AK-Cowboy

by Joanna Wayne

  In contrast, they’d eagerly welcomed Tyler. He liked seeing his brothers and he’d definitely needed a break from the pressures of battle. But the stress of trying to fit into this new family scheme of things was like being forced to coat your ice cream with vinegar.

  He couldn’t swallow it. Innocent or guilty, Troy Ledger was still the stranger he’d become when Tyler had needed a father most.

  But Julie intrigued him. The first sight of her cracking that whip would fuel a thousand fantasies. Maybe he’d be lucky and she’d visit his dreams tonight.

  Ten minutes before the bewitching hour, yet the house was totally quiet. He was caught somewhere between the radical time changes distance imposed. For all his body knew, it was the middle of a sunless day.

  Searching the cabinets, he located several bottles of liquor, most of them full. He chose the whiskey and poured a couple fingers’ worth of the amber liquid into a short glass and walked into the family room.

  The room where his mother’s body had been found. He stared at the stone hearth and images that floated deep in the fog of childhood memories exploded in his mind in vibrant color. Her body covered in a bleached white sheet. Her dark hair matted in a sticky crimson mass. His mother’s beautiful eyes, yet when he’d looked into them that day, she hadn’t been in there. It was that blank stare of death that had frightened him most.

  Taking a sip of the whiskey, he savored the slow burn as the liquid traveled down his throat. Then he forced his eyes from the hearth to a small desk against the back wall of the room. A laptop computer beckoned. Tyler crossed the room, switched it on, and clicked on the internet icon.

  Sliding into the uncomfortable wooden desk chair, he slid the cursor to Google and typed in New Orleans sex ring. In seconds, dozens of sites were displayed. He selected the most promising and took another sip of the drink as the article loaded.

  “Prominent New Orleans Businessmen and Two State Senators Arrested in Underage Sex Scandal,” the title read.

  He scanned the article, digesting the brunt of the information. The details were all there, as sordid and depraved as you’d find in the latest thriller. There was no mention of Julie Gillespie.

  He read three more articles with the same results. No Julie.

  Disgruntled to the point of marching into her bedroom and demanding to know why she’d lied, he searched Google for her name. He found a few articles written by a woman named Julie Gillespie for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, fluff pieces to appeal to locals. Not one investigative piece of work bore her byline.

  When he was about to give up, she showed up again, this time under the moniker of Julie G. The accompanying photo left no doubt that teenage advice columnist Julie G and the woman sleeping down the hall were one and the same.

  Tyler clicked again and an enlarged picture and a sample from her column claimed the entire screen.

  Dear Julie

  I really like this boy in my second period study hall, but when I try to start a conversation with him, he ignores me. How can I tell if he’s shy or just not interested?

  Investigative reporter? Like hell she was.

  And he seriously doubted that one of her lovesick teens was responsible for the note found on her car today.

  But someone had threatened her. Julie was in danger. The burning question was: Why?

  And if she wasn’t an investigative reporter, what was she really doing in Texas and why had she come to see Troy Ledger?

  Possibilities stormed his mind. Things like her selling the story of Troy Ledger’s life in the haunted house where he’d murdered his wife to some cheap gossip magazine.

  It wasn’t the first time trusting a woman had backfired on Tyler. Hopefully one day he’d learn his lesson.

  Tyler carried his glass back to the kitchen and started down the hall to the guest bedroom. He slowed at the sound of footsteps and movement at the end of the hall. Julie, as if she knew he was coming to confront her and saving him the trouble. He stopped and waited for her to reach him.

  “I was just going for a glass of water,” she whispered. “I didn’t realize anyone was still up.”

  She crossed her arms tightly over her chest as if afraid that even in the dark, he’d glimpse the outline of her nipples beneath her pajamas. She pulled herself in to squeeze past him.

  He put up an arm and blocked her escape. Leaning toward her, he placed his mouth to her ear.

  “Dear Julie. This woman I met today fed me a line of bull a mile long. I don’t like being lied to. I’m thinking she’d better start leveling with me—now!”

  Chapter Five

  Julie took two steps backward since there was no going forward with Tyler blocking her path. “Keep your voice down,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “You’ll wake Troy.”

  “Maybe we should. I think he’d be interested in learning that you’re no more an investigative reporter than I’m Lady GaGa.”

  “You wasted no time in checking me out.”

  “I’m not the most trusting of guys.”

  “Obviously. It’s late, Tyler. Can we have this conversation in the morning?”

  “It’s morning in several time zones right now. Take your pick.”

  He stepped closer and to her dismay, a shudder of awareness ripped though her.

  “Fine,” she muttered, giving in. “But I’d rather not talk in the hallway.”

  “I’m easy. My room or yours?”

  “Mine,” she said, defiantly. At least in hers she had material to back up her story—and a robe to pull over her thin pajamas. Not to mention enough space to move so far away from Tyler that she wouldn’t catch the musky, masculine scent of him with every breath.

