Page 41 of Deputy Brand Gets Her Man
There were several video clips on the screen.
“It’s surveillance footage from the Bluebonnet house,” Drew muttered. She scraped her hand across her face and sat up, blinking sleepily.
“What did we get? I haven’t had time to look.”
“Nothin’. Just scrub brush and wildlife.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Can you send me that footage?”
“Don’t need to. It’s on your phone, on the app we installed. Remember, I showed you?” She stretched and yawned.
Willow wondered why Drew had come all the way over here and waited up for her when she could’ve just sent a text. “Do you want to sleep over?”
“Nah, the folks’d worry. I just needed a quiet place to study where nobody could find me.”
“Oh. Cool. Yeah, anytime Drew. My place is your place.”
“I know,” she said. “Thanks. But I’m headin’ out now, cause I’m an early riser, and you need to spend the next several hours asleep.” She looked at the clock on the wall as she said it, then lifted her eyebrows. “How was it? With the Gringo?”
Willow opened her arms and fell backwards onto her own sofa. “Unbelievable.”
“Yeah?” Drew’s smile was bright.
“Yeah. And that’s all you’re getting. Did you call the art major?”
“He called me,” she said. “Asked me out. I told him I’d think about it, because I take these things much more carefully than my older and supposedly wiser cousin.”
Willow rolled her eyes. “Go home and let me sleep.”
“Night, Will.”
“Night.”
Drew scooped up her laptop and let herself out. She turned the lock before pulling the door closed behind her.
Willow went to her bedroom, peeled off her clothes and fell into her bed. But every time she started to drift off, she fell into Jeremiah’s arms again, holding him, kissing him, moving with him. Eventually, she let the visions sweep her into dreams, and then she slept for a solid eight hours.
When she got up it was nearly noon, and nobody had bothered her. She made a single cup of coffee, stared into the fridge for a minute, and decided to have lunch at the WTD. She found the files Drew had sent on her phone and watched the video of the Bluebonnet Inn’s back yard from the night before while she sipped.
The footage flickered. She frowned, stopped, went back, played it again, and watched closer. For sure, it flickered. She played it a third time, watching the counter instead of the footage this time. Sure as all get out, right at the flicker, the counter jumped ahead forty-four minutes! How the hay…?
He’d disabled the camera somehow! Or someone had. He hadn’t dug anything up from what she could see on the live feed, the backyard looked undisturbed. But it was too big a coincidence that there was a forty-four-minute gap in the footage just when she’d expected Jeremiah to go out there on his treasure hunt.
He had to be the most frustrating, untrusting, sneaky-ass man on the planet.
She got dressed and walked right past her truck and on to the horses. It smelled so good in the cool of the stable. She went into the tack room to get her saddle and a bridle. The West Texas Diner was close enough to go by horse, and she didn’t like going anywhere by vehicle if you could get there by horse. She had time, and Sundance needed the exercise.
She opened the back door of the barn and gave a whistle.
The horses turned her way, but only Sundance came galloping at her, his mane nut-red in the sun. “What a beauty you are, Sundance. You’re a good boy, yes, you are.”
He nickered and nuzzled her face. She said, “Come on,” and he followed her inside and stood like a perfect gentleman while she slid a blanket and saddle onto his back. She’d taken a halter instead of a bridle—no bit for her boy. He didn’t need it.
In no time at all they were riding cross-country, a far shorter distance than going by road. She intended to ask Marvella about her memories of Juanita Lopez and the criminal de Lorean. People often remembered more in the hours and days after an interview, their memories having been stirred up.
