Chapter Seven
“We need a loan.” Carly said the words aloud even though she was the only one in her office. Over the past few weeks, she’d spent hours scanning page after page of bills and invoices on the computer, looking for a solution, but a loan seemed the only way out.
It was Monday morning. Earlier she’d made sales calls, managed to bring in another client, but the shipment of drilling parts wouldn’t be ready for delivery for two more weeks. She was convinced she could make Drake profitable, but she needed time. She needed enough money to stay afloat until the checks started coming in.
This afternoon she was going to Joe’s bank. He’d been a customer with the Iron Springs Credit Union for years. She’d apply for the money and she’d get it.
Donna’s quick knock preceded the door swinging open. “A Deputy Rollins just stopped by. He left these for you.”
Carly stood up behind the desk. “It’s the Hernandez case files. I really didn’t think the sheriff would let me see them. He wasn’t too happy about it.”
“That’s our beloved Sheriff Howler.” Donna set the files down on the desk. “He thinks he knows everything.”
“If he knows so much, why hasn’t he caught Miguel’s killers?”
“Good question.”
Actually it was. Maybe the sheriff really was on El Jefe’s payroll. It didn’t seem likely, but still . . .
Donna left the office and Carly opened the file folder, which contained copies of documents: Texas Highway Patrol reports, a Howler County deputy’s statement, the coroner’s report, statements from the couple who’d found the body.
Carly thought of Cain. He wanted to see the reports. As soon as she finished going over them, she’d call him. By then he’d probably be back in Dallas. She hoped.
The man was a walking, talking sexual temptation. After he’d left yesterday, she’d gone back and Googled him again, read up on his exploits, the beautiful models and starlets he dated. He’d been married to a former Miss America beauty pageant finalist, Miss Colorado. A marriage that had ended after just three years.
No serious relationships since then, at least according to the tabloids. Obviously he’d learned his lesson and was no longer a marrying kind of guy. But then she wasn’t really interested in marriage, either.
She had too much going on in her life. Too much to accomplish, too many promises to keep, debts to repay. Add to that, she wasn’t really a believer in happily ever after. Her mother had gotten pregnant when she was a teen. Carly didn’t even know her father’s name.
Joe had been married twice and had two kids. Both marriages had ended in divorce. Besides her mother, he’d had another daughter with his second wife, but there had been some kind of rift. Joe and the daughter had lost touch years before she’d been killed by a drunk driver.
It occurred to Carly that maybe she should just sleep with Cain and get him out of her system. She was a grown woman and wildly attracted to him. After years of dealing with men, she had no doubt Cain wanted her, too.
Maybe a couple of nights would be enough to satisfy her curiosity as well as the fierce lust she felt for him. Enough for Cain, too.
But what if it wasn’t? What if the attraction only grew stronger—at least for her?
She wasn’t ready to take that kind of chance.
Carly opened the file. There was a message pinned on top. No fingerprints on the note in your house or around the windowsill in the bedroom.
She turned to the stack of documents, began to shuffle through the pages. Maybe she would find a clue that had been missed.
An hour later, she hadn’t found a thing. The gruesome details of the shooting, execution-style to the back of Miguel’s head, turned her stomach. Just looking at copies of the crime scene photos was enough to make her nauseous.
It looked as if Miguel had struggled some with his attackers, but according to the report, it hadn’t been much of a fight. Why hadn’t he tried to escape? Could he have known them? She didn’t want to think so, but as Ross Townsend had said, they needed to find out the truth.
More likely, Miguel hadn’t realized the hijackers were actually going to kill him. Maybe he’d thought if he went along with them, they would just take the truck and leave.
The couple, a man named Andy Granger and his wife, Maria, had both given brief statements. They’d pulled over to let their puppy out. The animal had caught the scent and darted across the road to where Miguel’s body lay just off the pavement. The couple had seen the bullet hole in his skull and all the congealed blood and immediately called 9-1-1.
Carly felt a stab of pain for Miguel’s wife and hoped she hadn’t been told the terrible details. She wondered if someone should follow up with the Grangers in case they had remembered something later. Cain would be in Dallas. Maybe he’d want to talk to them.
She closed the file, pulled Cain’s card out of the top desk drawer, walked out, and spoke to Donna. “Make a copy of these, will you, then send them to Tex/Am in Dallas. His information is on the card. It’s kind of expensive but I guess we’d better overnight them.”
