Page 18 of In Her Sights
His face darkened, growing even more flushed than his normal ruddy coloring. “I, being the nice guy that I am, helped her out when none of her kids bothered to show up.”
“Why’d she pick you?” Molly asked, relieved that they were finally getting to some details about Jane’s arrest and first advisement. “She’s never used your services before, right?”
Studying her face closely, he leaned back again, drawing a complaining shriek from his chair. “That’s right. I happened to be at the courthouse yesterday, and we ran into each other.” His grin was an unnatural shade of white, bordering on blue, and she made a mental note to mention his disconcerting appearance to Felicity, who was addicted to tooth whitening. “She must’ve realized what she’s been missing all these years.”
Ignoring the gross sexual innuendo for the time being, Molly focused on the situation and what needed to be done. “But why you? Normally, she uses Gavin or Delia.”
His gaze dropped as he gave an irritated shrug. It was just for a second before he refocused on her face, his gaze snapping back to meet hers, but it was long enough for her to know that he was about to lie. “No idea. Like I said, she probably just figured out that I’m the best.”
“Uh-huh.” Even to her own ears, her tone made it sound like Molly didn’t believe a word he was saying…which was pretty accurate. “So, she didn’t hit up Gavin and Delia first, but they turned her down?”
His face darkened again, this time to almost a plum color. “How would I know that?”
“Uh…” Molly gave him a “duh” look. “You all stand in the back of the courtroom, waiting to pounce on potential clients. Don’t you guys talk?”
“Of course we talk, but we don’t share client information.” He huffed, sounding more offended than a guy who, the bail-bond gossip pipeline had it, had once accepted someone’s kidney as a form of payment. Although Molly was ninety-nine percent sure the rumor was false, that one percent of doubt remained. It would’ve been enough to make her shy away from working with Barney—that and his utter creepiness.
From Barney’s defensive attitude, Molly was fairly certain that he’d been Jane’s last choice. The question that remained was why? If Barney had fronted a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bond, it had to have been worth it. Even with the proceeds from Molly’s car and the stolen cash, Jane didn’t have enough collateral to justify the risk.
A suspicion crept into her brain.
“Are you holding the stolen necklace for her?” she asked suddenly and bluntly, wanting to see his immediate reaction before he managed to think up a proper lie.
The baffled surprise that instantly crossed Barney’s expression seemed sincere, however. “I wish.” That sounded heartfelt, too. “If she’d given me the necklace, I would’ve happily written a bond for ten times Jane’s bail.” His face blanked, and it was almost comical how chagrined he looked at his own honesty. “Not that I would ever deal in stolen merchandise.”
A snort escaped Molly at his sloppy attempt to regain the moral high ground—not that he’d ever had it in the first place. She quickly sobered, however. The mystery of why Barney had helped Jane still hadn’t been solved. “What’d she use for collateral then?”
His slow, snakelike smile caused a shiver to zip along Molly’s spine, and she instinctively stiffened, knowing that whatever was going to come out of Barney’s mouth next would be very, very bad. Flipping through the pages in the folder, he pulled something out and slowly extended it toward her. Despite the trembling deep in her gut, her hand was steady as she accepted it.
As she glanced down at the heavy paper, comprehension struck with the force of a sledgehammer. She held the title to her house. The place where she and her sisters lived, the one that had been a breath away from foreclosure when Molly had taken over the mortgage payments at the age of eighteen, the mortgage that she and her sisters had managed to pay off just four months and three weeks ago. It was the house that Molly—that all of them except Jane—had almost killed themselves to save, working long hours chasing down every skip who had an arrest warrant out, no matter how dangerous or how small the bounty was.
“That isn’t hers,” she managed to say with numb lips as she clutched the precious paper with both hands. “The house is ours. Not hers.”
“Her name’s on it.” With a shrug, he reached over and plucked the title from her hands as easily and effortlessly as their mother had stolen the house out from under them.
“She refused to sign the paperwork to transfer the title.” Molly watched, unable to look away as he tucked the title for her house back into the folder with a smug neatness that belied the mess of his office. How had her mom even gotten hold of the title? Molly kept it in a document safe in her room, and she’d never told Jane the combination.
Barney made a tsk sound. “That’s too bad. Not my fault that you don’t have your ducks in a row, though, is it?” Patting the closed folder, he widened his smile. “It’s a great piece of property, worth twice the amount I’ll have to pay when Jane forfeits her bail, even if the house is a wreck. There are only two other houses in Langston with national forest access, and they’d never sell. What should I do with it? Tear down that dump you live in and build fresh? Sell it to the hunting resort next door? I’ve heard that they’ve been trying to buy your place for years. So many options… It’s a good problem to have.”
Molly wasn’t sure what emotions she was showing, but whatever they were, they seemed to make Barney very happy—giddy even. “If you ask very nicely, I might even consider keeping the place intact for a few months and rent it to you. I’m sure we could come to some sort of amicable agreement.”
A fresh wave of anger flared inside her, burning away the numbness, and she almost levitated off her chair from the contained rage. The only thing that kept her from leaping across the desk and doing major damage to Barney’s smarmy, stupid face was the clear glee in his expression. He wanted to upset her, wanted her to lose it, and she couldn’t give him the satisfaction. With a huge effort of will, she smoothed her expression and sat back in her chair, fighting for a show of indifference.
“It doesn’t matter.” It did, it really did, but she somehow managed to say the words anyway. “You won’t be taking the house. To forfeit her bail, she’d have to miss her next court date, and she always makes her court dates.” Even though Jane found it impossible to stay on the right side of the law, she’d never skipped before.
“She’s never missed a court date yet,” Barney corrected, although the unpleasant joy in his eyes had faded. “Jane’s only done petty stuff before. She’s in a whole other world now, one that could get her twenty years or more in prison. I’m betting she’s already halfway through New Mexico, never to return.”
Although Molly had known that stealing the necklace was a more serious crime than her mom had ever committed before, she hadn’t allowed herself to consider what that meant as far as sentencing went. Up until that point, Jane had done quite a few short stints in the county jail, paid a boatload of fines, and was almost constantly on probation. As much as Molly hated to admit it, Barney was right in this case. Jane had committed a crime that could easily put her in prison for the rest of her life.
Pushing away the mountain of anxiety that this thought brought on, she tried to focus on the most immediate need—making sure Barney didn’t yank their house away from them.
“This is all speculation until her court date arrives. Personally, I believe that she’ll show.” Molly tried to hide her doubts. “The house is simply collateral right now, so you can’t touch it.”
His smile was more a baring of his teeth. “The law is that the bond is forfeited if she doesn’t appear…or if she flees.” He gave her a knowing look. “Have you seen her since her hearing yesterday?”
“No, but that’s not surprising.” Molly’s heart was firing in quick strokes that echoed in her head, and she hoped he didn’t see the worry building inside her. “She burned her bridges with us. Speaking of that, you don’t happen to be holding my car as collateral as well?” When he hesitated, she narrowed her eyes and fixed him with her best basilisk glare. “For your sake, I hope not, since it’s stolen and I know that title is under my name.”
“Jane didn’t bring me any car.” There was a stiltedness to his phrasing, as if he was carefully avoiding a lie. Molly didn’t know why he bothered trying to stay truthful. It wasn’t like she believed a word out of his mouth anyway.
