Cowboy Above the Law

by Delores Fossen

  “Everything. You could be in the middle of this danger because of my father’s affair.” He didn’t say the word father with too much affection. However, there was plenty of anger. “I can’t believe he did something like this.”

  After everything Warren had put her through with the trial, Rayna wanted to say that she had indeed thought he was capable. But yes, even she was surprised. Warren could be a bulldog when it came to seeking justice, but he’d seemed to genuinely love his wife and family. And now he was tearing them apart.

  “If my mom dies...” Court started.

  But Rayna didn’t let him finish that. She stopped him by brushing her mouth over his. In hindsight, kissing him hadn’t been the right thing to do. But it certainly caused the heat to slide right through her.

  She leaned back, their gazes connecting, and this time she saw more than the worry and fatigue. There was some confusion. And a little fire.

  “Have only good thoughts about your mother,” she warned him. “Or I’ll kiss you again.”

  Despite everything going on, the corner of his mouth lifted. “Not much of a threat.” But then he huffed, and she understood what he meant.

  In some ways, kissing was the greatest threat of all.

  And that was why she stepped back. Just like that, the moment was lost, taking the fire right along with it. Unfortunately, Rayna knew it would return.

  His phone rang, and since he still had it in his hand, she had no trouble seeing the screen. Not Egan this time but rather Thea. He put this one on speaker, too.

  “How’s Warren?” Thea immediately asked.

  “Awake. He confirmed the affair with Alma.”

  “I see.” Thea sounded very disappointed about that. “Griff is here with the prisoner. I’ll send the gun he had on him for testing. Anything specific you want me to look for?”

  “Fingerprints or some DNA,” Court answered. “It’s possible this gun was going to be used to set someone up.”

  He looked at Rayna then, and she knew the someone might be her. She didn’t remember touching a gun that wasn’t hers, but it was possible someone had gotten a sample of her DNA.

  “I finished the interview with Alma,” Thea added a moment later.

  “Yeah, Egan told me.”

  “Figured he had. Alma will be back tomorrow though to go over her statement. If you or Egan wanted to question her, you could do it then.”

  Court made a sound of agreement. “We don’t have any grounds to arrest her. Not yet. But I need to look into her possible connection to the dead PI. According to my dad, her real name is Jennifer Reeves. And yes, he did hire her. Can you see what you can pull up on her?”

  “Sure.” And Rayna could hear the clicking of the computer keys. “Alma said Jennifer met with your mother. Do you know why?”

  “No idea, and it might be a while before I can ask her.” Judging from the sudden tightness in his jaw, that was all he wanted to say about that right now.

  “Jennifer Reeves,” Thea repeated a moment later. “Yes, she was a PI. Thirty-four. No record. She owns...owned an agency in San Antonio but didn’t have any other employees. Let me check her social media and see if I find any connection to Helen.”

  “And check connections to Alma, too,” Court insisted.

  “You think Alma could have been lying?”

  “I don’t know, but if Alma is on some kind of vendetta, then she might have used Jennifer to do it. Alma could have found out my father hired Jennifer and then paid her more money to set him up.”

  Yes, because after all, it’d been Jennifer who’d taken the photo of the woman who resembled Rayna. But then Rayna thought of something else.

  “Maybe you’ll find a connection between Jennifer and Mitch,” Rayna threw out there.

  Thea made an immediate sound of agreement. “There did seem to be something going on between those two, and Mitch is definitely someone who’d want to get back at Warren and you.” She paused. “I’m not seeing anything on her social media, but I’ll see about getting her case files. It’s possible... Oh.”

  Rayna definitely didn’t like the sound of that “oh.” Thea wasn’t exactly the sort to be easily surprised.

  “What is it?” Court asked when Thea didn’t continue.

  “I think we should be looking into someone else,” Thea finally said. “I’m sending you a photo that I found on Jennifer’s page. You want me to bring her in for questioning?”

  It took a few seconds for the photo to load on Court’s phone. It was a shot of two women, and they appeared to be at some kind of party. When Rayna looked at their faces, it felt as if someone had drained all the air from the room.

  The woman on the left was definitely Jennifer. But Rayna recognized the other woman, too.

  Because it was Whitney.

  Chapter Ten

  Court definitely didn’t like this latest turn of events. Why the heck had Whitney not mentioned that she knew Jennifer?

  From all accounts Jennifer had been working at the diner for a couple of weeks, and Whitney lived in town. As small as McCall Canyon was, she would have likely run into her, seen her friend and then been very concerned that her friend had turned up dead. The very friend that from all appearances had tried to set up Rayna for a crime she didn’t commit.

  Court drove away from the hospital while Rayna tried to call Whitney. They were alone in the cruiser but not alone on the road. He hadn’t wanted to risk that. Deputy Dakota Tillman and a Texas Ranger were in a second cruiser behind them, and Court hoped that three lawmen would be enough to deter another attack.

  “Whitney’s still not answering her phone,” Rayna said. It was her fifth attempt to get in touch with the woman, but each of the calls had gone straight to voice mail.

