Last Light (12 page)

Roscoe’s eyes narrowed. He was not a man you said no to. Especially not after he’d just handed you the election. But if Drew was going to do this job, he was going to do right by the people of this county. All of the people, not just the Blackwells.

He keyed his radio and called dispatch. “I need you to send all our free units to the Mannings’ trailer. Bring in both boys for questioning. And get me the county prosecutor. I’m going to need some warrants.”

“Fine,” Roscoe said. “You just make sure you seal this up good and tight—and fast. Because folks around here, they won’t stand idle while baby killers walk their streets, believe you me. You and the justice system don’t handle this, they sure as hell will.”

“That’s not the way and you know it. Folks here respect you. They won’t take justice into their own hands unless you tell them to.”

“Then you’d better give me a damn good reason not to. Understand, Sheriff?”

Drew did not like the older man’s tone, not at all. Maybe Roscoe Blackwell had gotten him elected, but he was elected and by God he was going to do the job the way he saw fit. He leaned forward into Roscoe’s space. “I understand this is a crime scene and you need to let my people do our jobs. Now, take your boy home and wait for me there. I’ll need to get formal statements from you both.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to have a talk with the Manning brothers. After I have all the facts I can rustle up from the scene, the coroner, Ronnie Powell, and God willing, the Martin boy. This kind of case can’t be rushed and you’re just going to have to wait your turn, Roscoe.”

Roscoe turned as Caleb wheeled his bike past the two men. “Okay. We’ll do it your way. For now. But you’d better move fast, Saylor. I’m not a patient man.”

“Then maybe you’d best let me get on with my job, Mr. Blackwell.”

Roscoe grabbed Caleb’s bike and with one hand tossed it into the back of the pickup. “Get in the truck, Caleb. Good God, you’re a mess. Did you wet your pants? You ride in the back.” He marched around the cab to the driver’s side, barely waiting for Caleb to scramble into the truck bed before starting the engine and screeching away, raising a cloud of dust.

Drew stared after them. Bad enough he had to handle the first mass murder in the history of Blackwell County, but now he had to worry about a possible lynch mob and frontier justice forcing him to rush his investigation.

He glanced back at the house. It looked different somehow. Despite the bright sun beating down on it and all the lights still shining from the inside, it was as if the house was shrouded by shadows…or ghosts.

He shuddered, shaking off the feeling he was being watched and turned to greet the coroner as he drove up in his hearse.

DAVID MADE CERTAIN
he stayed close to TK as the sheriff called his deputy and escorted them to the parking lot. Not that he was worried about her defending herself—Sheriff Blackwell had taken control of the situation before the natives could get restless. But the way she’d snapped so quickly into combat mode, he’d seen too many guys do that both on and off the battlefield, addicts chasing an adrenaline fix, unable to stop once they’d started.

The Sweetbriar’s parking lot was filled with vehicles, their colors morphed by the buzzing neon light above them. A few locals looked on from the shadows as Blackwell stood between the three men and David and TK.

“You three, sit your asses down there on the curb,” he ordered the drunk men.

The kid, the drunkest of the three, was wavering as if debating whether to throw up or fall down. Finally, he settled for plopping down to the ground, resting his head in his hands. The oldest edged a belligerent glance at TK. “She started it. Don’t see why—”

“Button it,” Blackwell ordered, one hand on the butt of his gun. “Think I didn’t see you push Junior?”

“Not our fault bitch got no sense of humor,” the other man said even as he sank down to the curb.

TK tensed beside David and he grabbed her arm, stopping her lunge forward.

“Who you calling a bitch?” she demanded.

Blackwell turned his attention on them. “These boys might have started things, but you could have done some serious damage young lady.”

“Then it’s to her credit that she didn’t,” David put in before TK could say anything. Her hands were raised at chest level, ready to strike, muscles buzzing with the urge to fight.

Blackwell frowned at David’s voice but nodded at his words. “Which is why I’m taking you all over to the station.”

