by Katie Ruggle
From the sober faces of her sisters, it was obvious that Molly hadn’t read the price wrong. She let out a silent whistle as her stomach continued to try to eat itself. This was nothing like the lipstick Jane liked to sneak from the department-store makeup counter.
“She is in so much trouble.”
“So are we.” Cara’s voice was flat as she gestured around the dining room. It hadn’t gotten more than a cursory search, but other rooms of the house—especially Jane’s bedroom—were a tossed mess. Even the storage boxes in the garage had been dug through, and the contents had been strewn everywhere. At least they hadn’t dusted for prints again. The fingerprint powder that Sergeant Blake had left everywhere was a beast to clean up, Molly had found. “I take it the necklace wasn’t found on Mom when she was arrested?”
Molly held up her hands in an I don’t know gesture. “Sorry. I didn’t ask Carmondy that. Want me to call him back?” She really didn’t want to talk to him again so soon, mainly because their last conversation had put her severely off-balance in an unexpected way, and she’d had quite enough surprises for one day.
“Not yet,” Cara said, to Molly’s relief. “First, let’s figure out what we know—and what we can find out on our own. Then you can talk to John to fill in the blanks.”
“Okay.” Molly took great pains to hide her inward grimace. It appeared that her next call to John was just delayed slightly, not canceled as she’d hoped. As soon as the thought popped into her head, she mentally scolded herself. She and her sisters had an entire world of problems that were a thousand times worse than her uncertainty around this new version of John. If she had to call him for more answers—even if she had to ask him for help—she was going to put her pride in the closet and do exactly what was necessary.
After all, their mom had just jumped into a canyon of trouble…and Molly had to do her best to make sure that she and her sisters weren’t dragged into the abyss with her.
Chapter 6
Shoving open the dingy glass door to Barney Thompson’s bail-bond office, Molly very carefully hid any sign of disgust that wanted to creep into her expression. She didn’t even make a face when she felt something sticky adhere the door handle to her palm, and she was quite proud of herself for that.
After spending the morning chasing down leads on Jane’s case and getting nowhere, Molly hadn’t been able to put off the visit to Barney’s office any longer. She wasn’t happy to have to talk to him—in fact, she’d rather sleep in a bed full of cockroaches than waste a minute with Barney Thompson—but he’d written Jane’s bond, which meant he had information that Molly and her sisters didn’t. Reminding herself that it wouldn’t take long and then she could leave this hole-in-the-wall, she stepped into the reception area.
Barney’s twentysomething son, Ashton, sat at a battered metal desk, his focus on his phone. Peeling her hand free with an inner shudder, Molly let the door close behind her. When Ashton didn’t look up from the small screen, she pulled the door open again a few inches and closed it with a loud bang.
Reluctantly, he tore his gaze from his phone and let it flick over her. Immediately, he lost his disinterested expression as he gave her another more thorough visual examination. “Whoa. You’re one of the hot Mexican bounty-hunter sisters. Which one are you again?”
It became harder for her to hold back her ick face, but she somehow managed to cling to her coolly polite smile. “I’m Molly Pax. Is your dad here?” She didn’t bother correcting him about her nationality. After all, if it hadn’t sunk in after Ashton’s previous four encounters with her, then he was never going to get it.
“Yeah.” He didn’t take his gaze off her as he raised his voice to a yell. “Dad! There’s a hottie here for you!”
“Thanks,” she said dryly.
“No problem.” Ashton leaned back, ignoring his chair’s protesting squeal. “So…Mel. Whatcha doing later?”
“A lot of things.” She started to correct him on her name, but stopped herself before she could. It’d probably be a good thing if he couldn’t remember it.
Ashton opened his mouth again, and she braced to firmly shut him down. Luckily, the inner office door opened before he could say another word.
