Page 57 of Lone Star Witness

Marise figured the adrenaline crash and fatigue were playing into this peaceful feeling that had seemingly taken over her body. Of course, Slade was responsible for the feeling, too, since she was still snuggled in arms as they sat in the back of a county cruiser while the first responders did their thing.

Nash and Caroline were in the front seat, and he was also snuggling with Caroline on his lap while Jericho occupied the driver’s seat. He was talking on the phone to his fiancée, keeping his voice at practically a whisper, but Marise heard him doling out reassurances that he hadn’t been hurt.

And he hadn’t been.

As far as Marise could tell, Jericho, Nash, Caroline, and Slade had gotten no real injuries in the attack. Just some nicks and bruises. Marise had gotten some of those as well, including what she figured was a small cut on her left butt cheek. That’d happened when she’d gone over the bluff with the colonel, and she’d smacked against the rock. Soon, she’d need it examined, but it didn’t feel like a priority at the moment.

Through the rain-streaked windshield, she could see the medical examiner with Sonny’s body, and she’d heard the cops say it would soon be transported to the morgue. Marise personally didn’t care if the SOB’s body went straight to hell with the man’s soul. She felt no anger about that. Just that peacefulness that came with the fact that Sonny had failed.

And they hadn’t.

Sonny was dead, and the rest of them were alive. That included the colonel who was behind them in an ambulance while the EMTs examined him.

One ambulance had already taken Stephanie to the hospital because of her head injury. The cops hadn’t finished with her yet, but again, Marise was having a hard time working up any anger over the woman’s participation in this shitshow. Maybe that particular emotion would come later.

“We won’t be getting out of here anytime soon,” Jericho muttered once he’d finished his call with Rachel. He turned in the seat and looked behind them. “There’s an ambulance, two cruisers, the ME’s vehicle, and a CSI van parked behind us.”

Yes, and they were on basically a trail, one littered with parts from the van that’d been ripped apart with a grenade, so it would be next to impossible for the vehicles to turn around. Once it was time to leave, they’d have to drive in reverse to get out of there.

“So, have you two accepted you’re together?” Jericho asked, sliding his gaze between Slade and her.

Marise was trying to figure out how to respond to that when Slade beat her to it. “Yes.”

Surprised and very pleased, she turned and looked at him. And she kissed him. That gave the peaceful feeling and her body a nice little jolt of heat. Then again, Slade always gave her the right kind of heat. Still, his “yes” wasn’t exactly a declaration of, well, anything.

Was it?

She didn’t get much of a chance to contemplate that because a cop approached the cruiser and tapped on the window. It was County Sheriff Billy Lee Thompson. Apparently, he’d responded rather than the sheriff from the nearby town of Canyon Ridge, but their jurisdictions overlapped somewhat so the response team that got tapped was usually the one that could get there the fastest.

Like his deputies, Sheriff Thompson was wearing a bright yellow slicker, and when Jericho lowered the window, he ducked down to peer in at them.

“Y’all doing okay in here?” he asked.

They all responded with sounds of agreement.

“Good. Well, we’ll try to get you out of her soon. Your boss just called me,” he added, looking at Jericho, Nash, and Slade. “She wanted a status update since she was certain, and I’m semi-quoting her, none of y’all would tell her how you were really doing.”

Yes, they likely would sugarcoat it. Though in this case, the sugarcoating would be very close to the truth. All that was left to deal with was the aftermath of the brothers having killed Sonny.

Ruby would need to be reassured that all was mentally well with them. There’d likely be tests, counseling, and such, but Marise figured Sonny’s death was for the brothers as what it was for her.

A relief.

“FYI, we found Sonny’s truck parked on one of the trails,” the sheriff went on a moment later. “According to what Colonel Rosa just told me, Sonny had Rosa and his wife in the cab of the truck, and the three hired gunmen in the back where, as you can imagine, they were getting damn assed wet from the storm.”

The sheriff seemed pleased they’d experienced the discomfort of that.

“The men are all confirmed dead, by the way,” he added. “But then, with the training you fellas have, that shouldn’t be much of a surprise.”

It wasn’t.

“Any proof that Sonny hired them and they weren’t working for Stephanie?” Slade asked.

“No proof yet. Mrs. Rosa was talking in the ambulance, but she didn’t own up to anything.” The sheriff shrugged. “Well, she didn’t own up to me anyway, but she said plenty to Sonny when they were in the truck, and the colonel reported it to me. Apparently, his wife was seriously pissed off that Sonny had decided to kidnap her and bring her to the creek.”

“He actually kidnapped her?” Slade wanted to know.

“Sonny did. She didn’t come here willingly and griped about it the whole drive from where Sonny snatched her from her downtown office. During that drive, the colonel got an earful. He heard all about how his wife had hired Sonny to kill her lover, but that got screwed six ways to Sunday when her assistant lost his cool and did it.”

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