  She turned and marched to her room without her water. When she didn’t hear Tyler following her, she picked up her pace. She could just go into the room and lock the door behind her, but something told her that wouldn’t work with Tyler. He’d make a ruckus until she unlocked it—or knock the door down. With his muscles, he easily could.

  By the time he actually stepped inside her room, she’d shrugged into a short blue terry robe, switched on both the desk lamp and the one next to the bed. Then she pushed back the thick privacy curtain and opened the sliding door that led to the courtyard garden.

  She fanned the notes she’d been studying earlier across the desk. She’d give Tyler as much as she had to get him off her case. Nothing more.

  “You forgot this,” he said, holding out a large glass of ice water.

  Darn it! Leave it to Tyler to do something thoughtful just when she was working up a good burst of antagonism toward him.

  He closed the door behind him. She walked over and stood by the desk, trying desperately to find a way to put him on the defensive. “I wrote an advice column for teenagers,” she said. “That isn’t against the law, so what’s your problem?”

  “I could care less what you wrote. You lied about being an investigative reporter when you moved in here today. What else have you lied about? What is it you want from Troy?”

  “Information about Muriel Frost, just as I said.”

  She picked up her list of similarities and differences and handed it to him. “True enough that I haven’t had extensive experience as an investigative reporter, but everybody has to start somewhere. And I proved in New Orleans that I’m up to the task.”

  Julie drank half the glass of water. She really had been thirsty.

  Tyler gave the list a quick once-over and dropped it back to the desk. “Looks impressive, but I’ve spent the last hour reviewing information on the New Orleans case. Numerous investigators were identified. Your name never came up.”

  Julie’s hands flew to her hips. The dratted robe gaped open, making her blush and totally destroying the effect of warranted anger she’d been shooting for.

  She pulled the robe tight again and dropped to the edge of the bed. “The police and reporters weren’t big on sharing accolades, especially with me.”

  “How did writing fluff a
rticles and advice pull you into such a disgusting mess?”

  “I received a Dear Julie letter from a young woman who claimed she’d been kidnapped in Guatemala, smuggled into the U.S. and was being held captive and forced to work as a prostitute.”

  Tyler gripped one of the bedposts and stared down at her. His gaze was intense, his expression wary. “How did you handle that?”

  “At first I suspected it might be a ruse. I get lots of those. Kids with too much time on their hands made up bizarre problems and sent them to me for kicks, hoping I’d answer them in the newspaper.”

  “How did you decide this was on the up-and-up?”

  “It was written in broken English and half the words were misspelled. I took a chance it might be legitimate, so I brought it to the police who promptly ignored it.

  “I later realized that was because a huge number of them were taking bribes from the trash who were running the operation. So I had no choice but to take matters in my own hands.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I disguised myself as a man.”

  “I can’t imagine you fooled anyone.”

  “When I decide to do something, I do it well,” she assured him.

  “Touché. Go on.”

  “I went down to the French Quarter in search of very young prostitutes. It took only a few inquiries before someone recommended I contact a man they called Cruz. They even described him and told me the bar where I could find him.”

  “That was quite a risk on your part.”

  She shook her head. “That was the easy part. The hard part was finding a cop who’d take me seriously. I finally found a bulldog of a detective who wasn’t on the take. Between the two of us, we collected enough evidence to get the media interested. After that the NOPD had to investigate. The rest is history.”

  “I don’t see how it can be considered history if you’re still getting death threats.”

  “I may have been wrong about the threat being from Melody. There’s been a new development,” she admitted.

  “Since this afternoon?”

  “Since dinner.”

  Though she hadn’t planned to, she told Tyler about the call from Sheriff Grayson. “I think he may have put that note on my car to scare me off the Frost case.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “He practically threatened me on the phone, indicated I’d be in real trouble if I didn’t move on.”

  “So are you giving up and moving on?”

  “Hardly. I refuse to be bluffed by some arrogant sheriff who thinks he owns an entire Texas county.”

  “I guess that means our little road trip is still on.”

  “It’s definitely on for me.”

  “In that case, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  His reaction caught her completely off guard. She’d expected him to kick her out of the house or at least tell her that she was crazy. Every time she was all set to dislike him, he threw her a curve.

  She didn’t want to like him. She didn’t want to feel anything at all for him.

  Still, she followed him to the door and leaned against it. “Does that mean you believe me?”

  “It means I don’t like arrogant sheriffs. Now get some sleep.” He touched a finger to her chin and trailed it along her neck to her collarbone. “And get a tie for your robe. I haven’t seen female breasts up close and personal in a long, long time, and I’m not known for my restraint.”

  She looked down as he walked away. The robe was open again and her pebbled nipples were pushing like bullets against the silky fabric of her pajamas.

  This time she wasn’t sorry. Tyler Ledger might not fully believe her—smart man. But at least she wasn’t the only one who could ignite a bit of sexual interest.

  TYLER SHOVED A GAUZY CURTAIN of cobwebs aside. A hairy spider fell to the floor and scurried across the thick carpet of dust that covered the old plank floorboards. A large field rat raced it to a sizable crack that looked as if it had been gnawed into the back corner of the room.

