Page 5 of Lone Star Target

For three days, she’d been his wife. Three days when she had obviously had her head in the sand to not realize her father wasn’t going to allow the wife label to continue.

And he hadn’t.

No way would the mighty Ramsey Barclay allow her to be married to someone who’d been raised in foster care. Someone with no pedigree. No money. No connections that her father could tap into and exploit.

Ironically, if her dad had just waited until Jace had become a cop, then the connection would have been in place for Ramsey to try to use. If Jace had let him, that is. And she knew down to the bottom of her heart that Jace wouldn’t have allowed it.

Unlike her, Jace would never cave in.

Ruby flipped past the four single-spaced pages of Kit’s background. Four! Jeez Louise, the woman had included every single milestone and hiccup in her life. Kit had always heard that Ruby was thorough, that she ran Maverick Ops like a military campaign, and here was proof of that.

“You stopped working for your father,” Jace muttered, obviously scanning the report on her and catching that detail amid all the other info.

“I did,” she verified. “I was officially one of his attorneys. A part-time one.”

Because of that thorough report, Jace could see where the rest of her time went. She managed the foundation her late mother had started for battered and abused women.

And, yes, her father had objected to her continuing it.

Kit had objected to his constant attempts to shut it down. In the end, they’d reached a standoff of sorts. She would continue to be his attorney in name only if he stayed the heck out of her business life. That pact had worked.

Until now.

Ruby continued to scroll through the report, and she stopped on another picture. This time, it was her father.

“Ramsey Barclay, age sixty-two, born in Fort William, Scotland, but he came to the States with his parents when he was four. He’s a long time resident of Texas and has lived on his estate in Bandera Bluffs for nearly twenty years,” Ruby spelled out. “Along with him briefly being Jace’s father-in-law, he’s head of Barclay Fidelity, an investment company that has business holdings in six countries.”

“A company that’s a haven for money laundering,” Jace supplied.

He’d let that cop’s attitude slip just a smidge, and Kit heard the disdain in his voice. She agreed with Jace on both his attitude and his conclusion about her father and his company.

Ruby made a sound of agreement. “Ramsey was seemingly untouchable. Now, he’s not.”

Jace’s gaze whipped from the monitor to Kit. “You can’t testify against him. You’re his lawyer.”

“Was his lawyer,” Kit corrected. “I resigned from that position. But you’re right. I still can’t testify about anything I learned while he was my client.” And even with her part-time status and limited access to his accounts, she had learned so very, very much.

Enough to want her father in jail for an eternity.

“Kit can testify against this man though,” Ruby went on, and she put another photo on the monitor. “That’s Marvin Shoemaker.”

Again, Kit felt her stomach tighten. The beefy man with the shaved head seemed to be glaring down at her, threatening her with that sneer and cold, hard expression.

“He looks like a thug,” Jericho remarked.

“He is one,” Ruby verified without any hesitation. “He’s forty-one and until recently worked as a security guard/chauffeur for Ramsey. When Kit was outside her father’s home last month in Bandera Bluffs, she witnessed Mr. Shoemaker assaulting a woman in the driveway.”

“It was his ex-girlfriend who’d come to get back her house key from him,” Kit said, taking up the explanation. “He punched her and was kicking her when I gave him a shot of pepper spray, kneed him in the balls, and called the cops.”

Kit had to stop and fight back those horrible images. Jace likely had his own set of images like that. A huge set, considering he’d been a cop. And Kit wasn’t sure how he managed to live with them. They haunted her every single night.

Jericho, however, leaned over and gave her a high five. “Good job going for the balls.”

Despite the thick tension in the room and inside her, that made Kit smile. But not for long though because Ruby continued with the horrific details of that attack she’d witnessed.

“The ex-girlfriend suffered serious injuries, including head trauma that robbed her of memories of the incident,” Ruby spelled out. “Shoemaker was arrested, and because of his previous arrests, this could send him to jail for a very long time. Now, he’s out on bail, and he wants to deal.”

“A deal where he spills on Ramsey in exchange for a reduced sentence,” Jace grumbled.

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