Barney peered into the reception area. When he spotted Molly, his scowl disappeared and his mouth curved up in a small grin. The smugness in his expression was almost enough to make her turn right around and leave his office, but then she reminded herself that he had information she needed. First, she’d learn more about what happened with Jane, and then she’d tell him—and his son—to shove it.
“Molly Pax.” He looked like he was resisting the desire to rub his hands together, evil-villain style. A tall man with a broad frame, he might have been considered moderately handsome if a stranger saw him in a picture, but his personality had completely warped her perception to the point that just the sight of his florid, square-jawed face made her gag a little. “What a surprise to see you here.” His almost giddy tone made it clear that he wasn’t surprised at all.
“Molly?” Ashton repeated, frowning, before she could get her bubbling temper under control enough to respond. “Why’d you tell me your name was Mel?”
Ignoring the son, she focused on Barney, clinging to her mantra that she only had to deal with these two for a short time before she could leave them to their dingy, depressing office with its mysteriously sticky doorknobs. “Barney. It’s been a while.” She almost told him that it was nice to see him again, but she couldn’t force out such a whopping lie.
“Too long. Too long.” He made a flourishing gesture, extending his arm toward the inner office. “Come in, and we’ll discuss business.”
Molly had to force her feet to move. Everything in her gut was telling her to cut and run and find a different source of information, but she was already here—plus she’d already dealt with Ashton’s sliminess. Surely she could survive his father’s as well?
Inside the office, Barney waved her toward a straight-backed wooden chair in front of his desk as he took the seat behind it. That chair protested just as Ashton’s had, and Molly had the whimsical thought that even the furniture was complaining about having to work with these two—or, more practically, Barney was just too cheap to buy new chairs.
“So…Molly.” Leaning back, he steepled his fingers and put on what Molly was pretty sure was supposed to be his thoughtful expression, but it ended up making him look even blanker than normal. “Since you’re here, I’m guessing you’ve decided to take the Sonny Zarver job after all.” Before she could refute this, he continued, “Figured you’d come around eventually. It’s a lot of money at stake.”
Even though she was almost painfully tempted to punch the smug condescension off his face, she crossed her legs and linked her fingers together in her lap instead. “Actually, I’m not here because of Sonny. Our decision not to take that job stands.”
His smarmy grin disappeared as quickly as if she’d really allowed herself to smack him. It was very satisfying to watch. Unfortunately, she could only enjoy it for a few seconds before he smiled again. This one was a little meaner-looking than the last, and a great deal colder. “You sure about that?” After moving the remains of a fast-food breakfast sandwich off a pile on his desk, he slid a large manila file from the top of the stack and opened it. He didn’t look down at the contents, so she knew he was already well aware of what they said. Her stomach twisted and turned as she waited for him to drop whatever bomb he had on her head.
Instead of answering, she waited. When she didn’t know all of the facts, the only thing running her mouth would do was get her in trouble. Barney loved to brag about his exploits, so she figured that he’d tell her everything if she just stayed quiet.
When she didn’t respond, his mouth tightened, and he tapped his fingers against the contents of the folder. Molly resisted the urge to glance down at the papers in front of him to get a peek at what
ever he was about to throw her way. Instead, she held his gaze and kept her face calm…at least she hoped she was projecting a placid facade. After the turmoil of the past couple of days, her nerves were starting to fray, and she worried that her tension would show through.
Finally, he spoke. “Your mother got herself into a shitload of trouble.”
Tell me something I don’t know. Rather than letting her snarky words escape, Molly limited herself to raising her eyebrows slightly.
His face darkened, growing even more flushed than his normal ruddy coloring. “I, being the nice guy that I am, helped her out when none of her kids bothered to show up.”
“Why’d she pick you?” Molly asked, relieved that they were finally getting to some details about Jane’s arrest and first advisement. “She’s never used your services before, right?”
Studying her face closely, he leaned back again, drawing a complaining shriek from his chair. “That’s right. I happened to be at the courthouse yesterday, and we ran into each other.” His grin was an unnatural shade of white, bordering on blue, and she made a mental note to mention his disconcerting appearance to Felicity, who was addicted to tooth whitening. “She must’ve realized what she’s been missing all these years.”
