Wyoming Cowboy Justice. Nicole Helm

       Chapter Three

      Laurel fumbled with her phone to turn off the beeping alarm. She wanted desperately to hit Snooze, but there was too much to do.

      She hadn’t gotten home until well after midnight, after tracking down all the names the Carsons had given her yesterday. She’d questioned both teens, but neither one had been able to give her the faintest hint on Clint’s whereabouts.

      She yawned and stretched out in bed. Oh, she didn’t believe any of the shifty teenagers, but she couldn’t force them to tell her anything. Which meant today would be another long day of investigating. Even if she got ahold of Clint to question him, she wasn’t hopeful she’d get anything out of him.

      She didn’t have time to find Clint and investigate a murder that would be common knowledge in Bent and the surrounding areas by now.

      Murder. Who had murdered Jason Delaney?

      She forced herself out of bed and walked from her small room to the tiny kitchen. It was a cold morning, but it would have to be a quick one. Coffee, shower, get on the road. No time to build a fire and enjoy the cozy fall silence.

      She frowned at the odd sound interrupting said silence as she clicked her coffee maker on. Something like a rumble.

      Or a motorcycle.

      “Hell,” she muttered. She could not argue with Grady before she had coffee. Before she even had time to get dressed. She looked down at the flannel pajamas. It could be worse—she could be wearing the ones with bacon and eggs on them, or more revealing ones.

      But she wasn’t wearing a bra and she very nearly blushed at the idea of being bra-less in the same room as Grady.

      She jumped at the pounding on her door, which was silly when she knew it had been coming. But she hadn’t expected it to all but shake her little cabin.

      Well, no time to fix the pajama situation. Worse, no time to fix the no-coffee situation. So she put her best frown in place and opened the door. “What do you—” But she stopped talking because it wasn’t just Grady.

      Grady shoved Clint through the door before following, and for a few seconds Laurel could only stand there and stare. Grady had brought her the only potential witness and the main suspect all rolled up into one. He’d brought a Carson into Delaney territory.

      Grady scowled at—she assumed—the naked shock on her face. “The sooner you question him, the sooner you can clear him. You said you know he didn’t do it, after all.”

      “I didn’t say that,” Laurel returned, shaking herself out of her shock and going for a notebook and a pen.

      “What do you mean you didn’t say that? Never mind, Clint. Let’s go.”

      Laurel stepped in front of him, holding out a hand to stop him. Somehow that hand landed on his chest. Because even though it was something like thirty degrees outside considering the sun was just beginning to rise, he only had a leather jacket on, unzipped, so that her hand came into contact with the soft material of his T-shirt, covering the very not-soft expanse of his very broad chest.

      She jerked her hand away and focused on her notebook. “Calm down,” she said, hoping she sounded calm. “I said I don’t think he did it. I’m only out for the truth, and if the truth is Clint’s nose is clean, I’ll make sure my investigation reflects that.” She lifted her chin and met his blazing blue gaze.

      She’d never seen Grady this riled up before. He was more of the “annoy the crap out of people till they took a swing at him, then gleefully beat them to a pulp” type.

      Which was why it didn’t surprise her in the least when he relaxed his shoulders and his gaze swept down her chest. “Nice jammies.”

      She sidestepped him and gestured Clint to a seat at her small kitchen table. “Sit, Clint. I have a few simple questions for you. Now, right now, we don’t know what happened, so I need you to be honest and forthcoming, because the more we know, the quicker we can get to the bottom of this.”

      Clint sat in the chair, slumping in it, looking everywhere but at her or Grady. “Sure. Whatever,” he muttered.

      Laurel opened up to a clean page in her notebook and quickly jotted down Clint’s name, the date and time. She left out Grady’s presence, and she didn’t have time to wonder about why. “Now, Mr. Jennings said you came to his door around ten asking to make a phone call. Is that true?”

      Clint shrugged again, fidgeting and sighing heavily. “Guess so.”

      “And why did you go to Mr. Jennings’s door?”

      “Crap car broke down not far from that rancher’s house. I walked up, asked to use his phone since mine was dead, and then my girl came and picked me up.” He pulled at a thread on the cuff of his jacket. “I wasn’t anywhere near that field.”

      “How did you know the dead body was in the field?” Grady growled before Laurel could voice the same question.

      Clint opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Laurel had to close her eyes. The idiot kid couldn’t even lie? Hell, she’d come up with one if Grady’s furious blue gaze was on her like that.

      “You promised me you were telling the truth,” Grady said, leaning over the table and getting in Clint’s face. “So help me God, Clint, you do not lie to me and get away with it.”

      “Gentlemen,” Laurel said in her best peacemaking tone, smiling encouragingly at Clint and then Grady. “Let’s take a calming breath.”

      She was pretty sure Grady’s calming breath included picturing breaking her neck, but he stood stock-still, fury and frustration radiating off him.

      If she hadn’t grown up in this town, if she hadn’t fascinatedly watched against her will, her whole life, how the Carson clan worked, she might have been concerned.

      But where the Delaneys were all cold silences and sharp words, the Carsons exploded. They acted, and it was oftentimes too much and foolish, but Laurel had never doubted it came from the same place her family’s way of dealing came from.

      Love. Family.

      Grady was pissed and frustrated—not just because Clint was lying to him, but at the fact Clint was clearly in trouble and Grady couldn’t fix it.

      “Let’s start from the beginning, Clint,” Laurel said evenly and calmly. “With the truth this time.”

      “Why are you making me talk to a Delaney?” Clint demanded of Grady. “She’s going to railroad me no matter what I say.”

      Grady’s entire face looked hard as marble, and the way he had his impressive arms crossed over his chest, well, Laurel didn’t think she’d mess with him the way Clint seemed to be doing.

      Clint sighed heavily, slouching even further in the chair. “Okay, yeah, I saw the body.”

      “You...” Grady was clearly working very, very hard not to come unglued.

      Laurel held up a hand, hoping it kept him quiet rather than riling him further. “And you didn’t call the police because?”

      “Because me plus a dead body was only going to make me a suspect.