Texas and Tarantulas (2 page)

“You’re just trying to make me mad, right?” Diego asked so earnestly, Trent couldn’t help but be honest.

“Sure, or at least get a rise out of you. It’s what I do.” He added in his best Batman imitation, “Because it’s not what I am underneath my Stetson, it’s what I do that defines me.”

Joe groaned. “God, stop fucking up the Batman quotes.”

“Go get ready, both of you. I’ll clean up in here.” Trent was pleased with his poking and teasing. Even when he wasn’t in the mood to play the annoying younger brother, he did it. Joe expected it of him, and it stopped Trent from thinking about things he didn’t want to think about.

He had the dishwasher loaded and the kitchen surfaces cleaned off by the time Joe and Diego returned, both freshly showered and looking ready to face the day.

“I gotta call the insurance company,” Joe said immediately. “Should have done so last night, but I was worn out.”

Trent tipped his chin at Diego. “Yeah, I saw just how worn out you were, remember?”

Joe might have even blushed at that. He tugged on the brim of his hat. “You need to get laid.”

“I keep saying that, and yet it hasn’t happened. I can’t seem to pull a boyfriend out of thin air like you did.” Trent kept back the pressing jealousy he felt. He wanted Joe to be happy and have someone. It just hurt that Trent didn’t. “And I can’t go looking for a fuck any time soon, not with the barn needing rebuilding and the possibility of psychotic shifters popping up.”

“After the barn’s up again,” Joe offered expectantly.

Trent cocked a hip and put a hand on it. “You trying to get rid of me, bub?”

Joe nodded.

Trent gave his best put-upon sigh. “Fine, fine. If I must, I’ll go away for a few days and have fun. But I’m going under duress.”

“You’re so full of it,” Diego muttered, a slight smile on his face.

Trent high-fived him. “Yay! You insulted me, sort of.”

“Sort of?” Diego asked.

“It wasn’t much of an insult, but you get points for trying.” Trent patted his back.

“You gotta be meaner than that or Trent’ll think you don’t like him,” Joe added.

Trent beamed at them both. “I
am
a glutton for punishment.” Then he let himself be wicked, and added, “Not like a certain person in this room. You two are loud. Did I tell you that when I was staying here?” Since Joe looked like he was ready for a fight with him, Trent temporized his teasing. “To each his own, of course. I’m just saying… I don’t think I could go for someone spanking me. I’d try to kill him, so go, you two! Y’all are all kinky and perfect for each other.”

“Trent, shut up,” Joe growled.

Well, he
had
kind of overstepped there. “Too much coffee this morning. Speaking of which…” He left them there while he strolled to the bathroom.

On his way, he saw the femur. The sight of it stopped him in his tracks. Small, thin, pitted, and grayed with age, the femur needed to be called in to Sheriff Kenzie. The shifters that had attacked them had lugged that bone up to the porch, and there was a good chance the rest of the skeleton was somewhere on the ranch.

Looking at the bone gave Trent a distinctly uncomfortable feeling. Diego had remarked that it probably had come from a female, and every time Trent even thought of the bone, he wondered if the bone belonged to his mother.

He heard footsteps and would have gone on to the bathroom, but knew he’d been caught gawking.

“We can call Kenzie today,” Joe said. “Before the insurance company, if you want. I don’t think it’s from her, though.”

Her being their mother, who’d disappeared on them over twenty-six years ago.

Trent shook his head. “Nah. Call the insurance agent first. Got to get the barn taken care of. Whoever this is, they’ve been dead a long time. Won’t hurt to wait a little while longer before anything’s done about it.” With that, Trent forced himself to walk away.

In the bathroom, he relieved his bladder then flushed the toilet. At the sink, he looked himself over in the mirror. He’d always looked a lot like their mom, though not really in build. They had the same sandy blond hair, and were both on the short side. Five-seven wasn’t super-short for a guy—

“Yeah right.” Trent washed his hands and told himself to get his head where it needed to be. They had a long list of chores to do today and for every day in the near future.

Chapter Two

Ruby Pilickis took the glass of tea he handed her. Trent watched her drink for a second before taking a glass to her brother, Eric.

“Thanks,” Eric said. He drained the glass in three gulps. “Shit, it’s hot.”

“Yeah it is.” Trent swiped at the sweat running down his neck. “I’ll bring the pitcher out in a second. Thanks for coming over and helping us out.”

