CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DAN PULLED OUT a cot he kept in his office. There wasn’t enough time to bother going home. He’d made the two-hour trip to Lubbock and back. He’d rest a few hours, and at sunup he’d start his investigation.
Someone had shot his deputy last night and Dan didn’t have a single clue why.
He didn’t call Brandi tonight. He couldn’t. What could he say to a woman he missed so badly, even in all the insanity? It was a mess here. He hadn’t solved one crime, and they were piling up. Two barns had been burned. Two bodies found. One burned. One with his head bashed in. Reyes was playing some kind of dangerous game, trying to figure out what was going on at the ranch where he grew up. And now, tonight, Blade had been shot while wearing Lucas’s clothes.
If Dan called Brandi and told her, she’d hear how frustrated he was and say she’d come home on the next flight. It had taken him two months to talk her into going to Nashville to record the new songs. Like it or not, he was married to a woman that loved country music, and he had to share her now and then.
He told himself it was better that she wasn’t in town right now. He needed to work every waking hour. But he missed her all the way down to his soul. She was the one love he’d never stop loving, never hold close enough, never ever let out of his heart.
Turning on his cell, he texted, Working late tonight. Miss you, sunshine. Will call tomorrow afternoon.
Before he could relax back on the cot, his daughter texted, Where are you, Pop? I’m at the lake house. After all the excitement I don’t think I can sleep in my apartment, so crashing here.
He answered back, At office. If you sleep at home I’ll see you at breakfast.
Will do. See you then, she answered. I want you to tell me what is going on. How is Blade? Where is Lucas?
He replied. Deputy out of danger. No clue why he was shot. Lucas is safe. We’ll talk in the morning.
Ok, Pop. Night.
He stared at the phone, wondering if one day people would stop talking altogether and just text each other.
Sleep didn’t find him for a while as he juggled the pieces of the puzzle in his mind. Somehow, Lucas and Reid, whether they knew it or not, were the center of all this trouble. They were both tied to the Bar W ranch. Both had been raised there. Both knew all the cowboys who worked there. Only, they were all gone, except Dice, who kept saying he was going back to look for his friend.
Reid had a right to sell off his land, or maybe just stop raising cattle, but why hire all the thugs? He’d downsized. Maybe he was switching to wind power or oil? Maybe he’d figured out how to claim the Bar W was really a reservation and he was planning to open a casino. No, that wasn’t possible.
Dan swore. His brain was so tired he was beginning to ramble. Maybe he’d find a few answers if he could figure out why there was such bad blood between Lucas and Reid. Another why.
One more person kept circling in the sheriff’s mind. Reid’s older brother, Charley Collins. Everyone knew he got a girl pregnant just out of high school and she’d left him with the kid to raise. Everyone also heard, three years later, how Charley had slept with his dad’s third wife, who happened to be about the same age as Charley, twenty-one at the time. Collins kicked his oldest son out with nothing but the clothes on his back. Charley had to quit school to make enough to keep food on the table for his daughter.
A few years later he met and married Jubilee, and they ran the Lone Heart ranch. In a small town, everything you’ve ever done weaves into the fabric of who you are. Some folks said that Jubilee was a little crazy, but all Dan knew was that she and Charley were crazy in love.
Funny thing about Charley, he’d screwed up his life a few times but folks liked him. Some even swore he was the best Collins who ever breathed. He was always willing to help anyone in need. Did a great job of raising his daughter and even took in a kid who might have headed in the wrong direction if it hadn’t been for Charley.
He wasn’t interested in his father’s ranch, but Charley might know the same facts that Reid and Lucas did. If he’d be willing, he might help the sheriff put this puzzle together.
Now that Dan finally had a plan, he relaxed. The only thing that still worried him was why someone shot Blade.
Maybe Lucas was right. It was just a simple case of mistaken identity.
The thugs might think Lucas knew something that would be worth killing him for to keep a secret.
If the shots were meant for Lucas Reyes. The lawyer. The son of the Bar W foreman. The only man Dan had ever heard of who refused to leave a jail cell. Then Dan needed to know what the thugs feared.
But trying to figure out why anyone would want to shoot Lucas only seemed to lead to more questions.