She looked down at his shirt. At the blood. And Rayna glanced away as if the sight of it sickened her. Court took advantage of her glance and knocked the gun from her hand.
At least that’s what he tried to do, but Rayna held on. She pushed him, and in the same motion, she turned to run. That’s when Court tackled her. Her gun went flying, skittering all the way into the living room, and both Court and she landed hard on the floor.
Rayna groaned in pain. It wasn’t a soft groan, and while holding her side, she scrambled away from him. Court was about to dive at her again, but he saw yet more blood. This time on the side that she was holding.
That stopped him.
“What’s wrong with you? What happened?” Court snapped.
She looked around as if considering another run for it, but then her shoulders sagged as if she was surrendering.
Rayna sat up, putting her weight, and the back of her head, against the wall. She opened her mouth as if to start with that explanation, but she had to pause when her breath shuddered. She waved that off as if embarrassed by it and then hiked up her chin. It seemed to him as if she was trying to look strong.
She failed.
“When I came in from the barn about an hour ago, there was someone in my house,” Rayna said, her voice still a little unsteady. “I didn’t see who it was because he immediately clubbed me on the head and grabbed me from behind.” She winced again when she rubbed her left side. “I think he cracked my ribs when he hit me with something.”
Well, hell. Court certainly hadn’t expected any of this. And reminded himself that maybe it was all a lie, to cover up for the fact that she’d committed a crime. But those wounds weren’t lies. They were the real deal. That didn’t mean that they weren’t self-inflicted.
“I got away from him,” she continued a moment later. “After he hit me a few more times. And I pulled my gun, which I had in a slide holster in the back of my jeans. That’s when he left. I’m not sure where he went.”
That didn’t make sense. “If someone really broke in an hour ago, why didn’t you call the sheriff’s office right away?”
Rayna lifted her head a little and raised her eyebrow. For a simple gesture, it said loads. She didn’t trust the cops. Didn’t trust him.
Well, the feeling was mutual.
“I passed out for a while,” she added. She shook her head as if even she was confused by that, and she lifted the side of her shirt that had the blood. There was a bruise there, too, and what appeared to be a puncture wound. One that had likely caused the bleeding. “Or maybe the guy drugged me.”
“Great,” he muttered. This was getting more far-fetched with each passing moment. “FYI, I’m not buying this. And as for not calling the cops when you were attacked, you called Egan when you saw me,” Court pointed out.
“Because I didn’t want things to escalate to this.” She motioned to their positions on the floor. “Obviously, it didn’t work.”
He huffed. “And neither is this story you’re telling.” Court got to his feet and took out his phone. “Only a couple of minutes before my father was gunned down, a waitress in the diner across the street from the sheriff’s office spotted you in the parking lot. There’s no way you could have been here in your house during this so-called attack because you were in town.”
She quit wincing so she could glare at him. “I was here.” Her tone said I don’t care if you believe me or not.
He didn’t believe her. “You must have known my father had been shot because you didn’t react when I told you.”
“I did know. Whitney called me when I was walking back from the barn. I’d just gotten off the phone with her when that goon clubbed me.”
Whitney Goble, her best friend. And it was entirely possible that Whitney had either seen his father get shot or heard about it shortly thereafter because she worked part time as a dispatcher for the sheriff’s office. It would be easy enough to check to see if Whitney had indeed called her, and using her cell phone records, they could possibly figure out Rayna’s location when she’d talked to her friend. Court was betting it hadn’t been on Rayna’s walk back from the barn. It had been while she was escaping from the scene of the shooting.
“This waitress claims she saw me shoot your father?” Rayna asked.
He hated that he couldn’t answer yes to that, but Court couldn’t. “She was in the kitchen when the actual shot was fired. But the bullet came from the park directly behind the sheriff’s office parking lot. The very parking lot where you were right before the attack.”
Judging from her repeated flat look, Rayna was about to deny that, so Court took out his phone and opened the photo. “The waitress took that picture of you.”
Court didn’t go closer to her with the phone, but Rayna stood. Not easily. She continued to clutch her side and blew out some short, rough breaths. However, she shook her head the moment her attention landed on the grainy shot of the woman in a red dress. A woman with hair the same color blond as Rayna’s.
“That’s not me,” she insisted. “I don’t have a dress that color. And besides, I wasn’t there.”
This was a very frustrating conversation, but thankfully he had more. He tapped the car that was just up the street from the woman in the photo. “That’s your car, your license plate.”
With her forehead bunched up, Rayna snatched the phone from him and had a closer look. “That’s not my car. I’ve been home all morning.” Her gaze flew to his, and now there was some venom in her eyes. “You’re trying to set me up.” She groaned and practically threw his phone at him. “Haven’t you McCalls already done enough to me without adding this?”
Court caught his phone, but he had to answer her through clenched teeth. “We haven’t done anything.”
She laughed, but there wasn’t a trace of humor in it. “Right. Remember Bobby Joe,” she spat out. “Or did you forget about him?”
Bobby Joe Hawley. No, Court hadn’t forgotten. Obviously, neither had Rayna.