One of the ranch hands didn’t like the idea. He got up halfway to his feet. “But Sheriff, you—”

Blackwell shoved the man down. “I can do as I damn well please. Besides, you all need time to calm down, sober up, sleep it off. Then we’ll decide if any charges are being filed.”

The man blinked, finally nodded. Blackwell turned to David and TK. “And how about you two? Want to add resisting arrest? Force my hand as far as charging you?”

David nudged TK with his hip, a silent warning. “No, sir,” he answered for both of them. “Whatever you need.”

“What I need is some peace and quiet, but don’t see as I’ll be getting it any time soon.” A van with the sheriff’s department insignia pulled up, two deputies in the front seat. “Let’s go.”

“You okay?” David asked as they waited their turn to be escorted into the van.

“I’m fine,” TK muttered. “I never lost control.”

“You sure as hell lost something,” he replied.

Her lips tightened. “I can handle it.”

A deputy separated them before he could challenge her.

Half an hour later after surrendering their possessions, being searched for weapons—turned out the cowboys were carrying a small arsenal between them, it was lucky for him and TK that they’d been too drunk to think of escalating the fight—all five of them were deposited in the holding area, a large three-sided room that faced the processing desk and was monitored by two deputies. They were handcuffed to railings that ran along the wall above mesh metal benches.

“What about our phone call?” David asked.

“It’s coming. Once the sheriff decides what charges are being filed,” a deputy told them. “I were you, I’d sit tight and not make any trouble. Best way to keep the sheriff happy.”

TK slumped against the concrete wall behind the bench she was handcuffed to. She eyed the trio from the Sweetbriar, cuffed to the bench farthest from her and David. “Don’t let me fall asleep.”

He glanced across the holding area at the three men. All were snoring, the youngest drooling, his head rolling almost into his friend’s lap. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about from them.”

“Not them I’m worried about.” She didn’t look at him but a shudder rattled her body. “I get nightmares. Sometimes I—”

“Wake up screaming?” He finished for her when she went silent. “In a different part of the house and you don’t know how you got there or why you’re holding a knife? It’s how mine go, at least.”

She nodded slowly. “Something like that. Yeah.”

“Okay, then you don’t let me fall asleep, either.” He shifted his weight down the bench toward the corner they shared, giving her room to lean against him. Not for intimacy, although it felt good, another warm body touching his. But it also brought their heads close enough together that they could speak without being overheard. “What do you want to talk about?”

“What made you become a reporter? Why not a lawyer or something if your mom wanted you to help get your dad out of prison?”

He snorted at that. “Wow. No foreplay with you, right to the rough stuff.”

“You can take it, tough guy,” she teased.

He wished he could hear the emotion in her voice—her body posture said she was interested, but he sensed she was also still probing his defenses, hadn’t decided yet if she trusted him. “Guess you could say I was running. At the time, when I got that scholarship, my ticket out of here, I was so damn angry, tired of being lied to my entire life that I thought I was running to something. A new life. The truth. A place where I could find answers.”

She arched an eyebrow. “So you became a reporter?”

“Don’t laugh. I had so many questions—all my life I always had questions. When I was little, my only answers were my mom’s. I believed her when she said Michael Manning was innocent. I’d come home everyday from school battered and bloodied, fighting for her and the truth she gave me.”

“Until you got old enough to wonder if she was lying.”

“After that, I didn’t believe in anything. For a long, long time. When I went to college, I thought I was running to something, to who I was meant to be. But I was running away. Ran all the way to Baltimore, then to Afghanistan and a war that was ending without answering anything about why it really started in the first place.”

He sighed, almost forgetting that he was talking to someone else. He’d never admitted half this stuff, not even to himself—but he’d also never been half-drunk, handcuffed to a bench with a pretty girl as a captive audience. “All those miles and years. I still just wanted the truth. To ask a question and be able to believe in the answer.”

There was a long pause while she considered that. She rested her hand on his arm, nothing sexual, simply comforting. “Maybe you should have become an accountant? Something where there are answers.”

