The Re
“Hot diggity damn, sis, this here’s like a palace!
Ain’t never seen nothing like it in my whole life.
” Billy Ray’s eyes were wide with amazement as Colton pulled into my driveway, his mouth gaped and then grinning with excitement.
“And to think I raided the ol’ coffee tin for my stash to bail you out. Ha!”
His exaggerated comment made me smile. The rental house was impressive, even by Las Vegas standards, but seeing it through his eyes brought a new perspective. The sleek, modern design in white concrete, metal beams, and expansive windows stood in sharp contrast with our humble beginnings.
The three of us were in Colton’s Porsche Cayenne, having just made the twenty-minute drive home from the courthouse.
For most of the drive, I’d felt as if we were young again together, roaming the roads of Abilene or the Texas prairies late at night, going stargazing.
I was in the passenger seat, my little brother in the back and leaning forward to bring his head between us.
He’d chatted the whole time, mostly about the fine car Colton drove and how the leather on the seats felt like butter, and how good it was to see us both, although the circumstances were downright shitty.
I was still reeling from the difficult couple of days I’d had, and my mind drifted quite often while the boys chatted, reliving the horrors of the past day and a half.
The stink of jail on me, of human filth and sweat and grime drowning out the new-car smell, reminded me I was living on borrowed time.
I was out on bail, and I had Colton to help me with my defense, but my life could soon be over. The thought of that made me shudder.
“Are you okay?” Colton asked, cutting off the engine.
The driveway was empty; my rental Beemer was gone.
I nodded, struggling to swallow when my throat felt like sandpaper.
My head on a swivel, I looked around for Jack.
He wasn’t leaning against the tree trunk across the street; he wasn’t anywhere in sight.
One problem at a time, I told myself, hoping Jack’s dire warning had been for nothing, just an uncanny foreboding that trouble would soon find me.
And trouble had indeed found me, but it had nothing to do with Jack’s unsavory employers, the DiMarco crime family.
“Y-yes,” I replied, stammering. Now that we’d arrived, I was hesitant to go inside. My life was no longer under my control . . . it was careening at high speed, barely held on track with the help of the two people I could always count on. “My car is gone,” I said, getting out of the Porsche.
“Your car?” Colton asked, frowning a little.
“It was a rental. The cops said they found the murder weapon in it,” I said, wondering if I’d find the door locked.
I didn’t have any keys. When Detective Stanek had thrown me into the back of his Tahoe, he hadn’t bothered to let me get my purse.
All I’d had with me had been Winston’s engagement ring on my finger.
Everything else was gone, confiscated as evidence: my phone, my purse. And now, my car.
“Then it’s probably in police impound,” Colton said, waiting patiently—smiling, but his eyes were worried.
Seeing him in the warm afternoon sun, I could tell he’d changed quite a bit since that day in Texas.
His hair was neatly combed and trimmed, no longer the tousled mess I’d used to grab handfuls of when I kissed him.
There was a severity in his eyes, a grim intensity I didn’t remember seeing before.
Fine laugh lines emerged from the corners of his eyes, way before his time to have wrinkles; perhaps the dry desert heat was to blame for those.
Smiling apologetically, I squeezed the home’s door handle, and it opened. I stepped inside and gasped.
The place looked as if a tornado had swirled through it.
Everything was scattered on the floor. Furniture was toppled, some couch cushions slit open and completely destroyed, stuffing scattered around in small cotton-like clumps.
The kitchen cabinets had been emptied out, and dishes and pots were scattered on the counters, several broken on the floor.
My spinner suitcase was open, and the clothing I’d had packed in it littered the living room floor.
The police had done their absolute worst executing their search warrant.
I felt an overwhelming need to grieve.
“Holy cannoli, sis,” Billy Ray whispered, then whistled quietly, looking around. He’d taken his hat off and was holding it against his chest, stunned. “This place is huge,” he added. “You really made it big.”
“It’s a rental, little brother, not mine,” I said, hugging him for no reason. I felt drained, and clung to his thin body like it could help me stay afloat somehow. Then I pulled away, afraid of the tears threatening to break the floodgates open.
Colton was looking around the mess with a frown and a cold, clinical eye. When he turned to me, his eyes warmed up a little. “Don’t worry, all right? We’ll sort everything out.”
I stood in the middle of the living room, dizzy and lost and scared, and for a long moment, no one said or did anything. Then Billy Ray walked over to the fridge and opened the door, whistling again, this time with disappointment.
“Shame to see a fridge this big be so empty. But you got beer,” he added cheerfully, extracting three bottles and setting them on the counter. Glass shards crunched under his boots as he popped the caps and gave Colton and me our bottles. “Cheers,” he said, holding his bottle in the air.
We clinked ours against his, and I took a few swigs of the cold brew. It soothed me on its way down, but then my stomach recoiled. I hadn’t touched food in more than twenty-four hours. Struggling with the urge to throw up, I set the bottle on the counter.
“I need a shower.”
Colton turned to me and nodded, then took a step closer, as if he was about to wrap me in his arms.
I stepped back and smiled shyly, my face burning with embarrassment. “Let me take that shower first.”
“All right,” he said before setting down his beer. He took off his jacket and loosened his tie, then put both on a toppled chair he picked up off the floor and set upright by the wall. “I’ll start cleaning up this mess.”
I looked at Billy Ray, but he was half buried in my freezer, rummaging.
“You got steaks,” he said, emerging with a tray of ribeye cuts.
“There’s still some hope for us, but I have to make a run for some beer soon.
Some potatoes, too, and hamburgers. Buns.
Some mustard.” He held out his hand, and Colton handed him the car keys just like in the old days, when the twelve-year-old kid had begged Colton to let him drive the old pickup across the fields. “Sweet,” he said, quick to disappear.
“I won’t be long,” I said to Colton, just as the front door was closing behind Billy Ray.
“Uh-huh.”
Before heading into the main bedroom for the shower I so badly needed, I paused in the doorway, glancing back at Colton. He was rolling up his sleeves and opening cabinets, searching for something or maybe just figuring out where things belonged.
I took a step toward the bedroom, then hesitated. Quietly, I peeked back around the corner, unseen.
A moment later, when he clearly thought no one was watching, he stopped his search. Leaning against the counter, he buried his face in his hands.
“Oh my God,” he whispered, his words muffled, barely intelligible. “Oh God, please.”
Petrified, I disappeared into the bedroom without making a sound. If he was so scared for me, so deeply upset, what chance did I really have?
I stood frozen under the powerful jets of the shower, my body tense, the last two days pressing down like an unbearable weight. My breath hitched, shallow and uneven, my chest rising and falling too fast.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Winston is gone.
The thought cracked something inside me, and the tears I had fought so hard to hold back finally broke free. A soft, shuddering sob escaped my lips, followed by another. My shoulders shook as I slid down to the tiled floor, drawing my knees to my chest.
The sobs came in waves—harsh, gasping cries that echoed off the walls. I pressed my hands over my mouth to muffle the sound, but it didn’t stop the tears or the pain tearing through me.
Winston was gone. My life, as I knew it, was gone. All I could do was let the grief drown me.
And Colton, who seemed to be a successful and well-respected attorney, was terrified for me.