  “Nice setting for a horror movie.”

  “It was,” Julie said. “Only it was enacted years ago.”

  Tyler stepped over a worn blanket, and a pile of garbage that consisted mostly of chicken bones and empty fast-food bags. Two huge roaches ducked under the blanket.

  “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since anyone’s lived here?” he asked.

  “Around seventeen years, if the information Kara Saunders gave me was correct.”

  “Who’s Kara?”

  “She was a friend and coworker of Muriel.”

  “Does she live around here?”

  “Not any more. She remarried and moved to Lafayette, Louisiana about ten years ago, which made it a lot more difficult to track her down.”

  “But not difficult enough to keep you from finding her.”

  “Right. I stopped by to see her on my way to Texas.”

  “How does she feel about your investigating the case?”

  “She thinks I’m wasting my time and she told me flat out that she doesn’t want the case legally reopened. Of course that was after I persuaded her to talk to me at all. She refused to even see me at first.”

  “But then she figured the only way she could get rid of you was to answer your questions.”

  “Something like that.”

  Tyler sympathized with Kara Saunders. He figured standing in Julie’s way once she set her mind to it would be like trying to stop a tank with a .22.

  “Kara said that as far as she knew, the house was only rented once after the murder. Fully furnished since no one claimed Muriel’s belongings. And the couple who rented it stayed less than a month.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Superstition. They claimed they heard screams in the night and that doors slammed and things went missing from their closets and cupboards. Word got around after that, and apparently no one would rent or buy the house.”

  “Uninvited guests can be a pain. I’m not talking about you,” he added quickly before she misread him, got peeved and decided again to take her room-and-board business elsewhere.

  His reasons for wanting her to stay on at the ranch weren’t completely clear in his own mind, nor were they particularly noble. For one thing, she gave him an excuse not to spend his every waking hour with Troy.

  Mostly it had to do with the way Julie got his motor running with just a sway of her shapely hips or a glimpse of those dynamite legs.

  But the attraction wasn’t all sexual. Her determination fascinated him. Back her into a corner and she threw those hands to her hips and stood her ground. And, he loved the flash of fire in her eyes when she talked of solving this case.

  None of which meant she had much chance of succeeding.

  Julie jumped out of the way of an escaping daddy longlegs spider.

  “It’s harmless,” Tyler said. He did, however, swat at a giant mosquito that was sucking blood from his forearm.

  Julie kicked a mustard-smeared hamburger wrapper out of her way. “I’m guessing the food scraps were donated by the druggies Troy mentioned.”

  “Doing their part for the survival of the roach and rodent species,” Tyler said. He followed her to the one piece of furniture in the room, a hardwood bookshelf that held a few moldy books, some tattered newspapers and yellowed magazines. The newspapers were covered in rat excrement.

  To Tyler’s surprise, Julie pulled a pair of thin rubber gloves from the pocket of her blue shorts.

  “You came prepared,” he said.

  “Your father gave me the gloves while you were showering this morning,” she said, tugging them on. She reached into her pocket for a second pair. “He sent these for you. And there’s a thermos of coffee in the car, as well, also thanks to your father.”

  Who’d have expected that? Tyler took the gloves, but stuffed them in the back pocket of his jeans. “I don’t see how you’ll get any evidence from this house that’s not totally contaminated.”

  “I�
��m not sure I will,” she agreed. “But visiting the crime scene seems the logical place to start an investigation.” She picked up a newspaper, shook it gingerly to remove a few layers of grime and then looked until she found a page that still had the date intact.

  “It’s from a few days before the murder,” she said. Her voice took on a husky tremor, and she coughed to clear the stale, mold-filled air from her throat.

  He reached up and knocked away an unidentifiable bug crawling up the back of her neck. “Are you sure all good investigative reporters started like this?”

  “Yes, but this is your vacation. You don’t have to stay, Tyler. I’m perfectly capable of handling this on my own.”

  “And miss all the fun? Besides, I’m used to scorpions, spiders, poisonous snakes and insects previously unknown to civilized man.”

  He followed her to what once was the kitchen. Faded stains that might or might not be blood painted eerie shapes on the floor and splattered bizarre designs on the peeling wallpaper behind a scarred oak table.

  “Is this the room where the murder took place?” he asked, sure Julie would know.

  “She was shot in the entranceway, just below the staircase. But according to old newspaper reports, deputies at the time surmised the attack started in here. Kara said Muriel was frying chicken when the man broke into her house, though I’m not certain how she knows that.”

  “It’s a small town. I’m sure a lot of true and false information about the investigation circulated.”

  “I guess. Kara said the man took her by surprise and that she never had a chance. And according to every report I read, the battery was extremely brutal.”

  In spite of her earlier bravado, Julie’s face went pale as she stared at the stains. If she stayed in this business, she’d toughen up, become desensitized to this kind of gore, but Tyler could tell she wasn’t there yet.

  Julie swayed, and he moved quickly, wrapping his arms around her waist to steady her. A rush of unexpected heat and stirring shot through him.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Guess I’m not the pro I’d like to be.”