Page 34 of Snowed In

Texas Snow

Kelly Fox

Chapter One

Rafferty

It was the week before Christmas, and I held my breath as the jury foreperson stood. The defendant, Jesse Travis, rubbed his mouth with a heavily inked hand, waiting for her to read the verdict. His hair was in a neat quiff and he wore a tailored navy-blue suit that showcased his lean form. The upstanding citizen cosplay was pretty good, but the tattoos peeking out at the cuffs and neckline made him look like a mafia don in that suit.

Personally, I preferred him with the loose halo of waves and high-end urban style I’d become familiar with in my months’ long surveillance. When I first started investigating him, I thought his casual clothes and heavy chains were the mask and that he had the soul of cold-blooded killer.

Over time, however, there were a million things that never fully added up. The way he always brought a coffee to the panhandler on his street. The groceries he bought for his elderly neighbor. The way the neighborhood kids joked around with him.

I started to realize that, had he been raised by different people, he would have chosen any other life than this.

According to my boss, that was my biggest weakness—I saw toomuch of the humanity in the folks that we investigated. It was just...I knew some of the people caught in our net would’ve made different choices if they could’ve. Still, I’d been doing this long enough to know that someone like Jesse Travis didn’t give a shit about my empathy because my testimony was going to put him away for a very, very long time.

This case had started off with a supposedly easy mission: find out who killed a small-time dealer nicknamed Jimmy Shoes. It didn’t take me long to realize that Jimmy was no small-time dealer and that this case had implications regarding Austin’s major drug distribution networks.

The investigation took place over the summer, and we took our time with the details, ensuring that the District Attorney’s office had what they needed to not only prosecute Jesse Travis, but also to eventually go after the entire Travis family empire.

The last part was harder because whoever managed the Travis family funds had done an excellent job of setting up an impenetrable combination of shell companies and offshore accounts to hide the cash.

Even so, I finally got the opportunity to testify a couple weeks before Christmas. While Jesse Travis’s lawyer was top-notch, my findings had been unassailable. Jesse had been the one to pull the trigger that night.

My heart pounded in my chest as the jury foreperson straightened out the document with trembling fingers and read, “On the charge of second-degree murder, we, the jury, find the defendant, Jesse Travis, guilty.”

I turned to watch Jesse as the foreperson carefully droned through the rest of the charges. Each new guilty verdict set his jaw on edge, and a warning sounded deep in my gut. Some crooks did okay in prison, but I’d studied this man for months and knew that he was not made for the inside.

I was already in motion when he pivoted away from the defendant’s table. He smoothly cleared the rail that divided the court room, and I stepped into his path, clocking the cold fury in his eyes.

He launched himself at me.

Operating on instinct, I dropped low, then punched up into his ribs, forcing all of that forward momentum up into his lungs as the bones cracked around my fist. He flew back and landed in a lump against the rail.

The entire sequence took mere seconds, but only when the sheriff’s deputies rushed the scene did time seem to catch up. Despite the wheezing and obvious pain, Jesse never broke eye contact with me.

The judge gaveled everyone to order. “Officers, make sure that Mr. Travis gets the medical attention he needs.” She turned her focus on me. “Detective Rafferty? Are you okay?”

I checked my reddened knuckles, then straightened my uniform and quipped, “Yes, Your Honor. All in a day’s work.”

The shocked gallery laughed at the mild joke while the silently enraged Mr. Travis was led out of the courtroom. Just before the door closed, his dark eyes found mine one more time.

I guess I should be thankful that he was going to jail for a very long time.

A sheriff’s deputy approached me, and I groaned thinking of the upcoming paperwork.

It was surreal, then, after hours of filling out forms in triplicate, to get in my truck and drive to my north Austin suburb with its tasteful Christmas decorations. I pulled into the driveway and my husband was waiting for me at the door with his arms crossed.

I’d choose a literal mountain of paperwork over dealing with whatever’d pissed him off this time.

“Heard you were a big hero down at the courthouse today.”

Marcus was a high-powered attorney who’d fallen in love with the way I looked in my dress blues. Six months into our marriage, however, and we were discovering that he wasn’t a fan of the life that came with it.

“Not a big deal. And I’m pretty sure that stunt added a few more years to his sentence.”

“Good. But no more of these dangerous cases.”

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