  Court figured that wasn’t a good thing no matter which way they looked at this.

  “You think it’s possible Whitney got wind that you learned she was connected to the dead PI?” Rayna asked.

  “Yeah,” he admitted. Since Whitney was a dispatcher for the sheriff’s office, she could have heard and might now be avoiding them.

  Or...

  There was another possibility. One that he didn’t want to mention to Rayna just yet. If Whitney had gotten involved in some kind of scheme to kill Warren, a scheme that involved Jennifer and Hallie, then she could be dead, too.

  “I keep going back to what Whitney did earlier in the hospital parking lot,” Rayna said. “She pulled her vehicle between us and the shooter.”

  Whitney had indeed done that, and while that alone wasn’t an indication of guilt, she was starting to look very suspicious. “I’ll question Whitney as soon as she checks in with us.” And the woman had better do that soon. She’d also better have the right answers.

  Rayna glanced at the sheriff’s office as they drove past. “You can leave me there if you want, and go back to the hospital and be with your mother.”

  “Rachel and Egan are there, and the doctor said he didn’t want her to have visitors for a while. Even if she were allowed, I’m not sure I should be answering questions she’ll have about my dad’s affair. It would only upset her even more.”

  It had certainly upset Court. And worse, he didn’t know what to do about it. Part of him hated his father for this, but hating wasn’t going to fix the danger. Or his mother. No. He had to focus on getting the person responsible for the attacks and then make sure his mom had the kind of help she needed to get better.

  His phone dinged with a text message, and Court handed it to Rayna so she could read it to him.

  “It’s from Thea,” she relayed. “No signs of the shooter. Also, Bo is only seventeen, and he lawyered up.”

  The first wasn’t a surprise, since the shooter was probably long gone by now. But seventeen! That meant Bo was a juvenile and might not be charged as an adult. That could be especially true if
Bo didn’t have a record. Of course, he had tried to slip a gun into a hospital room, and that was a serious enough charge that he might end up with some actual jail time.

  “Text her back,” Court instructed, “and ask her to question Bo as soon as his lawyer arrives. I want to find out if he knows who hired Hallie to give him the gun and the drugs.”

  Bo probably didn’t know the answer to that, but they had to try. Right now, Bo was the only living link they had to the dead woman.

  Rayna was about to hand him back his phone, but it rang before she could do that. This time it wasn’t a number he recognized, and he motioned for Rayna to answer it. She did and put it on speaker. Court braced himself in case this was the shooter, but it wasn’t.

  It was Raleigh.

  “I’ve got something that I’m sure you’ll want to see,” Raleigh immediately said. “The coffee shop here doesn’t have a security camera, but there’s one at the bank across the street. I’m emailing the footage to you now.”

  That was a pleasant surprise. “Is my mother’s meeting with the PI on the footage?” Court asked.

  “Yeah. It’s grainy because of the glass window that’s between them and the camera, but you can see their faces well enough. At first, your mother doesn’t appear to be agitated, but that changes at about the five-minute mark. She appears to start crying.”

  Hell. That could mean that Jennifer had told Helen about the affair. But why would the PI have done that?

  “I don’t see any exchange of money or anything,” Raleigh went on. “And your mother didn’t stay long in the coffee shop after that.”

  So, a short meeting. One that had upset his mother. Coupled with the fact that Helen hadn’t mentioned the meeting until he’d asked her about it, it wasn’t looking good.

  “You’ll let me know what your mother has to say about this after you’ve viewed the footage?” Raleigh asked.

  “That might be a while.” Court debated how much he should say and then went with the truth. After all, Raleigh would be hearing it soon enough, anyway. “My mother tried to kill herself. Pills. I won’t be able to question her until I get the all clear from her doctor.”

  “Sorry about that.” And even though Raleigh had muttered it, he sounded genuine. “We’re in a bad place right now with our mothers. Alma hasn’t tried to end her life, but she’s not as strong as she looks.”

  “Is she strong enough to have hired a killer?” Court blurted out. He wished though that he’d toned it down a little, since Raleigh actually seemed to want to get to the bottom of this.

  “As her son, I’ll say no. As a cop, I’ll say anyone is capable of pretty much anything. But ask yourself this—if my mother was so upset at Warren, then why would she have waited two months to go after him?”

  “Maybe because it took her that long to put a plan together.” But Court had to shake his head. “How long ago did my mom meet with the PI?”

  “Four days,” Raleigh readily answered.

  That meant Helen had had that meeting three days before Warren had been shot. If his mother had learned of the affair at the meeting, it was possible she’d somehow gotten Jennifer to help her with a plan. It sickened Court to think that might be true because the plan had included setting up Rayna. Plus, both Rayna and his father could have been killed along with the two women who’d been murdered.

  “I’m not saying either of our mothers killed anyone,” Raleigh went on, “but we have to consider they could have hired someone who went rogue. Someone they can no longer control.”

  Yes, and that someone had maybe fired shots at Rayna and him.

  Court’s phone beeped with an incoming call, and when he saw John Clary’s name on the screen, he knew he’d need to talk to his fellow deputy. “I’ll review the footage and get back to you,” he told Raleigh and switched over the call.

