Deadly Texas Summer

by Colleen Thompson

  “I just got off the phone with your friend Nadine at the motel,” Emma cut in. “After I explained the situation to her, she insisted I come stay with her at her place, with her and her family for a few days.”

  When Beau stiffened, she thought he’d argue. Instead, he swallowed audibly. “They’re good people. You’ll be safe there.”

  Forcing herself to press on, Emma said, “She can come by and pick me up tomorrow morning. Or if you’re especially eager to be rid of me, you can drop me off there any time after eight tonight.”

  “Is that what you want?” he asked.

  It’s not. She wanted to shout her admission, to pull him back behind this door and lock the world away awhile. To lock away the fear and stress she had been feeling, along with all the uncertainties over whom to trust and whether she was doing the right thing being here. To let pleasure rule the day for once, to allow her body’s needs and the aching chasm of her loneliness to be assuaged for a few hours, even a few minutes, before reality set in again.

  Then Jeremy’s voice returned to her again, shuddering through her like a sick chill. Spread your legs for him, why don’t you, slut? But he’ll never love you the way I did.

  “I want to leave as soon as possible,” she managed to tell Beau, the quaver in her voice the only sign of the turmoil inside her. “I think it’s best for both of us.”

  Beau hesitated, the look that passed between them so weighted with temptation that for a moment her heart lifted, thinking that he would try to change her mind. Or better yet, that he would reach for her, unable to resist.

  She was still working through how she would react when he nodded.

  “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

  “You stay here this time,” she told River, deciding there was no need to subject the dog to the afternoon heat.

  Though River whined and laid her ears low, Emma was able to convince her with a few pats and a fresh bowl of water that it was a good time for a nap instead.

  Afterward, Emma and Beau headed to his truck in grim silence. He stepped in front of her to open the passenger door and stowed her crutches with the cooler.

  She thanked him as he helped her with her seat belt and then climbed behind the wheel.

  “Any time,” he said. “But before we head to the turbine, we’ll stop by the equipment shed and grab one of the MULEs to make getting around a little easier for you.”

  “A mule?” Her sore leg gave a pang of protest. “I don’t think I’m up to riding.”

  He grinned and shook his head. “Wrong kind of mule. This one’s a brand of ATV. All-terrain vehi—”

  “I know what an ATV is,” she said, her face heating. “I just had a mental image of me prancing around the turbine, mounted on a jackass.”

  He grinned. “I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for riding on a padded bench seat next to one instead.”

  She laughed, unable to stop herself. “You said it, not me.”

  He shrugged. “I happen to admire mules as saddle animals. They’re tough, agile and resilient.”

  “I picture you more as the black stallion type. No, a stallion’s too impractical for a man with your responsibilities—a big, solid quarter horse—a sensible brown with a sensible name to go with your big hat and the tall boots.”

  He looked sharply her direction. “You’re good. I usually ride a cutting horse named Toby. He’s a bay quarter horse gelding, and the smartest, toughest animal I’ve ever ridden.”

  Smiling to herself, she didn’t tell him that she’d seen a framed photo of him aboard just such a horse while he’d been showing her the house and that one of his sons had mentioned the name Toby while describing their own Rascal and Pippin as the three had chatted after lunch the day they’d met.

  It hit her then that she was going to miss Beau, miss having him to talk to...and share advice with and even tease, something she hadn’t dared try with Jeremy in years.

  As Beau backed the truck up to a small trailer toward the open bay of a large beige metal building a few minutes later, a fit-looking older man with a thick black-and-silver mustache, light brown skin and darker eyes strode out, stiff-legged, his jaw set and his teeth gritted as he jammed a Panama hat back over his short, thick hair.

  “My ranch manager, Fernando Galvez,” Beau explained. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’d better check and see what’s rattled his cage.”

  “Who, I think you mean,” she said, gesturing toward a slim, far younger man stalking out behind the first, waving his hands emphatically as he shouted—though his words were muffled from inside the truck’s cab—at Fernando.

