Don't Mess With Texas (13 page)

“Yeah, but the moment his good-cop ass spotted me at the crime scene, he had two of his minions chase me off.”

Dallas knew Tony would figure out he’d been the one to send Austin there. He also knew Tony would give him hell for it later. Dallas felt the crease in his forehead pull. He dreaded that conversation, but not enough that he regretted his actions. He wasn’t above upsetting his brother to clear Nance. And while Tony would get angry, he knew if the shoe was on the other foot, his brother would do the same.

“So you didn’t get anything?” Dallas asked, his optimism waning.

“Not anything concrete, but it looks suspicious. They aren’t releasing what type of gun was used yet. But when Detective Shane, the cop who arrested Nance, showed up, he and your brother had words. Whatever Tony said to
Shane got him ticked. I thought the two were going to go to blows.”

“It must be the same MO,” Dallas said. “I’ll bet Tony pointed that out to Shane and he got hot under the collar.”

“That’s what I suspected, too. But damn it, if we knew for sure, we might be able to use that right now and get the DA to drop the charges against Nance.”

“If it’s really the same MO, Tony will speak up,” Dallas said.

“To who? Shane? What good is that going to do? You think he’ll admit at this point he arrested the wrong suspect?”

“If I ask Tony, he might give me something.” Dallas knew he was grasping at straws. Tony was a by-the-book cop. “Do me a favor. Find Nance, see if he has an alibi for tonight.”

“I already have,” Austin said. “He’s been home. The only person there has been his grandmother, asleep.”

“Damn,” Dallas said.

Tony stared at the body of the young store clerk as the coroners loaded it on the stretcher. For a homicide detective, death was a constant. But one or two a month he could deal with. Two a night, and two more victims possibly to follow, well… it would get to anyone. The ugliness of it filled his chest and he had to look away.

Wanting to wash the image from his head, he envisioned LeAnn… imagined how her soft hair shifted back and forth on her shoulders, the way she tilted her head slightly to the side when she listened to someone. She’d always been a good listener. Probably because she cared more than the average person.

Did she still care about him?

He’d noted that touch of interest in her eyes when she looked at him. Interest that, given the right conditions, he could turn to passion. However, he hadn’t missed the pain in her soft green eyes. LeAnn was still hurting. That didn’t surprise him. If he wasn’t careful, he could go back there himself, to that emotional place where pain and guilt made it hard to breathe. A place where he almost felt losing LeAnn was his cross to bear. But he didn’t want to go back there. He wanted to live life and, damn it to hell and back, but he wanted to live it with LeAnn. He wasn’t giving up on them.

But could he convince LeAnn not to give up on them?

“Hey.” Rick Clark, his friend and partner, joined Tony. “What the hell is it with tonight?”

“Tell me and we’ll both know.” Tony forced himself to look back at the body being moved out of the store.

“Shit,” Clark said as the body passed by them. “How old was that kid?”

“Twenty-one,” Tony muttered. “Just getting started.”

“Did I hear there was another vic?”

“Yeah, an older woman. Shot in the chest. Ambulance left with her about thirty minutes ago.”

“Damn. How’s she holding up?”

“Not good,” Tony said. “They don’t think she’s going to make it. She came to buy milk for her grandkids and it’s probably going to cost her her life.”

Clark looked around. “Cameras?”

Tony shook his head. “Have we ever gotten that fucking lucky?”

“Not working, huh?” Clark guessed correctly. Silence filled the room and then a woman screamed out front.
No doubt it was a family member of the vic. They both gazed through the glass to the woman sobbing on a cop’s shoulder. “You ever think about quitting this gig?” Clark asked.

“Every time I’m called to a case,” Tony said. But when he solved a case, he changed his mind. He loved that he caught the bad guys.

“I saw Detective Shane outside,” Clark said, following Tony to the counter.

“And he can stay out there,” Tony snapped.

