Chapter 11 #3
“Nope.” She held up a stop sign hand, then turned and strode back toward her pickup. “Next time I see you pass somebody on double solids, I’ll do worse than ticket you. I’ll take your license. You have a nice day.”
She got into her truck and took off, not looking at him again as she passed him, then his Jeep, and headed toward downtown Quinn and the sheriff’s department. Her hands were shaking on the steering wheel and her jaw was so clenched she was giving herself a headache.
“Why did I have sex with him again? Why?”
Willow had expected an argument with Uncle Garrett about coming back so soon. She’d have had one with her parents, but they’d left for the biggest horse show of the year for them. Two days and two nights. They’d be home in time for Lily’s shower.
But she’d play the professionalism card if she had to, to keep Uncle Garrett from calling her dad. One did not rat one’s deputy out to her parents. It would be unprofessional.
It never happened, though.
She ran the gauntlet of deputies who were surprised to see her back and all full of smiles and back pats and fist bumps. Uncle Lash came out of Uncle Garrett’s office and frowned at her as he gave her a hug. “Garrett know you’re back so soon?”
“Where is he, anyway?” she asked without answering the question.
“Out.”
“Obviously,” she said. “Well, I won’t be here long. I just want to check on a few open cases that are drivin’ me nuts. You know how it is.”
“Sure,” he said.
So she went to her desk and checked what she’d missed in her absence. The recording of the anonymous tip IDing Jeremiah as the drugstore-window-breaker was there waiting for her.
She played it, rewound, and played it again. Male voice, apparently doing his best Batman impersonation. Maybe on purpose. Maybe trying to disguise his voice. Interesting.
“I knew I’d find you here,” said Baxter. “Are you supposed to be back at work?”
Willow looked up fast, surprised to see her cousin’s shaggy mane in the sheriff’s office. “Accordin’ to me, I am. Aren’t you s’posed to be trying to grow soybeans in the desert?”
“I’m on a break,” he lied.
She smiled. He worked a half hour away, so coming here on a “break” was unlikely. “What’s up, Bax?”
“Orrin asked me to find you. Said he has info too sensitive to text and he wanted someone with you when you got it. Says to check your private email.”
Baxter was the guy you wanted around if there was bad news. The strong shoulder of the family. Moreover, his brain was so sharp, he could often see solutions nobody else could.
Was she about to get bad news? She tilted her head sideways. “What’s this about?”
Baxter looked around them, then said, “Can we talk in private?”
“Sure.”
She got up and came around the desk, let him out through the front doors and onto the sidewalk. It was already pushing eighty. She walked to a bench further up the sidewalk, but she didn’t sit down.
“After the accident,” Baxter said, “Orrin caught wind that you thought Jeremiah was up to something with you.”
She lowered her head. “Drew tells her brother everything.”
“Yeah, well, nobody knew he was fixin’ to do what he did, but…” He sighed, and pushed a hand through his hair, then paced past a black pole with twin streetlamps on top. “When he went into the bunkhouse durin’ the bonfire, and—”
“Did he snoop through Jeremiah’s things? Jeez, Bax—”
“No. He just…helped himself to a wadded up piece of paper on the floor next to the wastebasket.”
“Bax!”
“I know.”
“He’s already furious that I went through his phone.”
“You went through his phone?” Baxter asked. He looked horrified, too.
“Well, Drew did. Sort of.”
He lowered his head with a heavy sigh. “Those two need a family intervention or something.”
“Think they’re freaking Holmes and Watson.”
“Benson and Stabler,” Baxter put in. And he sent her a grin.
“Mulder and Scully,” she returned.
“Steele and Holt,” he said, and when she frowned he added, “Remington Steele, Laura Holt.”
“This game is no fun with you; you watch ancient television.”
Her cousin winked at her, but it didn’t ease the dread in her heart. She sighed and sank onto the bench feeling guilty as hell as she accessed her email on her phone and hovered over the one from Orrin.
“He said it looked like a page from Vincent de Lorean’s journal.”
“Illegal as hell,” she muttered, shaking her head. “What would Ethan think?”
“You don’t have to look at it,” Baxter said.
“How can I not look at it?” She clicked Orrin’s email attachment. It was a photo of a handwritten page crammed with text.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll have to read this somewhere else. It’s too busy here and I’ve got too much going on.”
“Or you could decide not to and just delete it,” Baxter said.
She met his eyes. “The Gringo’s been lyin’ to me,” she said.
“The Gringo saved Uncle Garrett’s life when he carried him outta that fire at Two Lilies. We owe him for that.”
She squared her shoulders. “I have a right to be upset with him. You’re gonna have to trust me on this.”
“I do trust you,” he said, pacing away. “And if he wronged you, cuz, I’ll kick his ass myself. But if he didn’t…this might not be the best way to…handle things.”
He was quite possibly the most civilized of her cousins, so that passionate promise of ass-kicking surprised her. “I love you for offerin’.” She chose to ignore the rest of his statement, though.
She got up off the bench and hugged his neck, the big handsome genius. “Now I need you to give me the respect and the autonomy to take care of this myself. Okay, Baxter?”
He took a deep breath, then nodded. “I’m fixin’ to hang around up home today, in case you need me.”
When any of them said up home, no matter where they currently lived, they generally meant the Texas Brand.
She sighed and shook her head. “I appreciate it. And do me a favor? Try not to let me and Jeremiah be the main topic on the soon-to-be-created Everybody-but-Willow text loop.”
He averted his eyes so fast it made her suspect such a loop already existed. They’d probably created it right after her accident.
Yeah, see? I’m not such a bad cop.