  Even in his anger, the young man was strikingly good-looking, with a thick sweep of shiny jet hair and flashing teeth so white against the warm golden-tan face that drew her gaze, making her wonder where it was she might have seen him.

  “The fireman,” Emma blurted, surprised that she recalled anything from those first awful hours after discovering Russell’s body. But the memory of the two strapping firefighters, carrying the cooler of water between them to the back of Beau’s pickup, was seared into her brain. “What would he be doing here?”

  “Antonio’s Fernando’s youngest,” Beau said. “Let me see if I can sort out these two hotheads before they come to blows.”

  Seeing the family resemblance between the two now, she impulsively reached for the door handle.

  “Why don’t you hang out here for a few minutes?” Beau suggested. “There’s no need for you to get involved in a minor family squabble.”

  Emma nodded, though the way the two Galvez men were glaring at each other, she wasn’t sure about the “minor” part of Beau’s assessment.

  When Beau closed the truck’s door behind him, she could see the pair abruptly went silent, both of their dark brown gazes shifting to look at her.

  Unease rippled through her, a shiver sparked by the lack of welcome in eyes that were hard and flat with anger. Looking away, she sighed, feeling nothing but relief when all three men disappeared inside the metal building.

  They’re angry at each other, not you. But as true as she knew this to be, she berated herself for her tendency to cringe at any sign of a man’s anger. When confronted face-to-face, she’d taught herself—over the course of months—to stand her ground and speak up. But inside, she realized she might never stop waiting for the next man or the one after to turn on her, just as the man she’d trusted most in this world had.

  Would she ever get beyond it? Or had her mother been right, all those times she’d pleaded for Emma to see someone in the months after she’d filed for divorce. A counselor can help you with your grief and pain, keep you from making the same mistakes with another man down the road.

  I don’t have to worry about that, Emma had responded bitterly, because I’m never getting that close to another man again.

  * * *

  “I just came around to grab an ATV, not get into your business,” Beau told Fernando, who kept glaring at his son. The thick atmosphere of his disdain, along with the way the twenty-year-old seemed to study the laces of his own tennis shoes, took Beau back uncomfortably to far too many arguments he’d had with his own father. Arguments that would have driven him from the ranch even sooner than he’d left had it not been for Fernando’s calm and reliable influence.

  Why couldn’t Fernando see that his own son needed the same thing now—and more than that, needed the love and acceptance of the man he most respected?

  “This boy of mine,” Fernando all but spat out, “has no consideration, no pride in his family history or honor. And no care for his sick mama.”

  “Papa, please,” Antonio told him. “Of course I care about my mother. Haven’t I cleaned the house, cooked the meals, driven her to treatments?”

  As Antonio—or Tony, as his friends called him—was the only one of the couple’s children still
living at home, Beau could see how many of the daily tasks might fall to him. Especially since it would never occur to the traditional Fernando that he, too, was capable of loading a dishwasher or pushing a vacuum.

  “Then why abandon her now? To go to Dallas of all places.” At the mention of the metropolis six hours to the north, Fernando narrowed his eyes. “You trade your family for what? Cars crawling everywhere, houses one on top of the other, strip malls and pollution and—”

  “And the job I’ve been dreaming of and working for my whole life,” Tony ventured. “An exciting, challenging career rooted in the future, not stuck in some dusty past—”

  Advancing on his son, Fernando shouted, “You talk about this ranch, this life, like it is dead already, right in front of Señor Kingston?”

  “It’s all right.” Beau stepped between them, afraid the two might come to blows. “He’s young, Fernando, and he has to find his own way, just like you and I did. Maybe someday, if things work out, Tony’s path will lead him home.”

  “And I’ll come to visit, Papa, as often as I can,” Antonio offered.

  “Your mother cried all night the last time you walked out of our house,” Fernando accused, scowling over the top of Beau’s shoulder, “and then I find your things in the storeroom here, where you’re been sleeping like some bum.”

