Texas Snow

Chapter 1

RAFFERTY

DECEMBER

I held my breath as the jury foreperson stood. The trim defendant in the tailored suit, Jesse Travis, rubbed his mouth with a heavily inked hand, waiting for her to read the verdict.

His attempt at upstanding citizen cosplay was pretty good, but his sharp fade mixed with the tattoos peeking out at the cuffs and neckline made him look like a Mafia hitman.

Dangerous. Far too pretty for his own good.

Jesse’s unkempt mug shot had gone viral on social media with tags ranging from #hotfelon to #butdaddyIlovehim. I could only imagine what would happen when his courtroom photos hit the wires. He was going to break the fucking internet.

As a red-blooded gay man, I could appreciate the look, but I preferred the version of him I’d gotten to know after following him for months: easy smiles, loose, sexily disheveled curls, and high-end urban style.

Model-hot, but guilty as fuck.

As lead detective on the case, my marching orders had been deceptively simple: find out who killed a small-time dealer nicknamed Jimmy Shoes.

Didn’t take me long to realize Jimmy was no small-time dealer and this case had implications regarding Austin’s major drug distribution networks, specifically the rapidly expanding Travis family empire.

Finding out who killed Jimmy, however, took a bit more finesse.

I’d spent years working my sources in that neighborhood, yet I couldn’t find a single person willing to give me details about the night of Jimmy’s murder.

Same with knocking on doors. The entire neighborhood had developed some sort of situational amnesia.

In the end, it was just a bit of stupid luck that finally brought me the thread I needed. I’d gone back to my informants, leaning on them for any scrap of information. One of the older guys, frustrated by my aggressiveness, spat out that Jesse hadn’t been anywhere near that shooting.

Which was strange since I hadn’t mentioned Jesse at all.

Dumb luck was useless, of course, unless you knew how to use it.

I switched subjects before my guy could realize his mistake, smoothing over his ruffled feathers as I tucked Jesse’s name into my back pocket.

I called up my boss that night with something approaching a target and a direction to go in.

By the end of the summer, my team and I had nailed the timeline, and then the forensics nerds put the nail in Jesse’s coffin.

The district attorney’s office practically salivated when we handed them the case.

Not only had we given them what they needed to successfully prosecute Jesse Travis, but we also shared the breadcrumbs that might lead to the takedown of the entire Travis family.

The trap was sprung, Jesse was arrested, and I moved on to other things while keeping an eye on the DA’s case.

I was genuinely surprised when he refused the deal they had on the table. Less surprised when I was told he did it while listing off the farm animals they could fuck instead.

Even though I thought his loyalty was misplaced, it made me like the guy.

With Jesse’s lack of cooperation, the larger case stalled out.

Whoever managed the Travis family funds had done an excellent job of setting up an impenetrable combination of shell companies and offshore accounts to hide the cash.

Our folks had one helluva mountain to climb, but I’d seen them do more with less.

If I were a betting man, I’d say the Travis family was going out of business, one way or another.

The trial got underway in early December, and I was called to testify. Jesse Travis’s lawyer put me through my paces on the stand, but I never cut corners, and my findings were unassailable. Jesse had been the one to pull the trigger that night.

My initial opinion of Jesse Travis was that he was a product of his family, murder woven into his DNA.

Over the course of my investigation, though, it became clear there was more to Jesse than that.

The way he always brought a coffee to the panhandler on his street.

The groceries he bought for his elderly neighbor.

The neighborhood kids who joked around with him without fear or hesitation.

I’d bet my pension that, had he been raised by different people, he would have chosen any other life than this.

According to my boss, that was my biggest weakness—I saw too much of the humanity in the folks we investigated.

I knew some of the people caught in our net would’ve made different choices if they could’ve.

Still, I’d been doing this long enough to know that someone like Jesse Travis didn’t give a shit about my empathy because my testimony was going to put him away for a very, very long time.

Not gonna lie, the thought of sending a guy to jail just before Christmas didn’t exactly sit well, but the timing of things was way above my pay grade.

My heart pounded as the jury foreperson straightened out the document with trembling fingers. I let out a slow breath.

Here we go.

“On the charge of second-degree murder, we, the jury, find the defendant, Jesse Travis, guilty.”

I turned to watch Jesse as the foreperson carefully read off the rest of the charges.

Each new guilty verdict set his jaw on edge, and a warning sounded deep in my gut.

Some crooks did okay in prison, but I’d studied this man for months.

He could handle himself in a fight, but he was not made for the inside.

By the time he pivoted away from the defendant’s table, I was already in motion. He smoothly cleared the rail that divided the courtroom, and I stepped into his path, clocking the cold fury in his eyes.

Perhaps realizing he had nowhere to go, he launched himself at me. As though he stood a chance against my superior size and bulk.

Operating on instinct, I dropped low, then punched up into his ribs, forcing all that forward momentum into his lungs as the bones cracked around my fist. He flew back and landed in a lump against the rail.

The entire sequence took a couple of seconds, tops, but time didn’t catch up until the sheriff’s deputies rushed the scene. Despite the wheezing and obvious pain, Jesse never broke eye contact with me.

The judge gaveled everyone to order. “Officers, make sure Mr. Travis gets the medical attention he needs.” She turned her focus on me. “Detective Rafferty? Are you okay?”

I checked my reddened knuckles, then straightened my suit and quipped, “Yes, Your Honor. All in a day’s work.”

The shocked gallery laughed at the mild joke while the silently livid Mr. Travis was led out of the courtroom. Just before the door closed, his dark eyes found mine one more time, the burning rage in them a silent threat.

Enough to make me doubt he’d been trying to escape at all.

I rarely feared the criminals I dealt with, but in Jesse’s case, I could admit I was thankful that he’d be going to jail for a very long time.

A sheriff’s deputy approached me with a paperwork grimace, and I groaned in anticipation of a late night of filling out forms in triplicate.

The paperwork was indeed atrocious, but that part, at least, was normal. Getting in my truck and driving through my north Austin suburb with its tasteful Christmas decorations felt surreal in comparison. I pulled into the driveway and…shit.

My husband was waiting for me at the door with his arms crossed. I’d choose a literal mountain of paperwork over dealing with whatever’d pissed him off this time.

“Heard you were a big hero down at the courthouse today.”

Marcus was a high-powered attorney who’d lusted after the way I looked in my dress blues. I’d been blinded by his hotness and willingness to let me take charge in the sack. Both of us mistook that for love, and four months into our affair, we found ourselves in Vegas.

Six months later, we were discovering we had nothing in common outside of the bedroom. I hated schmoozing at fancy dinners with lawyers and CEOs, and Marcus despised pretty much everything that made me a cop.

“Not a big deal,” I answered, trying to sound casual. I’m not sure I succeeded. “And that stunt’s gonna add a few more years to his sentence.”

“Good.” He drew himself up a little taller, a little more self-important. “But no more of these dangerous cases.”

I sighed. Now was not the time to tell him that the head of the GSU—Austin’s Gang Suppression Unit—had stopped by my desk this afternoon and offered me a job on her team.

Not only did they work on gang-related violence, but they also focused on prevention with younger gang members, giving me the opportunity to work with these young guys before they became someone like Jesse Travis.

Considering Marcus’s frustration with my job, and my ambivalence about the state of our relationship, I decided to leave it until after Christmas.

Things would either get better, or they wouldn’t.