Maybe that was what annoyed her the most. Hedidcare. It wasn’t like he’d let her win. He was competitive. Why did she let him annoy her so much?
Like right now. He hadn’t said a word since he’d handed her the note and mentioned Stuart. “Why are you being so quiet?” she demanded as they neared the edge of town.
He glanced over at her from under the brim of his Stetson. “I’m always quiet.”
“Not like this. What’s bugging you?”
Cooper seemed amused by the question. “Do I seem bugged?”
“If you wanted to drive your pickup, you should have spoken up.”
He laughed as he pushed back his hat and sat up. “You think I’m upset about you driving?” He shook his head. “You drive well enough. I hardly feared for my life more than a few times.”
She’d started to object at his “you drive well enough,” but she was glad she hadn’t. He was teasing her. She liked this Cooper who could tease. She liked his smile, and his laugh was contagious. This was a side of him that she’d never seen before. “You should laugh and smile more often.”
“Give me a good reason to and I’d be happy to oblige.”
The tension she’d felt earlier in the cab of her truck had dissipated by the time she stopped behind his rig in front of the café. The place was packed at this hour. She saw people at the tables along the window looking out at them. But if Cooper was uncomfortable with townspeople seeing them together, he didn’t say anything as he started to open his door.
She wondered if this was the last of their investigating together. It felt that way, and to her surprise, it disappointed her. She’d gotten a glimpse of a Cooper McKenna she’d never known. She wondered if there was more to him than she’d always thought.
“Can I see that note again for a minute?” Cooper asked.
She’d expected him to leap out of the pickup the moment he got the chance. His request surprised her. She dug out the notepaper and handed it to him. There wasn’t much written on it. Tick Whitaker’s name and his phone number, as well as the license plate letters and numbers.
“What are you looking for?” she asked as he held the note up to the light. From where she sat, she could see that the background was faint, the letters large.
“CH4,” he said.
She nodded. CH4. “I don’t get it. We already know that Howie works for the gas exploration company.”
COOPERSTUDIEDTHEnote as Tilly gave him a questioning look. He didn’t like keeping anything from her. But what he’d seen had nothing to do with her sister’s shooting. At least he hoped not. He’d seen on the back of the note how hard Howie had pressed the pen to paper. So it was no surprise that what he’d written on the piece of notepaper before the one he’d given them had left an impression.
The ghostlike indentation was a name: Treyton McKenna, and what could have been his cell phone number. The haunting shadow of Treyton’s name on CH4 notepaper appeared to be a damning assumption backed by what Tilly had told him about seeing Treyton being friendly with a gas company man. Howie or someone else? Times like this led to betrayal even inside the family.
“I was just thinking I might go check out Tick Whitaker before I go back to the ranch,” Cooper said. Tilly had said their families were off-limits. No reason to share this with her, he told himself.
“Not without me. Where were you thinking of looking for him?”
Cooper pointed across the street at the hotel. Tilly groaned when she saw what he’d seen. Parked out front was the geologist’s SUV with Texas vanity plates that read TICK followed by numbers that could have been his IQ.
“You just think you’re smart, don’t you,” Tilly teased as they crossed the street.
“Not particularly,” he said, but couldn’t help grinning at her. It wasn’t every day that he could best her.
Inside, they headed straight for the hotel registration desk. “We’re looking for Tick Whitaker,” Cooper said.
“Check the bar.” The way the clerk said it, he figured Tick had made himself so at home in the bar that he probably had his own stool. So he wasn’t that surprised when he heard a loud Southern drawl and followed it to an attractive, large man who had a redhead cornered at the bar.
Cooper looked over at Tilly as if to say, “Wanna bet that’s Tick?” as they advanced on the Texan. Tick was pouring on the Southern charm at an annoying volume. “Tick?”
“Not now,” he said without turning around. “Can’t you see that I’m busy?”
“Tick?”
At the sound of a sultry female voice, he turned, already smiling even before he saw Tilly. “Hey, honey. Where did you come from?”
“If you have a moment, we’d like to ask you a few questions,” Cooper said.