Deadly Texas Summer

by Colleen Thompson

  But he’d never put an end to them through lawyers or third parties. He’d have to do it face-to-face and on his turf, today, using the same allies he’d relied upon since childhood, after his own father had turned his back on him.

  * * *

  Forcing herself to reexamine the damning emails, Emma couldn’t do a thing to stop the waves of pain. It wasn’t so much knowing that someone had taken the time and effort to craft such an elaborate deception just to hurt her, but that Beau would toss aside what they’d shared, swallowing the hateful lies whole.

  Maybe he was feeling panicked this morning, all too exposed by the unfamiliar intimacy. Willing to latch on to this convenient “proof” she was a monster as an excuse to push her away.

  “Then you deserve to be alone,” she said, voice shaking. “Do you really think a college professor would send emails filled with so many misspellings to a student? Such dreadful punctuation?” Not to mention the hysterical tone. But maybe those factors were only obvious to her, maybe the sheriff or a DA would argue that they’d sounded off because she’d been overwrought when they’d been written.

  Exhausted and frustrated, she started to close the laptop screen to go hit a fast-food drive-through for another attempt at coffee. Instead, on impulse, she lifted the lid again and clicked on the image file she’d saved to her computer’s desktop. Once again, the blurry photo of the armed man from the game camera popped up. Once again, she squinted at it, hoping to spot some resemblance to her ex-husband that she could take to the authorities.

  But wasn’t that the same thing Wallace had been doing? Trying desperately to force the evidence to fit the suspect of his choosing? She thought back to what the sheriff had told her, something about the ear, the hair, or had it been the jawline?

  Closing her eyes, she focused on her breathing. On letting go of everything that had happened over the past few weeks—and the anxiety and sadness running through her.

  It took a while, but gradually, the throbbing in her leg eased and the knot in her stomach loosened. Only then did Emma take a fresh look at the photo.

  This time, she zeroed in on those details Wallace had mentioned, the facial features an experienced law enforcement officer had focused on.

  And just like that, something clicked, bringing with it a swift intake of breath as Emma saw what she had missed before. And with a shocking jolt of intuition, she knew, too, why Wallace might’ve been misled and Beau had discarded what may have been his own first suspicion.

  Behind her, River gave a little growl-yip, and Emma scolded, “Please, dog! Will you stop pestering—” She then gasped at the blurred movement of something vanishing behind the rear seat back.

  A small hand holding River’s duck.

  Her stomach somersaulting, Emma commanded, “Come out where I can see you, right this instant! What are you doing back there? Cort?”

  “He was too scared. He’s the baby.” Leland’s defiant face, with its missing front tooth, popped up from behind the barrier, where he’d clearly been hiding since she’d left the ranch. “If Daddy’s going to be so mean, I want to stay with you now. You can be my mom and River can be our dog.”

  Emma closed her eyes and gusted out a sigh, praying this was a hallucination and she wasn’t about to add a charge of kidnapping to her list of woes. But when she opened her eyes, the six-year-old was crawling over the rear seat and hugging River, who happily slurped the side of his face before reclaiming her duck.

  “You can’t run away from home. Your father and your aunt will be so scared.”

  For a moment, he looked doubtful. Then storm clouds darkened his expression. “They still have perfect Cort and all his dumb books.”

  “And what about poor Maverick? Won’t he have hurt feelings if he finds out you like River better?”

  “That dumb puppy chewed the heads off my favorite action figures!”

  “He’s still learning how to be a grown dog. Learning to forgive when the people who love him sometimes mess up. And to forgive himself, even when it’s really hard, when he makes terrible mistakes, too.” Such as endangering a child’s life by driving him all over without so much as a seat belt.

  “Do you think—” Lines of worry creased the boy’s small forehead. “Do you really think, Miss Emma, they might miss me a little?”

