Those Texas Nights

“I should have never let things get as far as they did,” he said. At least that’s what she thought he said, but he was slurring.

“Are you drunk?” she snapped.

“Uh, no. It’s nothing. I’m fine, really.”

“I don’t care a rat’s butt if you’re fine or not. And I have to go,” Sophie insisted.

Brantley blurted out something just as she hit the end call button. Something about a belt. She probably should have been concerned that he was about to hang himself, but her concern meter for him was tapped out. Besides, Brantley had plenty of faults, but he wasn’t the sort to kill himself.

Sophie put her phone in her pocket, looked at her brother, and that’s when she realized he had his attention nailed to her. Marcum did, too, though he was still talking on his phone.

“Anything about Billy Lee?” she asked Garrett as a preemptive strike. Sophie definitely didn’t want to talk about Brantley and what he’d just said to her.

He hadn’t loved her.

The anger ripped through her. A better feeling than the soppy tears because she didn’t need to blow her nose, but she needed to blow off some of this rage. She yanked off her two-carat engagement ring and threw it against the wall. Probably not the smartest idea she’d ever had because it hit the oil painting of their great-grandfather and made a dent in the canvas just below his left nostril.

“I’m guessing that call didn’t go well,” Garrett said on a heavy sigh.

“But please tell me your call went better.”

Garrett lifted his shoulder. “It was Chief McKinnon. He was checking on you.”

Great. Now, her date was chiming in on this. She didn’t want anyone checking on her. Especially anyone who’d seen her make a fool of herself. At the moment, though, that included pretty much everyone in Wrangler’s Creek. Later, in a day or two, she’d need to call him and apologize. Perhaps blame what she’d done on the tequila and temporary insanity.

Marcum finished his call, glanced at the two-carat ring that was now on the floor, before his gaze volleyed between Garrett and her. “You want the good news or the bad news first?” he asked again.

“Bad,” Garrett and she said in unison for a second time.

Marcum nodded. “The company’s assets will be frozen while the feds investigate the money laundering charges.”

Sophie’s mouth opened but no sound came out.

“Frozen?” Garrett snapped. “For how long?”

“I’m not sure. These things can take awhile.”

“Define awhile.” Garrett’s snap was even snappier that time.

“Months. Maybe years. And it’s possible everything will be seized if Billy Lee really was using this company as a money laundering operation.”

Still no sound. Her breath had vanished, and she figured it was a good time to sit back down on the floor again. Good thing, too, because the bad news just kept on coming.

“The frozen assets include both your apartments here in Austin since they’re company holdings,” Marcum added. “Your cars, too.”

No car, no apartment. It wouldn’t be as great of a loss to Garrett as it was for her because he split time between Austin and Wrangler’s Creek. And she doubted he’d ever even started the company car since he still drove their late dad’s truck. But for her, the apartment was, well, home.

“The investigators will be going through everything in the offices,” Marcum continued. “The vehicles and apartments, too.”

They wouldn’t find anything. Well, they wouldn’t unless Billy Lee had truly gone bonkers and stashed some stuff there. Though with the way her luck was running, there’d be a counterfeiting machine, a kilo of cocaine and Jimmy Hoffa’s body beneath her bed.

“Your personal bank accounts are also frozen for the time being,” Marcum went on. “But I feel that’s something we can resolve faster than the company assets.”

There was no way for the ball in her stomach to get any tighter or bounce any harder.

“So, basically everything we own, including where we live, has just been taken away from us, and we might never get it back?” she asked.

“Pretty much,” Marcum agreed.

“I’d like to hear that good news now,” Sophie grumbled.

“The ranch.” And apparently Marcum thought that was enough of an explanation. It wasn’t. Sophie motioned for him to keep going. “The ranch and the operation there aren’t part of the company or your own personal assets. That’s because Roman legally owns it, and he has no connection to the company.”

She gave Marcum a very blank look.

“So, you know what this means, right?” Marcum asked.

Sophie thought Marcum might be trying to tell them something more than the obvious here. “We won’t lose the ranch,” she concluded.

“It’s more than that. It means you’ll have a place to live. I just got the okay from Roman, and you and Garrett will be closing things down here in Austin and moving back home.”

* * *

HOME SUCKED.

This was not what Clay had in mind when he’d moved to Wrangler’s Creek. He’d come here to take over for the retiring sheriff. Also for some peace and quiet and to keep an eye on his kid sister, April. At the moment, neither was happening.

There was a toilet in the corner of what was supposed to be his living room. The bathtub was where he’d hoped to have a sofa. The toilet was obviously hooked up to some sort of plumbing because it was making a loud gurgling sound that Clay could hear even over the tile saw that was screeching in the kitchen.

“Yeah, I know,” Freddie said, scratching his head. Freddie Shoemaker was the only contractor in Wrangler’s Creek, and that’s the reason Clay had hired him to renovate the old house he’d bought.

Freddie was clearly an idiot.

“The guest bathroom’s not right,” Freddie conceded. “They put the plumbing in the wrong place so they just hooked it up where the fittings stopped. I left instructions with my crew, but they musta read it wrong.”

Yeah, or else they were idiots, too. Since the crew consisted of Freddie’s two sons and a nephew, that was a strong possibility.

“I don’t guess you could get used to having it this way?” Freddie asked. “It’d save you a lot of money if we didn’t have to undo all of this.”

No one had ever accused Clay of having a friendly face. It was a by-product of having been a cop for twelve years. First in Houston. Then, here in Wrangler’s Creek. And Freddie got a whopping big-assed dose of that nonfriendly face.

“Put the guest bathroom fixtures in the guest bathroom,” Clay snarled. “And no, it won’t cost me a lot of money because I’ll only pay for the work you do right.”

Freddie mumbled an “okay, you’re the boss” and headed toward his rust-scabbed truck parked just outside. Apparently that meant he was done for the day even though it was barely 3:00 p.m.

Clay tried to call April again. Again, no answer. He wasn’t ready to sound the alarms just yet because April wasn’t the most reliable person, but it’d been two days since he’d heard from her. Her boss at the hair salon where she worked had said April had asked for time off. She hadn’t been at her house, either, when he’d dropped by, which meant something was up. With April, something was up usually went hand in hand with trouble. She was twenty-three, eleven years younger than Clay, but plenty of times she still acted like an irresponsible teenager.

Clay growled out another voice mail for April to call him, and he followed the sound of the tile saw into the kitchen. The saw was going all right, but no one was cutting the backsplash tiles. In fact, no one was in the kitchen at all. Clay unplugged the saw to kill the noise and went in search of any signs of progress or intelligent life.