The Texas Ranger

“I didn’t think I needed an invitation. We’re partners,” Brannon drawled, watching her with those glittery gray eyes that didn’t even seem to blink.

“Not my idea,” she replied promptly. She put the files down beside his boots and stood staring at him. He didn’t look a day older than he had when she’d first met him. But he was. There were silver threads just visible at his temples where his thick blond-streaked brown hair waved just a little over his jutting brow. His long legs were muscular. She knew how fast he could run, because she’d seen him chase down horses. She’d seen him ride them, too. He was a champion bronc buster.

“You think Bib Webb hired a hit man to kill Jennings,” he said at once.

“I think somebody did,” Josette corrected. “I don’t rush to judgment.”

“Insinuating that I do?” he asked with an arrogant slide of his eyes down her body. He frowned suddenly as it occurred to him that she was dressed like an aging spinster. Every inch of her was covered. The blouse had a high collar and the jacket was loose enough to barely hint at the curves beneath it. The skirt was slightly flared at the hips, so that it didn’t pull tight when she walked. Her hair was in a tight bun, despite the faint wisps of blond curls that tumbled down over her exquisite complexion. She wasn’t even wearing makeup, unless he missed his guess. Her lips, he recalled, were naturally pink, like the unblemished skin over her high cheekbones.

“No need to check out my assets. I haven’t gone on sale,” she pointed out.

Brannon raised both thick eyebrows. That sounded like banked-down humor, but her face was deadpan.

Josette moved closer to the desk. “I’ve just explained my theory to Simon.”

“Would you care to share it with me?” he invited.

“Sure,” she said. “The minute you get your dirty boots off my desk and behave with some semblance of professional respect.” She didn’t smile as she said it, either.

Brannon pursed his lips, laughed softly and threw his feet to the floor. He’d only done it to get a rise out of her.

He got up and offered her the swivel chair with a flourish. He sank down gracefully into the chair next to the one his hat was resting on and crossed his long legs.

She sat down in her own chair with a long sigh. It had been a hard day and she only wanted to go home. Fat chance of that happening now, she thought.

“Anytime,” he invited.

“Dale Jennings’s mother was in serious trouble,” Josette said without preamble. “She’s sick and living on a small disability check. She’s only in her mid-fifties, not old enough to draw other benefits.” She leaned back in the chair, frowning as she considered the evidence. “She’d lost her small savings by listening to a fast-talking scam artist who convinced her that he was with a federal agency and she had to turn over her savings account to him in repayment for back taxes she owed.”

“Of all the damned outrages,” he said, angered in spite of himself.

That comment moved her. Brannon, despite his rough edges, was compassionate for the weaker or less fortunate. She’d seen him go out of his way to help street people, even to help young men he’d arrested himself. She had to force her eyes away from the powerful, lean contours of his body. She was still fighting a hopeless attraction to him.

“By the time she found out that no federal agency was asking for her savings,” Josette continued, “it was too late. Some people believe anything they’re told, even from people who don’t prove their credentials. She didn’t even ask for any identification, I understand.”

He grimaced. “Did she own her home?”

“She was barely a year away from paying it off. When she couldn’t make the next two payments, the bank foreclosed. She’s staying at a homeless shelter temporarily.” She studied him. “Now put yourself in Dale’s shoes,” she said unexpectedly, “and think how you’d feel if you were in prison and you couldn’t do anything to help her.”

Brannon remembered his own frail, little mother, who’d died an invalid. His thin lips made a straight line across his formidable face.

Josette nodded, realizing that he understood. She remembered his mother, too. “I’m not pointing fingers at anybody right now,” she said before he spoke. “I’m telling you that, first, somebody helped him escape prison detail. Second, somebody had proof or was keeping proof hidden of a crime that involved a person of means. Dale must have thought his chances of blackmailing the guilty party were pretty good. That doesn’t explain what he hoped to do on the outside. But he was killed, and in a very efficient manner. Whoever killed him had to know that he’d escaped from that work detail, and exactly where they could find him. I’m assuming that the person who had him killed was satisfied that he had concrete proof of something illegal, and that Dale was helped to escape so that he could present whatever proof he had and be dealt with efficiently.”

“Any prison has inmates who’ll kill for a price, guards and wardens notwithstanding,” he reminded her. “They didn’t have to get him out of prison to have him killed.”

