Lone Star (Dartmoor Book 7)

by Lauren Gilley

  “No. He said he threw a tarp over the bodies.”

  Blue made a choking sound. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Yeah. Same old dumbass. Didn’t want the neighbors to see. He said he’d wait for us, but, if this looks like the other bodies out in the desert, I say we call Agent Cantrell.”

  “The fed?” Blue sounded like someone trying very hard not to sound incredulous – and failing.

  “It shows innocence on our part,” Candy said, feeling a little defensive. “We wouldn’t call him if we’d done it – not to mention, I wouldn’t dump a fucking body in my own sister’s yard.”

  “Unless you were really trying to throw off the trail.”

  “Not helpful, bro.”

  He felt Blue’s gaze on the side of his head, and gritted his teeth against whatever his old friend was about to say, already anticipating a lecture. “Used to,” Blue said, and here it came, “you’d sooner cat burglars make off with everything you own than file a police report.”

  “Blue.”

  “You’d pay to replace a whole entire truck with cash outta your pocket before you called the cops so insurance could handle it.” It wasn’t said unkindly, or with any urgency; was spoken as a matter of mild observation.

  Candy massaged the steering wheel a few silent minutes, putting a tight rein on his initial, kneejerk flare of anger. He felt defensive, and that wasn’t a normal feeling for him. He wasn’t used to explaining himself to the boys, and he hated doing so now.

  But Blue had a point, damn it. He’d once accidently scratched a Mercedes with his wallet chain, trying to squeeze between it and an old truck in the grocery store parking lot. He’d left a fat wad of cash tucked beneath the windshield wiper to avoid having to give his name to whatever nice lady owned it, who would probably, once she got a look at his cut, want to dial 9-1-1.

  “The fed already knows I’m involved because he saw me there with Pacer,” he reasoned, squirming inwardly because he was dodging some of the truth, and knew it. “If we go dump these bodies, and do a shit job of it – if someone found them – if one of Jen’s neighbors peeked out the window and saw it lying there already – then we look guilty as shit. Right now, we’ve got no idea who’s doing this, and no idea where to even start looking. Maybe we ought to let the long arm of the law get off its ass and do its job for once.”

  “Solid point,” Blue said after a moment.

  “Yeah, well. Getting smarter as I get older.”

  “And more cautious.”

  Candy darted a glance toward him, registered his thoughtful expression in the dash lights, the knowing way Blue glanced back before the road took his attention again. “You saying I’m getting soft?” he bristled.

  “If I was, it’s because I know that it’s got nothing to do with age, and everything to do with a little blonde sweet thing and a baby boy.”

  Candy lifted a hand off the wheel and made a staying gesture in the air between them. The anger spiked, thrumming through him now, wanting an outlet. Misplaced nerves over Jenny, and the situation, and frustration at his own helplessness – throw Michelle into the mix and he was ready to throw hands. “Blue,” he said, warningly. “I know you’re not gonna say some shit about my old lady.”

  “No. Jesus, will you cool it? I’d never insult Michelle, I love that kid. You know that.” He made a disgusted sound. “Do you honestly think…? No. What I meant was, you’ve got a family now. That softens everybody up, and there’s no shame in it. Nobody wants to get locked up or shot dead when he’s got kids and an old lady. I get why you’re doing things the legal way this time.”

  Candy frowned at the road. What Blue had said made sense. But Candy wasn’t just some guy in some club. The MC wasn’t just a stop-gap between disastrous life decisions like it was for some; not one in a long string of nefarious, law-breaking mistakes. Michelle and TJ – and the little nugget to come – were his everything, but calling Cantrell wouldn’t be about running gun shy. About worrying about getting locked up and leaving them behind.

  It was the most practical, least risky decision for his club. His club, that he’d been born into, that ran thicker than blood through his veins.

  He wasn’t soft.

  When was the last time you hit somebody? a traitorous little voice asked in the back of his mind. He shoved it down and said, “If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears.”

  “No,” Blue said. “Nothing better.”

  The turn appeared up ahead, and Candy was grateful to flick on the blinker and be done with this conversation. Questioning himself was not his natural state of being, and it sucked.