  “I think they’re probably running around like crazy, looking everywhere, and calling your name right now. You aunt Alicia might even be crying. You know, she’ll blame herself for—”

  “It wasn’t her fault. It was Daddy’s, telling you to go away,” Leland insisted. But his brown eyes pooled with tears as he suggested, “Maybe we should call ’em? Just so they won’t be too scared.”

  “I think that’s a very good idea,” Emma told him. “You’re a very thoughtful boy to come up with that on your own.”

  Chapter 19

  “You take me for a fool? Why the hell would I agree to come meet you alone?” Wallace demanded after Beau, sitting in his pickup, reached him on the cell phone. “And especially way out there, where nobody could hear a gunshot? You thinkin’ to maybe solve your problems with an ambush, mongrel?”

  “I’m thinking it would be a good place to finally hash this all out,” Beau said, fighting back a red-hot surge of temper that would do him no good whatsoever. “A quiet place with no lawyers between us, no kids or aunt to interfere. Just you and me, talking like grown men, unarmed.” And recording every word you say.

  Out ahead of where he sat parked, the wind rippled over the seed heads of tall grasses, sparkling in the morning sunshine after last night’s rain.

  “I’m an officer of the law,” Wallace argued. “I don’t go anywhere without my sidearm. If you want to talk to me, you know where my office is.”

  “I don’t think you’ll want to have this chat there, on the record and in front of my attorney.” Beau drew a deep breath, turning his head to take in that long strip of range darkened by the shadow of Turbine Number 43. Even from inside the cab, he could hear the low hum of its motor as the blades whirled slowly, once more producing clean, if not exactly bloodless, power. “And I don’t think you’ll want to explain the evidence I’ve brought to show you to your colleagues without having a chance to prepare.”

  “What do you have, bastard?”

  “I suppose that’s the fifty-four-million-dollar question,” he said, naming the figure of the settlement offer. “And afterward, if you’re still of a mind to haul me in in handcuffs, we can go that route, too. I swear it. I’ll just be damned if I let you arrest me in front of my heirs.”

  Beau referred to his boys as such as a reminder that, even if Wallace chose to try to expedite his takeover with another murder, he’d still face a legal challenge on behalf of Cort and Leland. What Wallace couldn’t know is that the boys’ godfather, Ty Phelps, would stop at nothing to destroy him if that’s what it took to protect the children’s interest and avenge his friend.

  Wallace sighed, “Well, we do need to talk. And this time you’re gonna damned well listen to me.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” Beau said.

  Wallace hesitated before saying, “Just make damned sure you’re alone, and know that if you try pulling anything out there, that Kingston name of yours won’t stop a bullet.”

  Once they ended the call, Beau whispered, “That name’s never been a shield for me. It’s a lesson that you taught me early, you and my father both...”

  Along with the stupidity of playing by his cousin’s rules.

  * * *

  After dropping off Leland and leaving both boys with hugs and a vague promise that maybe she would see them sometime, Emma left the mansion once more. But a lump rode with her, like a boulder in her stomach. Something hadn’t been right. Something beyond Beau’s absence and the coldness of her welcome.

  She sensed it in the odd behavior of Beau’s aunt, who’d seemed awkward and d
istracted as she’d curtly thanked Emma for returning her charge. Still dressed in her bathrobe and with her normally perfect dome of curls mussed, Mrs. Parker had seemed off, distracted. Normally the most vigilant of caretakers, she’d admitted that she hadn’t even realized that her younger charge was missing until Emma’s call.

  Emma had tried apologizing, both for missing Leland when she’d left the ranch and for speaking so sharply yesterday when they’d talked. But the woman had all but pushed her out the door, saying, “I think it would be best if you’re gone when Beau returns from wherever he’s run off to. There’s been enough upset around here this morning without—Just go now, all right?”

  Emma had had no choice except to leave, but she didn’t feel good about it. Should she reach out to Beau to suggest he check on his aunt? But at the thought of hearing his voice again, she tensed, her mind flooding with his angry accusations. With the lack of trust, the fear she’d felt mingling with bad memories from her marriage.