“True, but maybe he was lured out to present his proof in person, to make sure that he really had it.” Josette leaned forward and clasped her hands on the desk. “Then, what if they thought he had the proof on him, and he didn’t?”

“We don’t know that. We didn’t find anything on the body, no ID of any sort, not even a pocketknife. If it hadn’t been for the information about the Wayne escapee fitting Jennings’s description exactly, and that raven tattoo on his arm to clinch it, we might have spent weeks trying to identify the body.”

She nodded. “So either the perpetrator took the evidence with him, or he didn’t get it and there’s still somebody out there, who was helping Jennings,” she emphasized, “and who now has the evidence and may still use it. Money is a powerful motive for murder. What if Marsh had him killed, for some reason?”

Brannon frowned. “He’s had people killed before. There could be a hit man on the loose, and whoever he’s working for may dig deep enough to find Jennings’s source.”

“That means we have another potential murder waiting to happen unless we solve the crime in time,” she agreed.

He studied her quietly. “You’ve learned a lot in the past few years.”

“Simon taught me,” she said simply. “He started out as an investigator while he was in law school. He’s very good.”

“You haven’t said anything about Bib Webb,” Brannon said.

“I said I don’t have a potential perpetrator,” she replied quietly. “And that’s true. I’m approaching the case with a completely open mind. But there’s a lot of investigative work to do. I’ll give my information to the local district attorney’s office in San Antonio, and we can do interviews with the most prominent people in the case. But I want to talk to Dale’s mother in San Antonio, the evidence technicians and police in San Antonio, and the prison warden at the Wayne Correctional Institute near Floresville. And to any cell mates Dale may have had or anyone who corresponded with him. Especially somebody who knows computers.”

He watched her, brooding, with one eye narrowed. “Why do you dress like a woman out of the fifties?” he asked unexpectedly.

“I dress like a professional on the state attorney general’s staff,” Josette said, refusing to be baited.

“What’s your next move?” she asked.

“I’m going to see Mrs. Jennings, and then I’m going to try to get a line on the hit man.”

Josette raised an eyebrow. “Have a good relationship with Jake Marsh and his local stable of bad boys, do you?” she drawled in a good imitation of his own sarcastic tone.

Brannon stood up. “I have informants, which is probably about the same thing.”

“Did anybody question Marsh about the body being found near his nightclub?” she asked.

“The very day we found the body. He’s out of town. But his assistant manager seemed shocked!” He said that with a disbelieving expression. He studied her quietly. An impulse had brought him back into her office, when he’d meant to go straight to the airport. Two years, and she still haunted him. Did she hate him? Gretchen said she didn’t. But Josette had learned to hide her feelings very well. He’d thought to surprise her into a reaction. The one he got wasn’t what he was expecting. Or the one he was hoping for.

Brannon watched her rise from her chair with that same easy grace he’d admired so much when she was still in her teens. She wasn’t pretty, not in a conventional way, but she had a sharp intelligence and a sweet nature…. Sweet nature. Sure she did. He recalled the vicious things she’d sworn to about Bib and his expression closed up.

Josette came around the desk and right up to him, unafraid. “I’m not prejudging. That means you can’t, either,” she said deliberately. “I know what that—” she indicated his Ranger badge “—means to you. My job means just as much to me. If we’re going to work together, we have to start now. No acid comments about the past. We’re solving a murder, not rehashing an incident that was concluded two years ago. What’s over is over. Period.”

His gray eyes narrowed so that they were hidden under his jutting brow and the cream-colored Stetson he slanted at an angle over them. Until he’d seen her again, he hadn’t realized how lonely his life had been for the past two years. He’d made a mess of things. In fact, he was still doing it. She held grudges, too, and he couldn’t blame her.

“All right,” Brannon said finally.

She nodded. “I’ll keep you posted about anything I find, if you’ll return the courtesy.”

“Courtesy.” He turned the word over on his tongue. “There’s a new concept.”

“For you, certainly,” Josette agreed with an unexpected twinkle in her eyes. “I understand the Secret Service tried to arrest you when your sister came home to your ranch in Jacobsville the last time, and they threatened to charge you with obstruction of justice for assaulting two of them in the yard.”

He straightened. “A simple misunderstanding,” he pointed out. “I merely had to mention that I was related to the state attorney general to clear it all up.”

That sounded like the dry humor she’d loved in him so many years ago. “Simon uses his new cousin-in-law, the Sheikh of Qawi, to threaten people.”

He leaned down. “So do I,” he confided with a grin.