“I heard you two nearly came to blows. What happened?”

Tony ran a hand through his hair. “A robbery took place several months back. Similar MO, black kid of average height and build and, according to the eyewitness, the same type of gun was used, only no one was shot. Dallas’s PI firm is handling the case. He really believes the kid Shane fingered for it is innocent.”

“Is the kid still locked up?”

“No,” Tony said. “He’s out on bail, but the moment I brought up the MO being similar, Shane accused me of trying to help Dallas.”

Clark cut Tony an accusing look. “Are you?”

“Hell, no!” Tony snapped. “But neither do I want to see an innocent kid go to jail.”

“I agree, but no cop wants a damn PI nosing around his case. Hell, I’d be pissed, too.”

“I know.” Tony glanced at the empty cash register and the baseball bat. “Looks like the kid tried to overtake the perp.”

“And got himself killed.” Clark leaned over the counter, looking at the blood pooled behind it. “From the blood
splatter I’d say he was close to the counter when he took the bullet.”

Tony walked around the counter and knelt down. “There’s blood on the end of the bat and it wasn’t near the blood pool that appears to be our vic’s. The kid might have gotten in a hit before he got himself shot. Which means this really could be the same perp as the other robbery, and he only shot this time because he was provoked. Make sure CSU takes in the bat.”

Clark nodded. They moved around a few minutes, figuring out how the crime went down. After taking notes, Clark asked, “Any news on the Ellen Wise chick?”

“She’s going to make it,” Tony said.

“You talk to her yet?” Rick asked.

“Doctors won’t let us in until tomorrow.”

“But it looks like I’m in the money, right?”

Tony looked up, confused. “Huh?”

“You know, the bet we took on the scene. If the suspect was guilty or not. Your brother put twenty on Blondie being guilty.”

“He bet on her being guilty?” Tony asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” Rick said, and chuckled. “That was before she puked on him.”

Tony recalled his own initial reaction to Nikki Hunt and Dallas’s accusation that he was like their old man and being judgmental. “You didn’t think she was guilty?” Tony asked.

“I thought she was guilty as sin, but you make more if you take the long shot. I’m in the money, right?”

“I wouldn’t count your money, but yeah, there’s reasonable doubt.” Tony recalled how Dallas had already grown attached to Nikki Hunt. For his brother’s sake,
Tony hoped reasonable doubt was enough. This was one bet that he figured his brother wouldn’t mind losing.

“I’ll stay if you need me,” Nikki told Mrs. Wise a couple of hours later, after one of the nurses had informed them that Ellen was doing great.

“You’ve been good to stay as long as you have. And with everything that happened, too. Please. Go get some rest. Ellen’s father is going to relieve me in a couple of hours.” She gave Nikki a hug. “My baby is going to be just fine.”

Nikki pulled away, and when she saw tears of joy in Mrs. Wise’s eyes, she got a little weepy, too. “I’ll call in the morning.”

“You do that,” Mrs. Wise said.

Nikki went back to her seat for her purse. Dallas followed her out of the waiting room. Several times she’d told him he could leave. He shrugged and said he didn’t have anything better to do and continued to read magazines.

As Nikki stepped through door, she opened her purse to look for her keys. She hadn’t even gotten her hand past her wallet when she remembered.

Remembered she hadn’t driven to the hospital.

Remembered why she hadn’t driven to the hospital—because Jack had been found dead in her trunk.

Jack was dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

Oh, and her car had been confiscated.

As had her clothes, down to her underwear.

Glancing downward, past the girls that hung freer than normal, she wiggled her toes in the rubber-footed hospital-quality socks and tried to keep the image of a dead Jack in her trunk from flashing in her head.

It didn’t work.

The picture of him curled up, eyes open, staring at nothing, filled her head. She swallowed and slammed her eyes shut.

Go away. Go away
.

“You okay?”

