Chapter 9
Nine
Heather taught Josie how to make fresh bread. It was an education being around the older woman. She was very much like Josie’s
late mother, right down to her soft heart.
“John said you lost your mother,” Heather said gently while they waited, over cups of coffee, for the bread to rise.
“Yes,” she replied, staring into her coffee. “I hadn’t been home much in recent years, so it was mostly holidays when I saw
her.”
“Just her? Not your father?” Heather pressed gently.
She made a face. “My father didn’t really like being married, so he pretended that he wasn’t,” she said after a minute, and
with a rueful smile. “My mother always just accepted him the way he was. She said you couldn’t make people stay with you if
they didn’t want to. Maybe they loved each other at the beginning, but it didn’t last.”
“Life happens,” Heather replied. She studied the younger woman. “I just can’t picture you as a criminal.”
The coffee cup danced slightly in Josie’s hand, but she recovered quickly with a short laugh. “Well, I honestly didn’t start out to be one,” she replied. “I wanted to be like Mom.”
“We all make mistakes in life,” Heather said softly. “We get past them. You’ll get through this.”
“Do you think so?” Josie asked with a sigh. “Life is so darned hard sometimes,” she mused, thinking of what trials lay ahead
of her while she tried to get a net on Velasquez and his associates.
“I do,” Heather replied earnestly. “I’ll help you. Any way I can. So will Cole.”
“The two of you get along so well,” she said.
Heather laughed. “I’ve known Cole for a very long time. Our parents knew each other. I started out to have a real career on
the stage as a singer. I gave it up when I married Cole.”
“Did you ever regret it?”
Heather smiled and shook her head. “Never. Despite all the years and three children, we almost never had a cross word. He’s
still my best friend,” she added on a laugh. “We sit up all hours and talk about politics or the state of the world, or our
kids, or the ranch, or new trends in ranching.”
“That must be nice,” Josie said. “I don’t think my parents ever talked to each other at all. They just made polite conversation.”
“Is that why you got in trouble with the law?” Heather asked.
Josie stared at the coffee cup again, thinking fast. “I guess it added to it, once I got away from home,” she said. “They
say most people who get involved with gangs do it because they feel outcast, as if they don’t belong anywhere. Maybe their
families are overcrowded, or there’s only one parent trying to support a household. Things like that.”
Heather nodded. “I guess so.”
“It was so kind of you and Cole to take in JJ,” Josie said softly. “He’s a really great kid. Such a shame about his father,” she added, grimacing. “He was doing the best he could to support them, but you could tell it was an uphill struggle all the way.”
“How did you meet him?” she asked.
Josie smiled. “We were both in the stands, watching the rodeo, and we just started talking. Most kids his age are shy and
hard to talk to, but there was just a connection there from the start. It broke my heart to watch him when his father collapsed.
If John hadn’t been there, I don’t know what I’d have done. My . . . colleague had gone to a meeting, and I had no way to
get to the hospital with JJ.”
Heather pursed her lips. “You have a great deal of compassion for somebody who’s at odds with the law.”
Josie’s heart jumped. “Oh, well, not all the time,” she began, cornered.
The timer for the bread went off and saved her. She laughed as she got up to watch the way Heather made the risen bread dough
into loaves.
She and JJ went riding down the wooded trail around the ranch on some of Cole’s saddle horses.
“You’re pretty good at this,” Josie remarked.
He grinned at her. “I love horses. On ranches where Dad worked, there were always kids who would let me go riding with them.
But that was before we had to move.” He grimaced. “Dad did his best for us,” he added quickly.
“I’m sure that he did,” she replied.
“It’s just, there wasn’t much money, and Dad wasn’t in good health. We moved a lot because the rent kept going up. Rodeo can
keep you going, but only if you win top prizes. Dad said he wasn’t good enough for that. And he was sick a lot. When he lost
the last ranch job, and there wasn’t another one he could get, everything just seemed to fall apart.” He looked away. “I miss
Dad a lot.”
“I know you do. Life is hard without parents.”
“Don’t you have parents, Josie?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I lost my mom to cancer. My dad only calls when he needs something. We’re not close.”
“That’s sad.”
“I guess it is.” She smiled. “It’s really nice, the way your new family gets along.”
“They’re terrific,” he said. “I felt at home the first time I saw them. And John specially. He’s always around.”
“I guess he’s not so bad,” she muttered.
