Page 53 of Brett and Rowdy
“I know you will.” The sound of another vehicle coming down the drive told him Madison was arriving, and he tried not to roll his eyes even though Rowdy couldn’t see him. The timing of this was just sucking up some sucky sucky suck.
Rowdy’s phone rang almost immediately, and he grabbed it. “I know. I know. Just keep driving, baby. Just keep going straight. I will call you when you can come pick me up. Yeah, call your momma. Tell her to wait for my phone call. Don’t go far. Okay. Yeah, I love you. Don’t worry, I got this.” Rowdy hung up the phone about the time the sheriff knocked on the door, and bit out, “Mother fucker.”
“Don’t worry about it, babe. I got this.”
Lionel Reacher banged on the door, no doubt trying to sound all official. He opened the door and nodded to Lionel.
“Brett, I hear there’s somebody here at this house I need to talk to. I’m going to take him into the sheriff’s office and speak to him.”
He heard Rowdy from the kitchen, just barely.
“Like hell you will.”
He smiled.Shut up, Rowdy. Let me deal with this. “Now, Lionel, what the hell’s going on?”
“You know full well what’s going on. You were there.” The sheriff didn’t look terribly amused. “Your friend coldcocked Jason Avery and left him for dead right there on the high school parking lot. That was not a very friendly thing to do. Avery is pressing charges, and I gotta take him in.”
He cocked his head. “You have any witnesses? Any proof?”
“I’ve got you and Ashley and Dan. And surely not all three of you are going to ruin your reputations for some outsider from fucking God knows where out West.”
Not only was Brett not too sure about that fact, Brett was incredibly sure the sheriff was vastly misinformed about that. There was absolutely one hundred percent of a chance that all three of them would put their reputations on the line for this particular son of a bitch from God knew where out West. In fact, when push came to shove, he was sure that Ashley would die for Rowdy, no questions. He’d saved her when nobody else would.
“So you’re going to take Jason Avery’s word over all four of us?”
“Why would he lie?”
Brett let his expression go icy cold, even as he was praying to God that Rowdy just kept his ass in the kitchen. He felt one of his eyebrows raise up so high that it actually tugged at the corner of his mouth. The simple fact was, he wasn’t an outsider. In fact, he was about as inside as it got around here, and he wasn’t going to play this goddamn game. “Lionel. Don’t be feeding me a line of bullshit. Folks talk. And you know as well as I do thatthere’s not a girl who was in high school with Coach Avery back in the day, who didn’t know exactly what he was getting up to. It came out about what he was getting up to, and still he has a job here at the school. Even when law enforcement knew there was a problem. Now, should something have happened—and I’m not saying it did, but if Coach Avery happened to threaten Ashley and Rowdy’s daughter, then it is perfectly reasonable for Rowdy to defend his daughter. Although it’s going to be really, really difficult for anybody to convince a jury that a blind man went and coldcocked a perfectly healthy sixty-year-old man.” He shook his head. “Rowdy Duran not only is a short son of a bitch and probably would have to stand on tiptoe to coldcock anybody, the man is goddamn blind.”
Lionel looked at him, and he looked back because he wasn’t putting up with his shit. “I want him gone.”
Now that wasn’t new. People had been wanting Rowdy Duran gone out of this town since the second he stepped foot in it.
Brett waved a hand. “That is not going to be a problem, I can assure you. Give us twenty minutes and you’ll never have to see him again.”
Lionel sighed, cleaning his mirrored shades. “I got your word on that?”
“Yep.” He figured if Rowdy ever came back to visit Ashley, which he doubted was going to happen because Ashley would probably go to New Mexico instead, well, Lionel would be out of office by then. “You got my word.”
“All right. I’ll call it in, say I didn’t find him, but I want him long gone in the next hour. Twenty minutes to get his shit together and out of here. An hour to be out of town.”
“I’m already packed, and his daughter’s in a holding pattern out there in the truck and trailer. We’ll be out of here for sure.”
Lionel raised an eyebrow. “You’re heading out too?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna go visit New Mexico for a while. I think it’ll be good to see new things.” He just stared the man down, daring him to say a word.
“Well, good deal. You got somebody watching your place?”
“I do especially since Mr. Mann’s not gonna be here.”
Lionel glanced at the big basset hound and made a face. “Not that he’s much of a guard dog anyway, but I’ll have somebody drive by here every so often too. Just in case you don’t want any squatters.”
“No. You’re right about that. I’ll make sure everything’s locked up tight too.”
“Good. Good deal. You be safe on the road.”
“Yes, sir.” He had to grin, and Lionel grinned back. The guy was the same age as his parents; sometimes that was a little bit weird, but at least he was a good man, and the guy was doing him a solid.