  “In the storeroom?” Beau echoed, thinking of the cold comfort offered by the glorified closet area, with its concrete floor, its bins of parts and equipment, and the tiny, Spartan half bathroom tucked into one corner.

  “For the last time—” Antonio shook his head “—I would never touch the security cameras, and those things aren’t mine. You know that. I’ve been—I’ve been mostly staying at the station or with Carlos,” he explained, naming an older brother who lived in one of the modest homes that made up the ranch employee housing area a few miles away.

  “Why do you lie to me?” Fernando demanded. “Do you think I don’t talk to Carlos?”

  “All right.” Tony’s shoulders sagged. “It’s not him. It’s Felicity. I’ve been staying with my girlfriend—”

  “This rich white girl who goes with all the firemen? The one you are too ashamed to introduce to family?”

  “She’s not like that, Papa. You don’t under—”

  “Bah! We have seen you, driving this girl’s fancy car around town like you’re the big man, sleeping through Mass because all night you have been—”

  “This stuff—I’d like to take a look,” Beau interrupted, far less interested in who the kid was shacking up with than he was the night that Emma had nearly been run down. “And I’ll be bringing Dr. Copley inside to check it with me—if I can trust you two not to embarrass all of us.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Kingston,” Tony said, shaking his head. “It’s bad enough he dragged me down here without bringing you and your guest into our family squabble. But if I came across as disrespectful, especially after everything you’ve—”

  “We’re fine, Tony.” Beau shot a look to the kid to shut him up before he mentioned that Beau had served as a job reference for Antonio’s employment applications. Fernando would feel even more betrayed to learn that Beau had given a nervous Tony some advice about his interview and sprung for his hotel room when he’d traveled for it a couple of months before.

  A few minutes later, Beau was standing in the storage room with Emma, who seemed fascinated with the ranch equipment hanging from wall racks or heaped into bins. “What on earth is that thing?” she asked. “And this?”

  “A cattle oiler for parasites, and that one’s a broken head chute that needs welding. But I wanted to show you this.” He walked over to the spot he’d gotten Fernando to describe and crouched beneath a bank of wall-mounted bins, where he pointed to a sleeping bag and several items of men’s clothing.

  “It seems we’ve had an unauthorized squatter,” he said, looking up at her, “and I need to know if you recognize any of these things.”

  Emma’s face went ashen, her eyes rounded with alarm. “You—you think Jeremy could be here?”

  “I can’t say. We don’t know how long this has been here.” Beau pulled a penknife from his pocket and used its blade to lift a dark gray T-shirt, gritty with dust, and a single crumpled sock.

  “I—I don’t recognize those things, but—but I was always on Jeremy for taking off his socks and leaving them balled up like a slob.”

  “That narrows down our suspect list to—half the men in this state,” he said.

  “What’s the shirt size?” she asked. “Is there a tag?”

  “It’s hard to read. Large, maybe?”

  “Jeremy wears a large,” she said uncertainly, her gaze darting around as if she half expected him to still be here, hiding somewhere.

  “So do a lot of guys,” Beau said.

  “It’s Jeremy. I know it’s him.” Emma hugged herself. “He’s killed Russell, and he’ll kill you, too, if he’s seen us together.”

  “We don’t know for sure this is even connected to the attacks on you or Russell’s death,” Beau said. “The ranch has had other visitors in the past. Undocumented migrants looking for a safe place to spend the night as they pass through.” Though he and his employees tried to keep the outbuildings secured at night to discourage such intruders, along with the occasional theft, Beau suspected it was one more area where procedures had grown lax.

  He pushed at the surface of the blue sleeping bag, which was grease-splotched, worn and lumpy. And unaccountably bulky in spots, with several solid items hidden inside. Coming to his feet, he grabbed the bag’s corners and shook it in the hope that something would fall out, preferably something like a wallet or a driver’s license. Instead, something heavier fell, clunking against the concrete at his feet.

