Делорес Фоссен – Cowboy Above The Law (страница 3)

Judging from her repeated flat look, Rayna was about to deny that, so Court took out his phone and opened the photo. “The waitress took that picture of you.”

Court didn’t go closer to her with the phone, but Rayna stood. Not easily. She continued to clutch her side and blew out some short, rough breaths. However, she shook her head the moment her attention landed on the grainy shot of the woman in a red dress. A woman with hair the same color blond as Rayna’s.

“That’s not me,” she insisted. “I don’t have a dress that color. And besides, I wasn’t there.”

This was a very frustrating conversation, but thankfully he had more. He tapped the car that was just up the street from the woman in the photo. “That’s your car, your license plate.”

With her forehead bunched up, Rayna snatched the phone from him and had a closer look. “That’s not my car. I’ve been home all morning.” Her gaze flew to his, and now there was some venom in her eyes. “You’re trying to set me up.” She groaned and practically threw his phone at him. “Haven’t you McCalls already done enough to me without adding this?”

Court caught his phone, but he had to answer her through clenched teeth. “We haven’t done anything.”

She laughed, but there wasn’t a trace of humor in it. “Right. Remember Bobby Joe?” she spat out. “Or did you forget about him?”

Bobby Joe Hawley. No, Court hadn’t forgotten. Obviously, neither had Rayna.

“Three years ago, your father tried to pin Bobby Joe’s murder on me,” Rayna continued. “It didn’t work. A jury acquitted me.”

He couldn’t deny the acquittal. “Being found not guilty isn’t the same as being innocent.”

Something that ate away at him. Because the evidence had been there. Bobby Joe’s blood in Rayna’s house. Blood that she’d tried to clean up. There’d also been the knife found in her barn. It’d had Bobby Joe’s blood on it, too. What was missing were Rayna’s prints. Ditto for the body. They’d never found it, but Rayna could have hidden it along with wiping her prints from the murder weapon.

The jury hadn’t seen it that way though.

Possibly because they hadn’t been able to look past one other piece of evidence. Bobby Joe had assaulted Rayna on several occasions, both while they’d been together and after their breakup when she’d gotten a restraining order against him. In her mind, she probably thought that was justification to kill him. And equal justification to now go after Court’s father, who’d been sheriff at the time. Warren had been the one to press for Rayna’s arrest and trial. After that, his father had retired. But Rayna could have been holding a serious grudge against him all this time.

She’d certainly held one against Court.

He heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up in front of Rayna’s house and knew it was Egan before he glanced out the still-open door. He also knew Egan wouldn’t be pleased. And he was right. His brother was sporting a scowl when he got out of the cruiser and started for the door.

Egan was only two years older than Court, but he definitely had that “big brother, I’m in charge” air about him. Egan had somehow managed to have that even when he’d still been a deputy. Folks liked to joke that he could kick your butt even before you’d known it was kicked.

“If you think Egan is going to let you walk, think again,” Court warned her.

“I won’t let him railroad me,” she insisted, aiming another scowl at Court. “I won’t let you do it, either. It doesn’t matter that we have a history together. That history gives you no right to pull some stunt like this.”

They had a history all right. Filled with both good and bad memories. They’d been high school sweethearts, but that “young love” was significantly overshadowed by the bad blood that was between them now.

Egan stepped into the house, putting his hands on his hips, and made a sweeping glance around the room before his attention landed on Court. “Please tell me you’re not responsible for any of this.”

“I’m not.” At least Court hoped he wasn’t, but it was possible he’d added some to the damage when he tackled her. “Rayna said someone broke in.”

Court figured his brother was also going to have a hard time believing that. It did seem too much of a coincidence that his father would be shot and Rayna would have a break-in around the same time.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Egan said to him in a rough whisper.

Court was certain he’d hear more of that later, but he had a darn good reason for being here. “I didn’t want her to escape.”

“And I thought he’d come here to kill me,” Rayna countered. “I pulled a gun on him.” She swallowed hard. “Things didn’t go well after that.”

