Always a Lawman

by Delores Fossen

  Jodi repeated the man’s name, but it didn’t mean anything to her. “Why was he here in Blue River?” She went to Gabriel’s side and started reading through the initial report that Cameron had done on the dead man.

  “I don’t have a clue,” Cameron answered. “Lasher’s boss and family don’t know, either, but his boss said he’d been investigating Hector.”

  That caused both Gabriel and her to take their attention from the paper and look at Cameron. “Why?” they said in unison.

  “An illegal wiretap. Lasher had arrested a pimp who wanted a plea deal. The pimp said Hector had set up an illegal tap on his phone.”

  Gabriel turned to her. “You know anything about that?”

  “No. But we do have out-of-state clients. It’s possible Hector knew one of this pimp’s girls, and maybe she had complained to him.”

  “It’s not as if Hector hasn’t done something like this before,” Gabriel grumbled.

  She didn’t miss the disdain in Gabriel’s voice. “True, but it would have been stupid for him to do it when he’s on probation. Something like this could land him in jail.”

  Of course, that might not have stopped Hector. His favorite saying was, never mistake the law for justice, so he was always bending rules to the point of breaking them.

  “Hector doesn’t live in Blue River, either,” she added. “Seems a stretch that he could have lured a cop to the Beckett ranch in order to kill him.”

  “A stretch but not impossible,” Gabriel pointed out. “This way he could eliminate someone who might be able to put him back behind bars.”

  Maybe. But that seemed extreme for what would have turned out to be a fairly short jail sentence, and it was a sentence that Hector could have perhaps beaten. He had a knack for escaping time behind bars.

  “When did this wiretap supposedly happen?” she asked Cameron.

  “About two weeks ago.”

  “Good, that’s recent enough that the file won’t be archived yet,” Jodi explained. “If you let me use your computer, I’ll see if I can access the info.”

  Gabriel motioned for her to use the laptop on his desk, and she was about to log on to the Sentry page when she heard footsteps in the hall. Cameron and Gabriel immediately reacted, both of them putting their hands over their weapons, but she saw them relax just as fast.

  “Is my sister here?” someone demanded.

  Theo.

  Jodi hurried out from behind the desk to see her brother walking up the hall. It was the first time she’d seen him in a year, and she went to him, wanting to hug him but not sure how he would react.

  Once Theo and she had been so close. But that had changed the night of her attack. In the aftermath, each of them had been dealing with their own pain. She, because she had nearly died, and Theo, because he’d been a suspect in the murders.

  He’d changed a lot since she’d seen him. His hair was long, practically to his shoulders, and he was dressed more like a cowboy-biker than a federal agent. She didn’t know if his leather vest and rodeo buckle were his own clothes or if this was something he’d been wearing undercover.

  “Jodi,” he greeted. He lifted his hand as if he might reach out for her, but he didn’t. Maybe because he saw the unease in her eyes. Of course, there was plenty of unease in his eyes, as well. Probably because there was no love lost between Gabriel, Cameron and him.

  She didn’t ask him where he’d been. Jodi knew as a deep cover DEA agent Theo wouldn’t be able to tell her anyway. Plus, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the kind of danger he was in on a daily basis. It was already hard enough to accept that he might never be a real part of her life.

  Equally hard to accept that both of them wanted it that way.

  “Are you okay?” Theo said to her.

  She nodded. “You?”

  He lifted his shoulder. “I got a threat just like all of you, but it’s been sitting on my old server for days, so I just now got word of it.” Theo turned his attention to Gabriel. “I’m guessing Ivy got one, too?”

  It wasn’t a surprise that Theo had asked about Gabriel’s sister, Ivy. Theo and she been a couple of steps past just being close.

  “Yeah, Ivy got one all right, but she’s not here,” Gabriel answered. Cameron and he shared a glance. “In fact, Ivy doesn’t stay in touch with us.”

  Yet another casualty of the aftermath of that horrible night. Gabriel’s family had been torn apart as well, and Jodi suspected that Ivy just hadn’t been able to stay in Blue River with the god-awful memories of the place.

  “I heard about the recent attack,” Theo went on. “And the dead cop. I can’t stay, but I wanted to let you know that I made some calls to a few criminal informants to see if there’s any buzz about this. There isn’t,” he added a heartbeat later. “But I did turn up something that’s been bothering me. It’s about Russell.”

  Of course, Russell was on their suspect radar, but it was still a surprise to hear Theo bring up his name. “You talked to Russell?” she asked, ready to tell him about the rattlesnake incident. But Theo continued before she could do that.

  “I didn’t talk to him, but a CI happened to know one of his old friends. According to the guy, Russell was binge drinking after Jodi broke up with him. He possibly even used drugs. The friend said Russell kept going on and on about Jodi leaving him for some deputy.”

  Gabriel.

  “I never mentioned Gabriel’s name to Russell,” she explained, “and I certainly never told Russell I was leaving him for Gabriel.”

  “The friend said Russell figured it out when he heard you talking with Ivy.” Theo paused, rubbed his fingers over his left eyebrow. “From the part of the conversation he listened to, Russell decided that you were going to try to seduce Gabriel.”