“Or maybe I need to ask different questions. I don’t know anymore.”

“Where will you go after this? I mean, after your mom—”

“My old editor in Baltimore started an online news service devoted to crime. Not the flash-in-the-pan stories of the crime beat, but real, in-depth stuff. Invited me to join him.”

“While your father stays here in prison?” He loved the way her frown made her eyebrows come together in a small V. “Isn’t that still running away? Maybe your mother was right. Maybe, even if your father really is guilty, there’s a truth you still need to face. Right here.”

LUCY FELL ASLEEP
dreaming of the Martin crime scene. There was something wrong with the reports, something even her unconscious mind couldn’t quite put a name to...

Her phone woke her. Adrenaline jangling through her, she sat up, reaching for her weapon, scouring the room for hidden danger.

The phone rang again. The real phone, the one with a cord and an old-fashioned blaring bell. “Hello?”

“Ms. Guardino? This is the front desk. We have a call for you from a David Ruiz. Okay to put him through?”

David? Why was he calling at—she glanced at the clock—five-eleven in the morning? “Yes. Put him through.”

“Sorry,” he said once they were connected. “They wouldn’t let us call long distance to your cell, so had to call the hotel. Can you come get us?”

“Where are you? The Sweetbriar? What happened?”

“Um, no. We left there hours ago. We’re, uh, actually, we’re just across the street from you. In jail.”

“You and TK—”

“Were arrested. Along with a couple of locals. They started it and the sheriff is dropping the charges but not until we pay a fine for disturbing the peace. So could you?”

She blew out her breath. What the hell? This was exactly why she did not want to work with amateurs. “I’m on my way.”

Hoping to get a handle on her anger, she took her time in the shower before changing into a sleeveless cotton top, slacks, and Megan’s boots. On her way out through the lobby, she ran into the talkative clerk who checked them in and another woman setting out pastries for the free breakfast.

“Any coffee ready?” Lucy asked.

“Sure thing, sugar.” The clerks exchanged a glance. “Couldn’t help but hearing—your friend, she’s got quite the temper, hasn’t she?”

The second clerk gave Lucy a wide smile that was more fake than her two-inch-long glittered nails. “Is she one of those women who just don’t like men? I’m guessing she isn’t used to our Southern hospitality.”

“What did you hear?” Lucy asked, sipping from the foam cup the first clerk handed her. She’d hear TK and David’s side of things soon enough, and it’d be nice to compare it to the natives’ perspective.

“Well, now. I heard from Bobby Su who was there that three of the Blackwell hands took a shine to your little friend, but when Junior Barstow screwed up his courage to ask her to dance, she attacked him.” Her eyes went so wide that flakes of mascara dropped onto her cheeks. “Hit him with a pool cue for just being nice and trying to make her feel welcome and then went after the other two.”

“We got a strict family-friendly policy here,” the first clerk added. “If you all are going to be causing trouble, you can just pack your bags and leave right now.”

The two clerks nodded in agreement. Lucy slid her credentials identifying her as a retired federal agent from her bag. They lacked any true power but still looked damned impressive to the uninitiated.

“We’re here on assignment,” she said, purposely taking care not to falsely identify herself as a law enforcement officer. “Sheriff Blackwell is assisting us in our investigation. If he signs off on Ms. O’Connor’s behavior last night, will that suffice?”

They pursed their lips, each waiting for the other to take charge. Lucy took advantage of their silence to top off her coffee and grab a chocolate donut.

“I thank you for your cooperation, ladies. It will be duly noted in our report. Have a great day.”

Leaving the gawking clerks behind, she went out the front door and got into the Tahoe. As she adjusted the rearview mirror, she realized she was smiling. Taking on three men just to see if she could. If Nick were here, he’d say TK reminded him of Lucy back when he’d first met her and she’d been trying to prove herself to the world.

Good thing Nick wasn’t here. Although she’d definitely need to channel him if she was going to make nice with the sheriff. Nick could sweet-talk Santa Claus into giving up candy canes and going on a diet.