“Three years ago, your father tried to pin Bobby Joe’s murder on me,” Rayna continued. “It didn’t work. A jury acquitted me.”
He couldn’t deny the acquittal. “Being found not guilty isn’t the same as being innocent.”
Something that ate away at him. Because the evidence had been there. Bobby Joe’s blood in Rayna’s house. Blood that she’d tried to clean up. There’d also been the knife found in her barn. It’d had Bobby Joe’s blood on it, too. What was missing were Rayna’s prints. Ditto for the body. They’d never found it, but Rayna could have hidden it along with wiping her prints from the murder weapon.
The jury hadn’t seen it that way though.
Possibly because they hadn’t been able to look past one other piece of evidence. Bobby Joe had assaulted Rayna on several occasions, both while they’d been together and after their breakup when she’d gotten a restraining order against him. In her mind, she probably thought that was justification to kill him. And equal justification to now go after Court’s father, who’d been sheriff at the time. Warren had been the one to press for Rayna’s arrest and trial. After that, his father had retired. But Rayna could have been holding a serious grudge against him all this time.
She’d certainly held one against Court.
He heard the sound of the vehicle pulling up in front of Rayna’s house and knew it was Egan before he glanced out the still-open door. He also knew Egan wouldn’t be pleased. And he was right. His brother was sporting a scowl when he got out of the cruiser and started for the door.
Egan was only two years older than Court, but he definitely had that “big brother I’m in charge” air about him. Egan had somehow managed to have that even when he’d still been a deputy. Folks liked to joke that he could kick your butt even before you’d known it was kicked.
“If you think Egan is going to let you walk, think again,” Court warned her.
“I won’t let him railroad me,” she insisted, aiming another scowl at Court. “I won’t let you do it, either. It doesn’t matter that we have a history together. That history gives you no right to pull some stunt like this.”
They had a history all right. Filled with both good and bad memories. They’d been high school sweethearts, but that “young love” was significantly overshadowed by the bad blood that was between them now.
Egan stepped into the house, putting his hands on his hips, and made a sweeping glance around the room before his attention landed on Court. “Please tell me you’re not responsible for any of this.”
“I’m not.” At least Court hoped he wasn’t, but it was possible he’d added some to the damage when he tackled her. “Rayna said someone broke in.”
Court figured his brother was also going to have a hard time believing that. It did seem too much of a coincidence that his father would be shot and Rayna would have a break-in around the same time.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Egan said to him in a rough whisper.
Court was certain he’d hear more of that later, but he had a darn good reason for being here. “I didn’t want her to escape.”
“And I thought he’d come here to kill me,” Rayna countered. “I pulled a gun on him.” She swallowed hard. “Things didn’t go well after that.”
Egan huffed and grumbled something that Court didn’t catch before he took out his phone and texted someone
“Court didn’t do any of the damage in this room,” Rayna added. “It happened when an intruder attacked me.”
That only tightened Egan’s mouth even more before he shifted his gaze to Rayna. “An ambulance is on the way. How bad are you hurt?” he asked and put his phone back in his pocket.
She waved it off, wincing again while she did that. Yeah, she was hurt. But Court thought Egan was missing what was really important here.
“She shot Dad,” Court reminded Egan. “We have the picture, remember?” Though he knew there was no way his brother could have forgotten that. “It’s proof she was there. Proof that she shot him.”
“No, it’s not.” Egan groaned, scrubbed his hand over his face. “I think someone tried to set Rayna up.”
Court opened his mouth to say that wasn’t true. But then, Egan took out his own phone and showed him a picture.
“A few minutes after you stormed out of the hospital,” Egan continued, “Eldon Cooper, the clerk at the hardware store, found this.”
“This” was a blond-haired woman wearing a red dress. An identical dress to the one in the photo the waitress had taken. But this one had one big difference from the first picture.
In this one, the woman was dead.
Chapter Two
Rayna slowly walked toward Egan so she could see the photograph that had caused Court to go stiff. It had caused him to mumble some profanity, too, and Rayna soon knew why.
The woman in the photograph had been shot in the head.
There was blood. Her body was limp, and her lifeless eyes were fixed in a permanent blank stare at the sky.
Rayna dropped back a step, an icy chill going through her. Because Court had been right. The woman did look like her. The one in the first picture did anyway. The second photo was much clearer, and while it wasn’t a perfect match, the dead woman looked enough like her to be a relative. But Rayna knew she didn’t have any living relatives.
“Someone killed her because of me?” she whispered.
Neither Court nor Egan denied it.
She felt the tears threaten. The panic, too. But Rayna forced herself not to give in to either of them. Not in front of Court anyway. Later, she could have a cry, tend to her wounds and try to figure out what the heck was going on.
“Who is she?” Rayna asked.
“We don’t have an ID on her yet, but we will soon. After the medical examiner’s had a look at her, then we’ll search for any ID. If there isn’t any on her body or in the car, we’ll run her prints.”