  He half-expected to pull up to blue lights and fluttering yellow tape. But when they braked in front of the house, all they found was moonlight gleaming dully off the blue tarp, and Colin standing with his bare arms folded tight against the chill. He at least wore a pair of work gloves, Candy noted with grudging approval. Hopefully he hadn’t gotten his damn prints and DNA all over the bodies before he’d pulled them on.

  Candy killed the engine, climbed out, and pulled up short when he nearly ran into Colin, who’d come striding down the yard to meet him at the front of the truck.

  As a general rule, Candy didn’t run into anyone taller or broader in the shoulder than himself. Mercy was the only one, but he only saw him a few times a year. In day-to-day life, Candy was the “big one.”

  Or, at least, he had been. Colin was just a hairsbreadth taller, shoulders just a smidge wider, and the muscles of his chest and arms bulkier. It was that Remy Lécuyer DNA; the body of a man who could dredge full-grown bull gators up out of swamp muck and haul them over the side of a tiny, wallowing boat.

  Colin lacked his half-brother’s spookier energy, though, most of the time. His life had been easier; his smiles came a little slower, but truer, less frenetic. Colin smiled like a joke was funny. Mercy smiled like it was so funny he wanted to hit the joke-teller with a ballpeen hammer and see if more jokes would come spilling out like candy from a piñata.

  Tonight, the December breeze plastering his shirt to his chest, his dark eyes black and gleaming in the moonlight, his jaw clenched tight enough to cut glass, Colin looked more Mercy than himself.

  “What the fuck?” he demanded, voice low, and rough, and channeling fear into fury.

  Candy elected to let it slide. But he did say, “We’re not having this conversation out on the street. We’re gonna call Cantrell–”

  “Who?”

  “Keep your voice down. Agent Cantrell. The FBI agent assigned to the desert killings case.”

  There was just enough moon and streetlight to make out the way Colin’s brows scaled his forehead. “You want to bring that guy to my house? You want to bring a fed to my house?”

  “What, you got another body in the garage?” Before he could answer, Candy put a hand on his shoulder, and not-so-gently steered him back up the yard, toward the tarp. “How bad is it?” he asked in an undertone. With this wind, and given the flatness of the street, the coldness of the night, voices would carry.

  “There’s two corpses on my lawn, so pretty fucking bad.”

  “What killed them, idiot?”

  They reached the edge of the tarp and came to a halt. To Candy, used to seeing such things, the shape of two bodies beneath were unmistakable – if unusual, given the way the arms and legs were spread.

  “Their throats are cut,” Colin said, grudgingly.

  “Same as the others.” Candy cast a look down the street, checking house fronts. He didn’t see any lights on, but that didn’t mean anything. If you were peeking through your blinds, spying on the neighbors, you’d keep the lights off.

  He crouched and lifted the edge of the tarp, just far enough to glimpse a battered work boot, equally weathered jeans, and to get a whiff of voided bladder and bowels. “What did the blood look like?”

  “What?” Colin sounded irritated, on edge, distracted. When Candy glanced back, he saw that he was scrubbing his gloved hands through his hair, shou
lders jacked up high and tight.

  “The blood where their throats were cut. Did it run down their fronts, or down the sides of their necks?”

  Colin lowered his arms, slowly. “The sides,” he said, and then, “fuck.”

  They hadn’t been killed and dumped. They’d been killed right here, in Colin and Jenny’s yard.

  “That’s just like the others, too,” Candy said, grimly.

  ~*~

  Jenny murmured a quiet thanks when Michelle placed a steaming mug of tea in front of her. She wrapped both hands around it, and pulled it close, but made no move to drink it. Michelle was well-versed in the medicinal properties of having a hot drink in your hands; the drinking was irrelevant.

  Michelle sat down across from her with her own mug. “Are you okay?” She’d asked that already, when she’d met Jenny coming in through the front door on a blast of cold air, but that had been automatic, and perfunctory. Now, it was alone, out from under Jinx’s watchful eye, in a safe place, at a familiar table, with tea and buttery lamplight. A person’s state of okay, Michelle had learned over the years, could shift in just a few minutes. It was when you finally stopped managing the situation and sat down that it hit you like a sucker punch.