Eric nodded. He wouldn’t quite look Trent in the eye.

Well, Trent knew why. He’d like to assure Eric that he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell anyone about them jacking off together a few times as kids, but knew even bringing it up would freak the guy out. It’d been half their lifetimes ago, and it seemed Eric was the one hung up on it. Trent hardly ever even gave those days a thought.

Trent repressed the urge to poke at Eric just to unsettle him. He wasn’t
that
big a dick. He just liked to tease some people.

Definitely not Eric. Trent grabbed the pitcher and returned with it, having just enough tea left to refill Eric and Ruby’s glasses, along with Diego’s.

“Thanks,” Diego said quietly. He moved closer to Trent when Eric looked their way.

Trent wondered what was up with that. So he asked. “What’s up with you scooting closer all the sudden?”

Diego snuffled, like he was either about to sneeze or something. “Makes me nervous. And he looks at you when you aren’t aware of it.”

Trent gave an internal eye roll.
Freakin’ closet cases.
He truly did believe the ‘to each his or her own’ thing but damn, he didn’t like being a fantasy for someone who would never come out. Not that Eric was fantasizing about him. Trent wouldn’t know. What he was aware of was the fact that Eric had never gone away to college, that he’d lived his whole life in and around Uvalde, Texas. So chances were good he’d never fucked around with a guy, not other than the jacking off they’d done together so long ago.

Okay, so maybe he was the star of some of Eric’s fantasies. Now he just felt bad for the guy.

“Eh, he’s harmless,” Trent informed Diego. “You don’t have to get too close to him.”

“He asked me questions,” Diego whispered, turning a worried gaze his way. “Where was I from, when did I get here, was I going to stay. I didn’t want to talk to him.”

Trent knew Diego was uncomfortable lying, and he couldn’t exactly be honest about his past with anyone other than Joe or Trent. “Then don’t talk to him. Just, say excuse me and leave. Find me or Joe. It’s great that Eric and Ruby are helping us clear this shit out, but they aren’t necessary. Insurance company can send someone instead of us having the neighbors over.”

Before anything else was said, Sheriff Kenzie pulled down the dirt road leading from the paved road to the main house. Trent nudged Diego. “Go tell bub the sheriff’s here.”

In the two days since she’d come and taken the report about the bone, nothing much had been done. Partly because there’d been some a bad wreck that had claimed the lives of three townsfolk, and there’d been a fire and explosion thanks to a meth lab gone wrong—or more wrong. Trent liked to take a toke now and then, but meth and hard drugs… Those were totally not in his realm of acceptable shit to do.

“Maybe she’s going to tell us they’ve got a search planned now,” Tony said to no one but himself.

Or so he thought. Eric stepped up to stand beside him. “She here about that bone?”

Trent swallowed back a sarcastic reply. “I’d imagine. Ain’t done anything to get me arrested today. Now yesterday…” He trailed off and slipped into a bit of a leer.

Eric blanched and moved away from him.

Trent ignored him after that. The guy had no sense of humor and was too scared of being called queer to take a joke anyway.

Sheriff Kenzie parked and Trent waved at her. She got out of her car.

“How you doing today?” he asked her. “Come to help clear out this burnt shit so we can get a barn put up?”

Sheriff Kenzie wasn’t much older than him, but she looked like she could be his mom. The thought caused a twinge of pain in Trent’s chest.

“If I had time to help, I would. Been a rough few days.” She came over and stopped in front of him. “You don’t have any idea where that bone came from?”

Trent had already been through this with her. So had Joe. And Diego. “No, ma’am. I told you. It was just on the porch.”

“Hm.” She waved at Joe and Diego as they strode over. “Hey there. Just following up about the bone.”

“Don’t know any more than we did when you came and got it, Sheriff,” Joe drawled.

Sheriff Kenzie flapped a hand at him. “Cut it out, Joe. Call me Cheryl and stop being a jackass.”

Joe smirked at her. “You know you like the title.”

“The power,” Kenzie corrected. “Because oh my God, I am just the queen of this here county.”

“Sarcasm from our good sheriff?” Trent asked. “Why, I’d never have thought it.”

“Because you don’t know her like I do,” Joe informed him.

And damned if Cheryl didn’t blush. Diego looked very uncomfortable. Trent felt bad for the guy.