It was so hard for Rayna to think with her head hurting, but she forced herself to try to figure this out. “Why would someone go to all the trouble of having a look-alike and then leave a car behind with bogus plates?”
Egan shrugged again. “It goes back to someone setting you up.” He sounded a little skeptical about that though. “Unless you hired the woman in that photo to pose as you. You could have gotten spooked when something went wrong and left the car.”
Even though she’d braced herself to have more accusations tossed at her, that still stung. It always did. Because this accusation went beyond just hiring an impostor. He was almost certainly implying that she had something to do with the woman’s death, too.
“No. I didn’t hire her,” Rayna managed to say though her throat had clamped shut. “And I didn’t shoot your father. I haven’t been in town in weeks, and that wasn’t my car parked near the sheriff’s office.”
Egan nodded, glanced at Court. “She’s right about the car. The plates are fake. I had one of the deputies go out and take a look at it. It’s still parked up the street from the office. Someone painted over the numbers so that it matched the plates on Rayna’s vehicle.”
Again, Egan was making it sound as if she had something to do with that. Good grief. Why was she always having to defend herself when it came to the McCalls?
Of course, she knew the answer.
She’d made her own bed when it’d come to Bobby Joe. She had stayed with him even after he’d hit her and called her every name in the book. She had let him rob her of her confidence. Her dignity.
And nearly her life.
But Egan and Court—and their father—hadn’t seen things that way. Bobby Joe had kept the abuse hidden. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, and very few people in town had been on her side when Warren McCall had arrested her for Bobby Joe’s murder.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree—again,” Rayna added. “I didn’t have anything to do with this. And why would I? If I were going to shoot anyone, why would I send in a look-alike? Why would I pick a spot like Main Street, which is practically on the doorstep of a building filled with cowboy cops?”
Egan shrugged. “Maybe to make us believe you’re innocent and knew nothing about it.”
“I am innocent,” she practically yelled. Rayna stopped though, and peered at the mess in the living room. “But maybe my intruder is behind what happened in town and what happened to that woman, as well. He could have arranged to have your father shot, killed her and then could have come out here to attack me. His prints could be on the lamp. It’s what he used to bash me over the head.”
Court looked at her, and for a split second, she thought she saw some sympathy in his intense gray eyes. It was gone as quickly as it’d come, and he stood there, waiting. Maybe for an explanation that would cause all of this to make sense. But she couldn’t give him that.
Rayna huffed. “If I was going to do something to fake an assault, I wouldn’t have hit myself that hard on my head or cracked my ribs. And I wouldn’t have broken my grandmother’s lamp.”
It sickened her to see it shattered like that. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t a huge deal, but it felt like one to her. It was one of the few things she had left of her gran. And now it was gone—much like what little peace of mind she’d managed to regain over the past year.
“Who do you think would have done something like this?” Court asked, tipping his head toward the living room.
“Bobby Joe,” she answered without thinking. She knew it would get huffs and eye rolls from them, and it did. “You think he’s dead, that I killed him. But I know I didn’t. So, that means he could still be out there.”
Court didn’t repeat his huff, but she could tell he wanted to. “So, you think Bobby Joe set you up for my father’s shooting and then came out here and attacked you? If he’s really aliv
e, why would he wait three years to do that?”
Rayna gave it some thought and didn’t have an answer. However, she wouldn’t put it past Bobby Joe. At the end of their relationship, he’d threatened to kill her. Maybe this was his way of doing that. Bobby Joe could be toying with her while also getting back at Warren McCall, who hadn’t managed to get her convicted of murder.
But there was something else. A piece that didn’t seem to fit.
“Tell me about the waitress,” Rayna insisted. “Who was she, and why did she take the picture of the woman in the parking lot?”
“Her name is Janet Bolin,” Court answered. “She said she took the photo because she thought you...or rather the woman...was acting strange.”
Egan groaned. Probably because he was agreeing with her theory of an ill-fitting puzzle piece. “I’ll get a CSI team out here to process the place.” He pressed a button on his phone and went onto the porch to make the call.
“You know this waitress?” Rayna asked Court.
He shook his head. “She’s new, has only been working there a week or so, but I’ve seen her around. We’ll bring her in for questioning.”
Good. Because it meant Rayna was finally making some headway in convincing Court that she hadn’t fired that shot or had anything to do with that woman’s death.
She hesitated before asking her next question. “How’s your father?” Warren was a touchy subject for both of them.
A muscle flickered in Court’s jaw. “He’s out of surgery but still unconscious. We don’t know just how bad the damage is yet.”
He might have added more, might, but the sound outside stopped him. Sirens. They were from the ambulance that was coming up the road. Since her house was the only one out here, they were here for her.
“I don’t want an ambulance,” she insisted. “I’ll go to the hospital on my own.” And it wouldn’t be to the one in McCall Canyon. She would drive into nearby San Antonio.
“That’s not a very smart thing to do.” No pause for Court that time. “We’re not sure what’s going on here. Plus, your ribs could be broken. You don’t need to be driving if they are.”
Cowboy Blues Page 5
