Texas Tall Read Free Page A

Is there some reason you don’t want me to question her?” The sheriff ’s eyes narrowed, as if he suspected some dark, hidden secret.
    â€œYou have children, Sweeney. Would you put your young daughter through something like this? If you need to talk to Erin, you can do it tomorrow—with her mother present.”
    â€œI’ll do that.” Sweeny ruminated a moment, maybe remembering that Tori was a lawyer. Abruptly he changed his tack. “You say you’d gotten out to change a flat tire. So what were you doing with a gun?”
    The little man seemed determined to prove some kind of wrongdoing. Will’s nerves were screaming, but he forced himself to answer calmly. “I already told you. I’d hit something on the road, and I took the gun because I thought it might be an animal. It wasn’t, but when the motorcyclist showed up with weapons, I used that gun to protect my daughter.”
    â€œAnd you thought the man was the robber we were after?”
    â€œYes, until I called the dispatcher. By then, he was already dead.”
    â€œDid you look at his face? Maybe raise that visor on his helmet?”
    â€œI told you, I knew better than to touch him.”
    â€œThen what do you say we have a look? Maybe somebody here will recognize him.” Sweeny turned toward the dead man. By now, the deputies were gathering up the evidence, preparing to bag the body and lift it onto the stretcher. One of them had already taken Will’s .38.
    The sheriff wasn’t wearing gloves. He motioned for one of the deputies to remove the helmet.
    As the visor came up and the helmet was lifted free, Will’s pulse lurched. He exhaled, his breath whistling through his teeth.
    The sheriff ’s shoulders sagged as if he’d been gut kicked. “God and Jesus,” he muttered.
    There could be no mistaking the swarthy features and the shaved head with its black Maori tattoos. The man Will had shot dead was Nick Tomescu, the brother of Stella Rawlins, who owned the Blue Coyote.

CHAPTER 2
    S lumped on a stool in the darkened bar, Stella Rawlins crushed the butt of her last Marlboro in the overflowing ashtray. Her head ached, and her feet throbbed in their cherry-red high-heeled cowgirl boots. Beneath the black silk blouse she wore, her 38DD bra had chafed a raw line around her ribs. It was well after midnight and the Blue Coyote had been closed for an hour. But she didn’t want to leave until her brother Nick showed up—and he was seriously overdue.
    Worry chewed at her. What if something had gone wrong? What if he’d screwed up and gotten himself arrested?
    True, Nicky wasn’t the smartest rooster in the coop. But even he should’ve been able to carry out the simple errand she’d sent him on—drive to the spot where the road cut off to the burned-out Prescott place, look for a dark blue pickup truck, give the driver the package, take the money, and bring it back to her at the bar. It was a no-brainer. So what could’ve happened to him?
    She ran a nervous hand through her dyed red hair. If something had gone wrong, Stella knew she’d blame herself. She’d looked after her younger half brother since he was a toddler. While their pretty, alcoholic mother had flitted from man to man, Stella had always been there for him. Last year, when he’d fled New Jersey after informing on the Romanian mob to beat a drug charge, she’d given him shelter here in Blanco Springs and hired him as her bartender and bouncer. Surprisingly, he’d been good at his job.
    Maybe she shouldn’t have risked him tonight. Nicky had never been quite right in the head. Behind his tough biker façade was a shy, almost childlike man, who became flustered if things didn’t go as expected. She didn’t dare trust him with anything more complicated than running a few drugs, maybe not even that.
    What she needed was a new ally who could think on his feet, somebody