble. Clint was one thing. Oscar something else entirely. And it was just a matter of time before she stumbled into something she shouldn’t.
Seeing her on the ranch had driven his fears home in a major way, and whatever happened between them or didn’t, he refused to have her in the crosshairs. No. Something had to change. Cassie didn’t need any reason to return to the ranch.
He dialed his brother. Better than a shotgun to the face. And if Clint had pulled one on Cassie, he’d beat his brother to a pulp. Is that all y’all do down here? Fight? Christ, it seemed that way. His entire adult life had been one fight after another, and he was tired. As he waited for Clint to answer his call, all he could think about was laying it down. The accompanying mental image that thought produced included laying it down next to someone very specific, and he found he liked that idea a lot.
“What do you want?”
“I’m at the creek,” he said.
“You fly over here or what?” Clint growled.
“Something like that.” He didn’t add that he’d broken every traffic law that existed after Clint’s call informing him that Cassie was sitting in his driveway. “What’s the deal?” he asked, hoping against hope that his brother might finally be open to negotiations. And not just regarding the lease.
There was a long pause. “Same as it’s always been, big brother.”
Yeah, I can see that.
Clint had always been complacent, only now did Jase understand his own complacency over the years—thinking that he had time to make it right, that all he needed was enough money, enough power, that if he didn’t rock the boat he’d one day wrest his land from those who controlled it. That was the reason he’d gone to work in the oil field, the modern day Wild West, where a select few made unfathomable fortunes and retired by fifty. But he’d never planned to retire. No, his goal was to force Clint to retire by buying out his portion of the land with an offer so big no one in their right mind would refuse. He just wasn’t there yet. Unless…
Clint snorted. “I can’t just walk away from this…from him.”
Jase pushed aside the plan forming in his mind to ask, “Have you ever even tried?”
After a few moments, Clint cleared his throat. “You that blind, brother?”
“Blind? He killed our father. We should’ve put a bullet in his brain five years ago. Ten years ago. Shit, the first time he dumped a body on our porch.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Explain it to me, Cowboy,” he said, invoking Clint’s childhood nickname, an endearment their departed father had bestowed on his legacy. A leaden silence followed and he could see Clint shaking his head—the same response Jase had received for years, the same sad acceptance that drove him from his land, from the only family he had left.
With a sinking feeling, he realized his brother wasn’t going to budge an inch. During the last few minutes he’d been flirting with a fantasy, one where he was allowed to build a real life, maybe even a life with Cassie. That was never going to happen. Not without a fight.
“I haven’t seen him in months. Nothing, man. And now…” Clint paused. “You know that FedEx truck?”
Jase’s heart sank to the floorboard. “That was one of his?”
“That’s why the gate was open,” Clint admitted. “But the driver got scared and bailed.”
Oh, fuck. Fuck! “Please tell me that was the worst joke I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s true. And now I’m—”
“You’re what?” he demanded. An accomplice to murder? He didn’t want to think about it in those terms. Surely Clint had no knowledge of the transport end. His only job was to leave a damn gate open. Still.
“I haven’t heard from Oscar since,” Clint said. “Maybe—”
“He’s just going to disappear because he got some bad press?” Christ. “He still has to move his shit even if his mules are dead.” It had to end. Not in some abstract future. Now. He was poised on the brink, and Cassie Mitchum, with her sexy dimples and tempting lease offers, had kicked open a door he’d been prying at for years. Maybe he didn’t have to buy Clint out, not entirely… “There are landmen fighting over who gets to write us a check,” he said. “Have you done the math? Over a million dollars, just in bonus money. That’s not even counting production on the wells. This place can hold at least three wells, maybe more if—”
“I can’t.”
“We could pay them off,” he said, giving voice to the idea simmering in his mind. “That’s the bottom line here, right?”
“You don’t understand.”
What the hell did he not understand? This place, everything that happened here, they were a part of him, a formidable part. He understood the danger. He just wasn’t willing to roll over any longer.
“Keep your little landman away from here,” Clint said. “I can’t guarantee her safety.”
“Clint, there’s—”
Dial tone.
—got to be an out.
Shit! Jase pummeled the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. He did it again and again and then stopped, his hand suspended. He still had time to convince his brother. As for the other player in this game? That was a much more urgent matter.
Oscar missed a pickup when his intended mules died en route.
