Whatcha Gonna Do With a Cowboy (7 page)

“Yep, things are a little more complicated than I first let on,” he said, his voice low but steady. “Kate might’ve gotten herself mixed up with the Perez gang a few years back in Tarpon Pass. And when she fell off the face of the earth, the debts she racked up didn’t exactly disappear with her.”

“Mind telling me who or what the Perez gang is?”

Grunting, Colt tilted his head back and stared up at the soft-top roof of the Jeep. “The Perezes use their motorcycle club to hide their illegal activities, such as dope, guns, and girls”—he rubbed his forehead—“and the feds have a pretty good line that they might even have some ties with a few of the human trafficking cases turning up at the border.” He eyed me cautiously and said, “The marshal’s office was able to pinpoint a group of them out in west Texas a few years back. And when Pistol Rock had the ketamine outburst six months ago, I started to dig a little deeper into your hometown and Kate’s whereabouts. But then it all came to a dead end when Pistol Rock hit national news over all the murders.”

Unfortunately for this cowboy, I had no intentions of rehashing life’s past mistakes. That long, twisted road could be a real bitch.

I stared at him. “And you thought it would be all right to pull me into this little drama without filling me in on the players?”

He had the grace to look sheepish, but not repentant.

“That’s it. I’m done.” I ripped out my cell and dialed
my
911. This day was turning into a hair puller. When Elroy told me he’d at least be an hour since he was driving Rip home, I tried Gunner. The call went straight to voicemail. I didn’t even want to think about calling the last person on my list. But I called Luke again anyway.

“Well?” Colt asked, tipping that damn Stetson forward to shield his eyes. I made a mental note to never give Gunner a Stetson for a Christmas gift.

“Well what?” I shot back.

“Is your knight in shining armor not answering your call?”

Shoving the cell deep into the back pocket of my jeans, I shrugged him off and parked my butt on the gravelly road. “Beats me,” I told him, closing my eyes.

He slumped down next to me. “Well, ain’t that some shit.” He laughed and pulled his hat down, covering his face from the Texas sun.

Thirty minutes later, my ass was roasted to a nice burnt crisp when Colt nudged me and pointed at a truck just coming into view down the two-lane highway. We got up and dusted off our jeans.

“Just curious, but who’d you call?”

I squinted. “You’ll know soon enough.”

The Ford F-150 stopped in front of the Jeep, damn near crushing the two of us. The driver-side window gradually rolled down, a ripped, tan arm flopped down the side of the dusty door, a white cowboy hat breached the opening, and a pair of blue eyes landed on me. “Your chariot awaits, princess,” Luke Wagner quipped, all the while keeping a steady glare on Colt.

“The day I’m a princess is the day you take a girl on a second date,” I fired back, smiling.

“How’s it going, Laney?” he asked, tossing me one of his snatch-tastic grins.

“If you can get us out of the heat, I’d be doing a lot better,” I said.

“Hop in,” he replied and leaned across the front seat to open the passenger door.

A minute later I was sitting up front with the AC vents aimed at my face and Federal Marshal Colt Larsen riding quietly in the backseat as we barreled toward Pistol Rock.

“Well, Laney,” Luke began, “Are you gonna continue to be as rude as your mother, or are you at some point gonna introduce me to your friend?”

“How dare you,” I said, smacking him in the arm. “It’s been a long day and I forgot. That there is Federal Marshal Colt Larsen. He’s here on a case all the way from Tarpon Pass.”

“Nice to meet you, Colt,” Luke said, eyeing him warily in the rearview mirror.

“The pleasure’s the same, Luke,” Colt replied, watching the flat and empty country pass his window. “How do you know Laney?”

Luke smiled effortlessly, laying the charm on thick while he tipped his hat back at me. “Oh, Laney and I go way back,” he said. “Ain’t that right, Laney?”

I shrugged. The heat had rendered all the fight out of me. “He means we grew up together,” I confirmed. “I used to make Luke mud pies on the playground.”

“That’s sweet,” Colt said. “My little sister used to do that with me, too.”

Thankfully, that put a quick end to any further bullshit Luke might have come up with. All I wanted was to ride in silence and enjoy the blast of cold air from the vents, and that was never going to happen so long as Luke knew he had someone to pick on. Colt slid down on the bench seat, reclining his head on the seat back. Luke turned on the radio, and the rest of the drive into Pistol Rock was almost blissful.

