Showdown at Shadow Junction. Joanna Wayne

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СКАЧАТЬ lips. “Let’s sit,” she said, joining him on the porch.

      He spied a brown envelope she was holding in her right hand. “If that’s bad news you’re bringing, I’m not sure I want it.” But he sat back down in his rocker as Carolina settled in the porch swing.

      “Have you ever heard of a man named Quaid Vaquero?” she asked.

      “No. Should I have?”

      “He’s a well-known jewelry designer from Spain.”

      “Last piece of jewelry I purchased was this here Timex.” He pushed up the sleeve of his cotton shirt to show her the watch. “Not likely I’d know some wealthy diamond peddler. What about him?”

      “He was murdered last night in his New York hotel room.”

      “That’s a tough way to go.”

      “The young woman who was in charge of scheduling and planning his New York exhibitions has disappeared, along with jewelry valued at two hundred and twenty-five million dollars.”

      “So she killed him, stole the jewels and went on the run. It’s about what you’d expect these days. Can’t trust those big-city people. So what does this have to do with me?”

      “The name of the young woman who disappeared is Jade Dalton.”

      His stomach knotted. “Not my Jade?”

      “Take a look for yourself.” She opened the envelope, pulled some folded sheets of paper from it and handed them to him.

      He glanced at the headline of the printed article:

      Famed Jeweler Murdered in New York Hotel.

      A picture of Quaid Vaquero and an article followed. Jade Dalton’s name jumped out at him.

      “Where did you get this?”

      “Off the internet,” Carolina said. “I was checking the national news while I drank my coffee. There’s a picture of Jade on the next page.”

      R.J.’s throat dried up so fast he couldn’t swallow as he stared at the photo. It had been almost two years since his daughter showed up right here on the Dry Gulch Ranch for the reading of his will. He’d forgotten a lot of things. Jade wasn’t one of them.

      His hands shook and he felt as if he was getting ready to lose his breakfast.

      “It’s my Jade, all right.”

      “I hated to tell you this, but I thought you’d want to know.”

      “Damn straight I want to know.” He shook his head. “It’s just hard to get my mind around this. Jade—a murderer. If she killed him, she must have had a very good reason.”

      “Two hundred million dollars plus is a lot of reasons,” Carolina reminded him.

      “Nope. I’m not buying that Jade would kill for money. Not after she let me know in no uncertain terms she wasn’t interested in inheriting any of mine.”

      “Your will had rigid stipulations,” Carolina said. “But the facts aren’t in. There’s no proof Jade had anything to do with the murder. She might be frightened and on the run or...” Carolina hesitated.

      “Or in the hands of the real killer or worse,” R.J. finished the sentence for her.

      “Do you know how to get in touch with Jade’s mother?” Carolina asked.

      “Not a clue. Woman’s last name changes more often than Texas weather. But I figure Travis can find out what this is all about. It pays sometimes to have a son who’s a Dallas homicide detective.”

      Sure as shootin’, Jade wouldn’t be calling R.J. or running to him for help.

      So it was up to him to find her. He would, even if it meant hiring every private detective in New York. He just prayed it wouldn’t be too late.

       Chapter Three

      Booker Knox woke alone in a hotel bed that felt as if he’d landed on a fluffy cloud. After a year of back-to-back special missions as a Navy SEAL in the Middle East, he’d almost forgotten what a real bed felt like.

      Still half-asleep and loving the feeling, he staggered to the bathroom in the nude, took a leak and then washed his face and hands. The man who stared back at him from the mirror looked years older than Booker felt and definitely needed a shave.

      But that could wait until later, he decided, after he soaked up some more luxury in the good old US of A. He grabbed the room-service menu on his way back to bed. What he needed now was coffee, hot, black and strong.

      He ordered a large pot of brew, steak, two eggs over easy and biscuits with gravy. “Double gravy,” he told the operator. “And grits if you have them.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had grits. Not that the California version would be like what his grandma used to make.

      “A side of grits. Will there be anything else for you?”

      “That should do it for now.”

      “It should be in your room in about thirty minutes.”

      “That will work.” Give him plenty of time to decide what he wanted to do with his first full day back in the States. First on the list was slip into a pair of clean jeans so that he didn’t flash the room-service attendant.

      Now that he thought about it, tugging on his jeans might be the only thing he did today. He’d turn on the TV and catch some movies on the tube. Surely something worth watching had been released over the past year.

      All he asked for was story lines with nothing to do with wars or death or blowing up buildings. Which left him with chick flicks. He could handle that if the starlets were hot.

      Which would no doubt make him even hungrier for a real live woman. Good-looking. Fun-loving. Temporary.

      In thirty days, he’d be back on the job and he wasn’t about to try to manage a relationship and his SEAL duties. A lot of men could, but it wasn’t for him.

      He stood, walked over to the window, opened the curtains and looked out on the California coastline. A more gorgeous view would be hard to find. He might just spend his whole leave here. Generally he’d have taken a few days to slide back into normalcy and then gone to visit his parents.

      But that was when home would have felt like home. It wouldn’t now that his mother had died. He and his father had never gotten along particularly well. Things would be even more strained between them without his mother’s warmth and enthusiasm for life to smooth the tension.

      And now his sister Sylvie was dead, as well. Killed on the streets of Houston, Texas, when she’d been mistaken for her twin sister, Brit Garner Dalton.

      The sister Booker had never heard of until she’d called him with the bad news. Talk about family skeletons shaking out of the closet. Who knew his mother had hidden such a scandalous past?

      He СКАЧАТЬ