Chapter 20
Aja sat at the desk in her kitchen, trying to focus on the numbers in front of her. Unable to concentrate, she gave up trying to get any work done and decided a midday break was in order. A quick trip to the fridge and she poured sweet tea into frosty mugs before she headed out to the front porch where Jackson was now pacing back and forth.
“You think you can stop wearing a hole in the wood on my porch long enough to have a drink?”
“Yessum.”
She handed him a mug and took a seat on the porch swing. She patted the cushion next to her and waited for him to sit. “How are you?”
He turned to her with furrowed brows. “How am I? I think I should be the one asking you that question. Your entire life is being upended for this investigation.”
“It’s true.” She took a sip of her drink and let the familiar flavor soothe her before she continued. “My life is filled with chaos right now. But I can’t stop being me because some lunatic has it out for me.” She waved a dismissive hand before meeting his eyes again. “Anyway, you seemed tense. If you’re going to be shadowing me all day, I can’t have you looking like a bomb slowly ticking toward detonation. I figured it would be easier to offer you some sweet tea and ask you what’s going on instead.”
The intensity of his glare was a palpable thing that slid down the length of her before returning and settling on her face. “You knew I was purposely sticking close?”
“Wasn’t hard to figure out.” She took a sip of her sweet tea. “Aside from when you took your truck to the back forty this morning, you’ve been either in or around the house all day. Smart money says if I actually needed to get work done outside the house today, you’d be walking in the fields right beside me.”
“I’d say that’s a fair assumption.”
Aja laughed and nudged his arm with her shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“This person who’s after you, his aggression is escalating. He started off with things that could almost be considered harmless pranks. He went from that to trying to burn down your barn with you nearly in it. And when that didn’t work, he tried to kill you with his bare hands. I want him caught and you safe. But we’re shorthanded. I’d usually connect with local law enforcement on a case like this to increase our chances at a successful outcome. But Hastings is negligent, almost criminally so.”
Cold flooded her nerve endings, making her shiver, and she put down her cup on a nearby end table. He wasn’t pulling any punches. Part of her was glad about that. But the very human part of her that worried about her mortality bristled at how tenuous this entire situation was.
“Any word from forensics?”
He shook his head. “It’s way too early for that. Jennings and Gleason picked up the evidence we collected yesterday before you woke up. We collected prints, but since he wore gloves, they’ll probably belong to you or someone that has usual access to your room. We’re hoping there was some transfer of DNA between him and you during the struggle. All the swabs we took from you are being processed now. But until then, we only have the bracelet we found. If we can get a hit on where it was made or sold, we might use that to generate a suspect list.”
“Bracelet?”
Jackson pulled his phone from his pocket and flipped through the screen until he found what he was looking for. He handed her the phone, and she examined the picture of a broken bracelet plate in an evidence bag.
“Do you recognize that?”
She shook her head. It was a small gold plate, the words “Mañana no está—” on it. “No, I’ve never seen it before.” She handed him the phone. “Do you think it belonged to the attacker?”
“No way of knowing. We won’t know anything until we can get the forensics back. Until then, we’re fighting in the dark, Aja. I don’t know who is after you, and I don’t know which direction to look.”
She was about to ask more questions when Jackson’s phone lit up in his hand. “Dean. What does he want? Hold on.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and tapped the mute icon on the screen, then turned to her. “Eli Bennett is at your front gates. He says he wants to come speak with you. You up for seeing him?”
She calculated all the things he’d said to her as she pieced together the unsaid things in his question. “You put security at my front gates?”
Jackson leaned over, bracing his elbows on his thighs. “I had my father add plans for a security booth. Once it’s completed, you can hire security of your own. Until then, there’s a patrol car at the gates being manned by two of my father’s employees who have a background in protection details.”
He tapped his finger on the screen a few times again. She looked up when her own phone vibrated. “I sent you the numbers of the men sitting at the gates, in the event you need to leave them instructions of some kind.”
She didn’t check the text. Not then. She was too busy attempting to process that she needed to live under lock and key now. A prisoner on her own land.
“Outside of a short list of people, no one is allowed to enter without prior authorization. If they show up unannounced, security has to contact one of us for clearance.”
There was something about the way he said the wordsshort listthat made her brain cells twitch. “Who’s on that list? How d’you cultivate it to begin with?”
“It’s based on necessity. There are a handful of people that need unobstructed access to you and the ranch. Your aunt and uncle, Brooklyn and Seneca, and me and my men. Other than that, everyone else needs to make an appointment.”
“And what about Mat Ryan?” She watched his lips tighten into a flat line at the mention of the man’s name and shook her head. “You cannot bar him from the ranch. He is Brooklyn and Seneca’s parole officer. He needs access to them.”
Jackson frowned, dismissing her displeasure. “So they can’t go into town and have their meetings with him there?”
