The area was busy with pedestrian traffic and the streets were clogged with cars. This late in the afternoon the night life was just beginning to take off, and it was obvious the second that Skye and Jason walked into the real estate office that it was awfully close to quitting time. There was an enormous clock on the wall to their right and the receptionist was blatantly staring at the tick, tick, ticking progress of the hands.
Then the bell over the door jingled and the blonde girl behind the counter snapped to attention. “Good afternoon and welcome to Herrera Land & Home Sales. How can I help you?”
Skye didn’t pause. She didn’t want to give the woman one second to do anything stupid. “We need to speak with Reese Herrera, please.”
“Did you have an appointment? Mr. Herrera only sees clients by appointment.” The woman tilted her head and gave them a once-over.
Now there was absolutely no doubt in Skye’s mind that the receptionist knew damn well that they didn’t have an appointment. It was probably possible that Mr. Herrera would have scheduled something off the books, but Skye could see the appointment book on the desk in front of the blonde receptionist and the thing was full.
Skye started to come up with a plausible excuse and a subsequent reason that they would need to see Mr. Herrera, but that was about the time the young woman seemed to recognize Jason King. Her blue eyes went wide and she seemed to be choking on the words she had been intending to say.
“Mr. King!” The receptionist gasped out loud. “I—Oh my goodness, let me tell Mr. Herrera that you’re here.”
“All right, thank you,” Jason said smoothly. To his credit, he did not act as though he were confused by the woman’s weird behavior. He just took it all in stride. “And could you please tell Mr. Herrera that we’re in a bit of a hurry?”
“Certainly!”
The young woman disappeared down the hallway as though her pretty little butt was on fire. Skye frowned after her. The whole situation seemed rather odd. Was this the developer of the whole deal? Was this not only the real estate agent but also the firm brokering the condo deal and then probably offering to manage the units once they were finished?
“Mr. King! I’m sure glad to see you!”
An oily man in a gray three-piece Western suit, tooled cowboy boots, and the clichéd ten-gallon hat came swaggering down the hallway. His beady little eyes were peering out from beneath the wide brim of his hat as though he were trying to assess how much trouble he was in. He had leathery skin that looked as though he spent lots of his spare time at the electric beach and not actually outside. In sum total, Mr. Reese Herrera looked like a total skeevy perv. Just the kind of guy who wouldn’t care if the husband knew what the wife was doing as long as it came with a huge paycheck.
Jason did not flinch when the man took his hand and pumped it up and down with such enthusiasm he seemed determined to rip it off. “Good to meet you, Reese. I was hoping to have a bit of a conversation about the deal if you don’t mind.”
“Of course!” There was a flash of something ugly beneath that nickel slick exterior, but it was gone so quickly that Skye couldn’t really catch what it was. “Step into my office. Your assistant can just wait here.”
“She’s not my assistant,” Jason said flatly. His tone did not suggest argument would be wise.
“Oh. All right then.” Herrera was now staring at the two of them as though he were trying to figure out what their connection might be. “Well, come on back then.”
Herrera led the way to an absolutely enormous office. It had windows that looked out onto the street and included a big screen television playing through what appeared to be a slideshow of Dallas homes and land parcels for sale. At one point Skye felt Jason stiffen as a picturesque view of a riverbed with a trickle of water surrounded by cottonwoods came up. Skye had a feeing that this was actually a photograph of Jason’s family land and that this one confirmation made it absolutely real for him.
There were overstuffed leather couches that shrieked Texas gathered around a rough wood coffee table. Herrera took a seat on a loveseat and then gestured that they should join him. “Would you like a drink? Coffee? Something stronger?” Herrera gestured to an ornate sideboard where cut crystal decanters filled with amber liquid sat on a silver tray.
“No thanks,” Jason murmured. “I don’t imbibe.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” Skye told them both.
She perched on the edge of the long couch so close to Jason that she could feel the heat of his body. She was here to observe. That was what she kept telling herself. She would get more from the interaction and from the meeting in general if she just kept her mouth closed. It was obvious that Mr. Herrera thought that Skye was nothing more than a bit of elbow trophy fluff or something of that nature. Let him think it. If he found out that she worked for the Dallas Star he would be far more careful with what he said and it would not matter if he knew that she wrote for the society page or not.
“Mr. King, I want to assure you that this deal can go on exactly as planned,” Reese Herrera began in a firm, quick voice. “The contractors are all lined up and they are set to start clearing the land for development in the next week.”
Whoa! This was far worse than they had expected. Skye bit the inside of her cheek to force herself to remain silent. Beside her she could tell that Jason was in similar shape. He had gotten so tense that Skye could feel his leg pressed up against hers as though he were made of granite.
Of course, Mr. Reese Herrera was not done with his assurances. “I want you to know that I’m ready to continue with my part of the deal. We will just need a few more signatures on the line in order to move forward. That’s all. Your father had already given his blessing on this project. He felt that the land should be developed so that it generated income for you and your brothers and for your families into future generations.”
