“Why would they do that?”
“To stay on his good side,” he said. “They’re just trying to stay alive in a town where one of the bosses is a scary asshole.”
“Is he likely to start shooting before he even talks to us?”
“I doubt we’ll get close enough to talk to him,” Caleb said shortly. “Guys like that have henchmen between him and the bullets.”
“Right,” she said. “Are we planning on talking to him today?”
“Not unless we get stopped.”
“Great.” She sat back, and they took a series of turns before they came to a very rural area and a large hacienda-looking house settled farther back on the land. “That’s what I expected,” he murmured. “Barbed wire roll on the top, complete with alarms and gunmen.”
She whistled. “Is that really somebody walking around with a rifle over his shoulder?”
“Yeah, that’s the guard on duty.”
“What’s he guarding? Fort Knox?”
“Probably just the boss,” he said quietly. “Which means the boss has made a hell of a lot of enemies, and he’s always afraid for his life.”
They kept driving slowly down the road. When a bullet whistled harmlessly overhead, he nodded. “Also expected.”
She stared at him in shock. “You expect to get shot at when you’re driving down a road?” She wasn’t even sure how the hell she could be a so calm herself because this was not normal for her.
“With guys like that? Yeah. First one is a warning shot. We get any closer, and it’s no longer a warning.”
“So they won’t even talk to us?” she asked, twisting to look back. She saw no sign of anybody.
“Nope, not at all. That’s just a warning to say, Keep on going.”
“And are we?”
“As much as we can,” he said. He tossed his phone to her and said, “Can you bring up a map on my phone? See what the GPS gives us for a route here. I’d love to circle the entire property.”
“How many acres do you think he has?”
“I’d guess ten but, out here, could be forty.”
“Forty would mean he could be doing something on the property, right?”
“Ten is big enough to be running all kinds of operations. He could just be running drugs. He could be manufacturing drugs. He could be moving women. We don’t know.”
At the word women, she stared at him in shock. He looked at her and said, “When you get into being a badass, they start looking at making money. Drugs are just the start of it. Women very quickly become secondary income and an equally decent income earner.”
“Great,” she said. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “but I’d be a fool to not keep you in the loop.”
“No, don’t do that,” she said.
“Do you have any guns at home?”
“Yeah, I got a shotgun and a .22.”
He just nodded.
“And, of course, neither of those are what you want, are they?”
“No,” he said, “but I can see why you have those.”
“Well, I need something for coyotes and two-legged predators,” she said. “Haven’t really had any need for more than that.”
“And I’m glad,” he said, “seriously glad because it makes no sense to carry any other firepower if you won’t use it.”
“I thought that was something everybody wanted,” she said, “bigger and better guns.”
“Maybe, but bigger and better guns doesn’t give you a bigger and better shooting ability.”
She snorted. “I remember that too,” she said, “but I haven’t done any target practice in a long time.”
“And that just means we need to change that when we get home again.”
“Believe it or not, I did think about that after the shooting at home today.”
“Good, and make sure everything is accessible.”
She went silent for a long moment. “You’re really expecting trouble, aren’t you?”
He looked at her and gave her the gentlest of smiles and said, “It’s not that I’m expecting it,” he said, “but I don’t want it to come and meet me unprepared.”
She winced. “So are you sticking around for a while, or will I be facing, alone, whatever trouble you think is coming?”
“Well, I was thinking about sticking around,” he said, “if you’re open to having a house guest.”
“I already have a house guest,” she said bluntly. “I just don’t know what his time frame is.”
“Well,” he said, “believe me, that wedding and rehearsal dinner and related drama has all dropped on the radar to be much less important.”
“For you, yes,” she said, “but for your brother, no.”
He groaned. “Back to that?”
“Yep,” she said cheerfully, “it’s the only way to deal with it.”
“Well, I sure am glad it’s a morning wedding. We’ll go and leave almost immediately.”
“Are you expecting trouble to follow you there?”
“Again, I’m not expecting anything,” he said, “but neither do I want something like that to happen on my watch.”
“Right,” she said, “and I guess, as much as I hate to say it, do you think it’s even safe to go now, what with the shooting?”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “Well, I’d love to say, Hell no, so that I can get out of it,” he said, “but it probably won’t get me out of anything, just cause more negative feedback.”
“But, if getting them killed is part of going to the wedding,” she said, “that’s hardly a good idea.”
“And yet think about it. Will anybody in the family actually believe me?”
“No,” she said immediately, “and that’s a hell no.” She laughed.
“And is there any serious danger? I don’t think so. We’ll have to take great care to make sure that we’re not followed, and, other than that, we’ll hit the wedding and not stick around.”
“That should do it,” she said, thinking about it. “You don’t need to be there for very long.”
“Nope, not planning on it.”
“He did want you for his best man.”
“Well, that won’t happen, since he decided to sleep with my wife.”
“Or before you married his fiancée.”
He stopped and looked at her. “What?”
She looked at him in shock. “Did you not know they were engaged?”
“No,” he said, staring at her, before tugging his gaze back to the road.
“Wow, she really didn’t tell you much, did she?”
“No,” he said, “I was away on missions. Remember?”
“Well, it sounds like you missed a lot while you were away.”
“You think?” he snapped.
She looked at him and asked, “It still bothers you?”
“What bothers me is that I was such a dupe,” Caleb snapped. “I mean, obviously a lack of human decency bothers me that she would do what she did, that he did what he did. Am I hurt by it all? No. I’m angry,” he said. “But I’m angry because I was so stupid. They should have kept me out of their little games.”