“We play video games together,” he told her. “He’s pretty good!”
She laughed. “I’ll bet you are, too.”
“Well, not as good as John. But I’m learning.”
They rounded a curve, and she recognized the area they entered. It was where that lot of calves Raines had dropped her off
to scout out were located. They were still there. A little bigger than they had been.
“Aren’t they pretty?” JJ asked as they stopped the horses beside the fenced pasture. “John says they’ll go up for our private
auction in December.”
She frowned. They were purebred, not neutered. What sort of interest did Raines and his boss have in calves? She knew Velasquez
had a huge property in Mexico, down near Cancun, and another in northern Sonora. But from what she’d been able to find out,
his interest was in horses, not cattle. What was he going to do with purebred calves?
As she looked at the calves, she recalled that these looked very much like the ones she’d been looking at the first time she
saw John. Why did Raines have such interest in this particular group of calves?
“Josie, I said are you going to stay with me while the family goes to New York to watch Odalie’s audition at the Metropolitan
Opera?”
“If I’m still here, I sure will,” she promised.
“You can’t go yet,” he said, concerned. “We have to get a Christmas tree and put it up, and then Cole says we’re going shopping
in Dallas to buy lots of presents to go under it! But that will be when they get back from New York.”
“It’s going to be a busy month,” she remarked absently.
“I love Christmas.” They started riding again. The wind was getting up, and it was a cold wind. “I wonder if we’ll get snow?”
he added.
She laughed. “You’d think so,” she agreed. “But even up in Wyoming we didn’t always get snow for Christmas.”
“I’ll bet Wyoming’s pretty,” JJ said. “Dad was offered a job up there year before last, but he said it was just too far to
drive. He didn’t think his truck could make it there.” He hesitated. “Daddy Cole brought it over here and fixed it all up.
He says when I start learning to drive, it can be mine.”
“Your dad would like that, I think,” Josie said softly.
He managed a smile. “Yeah.”
“And Christmas will be fun,” she added.
“Will you be here at Christmas?” he asked.
Her heart jumped. With any luck, she’d be through her undercover assignment and back at her office by then. But who knew?
She thought about going back East and never seeing John again. It was disturbing. She thought about him far too much anyway.
“We’ll have to wait and see, I guess,” she replied with a smile.
JJ and John played Destiny 2 in the den on John’s Xbox while Cole and Heather sat together in the living room, drinking coffee and talking about ranch
projects.
“I wanted to ask you,” Heather said, “if you were going to stay with us until Christmas. We have to fly to New York City to be with Odalie when she goes for her opera debut at the Met. We will have people here, of course, but JJ would feel more comfortable if you were here, too, unless you have other plans.”
Josie was touched. It was nice to feel needed. Of course her boss needed her on the job. But this was different. It was nice
to be needed on a personal level, especially by family like the Everetts, whom she admired so much. Well, except for John,
who disliked her, and who made it obvious at every opportunity.
“I would very much like to stay,” Josie said, “if it wouldn’t be an imposition.”
“And what if it was?” came a sardonic question from the den doorway.
Josie turned her head. She flushed at the cold glare in John’s pale, silver eyes.
“John,” Heather said disapprovingly, “that’s not a nice way to treat a guest.”
John continued to glare at Josie. “She’s your guest, not mine, Mom,” he replied. “And let’s not forget that she’s still in
trouble with the law.”
“That’s true,” Josie said proudly, “but I’m doing my best not to be a hindrance.”
“Just don’t walk off with the family silver,” John added with a cold smile. “And just what were you doing looking at a lot
of purebred calves that we plan to auction soon at our private sale?”
Heather gave her son a withering look, which he ignored.
She had to come up with a reasonable idea that wouldn’t make him even more suspicious. All the while she felt miserable that
she could not tell him the truth about who she really was. But that was impossible for the moment. Too many lives were at
stake, including her own.
“Raines is coming to the private sale. He wants to bid on that lot of calves for his boss, who runs purebred Santa Gertrudis cattle. That’s in addition to the property that his boss is also interested in.
” She’d overheard Raines talking about it.
She hoped the throwaway remark would spare her John’s suspicion.
“Who is this mysterious person that he works for? Is it somebody local?”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “I think I mentioned that it’s a reclusive, very wealthy person from the northeast. Raines never
told me exactly who it is, but he has deep pockets, and I have to make a living. Raines will pay me very well to do this sort