The sound of a voice vibrating in and out of focus—loud then soft, close then far, with a disorienting echo clanging around in her head—made it hard to tell who was speaking.
“Hold on. I got you.”
Strong hands hooked themselves under Aja’s arms and pulled. The dirt and rocks hidden among the blades of grass scraped against the backs of her thighs and calves through the heavy denim of her jeans. When the movement stopped, she could see sunlight breaking through the billows of black smoke, and the air didn’t smell as strongly of acrid and dense dust and ash.
A fuzzy shadow edged into her line of vision. The closer it came, the sharper the image appeared, and soon Brooklyn’s cynical face was filling her sight.
“Boss,” she called. “With the barn in flames, I kinda think your plans of us working all day in there are shot to shit.”
Aja blinked slowly as the pins and needles of numbness prickled her extremities, marking the return of feeling in her body. “Yeah, Brooklyn.” Aja’s voice cracked halfway through the woman’s name. “I think you might be right.” She tried to take a deep breath in, but her lungs protested and she coughed, making the pain in her head throb harder. “But”—she coughed again—“I think there’s something much worse than the barn burning down.”
“What?” Brooklyn asked.
Aja took a slow breath, determined not to let it disintegrate into a coughing fit. “I think Aunt Jo is right. Someone might really be trying to kill me.”
Chapter 2
Jackson Dean made his way inside the Texas Rangers’ headquarters and headed straight for his office. It was early in the morning, and he wanted nothing more than to still be in his bed. Unfortunately, a call from his boss, Major Hargrove, had put the kibosh on that plan.
He twisted the knob and switched on the light, waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust to the brightness flooding the room. He remembered how happy he had been to get an office of his own. The room was nothing much to speak of. A typical windowless space in a government building made of white concrete walls and filled with metal furniture. But no matter how bland it was, he was still proud to have his name etched on the door because it came with his promotion to team leader eight years ago.
Today, it looked almost exactly the same as it had when he’d first been given the keys. But at the moment, when sleep hadn’t completely let loose its grip on him, boundless pride wasn’t the emotion he was experiencing. No, it was more like annoyance and frustration grating on his nerves at having to come in early after working in the field late last night.
He dropped his bag on a nearby chair and headed straight for the coffee maker on top of a metal filing cabinet. Fresh, frequent, and plentiful caffeine would be the only thing to keep him from getting an insubordination write-up in his personnel file, so he opened a couple of bottled waters and poured them into the machine.
A tap on his door grabbed his attention. He glanced up from it, rested his eyes on the yet-to-start-dripping coffee machine, and groaned.
“Someone must want me to get a write-up.”
Another tap and he pushed away from the filing cabinet and opened the door.
“Morning, Jackson.” Major Hargrove didn’t wait to be invited in. He just assumed the open door was all the invitation he needed. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”
“I’m still half-asleep,” Jackson groaned as he stepped away from the door and made it back to his coffeepot.
“At least you had the chance to go to sleep. I’ve been up for about twenty-four hours, since I got this call just before I was about to head home yesterday.”
Jackson stared through narrowed slits. Hargrove didn’t play with his time. He stayed when necessary, but he was obsessed with him and his Rangers having a clear work-life balance. Nothing kept him from punching out at six in the evening unless there was a real emergency. “You made it sound like it was life or death that I come in at”—he raised his left wrist, pretending to read the wide-faced watch there—“ass o’clock in the morning. What’s going on, Major?”
His boss slid a file on Jackson’s desk and took the seat in front of it, waiting patiently for Jackson to fill the mug he’d grabbed the second the alarm on the machine told him his brew was ready.
“You’re not gonna put any milk or sugar in the rotgut?”
“No, sir,” Jackson replied, sitting down and taking a long, slow sip. “I like it the way it is: strong and black, just like me.”
He took another sip before opening the file. The first thing that caught his attention was the picture of a woman in a fitted designer dress. Not that he knew fashion from foam rubber, but with the way the black material hugged her full curves, he was certain it had been made or at least tailored just for her.
“I’m not gonna be ready to read this without at least another cup. Just give me the highlights. Who is she?”
His boss crossed an ankle over his knee and tilted his head. “She’s the niece of a friend. A judge in Hill Country. Her property has been vandalized, and the judge needs someone to look into it.”
Jackson felt his brow inching higher toward his hairline. Something about the way Major Hargrove said “someone” scratched at his bullshit meter.
“What do the locals have to say about it?”
Hargrove lifted an open palm before letting his hand fall back to his knee. “Not a thing. There’s some bad blood between the local sheriff’s department and Ms. Everett.”
Jackson shifted in his seat. The coffee plus his boss’s preliminary recount was starting to sketch an outline to this tale of a spoiled judge’s niece using her uncle’s connections to get what she wanted.
