Chapter 14
Ten minutes and I’m out of here. Blaze stared at the clock, his eyes feeling heavy from a long night at the station. After Lucas left, it had been crickets, just like always. A couple of the deputies had responded to some domestic calls, but that was it. Now, it was almost 10 a.m., and he was due back at the ranch to oversee Jasper and Colton for a shift of riding fences.
The work never ends. He pushed back from the desk, and stood to his feet, grabbing up his cowboy hat. Blaze glanced around the small office, squinting into the half-open door of Sheriff Myer’s office, but he couldn’t tell if the old man was at his desk or not. In general, he didn’t have a problem with the guy, but with the lousy statement taking from Beth about Sarah? Well, it had him questioning things.
“Where’s Blaze?” A voice boomed from somewhere at the front of the building. “I gotta talk to him, now. Done looked all over town for him.”
“You can’t just barge in there!” Brenda’s voice could be heard calling frantically.
Blaze braced himself, his hand on his weapon attached to his hip, while the other deputies barely looked up from their phones. Around the corner came Lucas Wilson once more, and he looked pissed. However, his hands flew up in a surrender position the moment he saw Blaze’s stance.
“I’m just here to file a report,” Lucas bristled. “That’s it, so don’t even think about trying to play gunslinger.”
“Was hoping I wouldn’t,” Blaze grunted, his tone devoid of humor. He was exhausted, and the sight of a weary, disheveled Lucas only made the fatigue that much worse. “What happened?”
“Beth Young tried to run me over!”
Blaze frowned, his voice flat. “Really?”
“Yeah, I was just trying to talk to her—” Lucas quit stopped suddenly, his eyes darting back behind Blaze.
The deputy turned to see Sheriff Myers standing at the entrance of his office, the door now wide open, and the old, brawny man filling the doorway entirely. There was as shadow across the boss’s face, his eyes hidden behind a dark line. The man was intimidating, but in this moment, much more so.
Blaze blew out a breath, readdressing Lucas. “We can chat in the interview room. Come on.” He wanted to hear what the guy had to say without Sheriff Myers breathing down his neck.
“You oughta just go and arrest her now,” Lucas muttered as Blaze placed a hand on his shoulder, guiding him away from the audience.
“We can’t just go arrest her,” Blaze grimaced as he shut the heavy black door to the interview room. “But I will make a report for you.”
“I’m telling you, that girl is off her rocker.”
“Uh huh.” Blaze squeezed the bridge of his wide nose, closing his eyes for a brief moment to gather his thoughts. So much for going home. When he opened them, Lucas was already seated in the same chair he had been in hours before, only this time, his knee bounced anxiously, and his arms were folded across his chest.
“I’m telling you, I know Garrett Myers got something to do with this.”
“Right,” Blaze huffed, pulling out his own chair and taking a seat. “You’ve made your stance clear. Was Garrett with Beth?”
Lucas’s face scrunches up. “No. He’s probably at work. Might be a drunk, but he always shows up to work. About the only good thing he’s got going for him.”
Blaze pursed his lips, not in the mood to dive back down the rabbit hole. He had spent some time on the rest of his shift contemplating it—and that’s as far as he’d gone with it. He’d ditched that curiosity in the fight to just stay awake and alert.
“Okay, so just tell me what happened today.” Blaze clicked his pen, ready to start writing.
“I was finishing up my morning coffee with Ty Miller and Gabriel Vernon, and then I saw Beth Young coming out of the attorney’s office—the crooked one.”
Blaze raised his brows. “Greg?”
“Yep, that’s the one. He’s crooked. He did my folks dirty.”
“Hmm,” Blaze didn’t offer any more commentary on that. He knew Beth was there to handle the Young’s estate. That was irrelevant to this. He was almost sure. “What time was this?”
“I don’t know? Nine? I don’t keep up with that.”
“Okay,” Blaze jotted it down. “Keep going.”
“I know she’s the last one who saw Sarah—I know that’s where Sarah was at. I was trying to get ahold of her, ‘cause I found out she was still screwing Ty, and you know, I get that she’s got these urges, but I was just trying to tell her that I thought it was a bad idea. She tells me she’s actually with Beth Young.”
“You were in Gale with some other girl though,” Blaze commented, thinking back to their last conversation.
“Yeah, whatever, anyway,” Lucas said quickly. “What I’m getting at is that I wanted to know if Sarah had told Beth anything about me, ‘cause she likes to blab about all our personal things.”
Blaze rubbed his brow, trying to keep it all straight. “Okay, so you approached Beth this morning outside of Greg Martin’s law office to ask her what she and Sarah talked about the night she went missing.”
“Yeah, ‘cause you sure as hellfire weren’t doin’ it.”
He ignored that. “What she’d say?”
“That she didn’t know nothing, and that Sarah just left her there. It sounded so pitiful, Cowboy. I can’t believe she would start throwing that around like that. I’ll bet Sarah told her a bunch of stuff, and it pissed her off, ‘cause Beth’s screwing Garrett Myers—and Sarah was closer to him than she was.”
