Peggy Nicholson - Don't Mess With Texans

Because even more than loyal patients Tag needed a good lawyer.

He took the long way into town, which was down a logging road, then up over a rocky hillside pasture, thankful that his new truck had four-wheel drive. By the time he reached Main Street he’d lost his pursuers. Shutting the outer door to Glassman’s office behind him, Tag breathed a sigh of relief-Ollie, Ollie oxen free—then grimaced as he remembered who’d said that last.

Glassman’s receptionist looked up with a smile. It froze on her face.

“Hi, Barbara. I know I don’t have an appointment, but...” He gave her his best grin. They’d had a flirtation going while Glassman had been drawing up his contracts to buy into Higgins’s practice. He’d considered asking her out, but somehow couldn’t see himself ever telling Barbara about the car collection he’d started at age thirteen. Barb believed in The Law, not the unbearable beauty of Porsches.

“I’m afraid—”

“Barb, if he could see me for even a minute. I’m in the soup. I guess you know, if you saw—”

“I did.” She shot a glance over her shoulder toward the inner office. “But I’m afraid we—he—can’t help you.” She lowered her voice. “He took a retainer this morning. The other side.”

Tag stared at her blankly.

“Colton. Stephen Colton,” she hissed. “He’s retained us.”

Colton? Here? “To do what?”

“I’ve no idea, Tag, and if I had, I couldn’t tell you. Colton’s man showed up waving a check for five thousand half an hour ago. They’re in there now, so if you don’t mind...”

“Yeah. Sure.” Just like that, wave a check and he was the enemy? Well, hell, there were other lawyers.

THERE WERE THREE OTHERS in town—and Colton had retained all three. For a pretty boy, he played dirty. Outside the office of the third and last, Tag stopped to rub his aching neck. Okay, so now what? Drive to Bennington?

But would a small-town lawyer do the job, if Colton intended to go for blood? Maybe he should hire a Boston heavy?

But a big-time legal shark would do his own bloodletting, and Tag had zip to spare. He’d used every dollar he’d saved since graduation to buy his first slice of Higgins’s practice.

And surely it was too soon to be talking lawsuits? First he should talk to the guy. Colton might be a snob, but he hadn’t looked stupid or unreasonable. And his real quarrel was with his crazy wife, not an innocent bystander. Find a phone then, that was next. Once Colton had heard Tag’s side of the story...

It took him eighteen tries to get past a busy signal. When someone picked up the phone at last, Tag drew a thankful breath.

“May I speak to Mr. Colton, please?”

“I’m afraid he’s not available just now.” Another pattering Kentucky drawl—a woman’s, sweetly professional. “But may I take a message?”

He wasn’t leaving his apologies and regrets with a secretary. “Yes, um, would you tell him Dr. Richard Taggart called and that I urgently need to talk with him? I’ll keep calling on the hour, every hour, till we connect.” No use giving his own number, since the line was jammed with crank callers.

That done, and maybe a call was all it would take to straighten this nightmare out, Tag headed back to his clinic.

Where Carol Anne’s car was no longer parked in front of the building. Gone home to lunch, he supposed. But like piranhas gathering, the number of reporters had increased. They turned as one when he parked, beamed as they recognized him, but rather than rushing to meet him, they held their ground by his front door.

As Tag reached the steps, he saw why. A burly stranger was screwing something into the clinic’s doorjamb—a steel hasp. “You! What d’you think you’re doing?” He jabbed an elbow in someone’s ribs, shoved another aside, gained the top step—just as a second man snapped a padlock in place.

Locking him out of his own clinic! For a roaring moment, the world went bloodred. Tag grabbed the lock man’s collar with both hands. “You bastard!” He hauled him up on tiptoe.

“I wouldn’t!” squeaked the man. His helper loomed at Tag’s shoulder. Laying a hand on Tag’s biceps, he dug in stubby fingers and breathed meaningfully in his ear, “I really wouldn’t, Dr. Taggart. You’ve got trouble enough already.”

So what’s a little more? Still, Tag let go of .Squeaky. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing, locking my—”

The other man—a lawyer, who else would wear a threepiece suit in this town?—shook his head. “Not anymore, it isn’t. Dr. Higgins sold out.”

Sold out? Tag stood, sucking for a breath that wouldn’t come. Sold, just like that? That fast? “To...to whom?” But that was obvious. How many millionaires had he pissed off this week?

“The FYA Corporation of Delaware.”

Colton’s cover. Had to be. “Higgins didn’t own it all to sell! I own—”

“One-fifth of the goodwill—and none of the property. Yes, we know that. And you’re welcome to take your share of the patients and practice anywhere else in this town, or any town you please.”

Right, practice small-animal medicine without a clinic? Without supplies, instruments, exam rooms, a phone? Using what for money in the meantime?

Higgins’s accountant had divided the business that way for some arcane tax reason that Tag had never bothered to follow. The deal had required that Tag first buy the clinic’s patients, its goodwill, while he rented use of the facilities from Higgins. Once he owned a hundred percent of the goodwill, they’d agreed that then he’d start buying the property, using his share of monthly earnings to do so, while the old man phased out of the business. In five years he’d have owned it all.

The lawyer turned to his heavy. “Leo, if I may have that box?” The thug scooped up a box that had been sitting on the stoop by his size fourteen feet and passed it over. The lawyer presented it with a tiny smile. “We cleaned out your desk for you. And your diplomas. When you wish to pick up your share of the patient files, and one-fifth of the Rolodex, then please call my office.” He placed a business card on top of the box Tag had automatically accepted. “We’ll be keeping the books for a few weeks while they’re audited. But once that’s done, then—”

“Sure.” Oblivious to the flashes going off as cameras recorded the awful moment, Tag watched the pair go. Just like that, they could chop him off at the knees?

He could feel a howl rising in his throat. Could see himself tossing the box aside—all that remained of his hopes in one pathetic box?—and hurling himself on the departing shyster’s back. Dragging him down. Ripping and tearing and gouging as he’d learned long ago on the street....

What d’you think this is for, Taggart my man? Knuckles gently rapping his forehead. Tag blinked, the words drifting back over the years one more time when he needed them. Jake talking, the big young counselor at the reform school, been-there smile, words that could cut through Tag’s rage when no one else could reach him. You use that to think with, kid. It’s not decoration. Fists are for fools and losers, and that’s not you, Taggart.

So Tag drew a breath and nodded to someone not there. Fists jammed in his pockets, he stood by his padlocked door while the cameras probed his face. While his bright future drove away in a shiny blue BMW. Blinking hard, he looked up at the lowering sky. Once upon a time, he wouldn’t have been able to resist a car like that. But he was somebody else now.

At least, as long as they’d let him be, he was.

A flake of snow drifted down...then another. Winter.

CHAPTER FIVE

A PHONE CALL to Carol Anne, Tag told himself, as he strode up the walk to his cottage. Remind her to feed the stray tomcat while he was away. Presumably Higgins could get her past that padlock. Then throw together a couple of days’ change of clothes. It might take that long in Boston to find the right lawyer.