Ignoring the gross sexual innuendo for the time being, Molly focused on the situation and what needed to be done. “But why you? Normally, she uses Gavin or Delia.”
His gaze dropped as he gave an irritated shrug. It was just for a second before he refocused on her face, his gaze snapping back to meet hers, but it was long enough for her to know that he was about to lie. “No idea. Like I said, she probably just figured out that I’m the best.”
“Uh-huh.” Even to her own ears, her tone made it sound like Molly didn’t believe a word he was saying…which was pretty accurate. “So, she didn’t hit up Gavin and Delia first, but they turned her down?”
His face darkened again, this time to almost a plum color. “How would I know that?”
“Uh…” Molly gave him a “duh” look. “You all stand in the back of the courtroom, waiting to pounce on potential clients. Don’t you guys talk?”
“Of course we talk, but we don’t share client information.” He huffed, sounding more offended than a guy who, the bail-bond gossip pipeline had it, had once accepted someone’s kidney as a form of payment. Although Molly was ninety-nine percent sure the rumor was false, that one percent of doubt remained. It would’ve been enough to make her shy away from working with Barney—that and his utter creepiness.
From Barney’s defensive attitude, Molly was fairly certain that he’d been Jane’s last choice. The question that remained was why? If Barney had fronted a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bond, it had to have been worth it. Even with the proceeds from Molly’s car and the stolen cash, Jane didn’t have enough collateral to justify the risk.
A suspicion crept into her brain.
“Are you holding the stolen necklace for her?” she asked suddenly and bluntly, wanting to see his immediate reaction before he managed to think up a proper lie.
The baffled surprise that instantly crossed Barney’s expression seemed sincere, however. “I wish.” That sounded heartfelt, too. “If she’d given me the necklace, I would’ve happily written a bond for ten times Jane’s bail.” His face blanked, and it was almost comical how chagrined he looked at his own honesty. “Not that I would ever deal in stolen merchandise.”
A snort escaped Molly at his sloppy attempt to regain the moral high ground—not that he’d ever had it in the first place. She quickly sobered, however. The mystery of why Barney had helped Jane still hadn’t been solved. “What’d she use for collateral then?”
His slow, snakelike smile caused a shiver to zip along Molly’s spine, and she instinctively stiffened, knowing that whatever was going to come out of Barney’s mouth next would be very, very bad. Flipping through the pages in the folder, he pulled something out and slowly extended it toward her. Despite the trembling deep in her gut, her hand was steady as she accepted it.
As she glanced down at the heavy paper, comprehension struck with the force of a sledgehammer. She held the title to her house. The place where she and her sisters lived, the one that had been a breath away from foreclosure when Molly had taken over the mortgage payments at the age of eighteen, the mortgage that she and her sisters had managed to pay off just four months and three weeks ago. It was the house that Molly—that all of them except Jane—had almost killed themselves to save, working long hours chasing down every skip who had an arrest warrant out, no matter how dangerous or how small the bounty was.
“That isn’t hers,” she managed to say with numb lips as she clutched the precious paper with both hands. “The house is ours. Not hers.”
“Her name’s on it.” With a shrug, he reached over and plucked the title from her hands as easily and effortlessly as their mother had stolen the house out from under them.
“She refused to sign the paperwork to transfer the title.” Molly watched, unable to look away as he tucked the title for her house back into the folder with a smug neatness that belied the mess of his office. How had her mom even gotten hold of the title? Molly kept it in a document safe in her room, and she’d never told Jane the combination.
