There’s a dull ache behind my eyes that grows more persistent the closer I get to the hospital. I’ve hardly slept since the night my father was attacked. Lucia left yesterday morning and then I spent the rest of the day chasing my tail. I even spoke to the college kid who found my dad and called the ambulance, but he had nothing to offer that was helpful. I’ve interrogated enough people to know that he was telling the truth about not being involved.
I avoided the hospital for the entire day because I didn’t want to run into the Sheriff. When I got back to the house last night it was late. I called Lucia and then did a little digging into some of the local residents online as well as that out of service number, but I found nothing.
When I eventually went to bed after midnight, I still couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t settle without her soft body pressed against mine. I hated saying goodbye to her at the airport yesterday. She’s only been my wife for a week and it’s not right that we’re being forced apart so soon, but she had to go, and I had to stay. She hugged me so tight and I know she was fighting back tears. Trying to be strong for me when she needn’t be. She’s the strongest woman I know. I hugged her back just as tight because I didn’t want to ever let her go.
I miss her already. Her smile. Her soft laughter. The way she makes me feel at ease with the slightest brush of her fingertips. Her soft lips. Her fine ass.
Fuck! Stop it, Jax. Getting a boner right now isn’t going to help the headache that’s growing increasingly stronger. This is going to be another long ass fucking day!
Walking to my father’s hospital room, I groan inwardly as I see that jackass, Sheriff Hicks walking out of it.
“Mr. Decker,” he says with a sneer.
“Sheriff?”
“I’m glad I ran into you actually.”
“And why is that? You finally stop playing with your dick long enough to find out something about who the hell attacked my father?”
His eyes narrow in annoyance.
“I suppose you’ve checked Rocky’s security cameras?” I ask. As far as I could see, the cheap asshole doesn’t have any, but Sheriff Hicks is about to confirm that for me.
“Rocky doesn’t have cameras. He says they spook his customers,” he says with a smirk that I could happily slap from his smug face.
“Convenient for him when people are getting the shit kicked out of them in his parking lot, right?”
“As far as I can tell, Mr. Decker, the only person around here who has any grudge against your father…” he licks his lips as he glares at me, “is you.”
I can’t help but laugh and that just makes his scowl deepen. I take a step closer to him. “You think I want my father dead?”
“Word around here is you hate his guts,” he snarls.
“Maybe,” I reply with a shrug. “But if I wanted him dead, he wouldn’t be lying in that bed, he’d be in the fucking morgue.”
Hicks has no response for that. He blinks at me. I know he’s looked me up. He knows who I am and so he knows I speak the truth. I might like to lie low here, but I’m the right hand man of one of the most powerful men in the goddamn country, it’s kind of hard to escape that.
“Is there anything else, Sheriff?” I glare at him and when he doesn’t reply, I brush past him.
“Just don’t leave town,” he shouts after me as I walk into my father’s room.
Molly is sitting by his bedside, she has a scowl on her face too. “Hicks is a jackass,” she hisses.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I think he believes you’re involved in this somehow, Jackson,” she whispers.
“Yeah, I kinda got that too.”
She looks at my father and her face softens. They haven’t always had the easiest relationship either, he let her down badly too, but she has been able to forge a meaningful and loving relationship with him. “Why would he think that?” she sniffs.
“Maybe somebody wants him too?” I mutter, thinking out loud to myself more than talking to her.
“But who and why?”
I shake my head. For once I have no clue. I spend so little of my life in this town, I have no idea who I could have pissed off enough. Or maybe blaming me is Sheriff Hicks’s easy out?
“No idea, Molly. But I know where to look next.”
The old-fashioned bell rings above my head as I walk into Johnson’s store. The place has barely changed since I was a kid. It’s like walking back in time. People still place ads in the window, buying and selling and offering services. Like they haven’t heard of this thing called the internet. It still smells the same too – of candy and newspapers. Suddenly, I feel like I’m twelve again, here to spend my allowance.
“Jackson Decker, is that you?” Hannah Johnson says as soon as I walk through the door.
“Sure is, ma’am,” I say taking off my hat like a good Southern gentleman.
She comes from behind the counter, tossing her long blonde hair up into a ponytail. Her daughter, Shannon, looks just like her.
Shannon and I were fuck buddies for a long time. She’s ten years younger than me, making her mom, Hannah only eight years my senior. She flirts with me every chance she gets, just like her daughter. At least just how her daughter used to. Even before I started dating Lucia, she met her husband, Ed and we’ve kept our relationship purely platonic since. They only got married last year, six months before Lucia and me.
“Hey, Mrs. Johnson. How are you?”
She snort laughs at my formality. “Now there will be none of that. How many times I have told you to call me Hannah? I mean I was almost your momma in law.” She nudges me on the arm.
“Momma!” Shannon scolds her as she comes out of the store room at the back. “If Ed heard you saying that.”
“Oh, shush. He’s nowhere around, is he?” Hannah says with a roll of her eyes.
“Yeah, well Jackson and I were never going to be anything serious, were we?” she says, shooting me a look that I can’t quite figure out. “How is your daddy?” she asks, changing the subject.
“Of course,” Hannah exclaims, her hands covering her flushed cheeks. “That was terrible what happened to him.”
“He’s not good.”
“Has he said anything about what happened?” Shannon asks, her face full of concern. Fuck, why is she even here? I hate having her pity me. She’s busted my ass for years about my relationship with my father.
“He hasn’t woken up yet,” I reply, surprised that they don’t already know this. News travels fast in a small town.
