“Janis made this?” Tommy asked with a smile. She’d been employed at the ranch for more years than Austin cared to count. So much so, she was more family than employee and the boys had voted to give her shares of the family ranch and Cattlemen’s Crime Club now that they’d inherited the place.
“You know it,” Austin said, taking a step back and crossing his arms as Tommy picked up the fork and dug in.
“I forgot how good a cook she is,” he said after swallowing the first bite.
“Stop by for Sunday supper anytime. Or any other night of the week, for that matter.” Austin took off his white Stetson and set his hat on the foot of the bed. Tommy already knew about Sunday meals being a big deal and they’d become even more important recently. Each of Austin’s brothers could’ve died at different points in the past nine months. As a result, Austin found he had a new appreciation for life and family. It was most likely the baby boom at the ranch that had him feeling soft, or the fact that he couldn’t put to rest his feelings for Maria O’Brien, soon to be Belasco again, that made him resolve to talk to her and see if they could give their marriage another chance. He missed her and he was still scratching his head over what had happened to make her walk out. Sure, they’d been through a rough patch, but wasn’t that true of every relationship? He and Maria had never really had a big fight, a final blow to know they were both throwing in the towel. And then, divorce papers had arrived a couple of weeks ago. With everything going on at the ranch, he’d been too busy to look them over.
“How are you really feeling?” Austin asked Tommy.
“About as good as you look, so like a cow that just spent twenty hours in labor,” Tommy teased.
“That good, huh? Well, some people just take a vacation when they want to lay in bed and watch TV for a few days instead of taking a bullet and rolling in via ambulance here at the Bluff Resort and Spa.” Austin waved his arm in the air. “What time does the massage therapist come?”
“She’ll be here any minute, so don’t get too comfortable. And, by the way, she has the hands of a goddess,” Tommy fired back with a chuckle in between bites, keeping the joke alive.
It was good to see him awake and alert rather than overmedicated and with tubes sticking out of him. None of the brothers, Austin included, could shake a similar image of their parents from nine months ago in this very hospital where they’d died. A later autopsy revealed they’d been poisoned and Tommy didn’t seem any closer to an arrest.
“Found this last night and thought of you.” Austin fished in the pocket of his shirt for the plastic badge he’d worn when they were kids. He pulled it out and tossed it onto the tray table.
“Wow. How old is this?” Tommy picked up the child’s toy and spun it through his fingers.
Austin shrugged. “What age were we when we decided to become sheriffs?”
“Couldn’t have been more than nine years old, right?”
“It was long before either one of us had hair on our chest, that’s for sure,” Austin said with a laugh. He couldn’t imagine being anything other than a cattle rancher, although his childhood had been filled with the usual cop, fireman and Batman fantasies.
“Where on earth did you find this?” Tommy held the badge flat on his palm.
“Been in the top drawer of my desk,” Austin said with a shrug.
“You never could throw anything away.” Tommy examined the toy. “Good thing you went up north to that fancy school instead of law enforcement. I’m pretty sure your accounting skills are needed at the ranch more than your rifle acumen.”
Going to a school in the Northeast had netted Austin the nickname Ivy League.
“Between you and Joshua, I figured the family was well represented in the badge-toting department,” Austin said, referring to his brother who had left the ranch and moved to Denver to pursue a career in law enforcement. He returned over Christmas to take his rightful place alongside his brothers and had the toughest time adjusting.
Austin’s cell buzzed. He fished it out of his jeans pocket and checked the screen. The text from his oldest brother, Dallas, read, Another calf is sick. Putting her in the pen.
“Everything okay?” Tommy asked, his gaze fixed on Austin’s phone cover.
“Fine. Got some kind of sickness moving through the new stock. Half a dozen calves are isolated and under quarantine. Vet can’t figure out what’s going on and we’re taking a wait-and-see approach for now. Hoping it doesn’t get any worse,” Austin stated.
Tommy didn’t look away from the honeymoon picture of Austin and his wife that she’d had made into a phone cover. Soon to be ex-wife, an annoying little voice in the back of his mind corrected.
The look on Tommy’s face sent a thousand fire ants crawling up Austin’s spine.
“What is it?” he asked.
Tommy took a minute to speak and when he did, he fixed his gaze on a spot on the wall behind Austin. More reasons to be worried.
“Hey, Ivy League, do you remember Deputy Garretson?” Tommy finally asked.
“Yeah, sure. Why?” Garretson was a year ahead of Austin in school, so Dallas knew him better. Austin was the second-oldest O’Brien. The former deputy had moved to the capital a couple years back craving more day-to-day excitement than Bluff, Texas, had to offer. He should’ve stuck around, Austin thought, because there’d been more than enough activity in the past year to keep him busy.
“He stopped by to see me yesterday,” Tommy said and then paused.
“Everything okay with him?” Austin asked.
“He’s fine,” Tommy said quickly. “He’s a detective now at Austin PD. Hangs out with his FBI liaison after work sometimes. Both are big Cowboys fans so they catch games together, grab a few beers.”
Tommy was normally a straight-to-the-point guy. That he felt the need to dance around a topic didn’t sit well with Austin. There was also a reference to the FBI, which was Maria’s employer.
“What does this have to do with me?” Austin asked outright. Also a straight shooter.
“This guy, Special Agent DeCarlo, who Garretson buddies around with, is planning his wedding.” Tommy’s gaze bounced from the phone to Austin. He hesitated again before he spoke but he didn’t need to say the words. Austin already knew what Tommy was about to say.
“He’s planning to marry Maria.”
* * *
DENALI, THE FAMILY’S Chocolate Lab, had been working alongside Austin for the better part of the night. Now, the hundred pound dog lay next to Austin’s boots, panting and whimpering in his sleep. Austin would give a nickel to find out what went on in that dog’s brain. Never mind, he thought wryly. Denali probably thought about food, treats and getting his ears scratched.
Austin pushed back from his desk and rubbed blurry eyes, thinking a few hours of shut-eye was a good idea considering how punchy he was getting. Between a record number of calves being born this winter and a bout of some kind of sickness causing him to quarantine half a dozen of them now, Austin had been working overtime for months. After learning his parents’ deaths were being investigated as murders, he wasn’t sleeping, either.
The news about Maria he’d received from Tommy earlier had been as unexpected as a sucker punch in broad daylight. His brain refused to process it, like it somehow wouldn’t exist if he kept it at arm’s length. So far, the only emotion he could strongly identify when he allowed it to surface was anger.
Adding to his sour mood was the fact that there was constant wedding/baby/adoption planning going on at the ranch. All five of his brothers had newborns, newly adopted children and/or wedding plans in the works. He didn’t begrudge his brothers