Drawing in a pound of oxygen, she opened her eyes and raised her head. She half-expected Dallas to be smirking because he probably knew she’d forgotten she didn’t have a car and had been looking for keys. Half-expected him to have a touch of sarcasm in his blue eyes because, face it, she had told him to go home several times.

She blinked. No smirk. No sarcasm.

He had that look again, the knight-in-shining-armor look.

“I’m fine,” she lied.

“I’ll be happy to drive you home.” His deep baritone filled her head and chased away the flashes of a dead Jack in her trunk.

She would have turned him down. Seriously, she would have in a second. But considering she didn’t have a dime to her name, and considering she wasn’t even sure taxis worked this late in her small town—and if they did come, would they accept overdrawn debit cards as payment? Considering all this, she bit down on her lip and did what she had to do.

“I’d appreciate a ride,” she forced herself to say.

A
T MIDNIGHT, AFTER
her twelve-hour shift was over, LeAnn walked into the four-bedroom, single-story, white brick residence she used to call a home. Now it was just a two-thousand-square-foot structure. A place she slept, a place she drank coffee by the potful and nuked frozen dinners, a place for her to hide out.

Oddly enough, tonight was the first time she hadn’t longed to run here and hide. The first time in forever that LeAnn hadn’t wanted to leave work.

It wasn’t about a sudden interest in her career, either. It was about Tony. She’d driven around the hospital’s parking lot for ten minutes, searching for his car. She hadn’t seen it. Why did she want to see him? Didn’t it hurt too much? If one was on a diet, you didn’t go hang out at a candy store, did you?

Nevertheless, she’d gone to check on Nikki Hunt before she’d left. The ER nurse had told her Nikki and her posse had moved up to intensive care where Nikki’s friend was still listed as critical, but was now expected to pull through.

LeAnn was happy that Nikki’s friend was okay. LeAnn
knew too well how it felt to lose a loved one. She found herself hoping everything went okay with the whole murder charge. Surely, Tony would uncover the truth, and the suspicions about Nikki would go away.

Closing the door and hanging her keys on the hook, she was struck by a surprise realization. Today was the first time she felt almost normal. Even with the pain of seeing Tony, reminded of all she’d lost, she’d managed to think about something and someone besides her own loss and grief. Was she finally on the road to recovery?

Dropping her purse, she walked past the living room, moved into the hall and stood in front of the door she hadn’t been able to walk into for over nine months now. She reached for the knob but couldn’t do it. Instead, she darted into the master suite.

Unfortunately, Tony’s presence must have followed her home. She could see him stretched out on the king-size bed, looking all too sexy. In the snapshot appearing in her mind, he was shirtless and the bedcovers came low to his waist. Then the image shifted, and in this image he was still shirtless, but on his chest was their precious six-week-old daughter, Emily.

Tears filled LeAnn’s eyes. She backed up against the bedroom wall and slid down onto the carpet, where she curled up in a ball and let herself weep.

She might be on the road to recovery, but she obviously still had a long way to go.

Dallas could tell Nikki was exhausted—mostly because she didn’t say a word when they left the hospital—and he debated whether or not to broach the subject of Jack and Ellen Wise. But that was his job.

The night temperature, still running in the high eighties, made the walk to his car seem longer. Dallas opened the passenger door of his previously owned but new to him, red 2008 Ford Mustang GT. It had been the one luxury he allowed himself after he’d gotten out of prison. At the time, he’d been pretty sure he’d given up women and decided he needed something sexy in his life. Turned out, celibacy behind prison walls was a lot easier than outside them.

“Oh, just a second.” He tossed a week’s worth of fast-food bags into the backseat.

“Nice ride,” she said when he stepped back.

“You into Mustangs?” he asked, not seeing her as a woman who would be. But a guy could always dream.

She made a cute face. “Sorry. I wouldn’t know one if it followed me home and wanted to be fed. I just know it looks sporty and it’s red. So I assume it’s nice.”