Jason suddenly raised a hand. Herrera’s mouth snapped shut. Then Jason exhaled a long shaky sigh. “Did you actually speak to my father in person about this deal? I’m just curious.”
“Oh.” Reese swallowed. His throat bounced as though he had just managed to get past a rock in his gullet. Interesting. He was obvious hiding something. “Well, not in person.”
“Not in person?” Jason pressed.
Reese Herrera sat forward in his seat and rested his elbows on the tops of his thighs. The gray fabric of his suit actually looked shiny in the overhead lights. Skye had not personally known Mac King during his lifetime, but even what little she knew suggested that there was no way in hell that he would have done business with a guy like Reese Herrera.
Reese Herrera cleared his throat. “Your father and I had several conversations back and forth via email.”
“Is that right? And he signed a contract for you, too, I would assume?” Jason’s words were deceptively mild. “Perhaps you emailed it to him and then got it back in the same way?”
“Sure. Exactly!” Reese seemed relieved. Skye could not imagine why except that the charlatan had no idea what was coming. “With busy men like your father that’s the way to get things done these days.”
“Uh huh.” Jason’s expression was mulish and his tone was flat. “I’d like to see that contract if you don’t mind.”
“The contract?” Was Reese Herrera squeaking? He sounded higher pitched and nervous as hell. He should have been. This deal was about to go south. “I suppose I could find it somewhere.”
Jason’s tone and manner left no room for argument. “Do it. Now.”
Herrera jumped up from his seat. To his credit, he did not try to pretend that the contract was either missing or somewhere he couldn’t grab it. The guy pulled open a huge low file cabinet and reached into a drawer. Then he pulled a file folder from the drawer before he closed the thing back up.
“Here you go. All in order.” Herrera laid the file folder on the coffee table.
Jason was staring at the folder. Skye could not imagine how he felt in this moment. It was not likely that
this whole situation was above board. That much was certain. And yet there also loomed the possibility that this was what his father had wanted or what he had done in an effort—however misguided—to make his wife happy. There was no telling.
Reaching for the folder, Jason slanted a sideways glance at Skye. She could not stop herself. She wanted to offer him whatever comfort she could. And the only way she could think of to do that was to put her hand on the top of his leg. She gave his heavy, powerfully muscled thigh a little squeeze. With just that minimal touch she could feel Jason relax just a bit, just enough that he could breathe. She could feel this through that contact. It was so odd. She’d never felt so connected to anyone before in her life. Yet here she was sitting next to a near stranger and feeling almost as though the two of them were totally on the same wavelength.
Jason exhaled a huge breath of air. He stared at the contents of the file folder for a good five minutes or more. He flipped through several pages worth of contracts and agreements before finally lifting his gaze to meet that of Reese Herrera.
“Well?” Herrera dug up his oily smile. “As you can see, it’s all in order.”
“No. It isn’t.” Jason put his finger on the contract. “This isn’t my father’s signature.”
The smile slid right off Herrera’s face. “Don’t play these games with me, Jason King. Just because you’re not happy with what Daddy did with your inheritance. Your mother said that you would be a pain in the ass about this.”
“Oh? And you’ve spoken to my other brothers about this?”
“Well no…”
“So you think I’m the pain in the ass?” Jason stood up. He swept the folder off the table.
Herrera shot to his feet. “Hey! You can’t take that!”
“I’m going to assume you have other copies. These are just copies of scans that you keep in a folder just to make sure that you’ve got what you need for active cases. But I’ve got to tell you that if you think you’re going to develop that land, you’d better think again. My brothers don’t know a thing about this. They’ve got no idea. We have never heard of this deal and our father would never develop that land. It was left in trust to him as a hunting parcel for his children and our children.” Jason paused and pointed at Herrera. “And let me tell you. My mother is not a King. She isn’t part of the family. She’s just a bitch that my father happened to marry. She’s our mother, but she might as well just be some stranger off the street considering how much care or attention she has for the family traditions.”
It was obvious that Jason’s words had an impact. Herrera’s beady eyes and oily expression seemed to draw back into himself a bit. He suddenly appeared shifty. And there was no doubt in Skye’s mind that this man was casting about frantically looking for a way to save this deal.
“You know,” Herrera began. “This deal has cost me a lot of hours. I have a right to be compensated for my time.”
“Really?” Skye could not hold her tongue any longer. “I might suggest you consider this entire situation a learning experience because it’s readily apparent that you need one.”
“Excuse me?” Herrera gazed at Skye as though she were a bug. “What are you talking about?”
“When making multimillion dollar deals to develop something, you should have direct contact with both parties involved.” Skye stared angrily at Herrera. “Especially when you know for a fact that the person you’re talking to isn’t the actual owner. You’ve been dealing directly and in person with Tisha Olivares-King. You might have even seen Tex Johnson. Right?”
Reese Herrera’s gaze shifted right and left and right and left and he looked as though he wanted to flee his whole office. “Maybe, but what does that matter?”