  Jenny reached up to rub at the place between her brows, the skin already pink like she’d done that on the ride over. Her gaze was on her tea. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve seen worse.” They both had. “But Jack…” She lifted her head, and glanced toward the sofa where Jack had curled up with his favorite blanket and fallen asleep almost immediately. “He saw it. One of them,” she said, quietly, her voice laced with a shiver. “I told him the man was just sleeping. Playing a game. He’s four, so I don’t know that it’s gonna stick in his head, you know? And, hell.” She sighed. “He’ll end up patching in one day. These won’t be his last dead bodies. But.” She turned toward Michelle, her eyes – the same faded denim blue as her brother’s – white-rimmed with repressed panic. “They were right outside his room. Somebody killed two men right outside his room.”

  “I know.” That was the thing that put Michelle’s mama bear instincts in sympathetic overdrive.

  It would have been so easy – would have taken only a moment – for one of the killers to take the three steps to the window and slip a blade in the crack at its bottom. Lever it up. Reach through…

  She dashed the thought away before it could manifest too strongly. Jack was fine, and he was going to stay that way. Just like TJ. The last was half-determined statement…half-prayer.

  “Candy say who he thinks it is?” Jenny asked, startling her.

  “No. If I knew, you’d know.”

  Jenny lifted a single brow and took a sip of tea. “Doubt it. I don’t know jack shit since we moved out.”

  “No, but…” Michelle’s argument faded on her tongue as she thought about it. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she and Jenny had sat at this table together, having coffee, or wine, or a shared dinner with the whole family.

  “Yeah,” Jenny said. “I’m out of the loop.”

  “No.” A weak protest. If she pulled out her phone, she’d find that her last contact with Jenny had been three days ago, a quick text about an upcoming potluck at a rec center charity the club was sponsoring this Christmas. “I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it. “I didn’t realize I wasn’t keeping you up to date.”

  “Shit, no, that’s not your job. Phones work both ways. Most of this is on me.” She sighed, and toyed with the string of her teabag. “With my new job, and Jack being in school now. And not living here…I guess I never realized how deep you get in club business when you live under its roof.” She sounded wistful.

  “Do you miss it?”

  Jenny looked up, surprised by the question. “No,” she said, right away, but then took a long sip of tea and seemed to think it over. “I love my house,” she said, firmly, like she didn’t want Michelle to think she didn’t. Maybe to convince herself, too, a little. “We just put the fence in across the backyard, and I’m going to have tomatoes next summer. We’ve got so much room. And privacy. God. It’s a miracle to have sex without worrying your brother’s just down the hall and might hear.”

  “Colin gets loud, does he?” Michelle teased, and they both chuckled.

  Jenny’s smile faded fast, though. She shrugged. “I got used to it, though: being here all the time. Knowing everything that was going on. A lot of it was dumb – nobody needs to know what sort of terrible lunch creation Cletus let go moldy in the fridge.”

  “Olive loaf on rye this week,” Michelle said, making a face.

  Jenny wrinkled her nose in sympathy. “See? Nobody. But I was–” Her next breath came unsteadily. “I wasn’t an old lady, but I was the woman they all turned to. I was the HBIC, you know? It was like I had a place. Like I mattered. And now I’m just…an old lady, living away from all the action.”

  Michelle frowned. “Jen, are things alright with you and Colin?”

  “What? Yes. Yes, they’re great. This isn’t about us.” She shook her head, and looked frustrated. “He’s a big doofus, but I love him.” She said it like it was an affliction, but a deep, private smile tweaked the corners of her mouth, the kind Michelle could immediately relate to.

  Jenny sighed. “You’d be feeling the same way, if it was you living apart from here.”

  Michelle smiled. “Guilty as charged, I’m afraid.”

  “Ignore me,” Jenny said with a little wave, and sipped more tea. “I’m all high-strung because of what happened. And,” she added, voice firming, gaze going steely in a reassuring way; that was the HBIC peeking through, still very much intact, living apart or no. “I can’t believe Candy isn’t already elbows-deep in ass-kicking yet. How does he not have a clue who’s doing this?”