It was high noon when we rolled through town and cut a path down FM 167 heading out to my house. I’d asked Luke to drop by my place so I could pick up the cruiser before hightailing it over to the station. No way was I gonna hang out with Marshal Larsen all day again. The man wasn’t good for my blood pressure. We eventually turned onto my unpaved driveway, leaving a trail of dust behind us as the truck rolled over the parched dirt. Luke parked next to my neglected vegetable garden and killed the engine. He looked over with that pussy-killer smile and those “God, I wish those were mine” blue eyes beaming at me.

“Well, sweet cake, you’re home,” he said deliberately, drawling out the words.

I pushed open my door and hopped out of the cab. “Thanks for the lift. You didn’t have to go out of your way like that.”

“I know,” he replied, cocky as ever.

Colt reached for his door, but Luke caught him by the arm. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he demanded. “Because I know you’re not even thinking about going inside Laney’s house.”

Colt looked at me, then back at Luke. “I was going to have her swing me by the station, then drop me off over at the Pistol Rock Motor Lodge.”

“Can’t you see the lady’s beat? I’ll haul you around until you can arrange for a rental or a replacement vehicle. It ain’t like I have anything better to do,” Luke told him as he gave me his grin. “Laney, it was good seeing you again. And don’t you hesitate to call when you need something. You hear me?”

“You got it, Luke.”

Then he fired up the engine, and I was left watching his rusty tailgate disappear down the twisty, dirt road.

I went back to work to answer the gazillion and a half questions that Colt’s superiors had about the highway shooting, then did the paperwork on that same incident. Like Colt, the marshal’s service also seemed to suspect the shooting had to do with Missy/Kate crossing the Perez gang at some point, though I was hard-pressed to figure out what, unless maybe she’d taken one of their members for the financial ride of his life.

When the paperwork was done, I did as much checking into the Perezes as the NCIC database would allow. What I found scared me enough to understand why Missy/Kate might have been desperate enough to marry Coach Granger, hide out in a place as off the grid as Pistol Rock, then do whatever she could to finance her escape when the Perezes found her. I mean, hell, they’d shot up Colt’s Jeep, and as far as I knew, neither Colt nor I had done anything to warrant that.

After that, I went through all the stuff we had on the coach’s incident. There wasn’t much. Finally, about four, I knocked off early and went home to my empty house for a beer and dinner.

I was kicked back on the porch swing, soaking up the moonlight and sipping on a Miller Lite, when I heard gravel crunching under tires on my driveway. I squinted at the bright headlights as they swept over the porch, heading toward the barn. As if someone had heard my dirty thoughts, Gunner’s black Yukon coasted by and parked. He flung the driver’s-side door open and out stretched his long, denim-clad legs.

“Late night at the office,” I hollered, drinking in the lethal cowboy who’d managed to tattoo my heart—and my ass—with his name.

“Sweetheart,” Gunner drawled, “please tell me that ain’t the last cold one.”

“Nope, there’s plenty in the fridge”—I slung back another swallow—“but a cold beer is gonna cost you.”

He strutted across the lawn, his boots crushing the dry, crunchy weeds in his path. He made his way up the porch steps and stopped to lean on the banister. “Well, babe. You know I’m cheap,” he told me, “but hell, I’m in the spending mood tonight.”

“Well, I guess I’m in luck, then.” I chuckled.

Smiling, he sauntered up the steps and sat down next to me on the swing. “Go ahead and tell me what my girl needs,” he said as he put his arm around my shoulders and held me close.

I stuck the empty beer bottle between my knees and raked a hand through my rumpled brown hair. “I need any information you can get me on the Perez gang.”

He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, but he might as well have said, “Bitch, are you crazy?” I knew I was in for it.

“Really, Laney? Have you lost your damn mind? I’ve only been working this new case in Odessa for a couple of weeks now, and already you’ve gotten yourself knee-deep in shit.”

“It isn’t like I go looking for trouble. You know that. It just seems to find me,” I told him. “That bastard federal marshal didn’t fill me in on all the info with Rip’s wife, and now it seems she might have rubbed a member of the Perez family the wrong way.”