Barney made a tsk sound. “That’s too bad. Not my fault that you don’t have your ducks in a row, though, is it?” Patting the closed folder, he widened his smile. “It’s a great piece of property, worth twice the amount I’ll have to pay when Jane forfeits her bail, even if the house is a wreck. There are only two other houses in Langston with national forest access, and they’d never sell. What should I do with it? Tear down that dump you live in and build fresh? Sell it to the hunting resort next door? I’ve heard that they’ve been trying to buy your place for years. So many options… It’s a good problem to have.”
Molly wasn’t sure what emotions she was showing, but whatever they were, they seemed to make Barney very happy—giddy even. “If you ask very nicely, I might even consider keeping the place intact for a few months and rent it to you. I’m sure we could come to some sort of amicable agreement.”
A fresh wave of anger flared inside her, burning away the numbness, and she almost levitated off her chair from the contained rage. The only thing that kept her from leaping across the desk and doing major damage to Barney’s smarmy, stupid face was the clear glee in his expression. He wanted to upset her, wanted her to lose it, and she couldn’t give him the satisfaction. With a huge effort of will, she smoothed her expression and sat back in her chair, fighting for a show of indifference.
“It doesn’t matter.” It did, it really did, but she somehow managed to say the words anyway. “You won’t be taking the house. To forfeit her bail, she’d have to miss her next court date, and she always makes her court dates.” Even though Jane found it impossible to stay on the right side of the law, she’d never skipped before.
“She’s never missed a court date yet,” Barney corrected, although the unpleasant joy in his eyes had faded. “Jane’s only done petty stuff before. She’s in a whole other world now, one that could get her twenty years or more in prison. I’m betting she’s already halfway through New Mexico, never to return.”
Although Molly had known that stealing the necklace was a more serious crime than her mom had ever committed before, she hadn’t allowed herself to consider what that meant as far as sentencing went. Up until that point, Jane had done quite a few short stints in the county jail, paid a boatload of fines, and was almost constantly on probation. As much as Molly hated to admit it, Barney was right in this case. Jane had committed a crime that could easily put her in prison for the rest of her life.
Pushing away the mountain of anxiety that this thought brought on, she tried to focus on the most immediate need—making sure Barney didn’t yank their house away from them.
“This is all speculation until her court date arrives. Personal
ly, I believe that she’ll show.” Molly tried to hide her doubts. “The house is simply collateral right now, so you can’t touch it.”
His smile was more a baring of his teeth. “The law is that the bond is forfeited if she doesn’t appear…or if she flees.” He gave her a knowing look. “Have you seen her since her hearing yesterday?”
“No, but that’s not surprising.” Molly’s heart was firing in quick strokes that echoed in her head, and she hoped he didn’t see the worry building inside her. “She burned her bridges with us. Speaking of that, you don’t happen to be holding my car as collateral as well?” When he hesitated, she narrowed her eyes and fixed him with her best basilisk glare. “For your sake, I hope not, since it’s stolen and I know that title is under my name.”
“Jane didn’t bring me any car.” There was a stiltedness to his phrasing, as if he was carefully avoiding a lie. Molly didn’t know why he bothered trying to stay truthful. It wasn’t like she believed a word out of his mouth anyway.
“Hmm.” She put all of her skepticism in that one wordless sound as she got to her feet. Her heart was racing, and her feet twitched with the need to rush out of that dingy, depressing office and find her mom. As soon as he’d said flee, the word had clicked in her brain. Of course Jane was going to run. These consequences were bigger than any she’d ever had to face before. If she still had possession of the necklace, that almost guaranteed she’d skip out and relocate somewhere across the country.
“Wait,” he said, reaching across the desk toward her, as if he could hold her in her chair. Pulling back far enough that he couldn’t touch her, Molly eyed his outstretched arm with distaste. Straightening again, he cleared his throat as he withdrew his hand. “We’re not done discussing this yet.”
“Sure we are.” Before he could make another effort to grab her, she took several backward steps toward the door. “Shall I recap? Mom put a home she doesn’t own up as collateral for her bond, and you’re threatening to kick us out, even though she hasn’t forfeited it.”