Justice Burning (Hellfire #2) Read Free

Hellfire didn’t have a bowling alley or movie theater. The only organized activities available to the kids were football and rodeo. High school football games drew everyone out on Friday evenings in the fall. Which left Saturday and Sunday to do chores before the kids returned to school and parents to work on Monday. But after chores, the teens liked to gather at the town’s only fast food drive-in or find a place to raise hell out in the countryside. Everything from cow-tipping to mud-riding in the bottoms.
    Today’s hell-raising just happened to be drag racing.
    Nash pulled into the rutted gravel road leading to the abandoned Dunwitty silos. Apparently the race was in full swing, because all eyes were on the vehicles at the center of the mob. Two tricked-out trucks, with knobby tires and fat chrome exhaust pipes, shot out of the crowd of young people and barreled along the wide gravel road running half a mile in length. Their engines rumbled, the sound reverberating through the warm, late-afternoon air.
    Guys in jeans, cowboy boots and hats punched the air, whooping and hollering. Girls in frayed cutoffs and shirts tied at their midriffs, laughed and screamed for the drivers to go faster.
    Nothing Nash could do at that point would slow the racing trucks. If he didn’t know they were trespassing, he’d enjoy the race and then slip away before anyone was the wiser about his presence there.
    But this was Dunwitty’s place and the clearly posted NO TRESPASSING signs out front were all the rules Nash needed. He followed the rules, the structure of his job and his life giving him comfort.
    When the trucks reached the end of the road, the crowd of young people shouted, yelled, hooted and whistled for the winner. The trucks turned around and drove back to the silos, stopping as the kids converged on them.
    Nash got out of his vehicle. Time to spoil the fun.
    One young man, Johnny Austin, spotted Nash before he reached the edge of the crowd. “Time to leave,” he shouted, loud enough to be heard over the noise of the celebration.
    All faces turned toward him.
    With a wave, Nash jerked his head toward the silos. “Sorry, folks. I gotta break it up. You’re trespassing.”
    “Aw,” the group said as a collective.
    The guys and girls piled into the cars and trucks and filed out of the silo area, one by one.
    Once they’d all gone, Nash climbed into his SUV and headed back to town to hang up his hat and go home. Another day, another dollar. The excitement was killing him. He chuckled. He’d thought about going to work in Houston, where a shooting occurred every day. Maybe more. But he liked being near the ranch, the horses and cattle. He’d missed it when he’d been on active duty.
    Perhaps he needed a woman in his life. Like his brother Becket, who’d never been happier. Up until Kinsey had come back into his brother’s life, Nash had been content to be a bachelor. Seeing them together, always touching and kissing…Never mind the headboard banging and springs squeaking into the wee hours of the morning. Nash had gone so far as to sleep in the barn a few times, or asked for the night shift to avoid the happy copulating going on in the ranch house master bedroom.
    Yeah, Houston was looking more and more like a possibility.
    Ahead, he spied a strange sight. A shiny black convertible, with cans strung out behind and a banner proclaiming JUST MARRIED, sped toward town, weaving side to side, white fabric ballooning up from the driver’s seat like a parachute.
    His interest spiked, and he increased his speed, hoping to catch up to the car to check it out.

2
    N o . No. No.
    This could not be happening. Phoebe tried to back away from the fence post, but the convertible’s rear tires spun in the dry Texas dust. The front bumper, seeming to have adhered to the fence post, refused to let go.
    To make her shithole of a life worse, a county sheriff’s SUV pulled to a stop on the pavement. A man in a dark brown uniform, wearing