It was disgusting. And everything he’d had fought against. But it didn’t mean Oscar was out of business. Coyotes always returned to their lair, where, Jase suspected, a healthy shipment of Mexico’s number one export awaited. Determined to make sure Cassie Mitchum was well out of the way before somebody checked into that, he slammed his truck into gear.
…
Back on the main drive—if you could call it that—Kyle’s SUV bumped and splashed through shallow mud puddles as a patchwork of woods and pasture crept by.
Kyle pointed to the right. “What’s that?”
The building appeared to be a part of the woods. Years of damp had patched the wooden exterior green with mold. The roof dripped moss and held so many leaves and fallen limbs it blended seamlessly into the shadowy trees. No wonder she hadn’t noticed it before.
“Old barn?”
“No, it’s a house.” Kyle slowed. “Know anything about it?”
“Since I haven’t run into him at the big house yet, I’m assuming that’s where Leatherface lives.”
A grassy, barely there trail appeared off the main drive, and Kyle turned sharply.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Checking it out. Don’t worry, this thing has four-wheel drive.”
Cassie wrenched her head around, scanning the road for Jase’s work truck. “Four-wheel drive is for creek crossings, not for tearing across the Lucases’ pasture.”
Kyle gunned it up a small slope, and his tires spun before catching hold and hurling them forward.
“This is trespassing, buster.”
“We’re already on the property.”
“Do you think Clint Lucas is going to care about that?” And what about Jase? She could seriously see him tanning her hide for this.
“We need to know what he’s hiding,” Kyle said.
She narrowed her eyes at the moldering structure. “And you think it’s up here?”
“Bad blood with the Neelys. And this used to be part of the Neely tract.”
“How do you know that?” she asked as Kyle put it in park.
“I’ve been digging around since you mentioned it. The Lucas boys had an aunt who died right before the original deed was signed in seventy-four. It was a year or so before the contest and suit.”
“Oh my God, the lawsuit. I remember that from the title. Michael Lucas vs. Joel Neely. Contest over…a hundred and twenty acres?”
“Right. The title ended up vested in our boys’ father. And this is the land.”
“Here? How do you know?”
“Looked at a map of this place lately?”
Her mind pulled up the Tobin copy she kept in the Lucas folder. And Kyle was right. “I’m not sure the aunt’s death has anything to do with the land conveyance and subsequent lawsuit. Why would it?”
“On the other hand, why wouldn’t it? Bad blood has to start somewhere.”
“I guess I never read into it that far. Okay,” she said, glancing back to the road. “Five minutes. Then we get the hell out of here.”
Kyle eyed the squishy-looking ground outside his already opened door. “You’re going to owe me a shoe shine, too.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a sink back at the motel,” she said, sliding ankle deep into leaf mold-covered muck.
They found the house unlocked. Once her eyes adjusted to the interior dimness, Cassie marked how clean it appeared—way too clean for a creeptastic house hidden in the woods.
“Take off your shoes,” she said.
“Good idea.”
No forest litter covered the floor as you’d expect from a busted door or broken window. In fact, all of the windows looked to be intact. No cobwebs. No sign of rodent infestation. In fact, it smelled of Pine Sol.
“I was joking about Leatherface and all, but I think someone might live here. Or come here often.”
Kyle spun in a slow circle. Her gaze followed, taking everything in, from the sagging but clean couch to the dust-free eight-seat dining table to the creased Texas Travel map pinned to the wood-paneled wall nearest the kitchen.
She approached the map. A hand-drawn star indicated their current location. Stars marked a few places to the south as well, but they didn’t mean anything to her. The only other thing of note was a back-road route to Houston, highlighted in yellow.
She heard Kyle shuffling down the hall and followed as he did his Inspector Smurf thing. The house contained three bedrooms, each with two sets of bunk beds. They discovered nothing in the closets except extra pillows and blankets, and they found the sparse kitchen as clean as the rest of the place. The large pantry was stocked full of canned foods and gallon jugs of water. Kyle opened several drawers that revealed nothing but a can opener, trash bags, a box of matches, and some plastic baggies. Leatherface would never keep his dwelling so spotless, but that didn’t rule out a psycho of a different variety—one who kept his hideout OCD tidy, for example.
