Page 17 of River Legacy
“Are you telling me you don’t know where he is?”
JJ looked as if it was the last thing he wanted to tell his boss.
“Neither one of you got a description of the person who sent me a death threat. Is that what you’re telling me?”
JJ’s face tightened, his eyes narrowing slightly. “I’m afraid not, since I thought Brice was covering your door.”
“You’re both fired,” Wendell said. “I’ll leave your severance pay and commercial coach tickets for your flights back to Dallas at the main desk.”He slammed the door, shaking. He couldn’t trust anyone, and he sure as hell didn’t trust JJ Gibson. He recalled that JJ had come highly recommended, though he couldn’t remember by whom.
The main desk called to say his rental had been delivered. He quickly packed, anxious to get on the road. It had been so long since he’d driven himself, he was actually looking forward to a trip alone.
Someone was trying to scare him. Or maybe really wanted him dead. He had no idea who, but plenty of people had good reason. As he got ready to leave Billings, he realized that he hadn’t heard from Claude Duvall.
Or maybe he had, thinking of the death threat he now had tucked into his suitcase.
Chapter Six
Oakley Stafford McKenna had just gotten off the phone with her brother Brand. She loved that Brand enjoyed relaying juicy news as much as she did.
Ryder had brought home a woman?That was shocking enough, but the woman was the daughter of the tycoon who’d been trying to buy the ranch?
“I’m going to pick up Tilly and go out to the ranch,” she called to her husband who had come in for a break from the construction work still being done on their house. It was almost finished, and she adored everything about it.
“Before you leave, we need to talk about your brother,” Pickett called back.
“Brand?” she asked in surprise as she walked into the kitchen still trying to get her earring on. Had her husband heard about Victoria Forester before she had and not mentioned it?
“Not Brand,” he said almost irritably, “CJ.”
“Oh.” She got the earring in and turned to face him. She’d known Pickett would be furious when he heard that CJ had been not just released from jail, but that the charges had been dropped after one ofthe witnesses had left the country and another had retracted his testimony.
“CJ is an attempted murderer,” her husband said with a curse. “You know your mother was behind getting him out. What was she thinking? CJ is dangerous, and now he’s running free?”
“He isn’t free. He’s on probation,” she said quickly. She would have loved to argue that her mother had nothing to do with getting rid of the two witnesses but saved her breath. Pickett knew Charlotte Stafford. CJ had always been her favorite offspring.
Pickett made a rude sound. “This has your mother’s fingerprints all over it. But I can’t believe she didn’t warn you about what she was planning to do.”
He wasn’t wrong. Oakley’s mother had come to her asking her to forgive and forget what CJ had done. He’d shot her, claiming it was an accident, and when Oakley had tried to stop the drilling of another methane well on the ranch, he’d hired two men to do whatever they had to, to stop Oakley from interfering once and for all.
She hadn’t told Pickett, who would have gone through the roof at even the suggestion that she listen to her mother let alone forgive and forget. Nor did he know that Oakley had visited CJ in jail at her mother’s request.
She recalled the day at the jail when she’d watched CJ come in on the other side of the plexiglass and pick up the phone handset. Oakley had hesitated to pick up hers on the partition that separated them. Alot more had separated them their entire lives. CJ had bullied his siblings, who eventually just made a point of staying clear of him—all except Oakley.
She’d always stood up to him, even when she got the worst of it. And suddenly she found herself in the middle. CJ behind bars and their mother wanting Oakley to forgive him when she’d almost died because of him.
CJ had looked nervous. He hadn’t expected her to come visit him. From his expression, he’d thought she’d come to the jail to tell him what she thought of him.
They’d been at each other’s throats since they were kids. True, he instigated it, but Oakley always held her own. She’d thought that sometimes he’d admired her for not being afraid of him when she should have been.
But then again, she was the reason he was locked up now.
“Mother asked me to come see you,” she’d said, making it clear it hadn’t been her idea.
“It’s good to see you. I heard you got married.”
Oakley had always been able to see right through his facade. Of course, that was why their mother had sent her to the jail. Charlotte Stafford wanted to believe CJ could change.
“What do you want me to say? I’m sorry for what I tried to do to you?I am.”