  “He isn’t Jeremy,” she reminded herself. “You can at least text him.”

  Pulling over on the ranch road, she took out her phone and tapped out the message: Had to return your stowaway youngest to the ranch. Your aunt seems a little off. Maybe you should check on her? Looking awfully pale.

  Once she sent the message, she noticed an unread text waiting for her from Lieutenant Williams, asking where in town he might be able to meet with her tomorrow. Only the text, she realized with a start, had been sent yesterday. She’d somehow missed it. Was the Ranger in Pinto Creek already, investigating Russell’s death, after misleading her to keep her from giving anything away?

  As she tried to think of a safe place where she could meet him, she glimpsed a silhouette on the horizon. It was the top of Turbine Number 43, a sight that drew a shiver.

  Why on earth were the blades turning, along with the blades of the more distant turbines? Could the company’s review already be over? She’d expected it would take months and have to be signed off on by the federal agency that oversaw workplace safety as well.

  Or had the company found the way to gloss over that “minor inconvenience” To get its investment producing once again?

  After texting the lieutenant to let him know she was on the Kingston spread but expected to be heading back to town soon, she abruptly turned toward the turbine in the faint hope of spotting the Green Horizons engineers who had restarted the windmill. But when she saw the pair of vehicles haphazardly parked near the tower’s base, she startled, her instincts telling her there was something deeply wrong here. Something she couldn’t, in good conscience, drive away from.

  Not without checking to make certain the man that she couldn’t help still caring for—no matter how he’d hurt her—was all right.

  * * *

  “Careful there,” Wallace warned, drawing his gun as Beau reached into his back pocket. Both stood in the shade of the turbine’s base, the pulsing thrum of the spinning blade like the breathing of a giant high above them.

  “It’s a piece of paper, that’s all,” Beau said, noting the sweat rolling down his cousin’s face and the slight shake of his barrel. A barrel now pointed at Beau’s own chest. “A copy of a contract I’ve left locked in the mansion’s vault...after emailing a scan to my ex-partner. For insurance.”

  “Insurance against wha—” Distracted the sounds of hinges creaking, Wallace jerked his head to see the turbine’s access door swing slightly open to his left, revealing a shotgun aiming at him. “Galvez! What the hell?”

  “You will want to put away that weapon now,” Fernando said with a hard stare that said he meant it, “and listen to your cousin, calmly and politely. This is surely what the old jefe, your uncle, would have wanted, would he not?”

  Wallace took a step back, the color draining from his face and the barrel still aimed at Beau shaking. “Put that shotgun down right this second, or I’ll have you in a cell faster than you can blink. Not only that, I promise you, I’ll see the whole lot of your relations evicted from this property the second I lay claim to—”

  Fernando nudged the door wider with a booted foot. “You dare to threaten mi familia?”

  “And you’re threatening an officer of the law? You do know that kind of killin’s a capital offense in this state, don’t you?”

  “Nobody’s killing anybody,” Beau insisted, ignoring the rushing blood in his ears as he attempted to regain control. “Now both of you, lower your weapons. Yeah, like that. Fernando.”

  “Now put it down,” the sheriff ordered. “On the concrete at your feet, Galvez.”

  When Beau said nothing, Fernando’s silver brows rose as he stared the question. “Jefe?”

  Beau hesitated, weighed his options. Prayed that his choice would lead to a de-escalation rather than dead bodies, since Fernando’s son, Antonio, who was lying among the weeds not twenty yards away holding a pistol, was young and inexperienced enough to be an unknown quantity if he feared for his father’s life.

  “Go ahead, Fernando,” Beau said, “and Wallace here will holster his gun, too. Right, Wallace? So we can finish talking.”

  The look Fernando gave him was full of disbelief, but Beau didn’t waver. Finally, the ranch manager slowly and carefully laid down the shotgun, contempt plain on his face as he glared at Wallace.

