Page 43 of Lone Star Witness

He nodded, sat down on the edge of the hot tub and downed her wine. He refilled the glass with the bottle he’d left within her reach.

“You should talk to someone, too,” he countered. “You’ve been attacked twice in two days.”

She had indeed, and there weren’t even guarantees that she wouldn’t be attacked again. As long as Sonny was out there, Slade and she would be in danger. Probably Rosa, Jericho, Nash, and their partners as well.

“Ruby keeps a shrink on tap,” Slade went on. “You can talk to her if you think it’ll help.”

“I’ll do it if you will,” she said.

“Deal.” He handed her back the now full glass. She had the beginnings of a slight buzz going on, probably fueled by the fatigue from the adrenaline crash, so she only took a small sip. Best to have a clear head since it was obvious Slade had something to tell her.

“The cops haven’t found Sonny,” she threw out there to get him started.

“They have not,” he verified. “But Angel did manage to record a statement of sorts from Julian before he died.”

Marise recalled Angel kneeling by the dying man and speaking to him, but she hadn’t pressed for what he’d said. “Did Julian confess to anything?”

“Not really. It was obvious he was the one who set the fire in the house and shot at us, but he died before admitting any part in murdering Hutton. However, Julian did say that Stephanie had no part in any of the attack.”

She considered that for a moment. “You believe him?”

“No,” Slade was quick to say, “but with him dead, the cops will have to prove her involvement. They might be able to do that with what they manage to recover in her office. And in Rosa’s. Everything will be tested, including the bottle he drank from the night of the murder.”

Good. Maybe they could find out if it had contained drugs that had ended up messing with Rosa’s memory.

“I have to wonder why Stephanie or Julian didn’t at least try to clean up the blood in her office,” Marise commented.

Slade shrugged. “It’s not easy to clean up something like that, and if Stephanie’s watched any crime shows, she would have figured out that no amount of cleaning was going to get rid of it all. I think her plan all along has been to burn the place down. Ruby found camera footage of Stephanie moving boxes out of her car and into her downtown office.”

“So, culling out the things she wanted to keep and letting the rest go up in flames,” Marise concluded. Then, she paused. “But all of that brings me back to Hutton’s murder. Obviously, it wasn’t planned. At least, it wasn’t planned to happen there in that office.”

“You’re thinking of that meeting between Julian and Sonny,” he said, and she nodded. “We might never get the truth about that, but if Hutton was threatening to expose the affair, Julian could have hired Sonny to do the murder, but something went wrong. Maybe Hutton came to the house to confront Stephanie, and in the heat of the moment, either Julian or Stephanie killed him.”

Yes, it could have played out that way. “Then, they took the body out into the country and buried it.”

He made a sound of agreement. “It’s possible they didn’t believe Hutton’s body would be discovered. Equally possible, too, that Stephanie’s arrogant enough to believe she wouldn’t be a suspect even if the body was found.”

That theory certainly meshed with Marise’s opinion of the woman. And she hoped with Julian dead, that didn’t mean Stephanie was going to get away with murdering her lover.

Or Sonny getting away with it.

No way could a soak in a hot tub take away that concern. Or the concern that Sonny would find a way to come after them again.

Marise tried to put that thought aside, and she motioned toward her phone that was next to the wine bottle. “I got my own update. The colonel has checked into a hotel down on the Riverwalk.”

Slade frowned. “Ruby said she was going to have one of her operatives guard Colonel Rosa.”

Marise was doing some frowning, too. “He declined. He said he was grateful for the offer but that he didn’t want to tie up her manpower that way. Instead, SAPD will do frequent patrols around the hotel.”

“That’s not enough,” Slade grumbled.

“It’s not. You and I know that. So does Rosa.” She sighed. “My guess is he wants Sonny to come after him. A showdown of sorts.”

Slade cursed and took out his phone. “I’m texting Rosa to ask him to reconsider the protection. If he won’t, then I’ll see if he’ll agree to have someone from Maverick Ops escort him to my townhouse. Or here. The security is far better at my places than at a hotel.”

It was, but she saw Slade’s frown deepen after he fired off the text and didn’t get a response right away from the colonel.

Slade added a frustrated groan to the frown. Then, he stared down at her. She saw some of the frustration slowly slip away when he clearly got distracted by something. And she knew exactly what that something was.

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