  “Please tell me you found the shooter,” Court immediately said.

  “No. But we do have a problem. Someone tripped the security alarm at Rayna’s house. And since it’s still taped off as a crime scene, I came here to check it out. There’s someone here all right, but he or she ran into the barn when they spotted the cruiser. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t Rayna or someone she sent out here.”

  “It’s not me,” Rayna assured him. “But this morning Court had some of his hands go over and tend my horses. Maybe it was one of them.”

  “Seems funny though that the person would take off running like that,” John commented.

  It did, and it put an uneasy feeling in Court’s stomach. Besides, those hands would have been long finished by now and back at the McCall Ranch.

  “Every now and then some kids will come out to my place,” Rayna added. “I think I’m the local bogeyman, since many people believe I killed Bobby Joe.”

  She glanced away from Court when she added that. It was a reminder that her life probably hadn’t been so great in the past three years.

  “So, you think it might be just a prank or something?” John pressed.

  “I don’t know,” Rayna said after a long pause. “The kids don’t usually go in my barn.”

  None of this was giving Court assurances that all was well. “Are you alone?” he asked John.

  “Yeah. I was headed back to the office when I got the call. You think I should get some backup?”

  It wasn’t an easy question to answer. The sheriff’s office was maxed out, and Rayna and he were only a couple of miles from her place. Court turned in that direction, but he definitely wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. He also motioned for the other deputy and Ranger to follow them.

  “Just stay put,” Court told John. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He ended the call and immediately looked at Rayna. “You won’t be getting out of this cruiser. Understand?”

  She didn’t argue with that, but she huffed. “You really think the shooter would be stupid enough to go to my house?”

  “He might if he thought he’d left something when he attacked you.”

  That put some new fear back in her eyes, and Court nearly turned around to get Rayna out of there. Then he saw a familiar car on the road just ahead of them.

  Whitney.

  Rayna immediately took out her phone and tried to call the woman again. Again, it went straight to voice mail.

  Court had another decision to make. He wanted to talk to Whitney, but he wasn’t sure it was worth putting Rayna at risk this way. That decision was taken out of his hands though when Whitney pulled off onto the shoulder of the road. She got out of her car, and she’d obviously seen them because she started flagging them down.

  “Stay inside the cruiser,” Court repeated to Rayna. He drew his gun and pulled up behind Whitney. However, he didn’t get out, and he only lowered his window a couple of inches. Dakota stopped his vehicle behind them and did the same thing.

  “What are you doing out here?” Court snapped when Whitney ran up to the car.

  She practically stopped in her tracks, and she pulled back her shoulders. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” She looked at Rayna when she asked that second question.

  “You tell us. Why are you here?” he repeated.

  She opened her mouth, her attention volleying between Rayna and him. “Mitch. Did he call you, too?”

  Mitch? Court certainly hadn’t expected her to say that.

  “No,” Rayna answered, “but I’ve been trying to call you for the past half hour.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, but the battery died, and—”

  “You didn’t tell me you knew one of the dead women,” Rayna interrupted.

  Whitney shook her head. “I don’t.”

  “You do,” Rayna argued. “I saw a picture of you with her. Her name was Jennifer Reeves.”

  It took several moments for Whitney to process that. Or maybe she was pretending to process it. “The dea
d woman is Jennifer? I thought her name was Janet.”

  “She was using an alias,” Court explained. “So, you did know her?”

  “Of course.” Whitney’s voice was barely a whisper now, and if she was faking it, she was doing a darn good job. “Jennifer’s dead?”

  Court verified that with a nod. “When’s the last time you saw her?” And that was the first of many questions he had for her.

  She shook her head again, pushed her hair from her face. “Months. Maybe longer. We met on a cruise about ten years ago and have stayed in touch.” She uttered a hoarse sob. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”

  Again, her shock seemed genuine, and later he intended to question her more about her friendship with Jennifer. For now though, there was something more pressing. “What does Mitch have to do with you being out here?”

  Whitney paused again as if trying to gather her thoughts. “He called me, and he sounded frantic. Maybe scared. It was a really bad connection with a lot of static, but I thought he said there was something in Rayna’s house that he had to get.”

  “Something?” Court questioned.

  Whitney glanced away. “He didn’t say exactly what, but I think he maybe meant a gun. He could be looking for the gun that he thinks killed Bobby Joe.”

  Both Court and Rayna groaned. “And why did Mitch think the gun would be there after all this time?”

  “I don’t know. That’s about the time my phone battery completely died, and I started driving out here. I was afraid the Rangers would still be here, would see him and think maybe he was the person who’d shot at Rayna and you.”

  They might have indeed thought that, but it was still no reason for Mitch to run.

  “Get in your car and go to the sheriff’s office,” Court told Whitney.

  “But what about Mitch?”

  “I’ll take care of him.”

  Whitney didn’t look at all comfortable with that. Well, welcome to the club. Court wasn’t comfortable with it, either, but he didn’t want Mitch trespassing on a crime scene, especially with another of their suspects around.