Page 24 of Lone Star Witness

None of that was true, but, hey, Slade wanted to get in some digs. The truth was Bodie had died damn fast, within seconds, after Caroline had hurled a knife directly into his heart.

“You liar,” Sonny repeated, but this time it wasn’t a shout. It was low and dangerous. “I was right to come after you and your lover bitch.”

“Do you mean me?” Marise asked, and she imitated Sonny’s earlier sappy tone.

“Yeah. You, bitch. Of course, I wouldn’t have come after you if you hadn’t stuck your nose in my business with Rosa.”

“And what exactly was your business with him?” Slade asked, trying to get Sonny’s venom aimed back at him.

“Nothing I’ll tell you about,” Sonny snapped. “I just wanted you and your bitch to know that you got lucky last night. You should both be dead. Don’t worry. I’ll keep trying. Your luck’s got to run out sooner or later.”

With that, Sonny ended the call, leaving Slade with a tight hot knot burning his belly. He wouldn’t have minded the dipshit targeting just him, but Slade hated that Marise was in the middle of a blood war for Sonny to avenge his son’s death.

But there had to be more.

Bodie had been dead for two months now. That was a long time for Sonny to wait to get his revenge. And it didn’t explain why Rosa was in the mix. To the best of his knowledge, the colonel hadn’t even known Bodie.

“Sonny was using a burner,” Ruby said, coming back on the line. “I’ll search for any—” She stopped for several seconds, and Slade heard her mutter something he didn’t catch.

“What’s wrong?” Slade asked.

Ruby drew in a long breath. “I just got notice from SAPD. They found a body.”

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Chapter Eight

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Marise sat at the desk in Slade’s lake house and stared at the face of a dead man. Or rather she stared at his photo anyway.

Not Rosa.

It was Stephanie’s lover, Carlyle Hutton.

The man had died from a single gunshot wound to the chest and had then been dumped in a shallow grave about twenty miles outside of San Antonio. It was a rural area that apparently didn’t get a lot of traffic so his body hadn’t been spotted for nearly two weeks.

At least that was the initial estimate from SAPD.

Which meant Hutton was never actually a missing person but rather a murdered one.

Marise felt plenty of relief that it wasn’t Rosa’s body that’d been found, but the relief didn’t extend to Rosa himself since the colonel was still missing. And after Sonny’s phone call, Marise had to believe that along with Slade and her, Sonny also had the colonel in his sights as well.

While Slade paced and had yet another phone conversation—this time with Officer Lopez from SAPD—Marise read through the latest report Ruby had just sent them. Slade had told Spock to put it on the huge wall monitor, probably so he could scan through it while he talked to Lopez.

Hutton’s photo was front and center.

Not of his body but rather of the last known picture taken of him that Ruby had managed to cull from the network of various cameras throughout San Antonio. This shot had been caught by a traffic cam and showed Hutton behind the wheel of his white BMW.

Very much alive.

And perhaps heading to the Rosa’s house.

Perhaps.

Hutton was certainly on the correct street to get him to that particular destination, but apparently when the cops had questioned Stephanie, she’d claimed Hutton hadn’t visited her on that particular day.

Marise figured the woman was lying.

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