  That had been the plan. No need to verify it because it was part of the statement she’d given the cops after the attack. Of course, Russell wouldn’t have had access to the report to confirm his suspicions, but that sort of info tended to get out.

  “Russell didn’t say anything to you about eavesdropping on your conversation with Ivy?” Gabriel asked her.

  “No. And he didn’t say anything to the cops about it, either.” Unlike Russell, she had managed to get her hands on the report and had read every word of Russell’s statement.

  “Who are you looking at for these latest attacks?” Theo asked Gabriel.

  “We have someone, a schizophrenic teenager, in lockup at a mental hospital.” Gabriel made a sound of dismissal that Theo echoed. “That brings us to Hector March, your uncle August and Russell. We already know Russell had a thin alibi for that night. And he came here yesterday to Blue River, maybe hoping to see Jodi.” A muscle flickered in Gabriel’s jaw. “Jodi put out the word that she was remembering details of her attack.”

  Theo cursed. “Why the hell would you do that?”

  She should have thought before she reacted, but Jodi lifted her T-shirt to remind him of the scars. Even though she only uncovered her stomach, there was plenty enough to see there.

  Theo cursed again and glanced away. “Those scars are the very reason you shouldn’t have put out a lure like that,” he said. But he dismissed it with a shake of his head. “If I’d been in your position, I would have done the same thing. That’s not a seal of approval, by the way, since most people think I’m crazy for doing what I do.” He snapped toward Gabriel. “You can protect her?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “I’m trained to protect myself,” she reminded both of them, but she might as well have been talking to the air because Gabriel and Theo stared at each other, some man-bond thing going on between them.

  “Whoever attacked you outsized you by a good five inches,” Gabriel said. “Outweighed you, too. We know that from the angle of your wounds and placement of your bruises. And all the training i
n the world won’t stop him from trying to put a bullet in you.”

  Theo seemed pleased with Gabriel’s stance. And the truth was—so was she. Even though it felt like this battle was hers and hers alone, it wasn’t. In fact, her attacker could use Gabriel, Cameron or even Theo to get to her. That didn’t make this easier to accept.

  Especially not with this heat swirling between Gabriel and her.

  The heat couldn’t lead to anything, but her body was having trouble remembering that. And it was getting in the way of what she needed to be focusing on—the person who wanted her dead.

  “If Hector’s behind this,” Theo went on, “things could get uglier than they already are. And as for August, well, he could just hire enough guns to finish whatever the hell he wants finished. Either way, be careful.”

  She would, but it sickened her to think that it might be any of those men. At various times in her life, she’d trusted each one of them. Of course, it could always be someone else. A nutjob whose name they didn’t even know.

  Not exactly a thought to ease her churning stomach.

  “I have to go,” Theo said, not sounding very pleased about that. “If anyone asks, I wasn’t here. I can’t give you a phone number, and you can’t try to contact me,” he added to Jodi, “but if I hear anything that’ll help catch this piece of dirt, I’ll find a way to get the info to you.”

  Jodi was about to thank Theo, but before she could do that, he brushed a kiss on her cheek, causing her to go board stiff. Theo noticed, too. He pulled back, making eye contact with her, and even though he didn’t curse out loud again, she thought that might be what he was doing in his head.

  “We’ll talk soon,” Theo whispered, and just like that she was a little kid again and he was her big brother. All the tension vanished. It wouldn’t last, of course. Wounds this deep didn’t heal, but for a moment it was good to have Theo back.

  She stood there, watching him walk away until he disappeared out the door. Jodi turned to go to Gabriel’s computer so she could do the search on the Sentry files, but Gabriel stepped in front of her as soon as she was back in his office. He shot Cameron a glance, and the deputy mumbled something about needing to check on a report.

  Uh-oh.

  That was not a good look in Gabriel’s eyes, especially since his gaze kept drifting toward her stomach. “That’s the first time I’ve seen your scars,” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He put his fingers under her chin, barely touching her, but lifted it so they were staring at each other. “Please tell me you’ve let a man kiss you in the past ten years.”

  She shook her head, moving away from him. Not because his touch had sent her into a panic.

  But because it hadn’t done that.

  No way did she want to talk about this with Gabriel, especially with all this energy and attraction zinging between them. While part of her desperately wanted a kiss from Gabriel, it would open wounds she didn’t want reopened.

  “The Sentry files,” Jodi said once she’d gathered enough breath to speak. Somehow, she managed enough energy, too, to move away from him. Definitely not easy.

  “You do know that by not answering,” he grumbled, “that it was an answer.”

  Yes. She hadn’t let a man kiss her since the attack. Hadn’t even wanted a man to do that.

  Until now.

  Mercy, she was in trouble.

  Jodi forced her attention on the laptop. Work had always gotten her mind off things, and she needed that to happen now. It did. The moment she accessed the files, she started going through them, looking for any of Hector’s active cases. There were at least a dozen, and none of them had anything to do with their dead guy, Calvin Lasher. In fact, none of them were cases that involved pimps or eavesdropping devices.

  She shook her head and was able to move to the archives when she spotted something. Not a case assigned to Hector but to her.