He lowered his face so he could cut his eyes up at me, his usual expression for calling my bullshit. Then he stretched his arm across the swing, leaned back, and crossed his legs at the ankle. The way his dark eyes were zeroing in on my face like a bull sizing up a rodeo clown wasn’t settling too nicely on my empty stomach. “I don’t want to know what happened today, do I?” he asked suspiciously.

“Not until after dinner,” I said, twiddling my thumbs and avoiding eye contact.

“Oh, shit. There’s something else you aren’t telling me, isn’t there?”

“It’s no big deal,” I mumbled.

His eyes suddenly got panicky huge. “Laney Briggs, what are you not telling me?”

I needed all the courage I could muster up. I sucked down the backwash roosting at the bottom of the beer bottle, then gulped and said, “My mother and father are going to be here in ten minutes. We…I invited them over for dinner last week.”

Gunner motioned at the bottle in my hand. “Give me the beer.”

I shook it in his face. “It’s empty.”

He jumped out of the swing. “You want one?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, and he started off. Before he got through the front door I said, “What about the Perez gang?”

“We’ll see how tonight goes,” he said right before the screen door slammed shut.

By the time the clock struck seven, I was as jumpy as an inmate on death row waiting for the governor’s pardon in the Huntsville prison. Gunner had taken it upon himself to slouch back on the couch, TV blaring the most recent Cowboys’ game he’d DVR’d while he tossed back one beer after the next. I sloshed the potato salad in a green Rubbermaid bowl, jammed the wooden spoon down the side, and placed the bowl in the center of the table. All the while my mind kept circling the knowledge that I hadn’t had a lot of cop training before becoming a sheriff’s deputy, and Gunner might be right to be concerned over me needing to take on the Perez gang. And I hadn’t even told him yet about getting shot at. Probably because I’d been out investigating with Colt.

But one disaster at a time. Naturally, I sucked at cooking. I grew up in a house where the kitchen was run by a chain smoker whose taste buds were so shot that she could eat a raw jalapeño like it was a Mentos. When I got out on my own, I’d never bothered to learn because I was too busy screwing up my life. And after I became a deputy, it just seemed like there was never any time—or, honestly, any real interest to learn how on my part. I wiped my hands on a dish towel, picked up my lukewarm beer, and chugged, all the while eyeballing the clock ticking away above the stove.

The doorbell chimed, and Gunner made no attempt to get up and answer it. I passed the couch on my way to the door, making sure to thump him. He tilted his head back and gave me a blank stare. There were times like this, and when he didn’t put his boots away in the closet after kicking them off in the middle of the living room floor, that I could just wring his neck. I rolled my eyes sky high, then turned my attention back to the front door. I could hear my parents arguing already.

“Floyd, put the beer back in the bag. You can’t have one ’til we get inside.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s rude. That’s why.”

Family time always made me appreciate the small things in life, like owning my own house.

I wrenched open the door and stared my parents down. “Glad y’all could make it over for dinner,” I told them, my gaze immediately zeroing in on the Pyrex bowl sitting snuggly in my mother’s arms. Upon further inspection, I spotted the mashed pickles, onions, smeared eggs, and potatoes inside it. The insufferable bitch had made potato salad in spite of the fact that I told her I’d be making it. When she shoved the bowl into my hands, my horns sprouted.

“Here you go, pumpkin,” my mother said in a strained but deceptively pleasant voice. She looked back over her shoulder at my father. “Floyd,” her smoky tonsils wailed, “go make yourself useful and grab the chicken and cornbread off the swing.”

I watched blank-faced and spitting mad as my father scooped up the dinner spread my mother had so graciously prepared for us all tonight.

“I told you I’d take care of dinner, Mom,” I said through clenched teeth.

“I know,” she sang, “but I brought something just in case.” She pushed me aside and charged into the house. “So where’s the asshole you got shacking up with you?”

Gunner lifted his beer in the air. “Right here,” he drawled, tipping his head back for a better view of my mother waddling into my house. “Nice to see you too Ruth.”

My mother didn’t even waste a nod on him before wandering off to the kitchen ahead of my father, leaving me holding her potato salad.

Gunner smiled. “You look so pretty when you’re pissed.”

I cradled the bowl against my stomach and eyed the sorry man down. “Not a word,” I warned him, “not a single word.”