Page 86 of Deputy Brand Gets Her Man
“We’re gonna be friends, I think,” Willow said. Now that she was looking, she could see Ethan’s eyes in Elena Montrose, and Jeremiah’s dimples when she smiled.
Jeremiah called the El Paso lawyer he’d hired to handle the inheritance. The conversation was short. There was cussing, followed by, “I’ve been trying to reach you for two days. I learned the name of the person contesting the will. Not that it matters now, the judge has ruled in her favor.”
He kept the Jeep rolling through flatlands speckled with scrub brush and tumbleweed. The desert was creeping in around the edges a little more every year.
“I’ve been busy. Mainly finding out I had a sister.”
“If you’d returned my calls?—”
“Next time text me. Now, here’s the thing, I’d have given her half of the old man’s loot if she’d asked.”
“What’d she say when you told her that?”
“I didn’t. She was lying’ in a hospital bed at the time, doped on morphine.”
“What happened to her?” the lawyer asked.
“Hit and run,” he said.
“When?”
“Last night,” he replied. “I met her for the first time in the hospital. She said she knew nothing about contesting the will, claims she didn’t even know who her father was until yesterday.”
“That’s not possible. I’ve spoken with her about the case multiple times, her and her husband both.”
He lowered his head. “Yeah, I figured.” He pulled into the driveway, then took the left fork out to Willow’s cottage, but her truck wasn’t in the driveway. He sighed, turned around throwing up a cloud of dust, and headed back toward town. He didn’t think she was anywhere near ready to return to work, but knowing Willow…
He’d best check the sheriff’s office.
What Ethan had said to him at the hospital was still echoing off the rafters of his brain. You love her, you idiot. And she loves you.
Was it true, was that what this thing was?
How the hell did you know?
He had every right to be angry, but being angry at Willow felt bad right to his bones. Her eyes, brown and swimming with tears, kept re-appearing in his mind. He’d hurt her. It felt wrong.
And wondering if it was over between them—that felt like wondering if his life was over.
Hell, maybe he did love her.
He drove a little faster.
Willow was pounding on the door of Matty Barker’s place by nine a.m. The old woman came to the door, a cigarette in her lips. She wore an unsnapped denim shirt, pajama shorts, and a pair of men’s moccasin-style bedroom slippers. She was braless, so the unsnapped shirt was dangerous. Willow kept her eyes up, on Matty’s red ones and her short gray curls. “Need to talk to your boys, Matty.”
“Ain’t here.” She puffed without removing the cig from her lips.
“No? Then who’s playin’ video games back there?”
“I said they ain’t here. You callin’ me a liar?”
“Pretty much. Hey boys,” she called. “I know you ran down Elena Montrose this morning. I got witnesses. I got a piece of your truck that fell off at the scene, and I can the see the blood on your bumper from here.”
She didn’t have a piece of the truck, nor could she see blood on their bumper. She was a bluffing. But she wasn’t dealing with geniuses here.
The firstborn and designated team leader, Stu, came to the door. Matty cuffed him right upside the head. “What fresh trouble you brought home to me now?” She gave him a withering look, and scuffed back into her home somewhere. Willow heard footsteps on stairs.
The other two appeared as soon as their ma had cleared out.
