Page 57 of Deadly Evidence
She leaned over to shut the case.
Footsteps thudded up the steps outside. The door opened and Vicente stepped inside with two bags of groceries in his arms.
He nodded a welcome at Lacey. Then his gaze skidded past Mia and landed on the table.
He froze, his jaw working. “What have you done?” he roared, slamming the grocery sacks on the kitchen counter. One tipped,spewing cans and paper goods onto the floor. A jar rolled to the edge of the counter. Teetered. Crashed on the floor at his feet.
But his furious gaze never left the guitar case and the dress laid out on the table. “Who did this?” He glared at Mia, his hands clenched at his side, and the veins in his neck distended and throbbing. “You? You dared this—thisviolation?”
Lacey wanted to run. Disappear. But at Mia’s quiet sob, she swallowed hard and gripped the back of a kitchen chair. “I-it was me. I—I had a school project. I just needed some things and—”
“No!” He slammed a fist on the counter. “You had no right. I’ve done so much for you—and this is how you repay me?”
“B-but I only borrowed—”
“You have no idea what you have done!” He took a step forward, then stopped and bowed his head. “Please...just leave me alone.”
Guilt flooded through her as she stared at him. He was angry, but there was something else in his voice, too—something so deep and sad that she felt like crying. “I’m s-sorry. I didn’t think—”
“Go!”
She turned and fled through the house to her own room, where she locked the door and threw herself on the bed.
And wished she’d never, ever opened that trunk in the storeroom.
At the first light of dawn on Monday morning, Brady rose from his surveillance point up in the bluffs, his bones stiff and muscles aching from hours on the cold, damp ground.
At thirty-four he felt like seventy when he did things like this—old injuries came back to haunt him, hinting at worse things to come if he didn’t slow down.
Not that he could ever face a desk job, he thought as he shook out his bedroll, rolled it up and tied it behind the cantle of his saddle.
But with this operation he would finally see his friends’ killers brought to justice. And afterward, he was definitely looking into a new career.
He gathered his binoculars and camera and stowed them in the saddlebag. With a last look around, he swung up into the saddle.Another wasted night.
He’d watched for the past seven hours. There’d been nothing—no furtive movement through the sagebrush and rocks below. No sudden beam of a flashlight or glint of metal in the moonlight.
“Well, old boy—time to go home.” He gathered up the reins and nudged the horse gently with a heel. Copper tossed his head and sidestepped in the direction of home, obviously looking forward to his warm stall and feed. “Easy, buddy.”
He dropped some slack into the reins and gave the horse his head. Copper took off at an easy jog straight for Anna’s place. Brady chuckled, feeling just as relieved to be heading for home. “You could be a homing pigeon, you know that?”
The trail was familiar, though Brady varied between several options each night and kept well out of sight of the route most of the drug runners followed along the flat valley floor.
This time he swung farther south, though Copper tossed his head and lashed his tail, clearly wanting to take the most direct route.
“Safer, pal,” Brady murmured. “Predictability is a big mistake.”
A niggling worry about Dante surfaced as Brady rode on.
Something wasn’t quite right there.
Nieto, the new ranch hand at the Rocking B, had clearly recognized the kid when they’d gone over there for hay, yetDante had denied ever meeting him—even when Brady casually mentioned it the next day.
Maybe they knew each other from Dante’s wilder days, when the boy had been in a lot of gang-related trouble in his hometown.
That alone could account for Dante’s reaction, now that he was apparently trying for a fresh start.
Or was he?