“I’ll make sure he gets them right away,” Donna said.
Now that she’d reviewed the file, Carly could drive into Iron Springs for her meeting with the banker. She had mostly been in jeans since she had returned to Iron Springs, but until last year when she’d moved to San Francisco, she had been living in New York City, had been flying the New York-Paris route.
She’d spent every extra dime on fabulous designer outfits, some forward in fashion, some classic, like this one. Hey, it was Paris, okay? And she’d learned to ferret out every possible bargain.
Today she was wearing a russet skirt suit with a cream silk blouse, a bright Givenchy silk scarf she had splurged on and bought on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, and a pair of Jimmy Choo high heels.
Since classic clothes stayed in style for years and she was good at mixing and matching, she was set, at least for a while.
Grabbing her taupe Chanel bag and the information she’d put together, she headed out the door to apply for a loan.
* * *
Linc strode out of his meeting, summoning all his control to clamp down on his temper. Making his way outside the big red and gray stone building, he pushed his way through the throng of protesters, heading for his truck. The sky had closed up, turned dark and sullen. Looked like it would rain later in the day.
He wished the clouds would open up right now, release a downpour, and send these idiots running.
“Keep Pleasant Hill green!” someone shouted, a thin man with big, horn-rimmed glasses.
“Take your filthy rubber and go back to Dallas!” A tiny black-haired woman jabbed a sign in the air that read SAVE MOTHER EARTH. STOP POLLUTION NOW!
Linc clenched his back teeth together and kept walking. He didn’t recognize any faces. He’d been told almost none of the people who were protesting lived in the area. Instead, they were out-of-towners who didn’t know squat about the needs of the people in the community, all of them swarming around like angry bees.
He’d learned at the meeting that they were concerned about the tire retreading process, the rubber dust it created, the storage of the tires themselves, the solvent, the cement vapors, the extra workload the plant might create for the Pleasant Hill volunteer fire department.
None of them could see the good the plant would do for the locals, the jobs it would create, the money that would flow into town in the form of taxes and spending. And the plant would be run as cleanly and efficiently as modern technology allowed.
Hell, he might have joined their cause if they had been right. He donated to a number of environmental organizations. In this case they were wrong.
If he’d known it was going to be such a hard sell, he’d have sent a team down to present the facts, guys trained to handle the concerns of the environmentalists—unlike Linc, who barely resisted the urge to throw a punch at one or two of the most obnoxious members of the group.
Once he reached his truck, he climbed in and cranked the engine. He was just backing out of the parking lot when his cell phone buzzed. The main Drake Trucking number appeared on the screen.
“Mr. Cain? Hi, this is Donna from Carly’s office. Are you still in Iron Springs?”
“I’m here for a couple more hours. What is it?”
“I just wanted to let you know the sheriff sent those case files over. Carly’s already gone through them. She asked me to overnight them to you, but I thought if you were still in town, you might want to pick them up.”
“I’m not far away. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” He ended the call and checked the time. The helicopter was due at the ranch in two hours. Plenty of time to look at the files before he went back to Dallas. While he was at the yard, he could check on Carly.
He thought how happy she’d be to see him and smiled at his own sarcasm.
He drove through town and out the highway, pulled into the trucking yard a few minutes later, and parked in the lot. Unfortunately when he walked into the building, Carly wasn’t there.
“I’m afraid she had an appointment with the bank,” Donna said. “I thought she’d be back by now. I’ll get you that file.”
“Thanks.” He knew Joe’s office manager, Donna Melendez. She’d be a big help to Carly—unless he could convince her to sell. He still hadn’t completely given up on that idea, though the prospect of her handing over the reins seemed dimmer by the hour.
Donna handed him the file. “Here you go.”
“I think I’ll take a look at it while I’m here. Okay if I use the office?”
She smiled. In her fifties now, she was still attractive, and she had completely worshipped Joe. “Well, sure.”
Linc carried the file inside and sat down at the desk, put up with the seat being set wrong for a guy his height, and went to work.
An hour later, he hadn’t been able to pick out anything useful. Though it might be worthwhile talking to the couple who’d found the body. And he wanted to go over the crime scene report one more time.