  There was a second thud, and then a third, a wicked-looking knife landing beside a set of brass knuckles and a palm-sized revolver. And the last item that came sailing out, so light that it wafted downward, was a photo. A photo of Russell Jorgenson grinning, one hand lifting what looked like a margarita as he stood behind a bar hung with colorful paper fiesta banners. The other arm, tan and muscular, was draped over the shoulder of a slender woman in a summer dress, her sun-streaked hair shining and her head tipped back in laughter.

  Beau was jolted to realize it was Emma, looking far more like a girlfriend than the grad student’s professor.

  * * *

  Emma tilted her head forward, groaning as she covered her face with one hand. The crutch she had let go of crashed to the floor, but the sound barely registered over the roar of blood in her ears and the wave of dizziness that threatened to cut her legs out from underneath her.

  “Emma, are you all right?”

  Beau’s voice seemed to float toward her from a great distance. Was he, like Jeremy, cursing her as a whore now, too?

  “This—this was taken last spring at a private party celebrating a colleague receiving a prestigious fellowship at a university in—” She shook her head, clenching her teeth so hard that tears came to her eyes. “Russell and a group of grad students performed some ridiculous song they’d made up about bat species—my colleague’s area of study—and we all took pictures after. Everyone was laughing, and—and I—”

  “You don’t have to explain,” Beau said as he gently helped her to metal folding chair along one wall. “You don’t owe me that.”

  “We were all only having fun,” she said. “I wasn’t—I never did anything more with Russell or any other student.”

  “If it helps, I believe you. I can see that photo’s been cropped, other people removed from it to zero in on you two.”

  “That’s what people do when they’re obsessed,” she said, rubbing at the eruption of chill bumps along her arms. “What Jeremy does. It has to be him. But how could he get this picture? If he’d been anywhere near that night, I would’ve had the police on him in a second. Could
he have hired someone? A private detective?”

  “Maybe, but look at this photo paper—” Lifting it for her to see, he thumbed the flimsy edge. “Someone’s printed this at home, probably off social media.”

  “I blocked Jeremy everywhere I could, deleted all of my accounts, too, so people wouldn’t tag photos of me or...” She pressed her fingertips to her aching forehead. “I’ve made an effort to disappear online.”

  “Staying invisible is easier said than done these days,” Beau said, the weight of his hand on her shoulder comforting. “And if it was your ex, he could’ve easily tricked someone who attended that party into accepting a request from a fake profile. You said he’s good at conning people.”

  “Apparently, far better than I am at keeping a low profile.” Shaking her head, she grabbed her crutches and pushed herself up from the chair. “But you know what? I’m not hiding any longer. I can’t—I absolutely won’t—let that man keep killing people.”

  People? He stared at her intently. “Wait—are you telling me that Russell’s not the first person you believe your ex has murdered?”

  Unable to look at Beau, she closed her eyes but couldn’t stop the tears that leaked out from beneath the lids. “The law might have thought otherwise, but he’s no less responsible. And I swear someday he’ll pay for the child we lost.”

  Chapter 14

  The shock of her statement cracked through Beau’s composure. His gut clenched in response, his arms aching to pull her into an embrace, but the hard look in her eyes warned him she wouldn’t welcome his touch. “You’ve lost a child? Emma... I’m so—I’m sorry. When did this—”

  Green eyes flashing open, she slashed the air with her hands. “I don’t—I can’t talk about this. Please, forget that I said anything about it.”

  But Beau knew that he wouldn’t. How could he, with the pain he’d seen in her face forever branded into his brain? Whatever had fractured Emma’s marriage had clearly left deep wounds. Wounds that did much to explain her brittleness and apparent isolation. It partly explained, too, why he had been so drawn to her from the start. Had the damage he had buried so deeply and borne in silence for nearly three years recognize her scars?