“Such an awful thing,” Hannah says sympathetically as she places her hand on my arm.
“Yeah, that’s kind of why I’m here. Do you remember the ad he put in the window a few days back?”
“Yes. For a crib,” she nods her head. “I told him that we had one just like it. It was Shannon’s when she was a baby and then her little brothers’ too.”
“You do?” I frown at her.
“Did,” she corrects me. “Shannon and Ed took it. For when they have babies.”
“Momma!” Shannon hisses, nudging Hannah in the arm as her cheeks turn pink.
I look between the two of them. What the fuck? Something feels off here.
“The delivery guy needs you, Momma,” Shannon says to Hannah.
Hannah rolls her eyes, bids me goodbye and then disappears into the store room.
“You going to be in town much longer?” Shannon asks me.
“A day or two, probably.”
“Your wife not with you?”
I frown. “No. She had to go home to our son.”
“Our son?”
“Yeah. He calls me Dad. I married his mom. He’s my son.”
“Okay,” she snaps, holding her hands up in surrender. “I was only asking.”
I’ve known this woman for eight years and I’ve never had cause to doubt her before. She knows things about my childhood and my past that I’ve only ever told Alejandro and Lucia before. Not that I told her any of it, but she gleaned it from working at the ranch all these years. I didn’t mind though, because I considered her a friend. But she is hiding something from me.
“Everything okay, Shan?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” she replies with a frown.
Maybe we’re both just on edge? I haven’t seen her since either of us were married. Maybe she doesn’t know how to be around me now?
“You still have that crib, Shan?”
“Yeah. My mom would kill me if I ever sold it,” she whispers behind her hand and then she starts laughing. And there is the woman I know.
The sound of my cell ringing interrupts the conversation.
Taking it out of my pocket, I see Alejandro’s name on the screen. “I gotta take this,” I say to Shannon as I hold the phone to my ear.
“Hey, amigo.”
“My plane is going to be at the airport in four hours, Jax. Get your ass on it,” he snarls and my heart immediately starts to race. He’s either pissed at me, pissed because something bad has happened, or both.
“Why? What the fuck is going on?”
I hear him draw in a breath, as though he’s trying to keep a lid on his raging temper. I’m not often on the receiving end of it, but when I am it’s usually to do with my wife – his daughter. “Just get your ass on the fucking plane, because if I have to, I will come drag you back here myself.”
“Then tell me what the fuck is going on” I snarl. “Is Lucia okay?”
“No,” he barks and my racing heart kicks up a gear.
“What?”
“She’s not hurt. She’s safe,” he quickly adds, because while he might be pissed at me for God knows what, he wouldn’t let me have a heart attack from worrying about her. “But if she finds out… So, get back here and clear up the fucking mess you have created. Now!”
I swear my heart is about to hammer through my ribcage. “What mess? Stop speaking in riddles. What the fuck is going on over there? Let me speak to Lucia.”
“No,” he snarls. “You do not tell her about this. Not until we know what to do.”
“For fuck’s sake, amigo, you’re killing me here. Tell me what’s happened.”
“This isn’t the kind of thing I want to talk about on the phone. I fucking trusted you to take care of her…” I hear the crack in his voice and it takes the breath from my lungs. “Just get your ass on the damn plane.”
Then he ends the call and I stand in the store with my heart damn near in my throat.
What the hell has happened during the last house since I spoke to her?
I walk out of the store, hearing Shannon calling after me but I don’t hear what she says. My blood is pounding in my ears as adrenaline races through my body. Lucia is safe and unhurt but not okay? What does that even mean?
I dial her number and she answers on the fourth ring.
“Hey,” she says breathlessly.
“Hi, angel,” I try to sound calm while my head spins with a million questions, but I ask her the only one that really matters right now. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just doing some yoga with my mom, sorry. I thought it was supposed to be relaxing. Do I sound out of breath?” she laughs softly.
“Just a little. How is Matthias?”
“He’s fine. I just got back from dropping him at school,” the tone of her voice changes. I mean I only spoke to her an hour ago and everything was fine then. “Why is something wrong?”
I close my eyes and take a breath as I prepare to lie to her. “Yeah, I just miss you, baby. I wanted to hear your voice.” Only a half lie.
“I miss you too.”
“I should let you get back to your yoga before your mom yells at me,” I say. “I’ll call you tonight. Okay?”
“Okay. Be careful, Jax.”
“Always, Luce. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
I end the call and put my cell back into my pocket. Speaking to her has calmed my racing heart at least, but I still have no idea what the hell is going on that I can’t even talk to her about it. I suppose there’s only one way to find out.
The flight from Dallas to LA has been the longest of my life. I’ve never felt so agitated, and nervous in my entire thirty-seven years, and given the life I’ve lived that’s saying something.
There’s a car waiting for me on the runway. I climb inside and see the familiar face of one of Alejandro’s longest serving employees, his driver, Jacob.
“Mr. Decker,” he says with a polite nod.
“What the fuck, Jacob? What’s going on?” I ask as I sit back against the seat.
He shakes his head.
“Come on. I’ve known you since I was fourteen. What the hell is it that you can’t trust me?”
“I don’t know anything,” Jacob insists. “Something happened this morning that made Mr. Montoya as mad as hell. I haven’t seen him so angry in a long time. Alana was doing all she could to calm him down, but…” he shakes his head. “Then Lucia arrived back from taking Matthias to school and it was like they were pretending nothing had happened.”
I close my eyes and take deep breaths, wondering what the hell I’m about to walk into.