  Holstering his own pistol, Wallace told the older man, “There are damned well gonna be some changes around this place, startin’ with a new crew that didn’t grow up runnin’ with this little bastard.”

  “Don’t you get it, Wallace?” Beau asked, unfolding the paper he still held. “It’s all over. You’re not getting any settlement, and you’re sure as hell not getting the ranch. But then, you never were, no matter what J. Armstrong Pinckney promised.”

  “What? What would your father’s lawyer have to do with—”

  “That’s what I was wondering. Why would you ask the man who allegedly updated my father’s will to bring my attorney a settlement offer?”

  “I—um—I liked his style when I met him, that’s all. And the lawyer I was usin’ was a damned fool, with his cockamamie idea that a fraud suit might root you out of—”

  “Lawman like yourself, I’m betting you took the trouble to check this Pinckney fellow out first, especially when he approached you out of nowhere with this second will, right?”

  “Why would I—”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Beau said sarcastically, “maybe to catch wind of the fact that he’s represented quite a few clients accused of fraud and embezzlement, even forgery.” It had been right there for him to find, in a search of court filings that had taken only minutes.

  “He’s a lawyer, isn’t he? I’m sure he’s represented all sorts of crooks.”

  “You ever hear of a criminal defense attorney handling a will involving an estate the size of this one? And what’s even more interesting, I happened to catch this name, right on my own lease agreement.”

  Beau pointed out a name low on the signature page he’d brought, belonging to Green Horizons’ vice president of energy projects. “Edith A. Pinckney,” he read aloud. “That sounded so familiar I couldn’t help but get curious. Curious enough to do another quick web search.”

  Wallace was shaking his head, sweat trickling down the side of his face. “What’s that have to do with some lawyer out of Houston?”

  “The thing is, your new lawyer friend’s not originally from Houston,” Beau said. “He’s from California, same as his sister, Edith.”

  “His sister? I—I don’t know anything about that. Let me—let me see that,” Wallace demanded, reaching out to snatch the copy from Beau’s hand and scanning the names on it. “Are you—are you sure about—”

  “What was it they promised you, Wallace, after they found out about your weakness? The jealousy poisoning you, the certainty that you deserved it more than any brown-eyed bastard? Did they offer you a cut if I
jumped at that payout? Or did they know, just like you did, that I’d never break the ranch’s back with that kind of debt, not even to save it? Did you really ever imagine that if you did win the ranch in court, they would ever let you keep it—after you’d committed murder for them?”

  “I never killed anyone!” Wallace shook his head emphatically. “I don’t have to stand hear and listen to this horsesh—”

  “So all you had to do was what? Look the other way while somebody else took care of Green Horizons’ little blackmailer issue? Then get it ruled an accident—and shut up Emma when she started making too much noise.”

  “What the hell are you going on about? After all I’ve done trying to bring in her attacker and keep that fool girl safe?”

  “From who? When we both know you’re the killer,” Beau said.

  “No, Beau. Wallace isn’t,” said Emma, who had appeared—using her crutches once more as she stepped from behind the turbine’s base, the partially open door at her back.

  Chapter 20

  “Didn’t I tell you to leave this property and not to come back?” The harshness of Beau’s voice didn’t hide the fear she saw in his eyes.

  Fear for his own safety? Or is he more terrified that I’ll end up with a bullet in me?

  But Emma understood the risks, had known them the moment she had heard their angry tones and spotted the sheriff’s right hand on his gun. Even so, she’d chosen to intervene—to go to the man who still held her heart captive—before the two destroyed each other, no matter what it cost her.

  Terrified as she was, sounds filled her awareness: the rush of air in her lungs, the rapid-fire pumping of her own blood in her ears. The turbine thrummed above them, and River, tied by her leash to the Jeep’s bumper, yelped at the sound of her voice, clearly upset at being restrained.