  “I didn’t work on this,” Jodi mumbled, scrolling through it. “But it did involve a prostitute from the New Orleans area. Her name was Kitty Martin, and she wanted to hire Sentry for bodyguard duty.”

  “About how much would it have cost for that?” Gabriel asked after a long pause. Obviously, he’d been reading the file from over her shoulder.

  “Hundreds at least. There’s a start date of a month ago with no completion date. If she’d actually hired me for the full month, the cost would have been in the thousands.” She shrugged. “Maybe Hector intended to assign the case to me but took it himself. Or else Ms. Martin changed her mind about wanting our services.”

  If either of those things had happened, then it should have been in the file and under Hector’s name, not hers. Plus, there was the part about the dead cop who’d been investigating Hector’s involvement with a pimp from New Orleans. Jodi doubted that was a coincidence.

  And apparently Gabriel thought so, too. Mumbling some profanity, he took out his phone. “I’m putting out an APB on Hector. I want him brought in immediately.”

  Chapter Ten

  Gabriel didn’t like the way this investigation was going. Somehow, he needed to figure out who was behind the recent attack so he could stop another one. Because he doubted the danger was over.

  Neither was the fallout.

  Jodi was pacing again, something she’d been doing for the past three hours while they waited for SAPD to find Hector and bring him in. While it seemed as if seeing her brother had soothed her a bit, that soothing was long gone now. Probably because she dreaded the idea of Hector being guilty. It would mean the only man she’d completely trusted for the past ten years hadn’t been someone she could trust after all.

  There was a knock at his office door, causing Jodi to whirl in that direction. Gabriel could see her steeling herself up. But it wasn’t necessary because it was only Cameron.

  “It’ll be another half hour or so before Hector gets here,” Cameron told them right off, “but I finally got permission for an interview with Billy Coleman.”

  That was good news. Or at least it would be if Billy wasn’t so drugged up that he couldn’t talk to them. Still, it was a start.

  “You want me to go see Billy, or should I stay here and do the interview with Hector?” Cameron asked.

  If Gabriel could have been in two places, that would be ideal, but he needed to stay put with Jodi. “Since Jameson’s already in San Antonio today at the Rangers’ office, have him go see Billy,” Gabriel instructed. “Jameson can probably be there in a matter of minutes. I also want him to record the interview if he can.” Though he seriously doubted Billy’s doctors were going to allow that.

  Cameron nodded, looked at Jodi. “This probably won’t come as a surprise, but Hector’s not happy about having to come in.”

  “No. I wouldn’t imagine he would be.” Jodi paused. “Did he say anything about me?”

  “Words that you probably don’t want to hear. The man has a temper.”

  Great. Not a good combination, and when Hector aimed his temper and venom at Jodi, it would eat away at her.

  “Anything else in the Sentry computer files?” Cameron asked, motioning to the computer that was still on Gabriel’s desk.

  Jodi shook her head. “And I’ve been through every one of them for the past year. Those the year of the attack, too.”

  Cameron’s eyebrow lifted, and he shifted his attention back to Gabriel. “You don’t think Hector’s connected to your mom and dad?”

  Gabriel blew out a weary breath. “If he is, he didn’t surface as a suspect.”

  “And I didn’t know him back then,” Jodi added. She was no doubt thinking about how Hector just showed up out of the blue in her hospital room. “So, unless Hector’s somehow linked to the late Hattie Osmond and that money she was seemingly paying out, then he wouldn’t have had any part in the murde
r of Gabriel’s parents.”

  But maybe he had a part now. Hector could have killed the cop and now could be so jealous of Jodi’s return to Blue River that he could want her punished. Or worse.

  “Would Hector have even been old enough to be swindling money from Hattie?” Cameron, again.

  “He would have been in his early twenties,” Gabriel supplied. “And he got his money to open Sentry from somewhere.” Of course, it was a stretch to believe the money had come from Hattie, but Gabriel had to look at all the angles.

  That angle included the most recent ones. The ones that included Jodi’s uncle.

  “Go ahead and call August and bring him back in for questioning, too. We know that Russell recently withdrew some money from his accounts, but maybe August did, as well.”

  Cameron nodded, turned to leave but then stopped. He eyed both Jodi and him. “If you want to take turns guarding Jodi, just let me know.”

  “What was that about?” Jodi asked the moment Cameron was out of the room.

  Gabriel scowled and shut the door.

  “Oh,” she said, obviously picking up on the emotions behind his scowl. “He thinks we’re getting together. Cameron clearly doesn’t know me,” she added in a mumble.

  Gabriel hadn’t needed a reminder of his earlier conversation with Jodi, the one about kissing, but her mumble brought it back to the surface anyway. He probably should just let it go, but it was hard to do. Plenty of things were hard when it came to Jodi.

  He went to her, knowing it was a mistake but not able to stop himself, either. He cursed this attraction that seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds. The timing for it sucked, and plain and simple, it could be dangerous.

  But this wasn’t about common sense.

  “You’re feeling guilty,” she said out of the blue. “If you’d kissed me that night, or had sex with me, then I wouldn’t be like this.”