Chapter 8 #2
Just as they got out of the car, just as Raines opened the door to the passenger seat, sirens went off all around them.
Raines sighed, let out a few unprintable words in Spanish and raised his arms over his head. Josie did the same.
There were no federal agents. It was just Sheriff Marlowe and one of his deputies.
“And I believe I just told you recently to keep your nose clean, Miss Blake,” Marlowe said pleasantly as he cuffed her. “Too
bad you didn’t listen.”
“We were just looking at the truck,” she said quickly.
“Yeah,” Raines said. “Just looking. You got nothing on us!”
“I’ll be sure to remember that you said that.” Marlowe drawled to two deputies, “Okay, let’s load ’em up and get them to the
detention center!”
Josie sat in her cell quietly, just worrying about losing her case. With Raines in custody, to say nothing of herself, she’d
be out of the loop when Velasquez moved his main load of fentanyl up this way to Dallas.
A couple of hours after Josie had been booked, Sheriff Marlowe unlocked her cell and moved her into an interrogation room. Sitting there nonchalantly was Tanner Everett. He grinned at her.
“I’ve blown my job,” she groaned. “Velasquez is moving two transfer trucks loaded with fentanyl very soon. This was just a
feint, to check out the possible problems!”
“We know that,” Marlowe said. He sat down, tossing his hat into a chair. He propped his expensive boots on the table she was
sitting at. “I have a pipeline of my own, near his main supply depot,” he told her. “My father has a big ranch right on the
border outside El Paso. He has to employ a small army to keep drug dealers and militia away from his cattle—a matter I’m going
to have to deal with very soon. But for now, we’re concentrating on Velasquez. You knew that he made an offer for the Big
Spur?”
“I figured it was him,” Josie agreed. “John told me about it, but he didn’t know who made the offer. You can’t tell him about
my role in this,” she added solemnly. “People have died for a slip of the tongue.”
“Including your partner, two years ago,” Marlowe said with quiet sympathy.
Josie grimaced. Paul Ramero had been a great guy, with a wife and a small son. It had hit Josie very hard. She hadn’t been
with him due to another assignment that took priority. Everybody felt guilty, though, and Josie most of all. It was hard to
lose a partner.
“We’ve all lost partners,” Tanner told her. “We go on, because we have to. But we don’t forget the lessons it taught us.”
“Truly,” she sighed.
“Velasquez has big plans. He needs a halfway hub, a place to store tons of drugs to be taken into Dallas and disseminated from there,” Marlowe told her. “The Big Spur is rural and big and in an ideal location, halfway between El Paso and Dallas. He wants it. Bad.”
“Your father will never sell it,” Josie told Tanner.
“I know.” He sighed. “We’re adding people. You’re going to be invaluable as an insider. You’re the only pipeline we’ve got.”
“You said you had somebody,” she began, glancing at Marlowe.
“Had. Yes.” He sighed. “Undercover work is dangerous. It can be fatal. It just was,” he added quietly.
She grimaced. She took a breath. “Okay,” she said after a few seconds. “My agency has undercover people . . .”
“In Dallas,” Marlowe interrupted. “And here. But not with Velasquez, or any of his lower-level operatives. You have a direct
line to Velasquez, through Raines. Raines is not suspicious of you and he likes you.”
She made an awful face. “You can’t be thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
Marlowe stretched. “I’d put on a dress and try my luck with him if I thought it would work,” he chuckled.
“Perish the thought!” Josie said, wrinkling her nose. “With all due respect, Sheriff, you aren’t woman material!”
“Which is why you have to do it,” he said.
She made another face.
Something dark and cold glittered in the sheriff’s pale eyes as he met hers. “I want Velasquez. I’d like him on a skewer,
but locked up for the rest of his miserable life would do in a pinch.”
Josie sensed a tragedy in Marlowe’s background. Something connected to Velasquez. She didn’t say a word, but he gave her an
odd look and frowned.
“Meantime,” Tanner interrupted, “Mom and I feel really sorry for you, for all the trouble you seem to be in,” Tanner said.
“And I really feel that you need to be rehabilitated. At the ranch.”
“John will have me for dinner,” she pointed out.
“Dad will protect you. Mom, too.”
“This is a very bad idea,” she began.
“You can’t like your cell that much,” Marlowe pointed out. “And you haven’t even sampled the meals here.” He made a face.
“I get mine at the café and bring them in. I’m not eating what they feed the poor prisoners. It’s enough to make a person
go straight and never break another law!”
Tanner burst out laughing.
“What’s going on with Raines?” she asked.
“Oh, he made bail an hour ago,” Marlowe said. “His attorney is really good. Found a sympathetic judge and sprung him on his
own recognizance. To give him credit, he tried to get you out, too, but the judge said no deal. You had priors.”