“Not cool,” Trent muttered to Joe.

Joe’s face went ruddy and he inhaled sharply. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean—”

Yeah, stop before you lie, bro.
There’d been a time when Joe slept with women, before he’d been able to be honest about who he was. Trent wasn’t surprised to learn that Cheryl had been one of those women. He did decide to shove the awkward shit out of the way and move on.

“About the bone?” he asked her. “That’s why you’re here, right?”

“Right,” she agreed brightly. Too brightly. “Right. We’re going to send it off for testing, see if there’s any DNA left it in and all that technical stuff that will take months to get results back on. Maybe even more than a year, seeing as how it’s an old bone. All the current crimes get priority. I’m still getting together people to help search your property, Joe. Just wanted you to know what was going on. Maybe in another day or two, we’ll have enough people to get started.” She pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head.

Her eyes were a pretty shade of blue, Trent noted absently, while he thought of groups of people scouring the ranch property.

“Okay. We’ll help where we can. Insurance company’s paying for the damage here, but we’re doing some of the work to help cut costs and ‘cause we’re moving faster than the insurance company is.” Joe took a drink of his tea.

There was also the matter of the policy not being the greatest and them not getting enough money out of it to have the barn built like they wanted it. Neither Joe nor Trent was going to admit to that outside of themselves and Diego.

“We might need some DNA from one of you, both of you,” Cheryl finally said after an uncomfortable moment of silence. “Just in case.”

Joe got a stubborn tilt to his jaw. “That ain’t our mom.”

“Probably not, but I’m still going to have to ask you to make arrangements with the clinic for samples,” Cheryl returned calmly. “I looked at your mom’s file, Joe. I had to, so don’t go getting all pissy. She went missing on the night of September third, nineteen eighty-eight. Your dad filed the report all proper, but since she’d taken some of her things—purse, wallet, jewelry except for her wedding rings—and there was nothing suspicious about her disappearance, there wasn’t much that could be done. It was written up as her leaving of her own will. Y’all don’t recall any fighting between your folks—?”

“What are you implying?” Trent asked with a calmness he wasn’t really feeling.

“Yeah, what?” Joe snapped, clearly not intimidated by the fact that he was losing his temper with the sheriff.

“Now, calm down,” she told them both. “She could have left because they argued. That’s all.”

“Except then why would her bones be on the ranch?” Trent wanted to cross his arms over his chest so bad, but he didn’t. “Seems like you’re trying to put the blame on Dad.”

Cheryl frowned. “You two are pricklier than a pair of bickering porcupines. I’m just trying to do my job, and that means asking questions. Do either of you know if your mom is still alive? Ever hear from her after she left?”

Trent didn’t wait for Joe to answer. “No. No we didn’t. I Googled her and paid for background checks. Never got a single hit. But I know Dad didn’t kill her.”

“Anyone work on the ranch back then?” Cheryl asked. “There’s nothing in the report about that.”

Trent tried to remember.

Joe answered instead. “Couple of guys. Morris and Christ… I can see if there’s any of their employment records left here. Dad let ’em go not long after Mom left. I don’t recall if he kept paperwork on them or what. I was only about twelve, I reckon. Wasn’t into shit like that. Still hate it.”

“If you could check, that’d be great.” Cheryl lowered her glasses back down. “Stop getting your hackles up, too. I’m just doing my job. Oh, and there’s a guy in Uvalde asking about y’all. Some scientist or zoologist guy wanting to know about the wolf, really. I expect he’ll show up out here today.”

“Great,” Joe muttered. “Fuckin’ great. Thanks for the head’s up.”

“Sure.” Cheryl took a step back. “I’ll call with the clinic info.”

Joe and Trent both grunted.

Neither of them brought up the bone again.

* * * *

Two hours later, Trent glanced up when he heard another vehicle coming to the house. He spotted a small, ugly green car bouncing down the road. “Gotta be the scientist-zoologist dude,” he said, whacking Joe’s shoulder. “No one with a lick of sense would drive a car like that on a road like ours.”

“Definitely a brainiac,” Joe agreed. “Got more than your four years of college.”

“They can have it, too. Four years away was enough for me.” Trent noticed Diego slipping into the shadows by the porch. “Glad Eric and Ruby left. It’s been too crowded here today.”