“It matters because neither of those people ever had one sliver of ownership in the land that you were trying to develop!” Skye burst out. She pointed right in Herrera’s face. “Why would you not demand to talk to Big Mac King himself? Why would you just take a scanned signature from a computer that you could not even verify? What were you going to do at closing? Or is there some kind of loophole where you don’t actually have to close the deal and you don’t actually need his signature? Because it is so much easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask permission!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Herrera stood up and walked to the door of his office. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”
“Really? Because I think you want us to go so you can hurry up and call Tisha Olivares-King and tell her that the secret is out and that the King brothers know that their mother was attempting to squander their inheritance without their father’s permission. It’s almost a motive for murder!” Skye added suddenly.
She had only tossed that out into the middle of the room to see what kind of reaction she could get out of Herrera. But what she got was not what she expected. Herrera’s eyes turned hard and flinty. His stony expression barely resembled the affable real estate salesman he’d been only a moment before. He was pissed off and they were seeing it firsthand.
“You need to leave before I have to call the police to remove you from my office,” Herrera said angrily. “And you don’t need to come back.”
“I think I do need to come back,” Jason King told Reese Herrera. “I think that my brothers and I need to come back here and try to find out for ourselves why you agreed to aid our mother in disposing of land that was intended to belong to us. And I don’t mean the kind of land that has a bunch of ugly ass condos squatting on it either.”
“You just cost me a lot of money,” Herrera told them both. “I will be damned if I help you figure out what your dear mother was up to. You can deal with that woman yourself. She is not my problem.”
“But you might be called upon to explain yourself,” Jason told Herrera. “You can count on that. When the investigators are trying to figure out how my mother managed to get so far down the line of this deal we’ll just sent them your way so that you can explain how you don’t care who signs something as long as the right name is on the line.”
“In fact,” Jason added as almost an afterthought. “I’m sure they’re going to want to know whether or not you decided to help my mother set up a hunting accident just to make sure that your fraud was never discovered. You know, because murder is always the best way to cover up a lesser crime.”
“Out!” The guy was shouting now and acting as though he were totally insane. He pulled off his huge cowboy hat and started using it to wave them out of his office as though they were calves or some other animal on the ranch. “Get out of my office! Don’t you dare come back. Ever! If your brothers want to talk to me they can talk to my lawyer!”
“Your lawyer?” Skye snorted and shook her head. Jason was already heading for the door. At the last second Skye swept the file and its contents into her arms. “Are you feeling guilty? Or just worried because you know that in Texas you can be convicted on a murder charge if you knew about it and didn’t say anything?”
Reese Herrera sounded as though he had absolutely lost his mind. He was shouting something through the open door and down the hallway. The little receptionist was running toward them but stopped at the last second when she saw Jason’s angry as hell expression. The receptionist backpedaled, but by then it was basically too late. What was done was done and Jason and Skye had the information they needed.
Skye led the way back down onto the street. Within moments the two of them were standing in front of a now locked storefront on a busy Dallas downtown street. It was kind of startling in its own way. The whole situation had been explosive.
Looking down at the file folder in her arms, Skye tried to sort through the thoughts spinning in her mind. They needed to figure out when this had all started. There had to be an inception date. When had Tisha Olivares-King come up with this idea to sell her husband’s land? And why? What had spurred her to that sort of action? Was this really about her desire to squash the whole shifting thing? Did the woman honestly believe that by ta
king away the shifters’ playground she could somehow render them one hundred percent human? How did that work?
“Are you hungry?”
Skye had to process those words more than once in order to think about what Jason was actually saying. Hungry. Food. Was she hungry? Not really.
“I’m thirsty,” Skye admitted. “I could use some iced tea or water or something.” She licked her lips and felt a jolt of something that felt a lot like stress. “And maybe a drink of something stronger too.”
“I’m hungry,” Jason told her. “I need to sit down and think. And I would rather do that in a restaurant or something where we can have some kind of privacy while we walk through what just happened.”
“That would be helpful,” Skye whispered. “That whole thing was insane. Absolutely insane. I know that people like this Herrera guy probably do shady deals all the time. As long as they can’t get caught, can you imagine how many people have their land developed right out from underneath them? And he just sits there in his office collecting a huge payoff and saying that they could have said no at any time or some other bullshit!”
Jason pulled out his phone. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to have my brother Edward meet us down here.”
“All right?” Skye frowned. Why just one brother? How did that work? Were the others not supportive or something? “Just one?”
“Let’s just say that it’s complicated and leave it like that. Edward is in a bit of a position kind of like mine. I want to talk to him in private so I can get his real opinion on this whole thing without my other brothers putting pressure on him to say what they want him to.”
This was the first time that Skye had honestly realized that there was another source of friction—or something—between the brothers. Maybe this thing was a little deeper and wider than she had first imagined. Or maybe it was just complicated, because honestly what family wasn’t complicated?
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 11