Diana Palmer - The Texas Ranger

“Any prison has inmates who’ll kill for a price, guards and wardens notwithstanding,” he reminded her. “They didn’t have to get him out of prison to have him killed.”

“True, but maybe he was lured out to present his proof in person, to make sure that he really had it.” Josette leaned forward and clasped her hands on the desk. “Then, what if they thought he had the proof on him, and he didn’t?”

“We don’t know that. We didn’t find anything on the body, no ID of any sort, not even a pocketknife. If it hadn’t been for the information about the Wayne escapee fitting Jennings’s description exactly, and that raven tattoo on his arm to clinch it, we might have spent weeks trying to identify the body.”

She nodded. “So either the perpetrator took the evidence with him, or he didn’t get it and there’s still somebody out there, who was helping Jennings,” she emphasized, “and who now has the evidence and may still use it. Money is a powerful motive for murder. What if Marsh had him killed, for some reason?”

Brannon frowned. “He’s had people killed before. There could be a hit man on the loose, and whoever he’s working for may dig deep enough to find Jennings’s source.”

“That means we have another potential murder waiting to happen unless we solve the crime in time,” she agreed.

He studied her quietly. “You’ve learned a lot in the past few years.”

“Simon taught me,” she said simply. “He started out as an investigator while he was in law school. He’s very good.”

“You haven’t said anything about Bib Webb,” Brannon said.

“I said I don’t have a potential perpetrator,” she replied quietly. “And that’s true. I’m approaching the case with a completely open mind. But there’s a lot of investigative work to do. I’ll give my information to the local district attorney’s office in San Antonio, and we can do interviews with the most prominent people in the case. But I want to talk to Dale’s mother in San Antonio, the evidence technicians and police in San Antonio, and the prison warden at the Wayne Correctional Institute near Floresville. And to any cell mates Dale may have had or anyone who corresponded with him. Especially somebody who knows computers.”

He watched her, brooding, with one eye narrowed. “Why do you dress like a woman out of the fifties?” he asked unexpectedly.

“I dress like a professional on the state attorney general’s staff,” Josette said, refusing to be baited.

“What’s your next move?” she asked.

“I’m going to see Mrs. Jennings, and then I’m going to try to get a line on the hit man.”

Josette raised an eyebrow. “Have a good relationship with Jake Marsh and his local stable of bad boys, do you?” she drawled in a good imitation of his own sarcastic tone.

Brannon stood up. “I have informants, which is probably about the same thing.”

“Did anybody question Marsh about the body being found near his nightclub?” she asked.

“The very day we found the body. He’s out of town. But his assistant manager seemed shocked!” He said that with a disbelieving expression. He studied her quietly. An impulse had brought him back into her office, when he’d meant to go straight to the airport. Two years, and she still haunted him. Did she hate him? Gretchen said she didn’t. But Josette had learned to hide her feelings very well. He’d thought to surprise her into a reaction. The one he got wasn’t what he was expecting. Or the one he was hoping for.

Brannon watched her rise from her chair with that same easy grace he’d admired so much when she was still in her teens. She wasn’t pretty, not in a conventional way, but she had a sharp intelligence and a sweet nature…. Sweet nature. Sure she did. He recalled the vicious things she’d sworn to about Bib and his expression closed up.

Josette came around the desk and right up to him, unafraid. “I’m not prejudging. That means you can’t, either,” she said deliberately. “I know what that—” she indicated his Ranger badge “—means to you. My job means just as much to me. If we’re going to work together, we have to start now. No acid comments about the past. We’re solving a murder, not rehashing an incident that was concluded two years ago. What’s over is over. Period.”

His gray eyes narrowed so that they were hidden under his jutting brow and the cream-colored Stetson he slanted at an angle over them. Until he’d seen her again, he hadn’t realized how lonely his life had been for the past two years. He’d made a mess of things. In fact, he was still doing it. She held grudges, too, and he couldn’t blame her.

“All right,” Brannon said finally.

She nodded. “I’ll keep you posted about anything I find, if you’ll return the courtesy.”

“Courtesy.” He turned the word over on his tongue. “There’s a new concept.”

“For you, certainly,” Josette agreed with an unexpected twinkle in her eyes. “I understand the Secret Service tried to arrest you when your sister came home to your ranch in Jacobsville the last time, and they threatened to charge you with obstruction of justice for assaulting two of them in the yard.”

He straightened. “A simple misunderstanding,” he pointed out. “I merely had to mention that I was related to the state attorney general to clear it all up.”

That sounded like the dry humor she’d loved in him so many years ago. “Simon uses his new cousin-in-law, the Sheikh of Qawi, to threaten people.”

He leaned down. “So do I,” he confided with a grin.

That grin was so like the old Brannon, the one she’d loved with all her heart. She let the smile she’d been suppressing come out. It changed her face, made it radiant. His breath caught at the warmth of that smile.

“If I run into any uncooperative officials, I’ll use it myself. He’s my cousin-in-law, too,” Josette recalled.

Brannon cocked his head and smiled quizzically. “I forget that we’re related.”

“By an old marriage way back in our family tree,” she agreed. “And it’s a very thin connection with no blood ties.” She turned away and walked ahead of him to her office door. “I’ll make arrangements to see Mrs. Jennings day after tomorrow.”

He gave her a long scrutiny, remembering her at fifteen, shivering in a blanket—at twenty-two, passionate and breathless in his arms. Then he remembered what he’d said to her, afterward. He hated his memories.

She glanced at him and saw the resentment and bitterness on his face. “I don’t like you, either, Brannon, in case you wondered,” she drawled.

He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me,” he lied.

“Not much does.”

He nodded curtly, closed the door behind him and she stood in the middle of the room listening to his footsteps die away down the hall. She hadn’t realized until then that her heart was doing a rhumba in her chest. She moved back to her desk and stared blankly at the stack of file folders. When her heart threatened to break, there was always work waiting to divert her attention. At least, there was that.

That evening, she curled up with her cat, Barnes, on the sofa and tried to get interested in a popular detective show, but her mind wouldn’t cooperate. She stroked the big cat’s fur lazily while he nestled against her and purred. She’d have to board him at the vet’s while she was in San Antonio. She didn’t like the idea, but she didn’t have anyone she could ask to keep him for her.

As she stared blankly at the screen, she remembered the fateful party that had cost Dale Jennings his freedom.

She’d met Dale at a coffee shop around the corner from the college she’d attended. Dale drove a fancy late-model sports car, and he was personable and charming. He also knew Bib Webb, and was helping him with his campaign for the lieutenant governor’s race in his home district, which was San Antonio. Webb was in partnership with Henry Garner, a wealthy local man who’d made a fortune selling farm equipment. Webb and his wife, Silvia, shared a palatial mansion on a private lake with Henry Garner in San Antonio, in fact. Garner was a lonely old man and welcomed the companionship of Webb and his wife.