Taking Aim At The Sheriff

Jericho had to shake his head. “We know from his prints that his name is Travis DeWitt. He’s got a record, a long one, but so far we haven’t been able to connect him to your father.”

“There’s probably a connection.” Laurel gave a heavy sigh and turned away from him again when she swiped at more tears.

She had plenty of reasons to cry. Someone had tried to kill her tonight, and that someone apparently wasn’t giving up.

Part of him wanted to put his arm around her and try to comfort her. Thankfully, that part of him didn’t win out, because the last thing he should do was have Laurel in his arms. Despite the bad blood, the attraction was still between them, too. No sense flaming that kind of heat when it would only make things more complicated than they already were.

She went to the table, picked up a notepad and handed it to him. “Those are the names of the people involved in the money laundering deal.”

The deal that Herschel was using to try to have her arrested. There were only two names: Quinn Rossman and Diego Cawley.

“I’ve tried to dig up anything on them, of course,” Laurel continued. “But so far, nothing. I thought it was just a simple real estate deal.”

Because her father had no doubt wanted it to look that way.

“That’s also the time line, as best as I can remember.” She pointed to some dates, times and a brief description of phone conversations she’d had with Rossman and Cawley. “I didn’t have any face-to-face meetings with either of them.”

Jericho checked through the time line and saw that something was missing. “I’ll need the exact dates of your mother’s death and when you broke off your engagement.” Because one or both of those could have triggered what was happening now.

While Laurel jotted down those dates, Jericho fired off a text to his brother Levi, who was a cop at the San Antonio Police Department, and asked him to run background checks on both men. Maybe Levi could dig up more than Laurel had. He also told his brother that he’d be faxing him a copy of the time line Laurel had just provided.

“So, what happens now?” she asked, handing him back the notepad.

Good question. But Jericho didn’t have anything remotely resembling a good answer. “We keep looking for the idiots who attacked us. Keep looking for anything we can use to stop Herschel.” He paused. “Please tell me you’ve got some dirt on him. Any kind of dirt that I can use to start legal proceedings for an arrest.”

“No.” Another heavy sigh. “Within minutes of Theo telling him that he wasn’t Maddox’s father and that I’d broken off the engagement, all my computer files and backups disappeared. They were corrupted by a virus that someone triggered.”

That someone was no doubt one of Herschel’s lackeys. “What about paper files?”

She shook her head. “All missing. By the time I got to my office, everything was gone.”

Herschel had worked fast. But then, he’d probably had this backup plan ready to go for years just in case Laurel turned against him. Still, there was something about this that didn’t make sense.

“You must have known your father would retaliate when you stopped being the perfect daughter.”

“I did. But I didn’t think he’d go this far.” Her voice broke, and again Jericho had to stop himself from lending her a shoulder to cry on.

Hell.

He only managed to hold himself for a couple of seconds, and then, as if it had a mind of its own, his arm eased around her and pulled her closer. Until they were touching far more than they should. Of course, any kind of touching was out between Laurel and him. That didn’t stop him.

Nope.

Jericho just waited until she wrestled with more of those tears. Thankfully, it didn’t last long. But it was long enough for his body to get really stupid ideas about the touching.

“Sorry,” Laurel said, and moved away from him.

Jericho got the feeling that the apology extended to a lot of things. Things he didn’t want to get into right now since he was still seething over the fact that Laurel had kept his son from him. And all because she was afraid Herschel would have tried to kill him.

Which Herschel would have tried to do.

All the more reason to figure out how to put that idiot behind bars.

“I guess you didn’t know Theo was going to tell your father the truth about Maddox when you broke off the engagement?” Jericho asked.

“I figured he would. Just not so soon.” She pushed her hair from her face. “I wasn’t thinking straight. My mother,” Laurel added.

Yeah, he figured her grief for her mother had played into this. From all accounts, they’d been close.

“So, after your mother’s death, you decided...what?” Because Jericho was having a little trouble filling in the blanks. “That you didn’t want to live by your father’s dirty rules?”

Her gaze slowly came to his. “I think my father murdered my mother.” No tears this time. There was a totally different emotion in her eyes and voice.

Anger.

And lots of it.

“You said she died from cancer,” Jericho pointed out.

“I think he helped her death along with an overdose of pain meds.” Laurel folded her arms over her chest. Started pacing again. “My mother wanted me to break off my engagement to Theo. She wanted me to leave and tell you the truth about Maddox.”

Jericho didn’t cheer out loud, but he was on her mother’s side on this. “She was right.”

“She was. And I think my father eavesdropped on our conversations and arranged for her to get an overdose of painkillers. Yes, she was sick. Very sick. But the chemo was working, and she wasn’t so much out of it that she would have taken too big of a dose by accident. I think my father might have put them in her food or something.”

That gave him a new surge of anger, too. Herschel preying on a sick woman because she wasn’t toeing the line. “Was there an autopsy?”

“No. And my father had her cremated the same day she died.”

Jericho wanted to curse. Hell. Now they were looking at murder. Two counts of it, since he was certain Herschel had also been responsible for his father’s death.

“I was grieving,” Laurel added, “and by the time I figured out what might have happened, it was already too late. Any evidence proving his guilt was cremated with my mother.”

Which Jericho was betting wasn’t an accident.

There was a soft knock on the door, and a moment later Jax opened it. “DeWitt’s lawyer is here.”

Good. Maybe the lawyer would convince his scummy client to talk.

Jax walked closer to them, and his gaze slid from Jericho to Laurel. Then to Maddox.

“He’s your son.” There wasn’t a shred of doubt in Jax’s voice. “How long have you known?”

“A couple of hours.” That alone said plenty, but his brother deserved a whole lot more, especially since Jax knew the emotional wringer he’d been through over the years with Laurel and her father. “Herschel’s trying to get custody.”

Jax didn’t look surprised, just as disgusted as Jericho was. “By trying to eliminate Laurel and you?”

“It looks that way. Herschel has dirt on Laurel to have her arrested.” Jericho handed Jax the notepad with the time line and names. “I need that faxed to Levi so he can try to help with the threat of Laurel’s arrest. But Herschel also has fake dirt to have her committed to the loony bin. Laurel wants me to marry her so she can transfer custody of Maddox to me.”