Page 45 of Tracking Down the Lawman's Son

“Manny,” Bree muttered when she saw him. He was in an office with a desk and bookshelves, and he wasn’t alone. There was a woman with him, but Bree could only see the back of her head.

“I don’t want you showing up at my apartment in the middle of the night,” Brighton snarled. “I’m tired of going through this because it’s over.”

“It’s not over until I say it is,” Manny lashed out.

Just as Manny said that, the woman turned enough so that Bree could see her face. Yes, it was Brighton all right, and it was hard to tell with the shaky recording, but she seemed to be crying.

“If it was over, you wouldn’t have called me,” Manny continued. “You wouldn’t have wanted to keep having sex with me.”

“It was just sex,” Brighton insisted, the anger coming off her voice. “And, trust me, I regret it. You think I enjoyed that scene you just made when you showed up at my place last night?”

“It wasn’t a scene,” Manny snapped. “I was merely talking to my replacement.”

Replacement? So, Brighton had seemingly dumped Manny and moved on to someone else.

“You were causing a scene,” Brighton said like a warning, “and I want it to stop. Don’t contact me again. I love this bar, and I plan on coming here in the future, but I don’t want to have to deal with you, understand?”

The camera stayed on Manny’s face, and Bree had no trouble seeing the rage there. Yes, rage. Apparently, Manny wasn’t ready to accept this breakup. And it also meant Manny had lied to them by omission.

“Check the date of the video,” Tara insisted after the recording had ended.

Luca did. And cursed. Because this had been recorded just two days before Brighton’s murder.

“Well, does that convince you that Manny killed Brighton?” Tara asked.

Luca didn’t respond to that. Instead, he doled out a question of his own. “Do you know your sister’s friend, Aubrey Kincaid?”

“A little,” Tara said after a short pause. “Why?”

“Because we’re trying to get in touch with her. Do you have any idea where she might be?”

Tara paused again. “No, but Manny might. Aubrey and he dated for a while.”

Bingo. There was another red flag. Well, it was if Tara was telling the truth.

“So, are you going to arrest Manny?” Tara repeated with even more venom in her demand.

Duncan nodded, not responding to Tara but letting Luca and Bree know what he was about to do. “I’ll get an arrest warrant started. Arrange to have Manny picked up right away.”

Chapter Twelve

Luca kept watch as they made the drive into town to the sheriff’s office. He was in the back seat with Bree who was firing glances around, too. Ditto for Woodrow and Duncan who were in the front. Luca figured Slater, Joelle and Carmen were doing the same back at the ranch, along with the hands and reserve deputies who were still patrolling the ground.

They had put a lot of security in place to keep Gabriel safe while they made this trip. There were now nine armed cops or ranch hands guarding him, and Luca had to hope that the small army would be enough. Had to hope, too, that maybe this journey wouldn’t turn out to be a big mistake. But pretty much anything they did at this point could fall into the “big mistake” category.

That included doing nothing at all.

Yes, they’d likely be safer if they stayed put inside the ranch house.Likely. But if they’d done a correct interpretation of those notes in Shannon’s trailer, then no place was truly safe. And they had to do something about that for Gabriel and everyone else who happened to be in the path of this killer.

That something meant Bree and him traveling into town to the sheriff’s office to have a chat with Manny.

Manny hadn’t resisted the warrant and had immediately come in for an interview, but he had demanded to speak to Luca and Bree. Luca had considered refusing, or leaving Bree at the ranch, while he went to hear what Manny had to say. Hell, he’d considered a lot of things, but this was a murder investigation and at least some of the things had to be done by the book. That included holding the interview at the sheriff’s office since that’swhere Manny had surrendered himself. It was also procedure for Manny to have his lawyer with him—which he did.

However, it wasn’t the norm for a suspect to ask to speak with two of the people involved in the attacks. Still, Luca had reasoned that Manny might finally be ready to spill all. And spilling all could finally put an end to the danger to Gabriel.

During his visual sweep of their surroundings, Luca’s gaze collided with Bree’s. She was worried all right. And exhausted. Too bad he couldn’t do squat about either of those things.

“A few days ago, our biggest concern was how we were going to co-parent Gabriel while being at odds with each other,” she muttered.

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