He was just closing the folder when the door swung open and Carly walked in. Surprise widened those big blue eyes. “What are you doing here?” Apparently Donna hadn’t warned her.
Linc stood up from the chair, let himself take a good long look, appreciate the expensive russet suit and high heels—along with the pretty legs and soft curves of the woman beneath the clothes. “You clean up good, Ms. Drake. You’d never know you were a lady trucker.”
She glanced down at herself as if she’d forgotten what she had on. “Thanks. I think.”
“Donna called. She said you’d gotten the case file. I figured it’d be faster if I just took a look before I left town.”
“Oh. Did you find anything?”
“No, but Ross Townsend’s due out at the ranch. I’ll take it out to him, see if he can pick up anything.”
She nodded. “Those are your copies. I didn’t see anything, either.”
He gave her a lingering glance. “So what’s the occasion? Hot date?” It was supposed to be funny, but as the words spilled out, he discovered it wasn’t.
She laughed. “Hot date with a banker and he wasn’t impressed.” She plunked down in her chair and slipped off her heels. “Neither were the other four bankers I talked to in various locations.”
“What’s the problem?”
She looked up at him. “Money. Something you wouldn’t understand.”
“There was a time I understood it plenty. I haven’t forgotten. I take it you were trying to get a loan.”
“That’s right.”
“How much do you need?”
She bent over and massaged a sore foot. It took a strong shot of will not to offer to do it for her.
“If you want the truth, I barely made payroll last week. If I don’t get a loan right away, I can’t come up with enough to write the next round of paychecks.” She straightened. “I thought getting the money would be easy, you know? Joe was never late on a bill in his life. He always repaid his debts. I figured the bank would give me the same opportunity.”
“Unfortunately you aren’t Joe.”
She sighed. “The thing is I know I can rebuild the business. I’ve been making marketing calls. I’ve already picked up one of Joe’s old accounts and signed up a new company we’ve never dealt with before. I just need some time.”
Time was something he could give her. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make you the loan. I’ll need to see the numbers, but I’ll get you what you need.”
She started shaking her head. “No way. I’m not taking money from you.”
“I’m not offering you money. I’m offering you a loan. I’ll have the necessary papers drawn up and secure the money with a lien against the business, just like the bank would have done.”
She eyed him with a mixture of suspicion and interest. “This would be strictly business, right? Nothing personal. Just a loan backed by Drake Trucking.”
“That’s right.”
“What happens if I can’t repay the money?”
He took his time answering. He wanted her to say yes and she wouldn’t if she thought he wasn’t playing it straight with her. “You don’t pay when the note is due, I take controlling interest in the business.”
Her eyebrows narrowed. She didn’t like that. “If I don’t pay when the note’s due, you take forty percent of the business.”
He shook his head. “Sorry. That’s a deal breaker. You don’t cut it, I take over. You’d still own forty-nine percent, but you wouldn’t run things. You want the money or not?”
She sighed. He had her; he could see it. “I don’t have any choice. I’ll have Donna make you a copy of the P&L I took to the bank, along with a list of assets.”
He thought about the company’s financial problems. “I’d also like to have my people look at your accounting records, make sure there aren’t any unforeseen problems.” Now was his chance to figure out how Joe had gotten the company into so much debt.
She cast him a suspicious glance. “I’m trusting you with a lot of company information. How do I know you aren’t just trying to find a way to force me to sell?”
It was a good question, a smart question to ask. “If I was a different man, you’d have every right to question my motives. But Joe was my friend. By extension that makes his granddaughter my friend. I want to help you. That’s all I want.”
She sat back in her chair. Studied him for several long moments. “Okay. It’s a deal.”
He smiled and nodded. He stretched out a hand and she slid her smaller hand in his. A feeling of protectiveness went through him. She was trusting him. He wouldn’t let her down.
Linc picked up the case file. “I’ve got to go. I want to talk to Townsend before I leave.” He held up the file. “I’ll show him this.”
“Let me know if he sees something.”
“I presume you haven’t had a call from El Jefe.”
“No. Maybe he changed his mind.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You really think so?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. Stay in touch and keep that gun of yours handy.”
Linc left the office. But the more he thought about the note and the attack on Carly at the roadhouse, the more it bothered him to be leaving Iron Springs.