Blaze was unmoved. “Beth had been back in town for three days. I don’t think she had started screwing anyone, Lucas.”
“Well, that’s all the time it took for my old lady to go screwin’ my friends.”
Blaze lifted his cowboy hat and wiped his brow. “So, back to what happened during this conversation with Beth.”
“Well, she just was acting real weird, trying to dodge me. Really pissed me off,” Lucas grumbled, his face growing a deeper shade of crimson.
“Yeah, I can tell.”
“Then, she jumps in her truck like I’m the law, and takes off, nearly ran me over.”
Blaze hesitated to write that down. “Where was your body in relations to the vehicle?”
He looked confused. “Do what?”
“Where were you standing when she took off? ” Blaze clarified.
“Oh, I don’t know. Right next to it. You know, close enough she coulda just mowed me right down.”
“But she was backing up?”
“What’s the difference?” Lucas grew irritated.
Blaze set his pen down on the table, leveling with Lucas. “Did you threaten her? Make her feel uncomfortable? It sounds like you approached her, intimidated her, and she reacted like any woman would against a man who was making her feel uncomfortable.”
Lucas shook his head. “You’re worthless.”
He blew out a sigh. “I’m taking the report. I’ll talk to her, get her side, and then we’ll go from there, okay? I’ll see what I can do.”
“Whatever.” Lucas shoved back from the table. “Nothin’ ain’t ever gonna get done in this town. You all just care about politics.”
“With all due respect,” Blaze cleared his throat. “I don’t think Beth Young has any pull in this town, Lucas. She hasn’t been a resident in years, and her family has no real influence.”
“But the Myers do with all their oil money,” Lucas sneered. “And she’s been Garrett’s kryptonite since she was seventeen. Probably before that. Everyone knew it. Why do you think Sarah asked her to drinks, huh? You think it was just out of the kindness of her heart? No. I’m sure it was some scheme Garrett had up his sleeve to get her back in his life. He probably thought if he had Beth Young on his arm, his daddy might let him have his inheritance.”
“You got a lot of theories,” Blaze pushed back his chair and stood to his feet. “Maybe we should get together some time, and you can tell me all about them.”
Lucas perked up at that. “I can tell you everything that goes on around this place. I know way more than you’d think.”
“Sounds like it,” Blaze said flatly. “But it’ll have to wait. I gotta get out to the ranch and get to work. I don’t have time to sit around and learn the history of Beth Young, though I have to admit, I’m curious.”
“Well, I’m sure you can find me, if you want to chat.”
Blaze opened the door for him and glanced back to Sheriff Myer’s office. The door was now shut, and he breathed out a sigh of relief. He obviously wasn’t too concerned about whatever Lucas Wilson had to say, even if it did involve Beth, which was another person he seemed to have little to no interest in—even with Garrett sobering up suddenly. Well, for a day anyway. God knows what state he was in at the moment.
“I’ll see you out, since I’m leaving.” Blaze nodded toward the front, and gave a wave to Dylan Myers, who sat half-asleep at one of the desks. He didn’t seem worried about Lucas, either. This go round with the guy had him questioning the validity of any of his statements, given that he was certain Beth had a good reason to run from Lucas.
But he’d still have to talk to her.
“You got an interest in Beth?” Lucas asked as they stepped out into the October midmorning air. It was still warm, but the suffocating humidity had lightened up. “You seem like you do.”
“I’d say I’m curious,” Blaze admitted. “But not in the way I think you mean that. I’ve just heard a lot about her from her dad, but never been around her much in person.”
“Well, she wasn’t ever popular—not like Sarah was. Sure, people knew who she was, ‘cause her daddy ran that big ole ranch and the family has been around here for ages, but Beth? She wasn’t nothing special. Never had any close friends, other than Lauren, who was a real piece of work—but they weren’t all that close her senior year from what I heard.”
Man, this guy loves to talk like he knows everything. But Blaze still gave him an ear, even if he had to take it all with a grain of salt. “Yeah? Who was she with then?”
“ Garrett Myers. The guy was nineteen, and working down at the auto shop, same as he does now. He always took lunch at the same time as Beth got out of school. Sam didn’t have no clue, ‘cause he was out there working for his daddy—but we all saw ‘em, heading off down to the lake. No one gave a rip about it though,” he added nonchalantly. “It didn’t really matter till Sarah’s party.”
“When there was the big fight,” Blaze thought back to what he had said previously.
“Yeah, Sarah always treated it like it was some taboo subject, especially once she got to know Garrett—meaning sleeping with him probably.”
Blaze grimaced. “You make it sound like she slept with a lot of people.”
Lucas gave him a funny look. “Well, that’s ‘cause I’m pretty sure she did. Everyone loved her. Any of them boys woulda killed to put a ring on her finger, but she ran them around like an old beat-up pickup. She wasn’t never gonna settle for anyone but me. But,” he paused, nodding off to a white SUV pulling up to the curb. “I got things to do. You have a nice day, Cowboy.”