Egan huffed and grumbled something that Court didn’t catch before he took out his phone and texted someone.

“Court didn’t do any of the damage in this room,” Rayna added. “It happened when an intruder attacked me.”

That only tightened Egan’s mouth even more before he shifted his gaze to Rayna. “An ambulance is on the way. How bad are you hurt?” he asked and put his phone back in his pocket.

She waved it off, wincing again while she did that. Yeah, she was hurt. But Court thought Egan was missing what was really important here.

“She shot Dad,” Court reminded Egan. “We have the picture, remember?” Though he knew there was no way his brother could have forgotten that. “It’s proof she was there. Proof that she shot him.”

“No, it’s not.” Egan groaned, scrubbed his hand over his face. “I think someone tried to set Rayna up.”

Court opened his mouth to say that wasn’t true. But then Egan took out his own phone and showed him a picture.

“A few minutes after you stormed out of the hospital,” Egan continued, “Eldon Cooper, the clerk at the hardware store, found this.”

“This” was a blond-haired woman wearing a red dress. An identical dress to the one in the photo the waitress had taken. But this one had one big difference from the first picture.

In this one, the woman was dead.

Chapter Two

Rayna slowly walked toward Egan so she could see the photograph that had caused Court to go stiff. It had caused him to mumble some profanity, too, and Rayna soon knew why.

The woman in the photograph had been shot in the head.

There was blood. Her body was limp, and her lifeless eyes were fixed in a permanent blank stare at the sky.

Rayna dropped back a step, an icy chill going through her. Because Court had been right. The woman did look like her. The one in the first picture did, anyway. The second photo was much clearer, and while it wasn’t a perfect match, the dead woman looked enough like her to be a relative. But Rayna knew she didn’t have any living relatives.

“Someone killed her because of me?” she whispered.

Neither Court nor Egan denied it.

She felt the tears threaten. The panic, too. But Rayna forced herself not to give in to either of them. Not in front of Court, anyway. Later, she could have a cry, tend to her wounds and try to figure out what the heck was going on.

“Who is she?” Rayna asked.

“We don’t have an ID on her yet, but we will soon. After the medical examiner’s had a look at her, then we’ll search for any ID. If there isn’t any on her body or in the car, we’ll run her prints.”

It was so hard for Rayna to think with her head hurting, but she forced herself to try to figure this out. “Why would someone go to all the trouble of having a look-alike and then leave a car behind with bogus plates?”

Egan shrugged again. “It goes back to someone setting you up.” He sounded a little skeptical about that though. “Unless you hired the woman in that photo to pose as you. You could have gotten spooked when something went wrong and left the car.”

Even though she’d braced herself to have more accusations tossed at her, that still stung. It always did. Because this accusation went beyond just hiring an impostor. He was almost certainly implying that she had something to do with the woman’s death, too.

“No. I didn’t hire her,” Rayna managed to say, though her throat had clamped shut. “And I didn’t shoot your father. I haven’t been in town in weeks, and that wasn’t my car parked near the sheriff’s office.”

Egan nodded, glanced at Court. “She’s right about the car. The plates are fake. I had one of the deputies go out and take a look at it. It’s still parked up the street from the office. Someone painted over the numbers so that it matched the plates on Rayna’s vehicle.”

Again, Egan was making it sound as if she had something to do with that. Good grief. Why was she always having to defend herself when it came to the McCalls?

Of course, she knew the answer.

She’d made her own bed when it’d come to Bobby Joe. She had stayed with him even after he’d hit her and called her every name in the book. She had let him rob her of her confidence. Her dignity.

And nearly her life.

But Egan and Court—and their father—hadn’t seen things that way. Bobby Joe had kept the abuse hidden. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, and very few people in town had been on her side when Warren McCall had arrested her for Bobby Joe’s murder.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree—again,” Rayna added. “I didn’t have anything to do with this. And why would I? If I were going to shoot anyone, why would I send in a look-alike? Why would I pick a spot like Main Street, which is practically on the doorstep of a building filled with cowboy cops?”