“Let’s go,” she hissed, convinced Clint Lucas was going to bust in at any moment and demand to know what in trespassing hell they were up to. Or worse, Jase would roar up and rip off his belt. Maybe that wasn’t worse—
Get yourself together, Cass.
Her partner in crime continued opening drawers.
“Kyle!”
“All right.”
“You know what this reminds me of?” Kyle asked as she scooted him out the door. “A vacation rental. You know…cozy cabin in the woods, sleeps twelve, bedding provided, you bring the rest.”
She pondered this as they scrambled into their boots.
“Except for the cozy part, I’m following you,” she said, hurrying to the SUV. “But I don’t think the Lucases are renting this place out.”
“Yeah, me either. That’s what makes it so weird.”
“Get us out of here.”
Off-Road Smurf executed a three-pointer and miraculously managed not to bury his ride. “Are you going to ask Jase about it?”
“He told me not to come back out here. The way he said it…” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Kyle glanced over. “You think he was just trying to keep his brother from hitting on you?”
“Good God, Clint was not hitting on me.”
“Girl. What he said to you? There at the end?”
“You heard that?” She shook her head again, nestling into her thick hair. “That wasn’t flirting. I don’t know what that was.”
“Uh, that was caveman for I’ll-drag-you-back-to-my-cave-and-make-you-scream.”
“That sounds pretty scary.”
“Then you haven’t tried it.”
“Ya think?” She glanced in the rearview, her stomach churning. “I don’t think that’s what Jase was afraid of. He told me not to go near the Neelys, either.”
“Hmmm.”
“That sheriff’s deputy said Neely’s was the second body he’d found. Who was the first? Do you know?”
Kyle nodded. “It was Culberson. Mack Culberson. He was the Lucases’ neighbor to the west. Been about three weeks ago now. I heard about it at the courthouse. It didn’t even make the paper.” He turned to her. “I’m starting to think that’s not an uncommon thing around here.”
She swallowed back something that tasted of fear. “And now the Willoughbys are missing.”
“What?”
“That’s what Jim said this morning when he was in the hot seat. He hasn’t heard from them in ten days.” Cassie frowned, more convinced than ever that the murders and missing persons were connected.
“This is fucked,” Kyle whispered.
Her stomach plummeted. “That deputy? The one all over the news? He didn’t show up out here to question Clint. He was asking for Jase.”
A heavy silence descended over the SUV. She watched Kyle chew the inside of his lip, lost in thoughts she wished he’d share.
“Whoa…creeper.”
Her worried gaze left her companion and z
eroed in on the Toyota Tundra inching down the road. “Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone drive that slowly. It’s like he’s barely moving.”
Kyle accelerated. “Maybe he’s waiting for us to pass.”
As they approached, an arm extended out the window, flagging them down.
“Maybe he’s having car trouble. Or truck trouble.”
Kyle snorted. “In a Toyota? Probably not.” He rolled down his own window and pulled to a stop. “How’s it going?”
A quiet male voice answered. “Good. Good. And you?”
Cassie leaned forward and peered across Kyle. The man in the Toyota stared straight ahead. Even in profile, the recognition was a shock, and the rutted gravel road seemed to tilt.
“Doing great,” Kyle said.
The man turned towards them. “Coy Martin.”
That was the last thing she expected to come out of the man’s mouth, especially since he was Hispanic, but even more so because the one-eyed man from Roma’s was going to be the Lucases’ new neighbor.
Coy Martin appeared maybe a decade older than she was. The handsomeness she’d previously noted proved not to be a trick of dim bar lighting or too much wine, but even in the broad daylight, something about the man seemed…off. At least he wore an eye patch today. Gone, though, was the elegant attire, replaced by a ratty-looking Houston Texas T-shirt and a John Deere baseball cap.
“What are you folks doing out here?” His voice was soft, lilting, and contained the barest hint of Mexico.
“What are we doing out here?” Oh man, she loved Kyle, though this was the kind of thing that tended to land him in trouble. “What are you doing out here?”
“I’m getting to know my new neighbors. Are you one of the Lucases?”
“N-o,” Kyle answered, turning the one syllable word into two. Nice, buddy.
“Then your question was out of line.”
Kyle stiffened. “We’re here on business.”
Coy Martin glanced at the woods they’d exited not minutes before. “What kind of business?”
“The oil and gas kind,” Cassie offered.