“How kind of him,” she exclaimed with a grin.
“Adding to your rep with the bad guys,” Tanner told her.
“We got Raines for entering a vehicle,” Marlowe said. “But we picked you up when we did a scan and found you had a prior arrest
for attempted murder. Acquitted, of course,” he drawled with a grin.
“Thanks,” she said, and laughed.
“It will boost your rep with Raines, whom I’m certain will be in touch with you soon and delighted to find you situated on
the very ranch his boss is trying to buy.”
“Lucky me. All I have to do is stay alive until they move those shipments north.”
“No worries, we can do that,” Marlowe chuckled. “Besides, you’ve got two former federal agents on the payroll at Big Spur
who’ll be watching your back, including Tanner, here, who’s faced about every kind of threat known to man.”
“Indeed, I have,” Tanner replied. “John and the others won’t know,” he added. “But my mother is a reformer at heart and she
likes you. She was already trying to force Dad to come bail you out when I volunteered.”
“How kind!” she exclaimed.
“But I beat her to it. I told her I’d be bringing you home today. JJ cheered.”
She smiled. “He’s one special kid.”
“He is,” Tanner said. “One of the nicest young men I’ve ever met.”
Marlowe didn’t comment. They both noticed a dark, cold look on his hard face and puzzled at it.
His boots hit the floor. “Well, let’s get you on the road, Josie,” he said, and managed a cool smile.
“How am I going to explain my sudden freedom when I’ve got priors and an outstanding warrant for an attempted assault?” she
wondered aloud. “I know that’s in the system, because my boss put it there in case anybody checked me out.”
“Bribed a judge,” Marlowe said easily.
“Bribed a . . . with what?” she exclaimed, indicating her less than couture attire.
“You have friends. The Everetts.”
“We don’t bribe judges,” Tanner reminded him.
“Oh, God, how I hate dealing with decent people!” Marlowe said with absolute disgust.
Tanner and Josie burst out laughing.
Marlowe sighed. “All right, then, you called a friend of your family in Wyoming, a lawyer, who got you out with some fancy
legal footwork.”
“Why not her dad?” Tanner asked innocently.
Marlowe grimaced. “Don’t go there,” he said in an undertone.
Josie let out a breath. “Don’t mind me.”
“We won’t,” Marlowe agreed. He looked at Tanner. “Her dad’s a dog. Anything in skirts. He’s never home and he’s already selling
their ranch so he has more money to attract women.”
Josie gaped at him. “How do you know . . . ?”
“Oh, I know everything,” he said with a cool smile. “And even if I didn’t, I know people who do.”
“I’ll bet you’re a four-alarm riot at parties,” she accused.
“I don’t get invited to parties.”
“Why?” she asked, because he was really good-looking.
“Well, at the last one I casually mentioned to my host that his wife was banging his best friend . . .”
They groaned.
Marlowe grinned. “See? Word gets around and people leave you alone.”
“Don’t you like people?” Tanner asked facetiously.
“No.”
“Short and sweet,” Tanner chuckled, getting to his feet. “Does she have to wear the ankle bracelet?” he asked.
“She hasn’t been charged yet, or convicted,” Marlowe said. “Okay, possible fugitive from justice,” he teased Josie, “let’s
get out the props and set you up as a lawbreaker.”
“Suits me. Want me to wear a wire?”
He shook his head. “He—” he nodded toward Tanner “—has all sorts of covert, illegal toys that can record unsuspecting people.”
He added that last bit with a cold glare.
“Just because I once, only once, recorded you cussing out one of your deputies for crashing a patrol car . . .” Tanner began
defensively.
Marlowe glared at him. It was the sort of look that would stop a riot. “The only kind thing you did was erase it before the
head of the county commission heard it,” he said. “As it was, I had to justify the expense of repairing the car and saving
my dumb ass deputy’s job.” He sighed. “And then the idiot resigned two days later to take a job at a feed depot.”
“It’s a small community and, forgive me, law enforcement is notoriously underpaid,” Josie said.
“Tell me about it,” he said. “If I didn’t have funds invested from my former occupation . . . well, let’s not go there.”
“Much better not to,” Tanner mused with a grin and a glance at the sheriff. “You’re a legend for some of the things you did in those days.”
“And now I just collect my check and watch reruns of my favorite show, The Mandalorian, until they make the new movie,” he sighed.
“Movie’s coming up next year,” Josie mentioned. “I can’t wait!”
Tanner chuckled. “That makes three of us.”
Josie was released. Tanner drove her back to the Big Spur in one of the ranch trucks.
“Thanks for the ride, and the accommodations,” she told him as they bumped down the dusty ranch road. She hated the idea of