Long, Tall Texans_ Boone (Long, Tall Texans #35) - Diana Palmer Page 0,70
up, and I was too angry to think straight when I saw those photographs.”
Keely recalled that Misty had promised to get even with her. She’d done a good job of it. “She’ll get her just deserts one day,” Keely replied.
“We all do,” he said philosophically. He glanced at his watch. “I have to make a few phone calls and get something to eat, then I’ll be back.”
Her eyes lit up. “Okay.”
He smiled slowly. Disheveled, her hair uncombed, her face devoid of any makeup, she was beautiful to him. So easily, she could have been dead. He’d never have been able to live with that, knowing he caused her death.
He bent and kissed her again with breathless tenderness. “I’ll be back soon,” he whispered.
She smiled. “Okay. I’ll wait.”
He chuckled as he walked out.
Ten minutes later the phone rang. She answered it, thinking it must be Carly or Winnie or Clark.
“Keely, is that you?”
It was her father’s voice.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“YOU KILLED MY mother!” Keely choked, overwhelmed with rage at just the sound of his voice. “How could you!”
“It wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t!” he replied, and he sounded frightened. “Keely, I’ve never killed a person in my life. You have to believe me.”
“You threatened her for money—”
“I had to! Listen, if I don’t pay them, they’ll…well, they’d already threatened to kill your mother, now they say they’ll get you, too,” he said nervously. “It’s the Fuentes gang! I got mixed up with them because of Jock,” he said bitterly. “He’s been working for Fuentes for years. He even went to prison for him, just after you came to live with me. He said they paid better than any of the other distributors, and that he’d get me in because he had a cousin in the organization. But there was trouble right upfront because Jock double-crossed one of the bosses and pocketed some drug money. Then he hid out and left me holding the bag. They’re after me, now.” There was a sigh. “Your mother was right about Jock. She said he’d destroy me if I stuck with him, and he has. He keeps calling me, making threats toward you if you don’t come up with enough money to help him to get out of town before the drug lords kill him. I don’t know what to do!”
She had to clamp down hard on her feelings. He was rationalizing his behavior, but she remembered that he’d stood by while the mountain lion dragged her away to what would have been her death.
“You go to Sheriff Carson,” she told him. “Tell him what you’ve told me, and help him find Jock. That’s what you have to do.”
“Hell, Carson will lock me up and throw away the key!” he muttered. “I gave his brother the coke that killed him. No, I’m not going to the law.”
“What else can you do?” she asked.
“Get enough money to pay Jock, so he’ll get off my back. The Fuentes organization want Jock. They want to kill him, but they don’t know where he is. They thought Ella did and they…” He was going to say they tortured her, but he couldn’t make himself say that to his daughter, whom he’d failed in so many ways already. “Well, they killed her. Now, the only hope I have is to raise enough money to help Jock get out of the country before they catch up with him. He swore if I didn’t, he’d tell them I was the one who double-crossed them. He’d give them back what he took and blame it on me!”
“If you give him money,” she said in a weary tone, “he’ll only want more.”
“There’s a chance he won’t. He just wants to get out of the country before they do to him what they did to those drug agents they killed. He won’t say so, but I think he’s afraid of Fuentes’s new partner. The partner is called Machado and he hates Jock. He’ll kill him before Fuentes does if he gets the chance, and Jock knows it.”
“Let him,” Keely said coldly.
“Jock was the only friend I had, Keely,” he said heavily. “He stood by me when everybody else jumped ship.”
Just as Carly had stood by Ella. But that had been because Carly genuinely loved Keely’s mother. Jock had stood by Brent Welsh because he knew Ella had money, Keely thought, and he could use Brent to get some of it. But she didn’t say that. He wouldn’t have listened anyway.
“I don’t have any money,” Keely told