  “I don’t know,” Michelle said, letting worry bleed into her voice at last. She stared down at her own undrunk tea. The mug had gone cold between her hands. “Has he ever not known what was going on in this city?”

  “No,” Jenny said, “and that’s what scares me.”

  Eleven

  Cantrell climbed out of his car wearing a wool trench over a threadbare Quantico shirt, his plaid lounge pants tucked into cowboy boots that, at least, carried admirable signs of wear. Never trust a man with too-clean boots, Dad had always said. He cursed, and fumbled with his coat buttons as he walked up the frost-crunchy sod to where Candy, Blue, and Colin stood beside the tarp.

  “You touched the bodies?” he asked, glancing down at the tarp.

  “The tarp touched the bodies,” Colin said, and Candy nudged him.

  “It seemed important the neighbors not see two dead guys laid out like lawn ornaments,” he said. “And I figure your lab guys are talented enough to know the tarp’s not what killed them.” He grinned.

  Cantrell regarded him a moment – there was enough light creeping up over the horizon to see the unimpressed flatness of his expression. “Yeah. Sure.”

  Patrol cars rolled up after that. Candy took Colin and Blue and they all retreated to the front porch to let Cantrell handle things – which he did. The uniformed cops were put on tape and lookout duty. Vans started rolling up. A coroner, and some black vans from the FBI lab, full of techs in white gloves and black windbreakers. They dragged out their kits, and cameras, and they folded back the tarp just as the sun finally broke over the horizon in pale white spikes, the soft glow of dawn spilling through the neighborhood.

  The neighbors rolled by a few at a time, slowing way down, rubber-necking on their way to work. The uniforms waved them on, but Candy was pretty sure one mom in a minivan got an eyeful of dead guy, if the way her mouth dropped open was any indication.

  Cantrell finally ambled up to the porch, walking like a man who’d had less than three hours of sleep, smoking a cigarette. Colin already had a travel mug of fresh coffee ready and handed it out in offering.

  Cantrell blinked at it a moment, exhaustion-rumpled face smoothing in momentary surprise.

  “I
t’s cream and sugar,” Colin said.

  “Thanks.” The agent took it, and if he had any hesitation about drinking something a confirmed outlaw handed him, he didn’t show it, taking a long sip straight off.

  “How long ‘til they get them outta my yard?” Colin asked.

  “Hard to say.” Cantrell glanced toward the action. Two female techs stood over one body, one near the head, one down at a staked foot, snapping pictures, then bending to place the little scale markers again and take more. “I don’t get involved in ‘the process.’” He said it like someone who’d been reprimanded more than once for doing just that. He turned back to Colin, gaze sharpening. “You saw them from the house?”

  “My wife did,” Colin said, folding his arms across his chest, that same puffed-up, defensive posture he’d had when Candy first arrived. The idiot still hadn’t put on a jacket – only a beanie pulled low on his brow. He looked huge, and the pose wasn’t going to help things. “Right outside our son’s bedroom window.” He nodded toward it.

  “Jesus,” Cantrell said, flatly. “Helluva thing to wake up to.”

  Then the agent’s gaze landed on Candy – installed in one of Jenny’s cliché white rocking chairs – and stayed there. “I’d like to have a word, Mr. Snow. Just the two of us.”

  Blue grumbled something unintelligible – though Candy swore he heard soft thrown in – but he and Colin headed inside without making a fuss.

  When they were gone, Cantrell sipped his coffee, and stared out at the crime scene.

  Candy snorted. “That old trick isn’t gonna work on me, boss. If you’ve got questions, you can just go ahead and ask them.”

  Cantrell sighed and gave a little shrug with his brows, expression rueful. He hitched a hip up onto the porch rail, one leg dangling tiredly, and looked at Candy full-on. Not with that careful blankness of a questioning detective, nor with any hostility. Honestly, Candy wasn’t used to being looked at like this by law enforcement of any kind.

  “I did some research into your organization.”