“Jesus, Moe has you—sorry,” he said before she corrected him. “Damn, Moe has you working already? And don’t tell me I can’t use ‘damn.’ I’ll drop the God and the JC references, but that is as far as I’m going.”
She let the feet of the wheelbarrow settle on the cropped grass. “Orange juice.”
“Excuse me?”
Jeb Landis’s daughter nodded down at his bottle. “Y’all can keep the ‘damn,’ but I’d like to see you with something other than—”
“Have you always been so judgmental?”
“—vodka in your hand this early in the day. And I’m not judging you.”
“Then why do you want to change a stranger’s behavior?”
“You’re not a stranger.” She wiped her brow with her forearm. “It’s not even nine a.m. I gotta wonder why you think you should have a drink so early.”
“I was feeling dehydrated.”
“No running water in your house? There was last night.”
He sloshed the liquid around. “This does the job just fine. Think of it as my version of vitamin C.”
She muttered something under her breath as she leaned back down to the handles.
“What did you say?” he demanded.
“You heard me.”
“No, I didn’t.” Which was not exactly true.
Shelby just shrugged and kept going, that body of hers moving underneath her simple clothes, performing its duty without any apparent discomfort.
And then it dawned on him. “Shelby.”
She paused and glanced over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“You said you’d gotten all the horses.”
“Yup.”
“In A and B.”
“Yup.”
He hustled over and grabbed her arm. “I told you. One rule. You don’t go in my stallion’s stall.”
“Ain’t going to muck itself—”
His hand squeezed down hard of its own volition. “He killed a stable hand a year ago. Trampled him to death in there. Don’t ever do that again.”
Those sky-blue eyes of hers got wide. “He was fine with me.”
“I’m the only one who goes in there. Do we understand each other? You do that one more time, I’ll pack your shit up,” he said deliberately, “and send you back where you came from.”
“Yessir.”
He stepped away and tried not to stumble. “Okay, then.”
“All right.”
She blew a stray hair out of her face and resumed her trek, her shoulders as tense as her walk.
Uncapping the vodka, Edward took a long pull off the bottle, and probably should have stopped to notice how the liquor didn’t sting at all.
But that was yet another thing he didn’t want to think about.
Just like anything happening to Jeb Landis’s daughter on his watch.
Damn it.
SEVENTEEN
The Washington County Courthouse and Jail was a complex of modern buildings that took up two entire city blocks downtown, the facility’s halves linked by a pedi-way that stretched over the traffic below. There were a number of entrances, and as Lane pulled up in his Porsche, countless people were streaming in and out of them, men and women in suits striding up and down the marble steps, officers in patrol cars and sheriff’s SUVs parking and unparking in specially marked spots, people with ratty clothes smoking on the fringes.
His 911 Turbo let out a low cough as he decelerated and stared up at the looming buildings. No logical layout that he could see. No street addresses, either.
Like if you had to ask where to go, you didn’t belong there—
From out of nowhere, a uniformed African-American man stepped directly in front of his car.
“Shit!” Lane nailed the brakes hard. “What the hell are you—Mitch?”
Deputy Sheriff Mitchell Ramsey didn’t answer. He just pointed to a marked spot directly behind him that was vacant.
As Lane shot forward and parallel parked on the first try, he was aware of the deputy standing right along his bumpers, arms thick as cruise-ship ropes crossed over the chest of a professional football player. Those dark eyes were hidden behind a pair of Ray Bans, and his shaved head made his neck and shoulders look even bigger than they were.
Lane uncurled his body from the sports car. “Hey, do you know where my sister—”
“I gotchu.”
The two of them clapped palms and went in for a hard embrace. As they stood chest to chest, Lane was transported back to nearly two years prior, to the private airstrip west of town, to the night when Edward had finally come home from his captivity.
Mitch had brought him back to the States. Back to the family.
God only knew how. No one had ever asked the details, and Lane had always had the sense that the former Army Ranger wouldn’t have shared the how’s and who’s anyway.
“She’s not doing well in there,” Mitch said.
“Not surprised.”
Lane followed the sheriff, the pair of them taking the fifty steps up to one of the many revolving entrances two at a time. When they got in range, Mitch routed them over to something marked LAW ENFORCEMENT ONLY and then the man barged them through security, the other officers waving them past with nods of respect.
“I worked fast as soon as I saw the name,” Mitch said as their footsteps joined all the others echoing into the high ceiling of the main concourse. “She’s up for stolen vehicle, no license, no proof of insurance—”