She got up and sent him her gap-tooth smile. “Deal. And maybe we can even go hunting or riding sometime. I mean we are kinda like siblings.” Her cheeks flamed as she waved a hand. “Never mind. Stupid thought.”
His cellphone pinged with an incoming text, but he ignored it. “It’s not that stupid. We could’ve been half siblings. Dixie Leigh certainly thinks we look enough alike.”
“Look alike?” Maisy drew back. “We don’t look anything alike, cowboy. I am good-lookin’ as sin and you’re butt ugly as hell.”
“Butt ugly?” He hooked an arm around her neck and gave her a good dose of noogies on the head. “Take it back, brat.”
“Never.” She frogged him in the side and gained her release.
He would’ve kept up the chase if his cellphone hadn’t pinged again, reminding him of his text. He pulled it out of his pocket. Dixie’s name made his heart start thumping overtime. She’d texted him. Which meant that she couldn’t still be mad at him.
“What has you grinning like a Cheshire cat?” Maisy asked. “Let me guess, it’s from Dixie Leigh. I knew something was going on between you two.”
Lincoln couldn’t deny it. And he didn’t want to. “As a matter of fact, there is something going on between us. I’m crazy about her.” He opened the text. As he read, his smile faded and the beating of his heart took on more the rapid pace of fear instead of happiness. He quickly called her. When she didn’t answer, the fear grew. “Shit.” He hung up and headed for his truck.
Maisy followed behind him. “You really need to work on your mood swings, cowboy.”
“It’s Dixie. She might be in trouble.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
He pulled open the door of his truck and hopped in. “Pray. Because if that bastard Willaby hurts her, they’ll be no place on earth he can hide from my wrath.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Dixie woke to her head pounding like she had downed a boatload of margaritas the night before. But she couldn’t remember going to a party. All she remembered was . . .
Her eyes flew open. She was lying face down in the backseat of a car with her cheek stuck to the vinyl. She didn’t have to guess whose car it was. She knew even before she sat up and saw the back of Sheriff Willaby’s head through the security cage that divided the seats. She reached for her gun, but her gun belt was gone.
“So you’re awake,” he said as if they were on some fun road trip and she just decided to take a little nap. She reached up and touched the back of her head where most of the pain was radiating from. There was a huge lump, but no blood.
“You just had to be nosy, didn’t you?” the sheriff said. “You couldn’t just leave with your senator daddy. You just had to go snooping around my truck.” He thumped the steering wheel with his fist. “And now I have to figure out what to do with you.”
That did not sound good.
“Do with me?” she croaked.
“You didn’t think I could let you live. Not when you’ve connected me to Sam Sweeney’s murder.”
Dixie didn’t know if it was the “let you live” part or the “Sam Sweeney’s murder” part that had her heart almost pounding out of her chest. Probably the “let you live” part. Deep down, she had known the fire was somehow connected to Sam’s disappearance. She just hadn’t been able to connect all the dots. The sheriff did it for her.
“It was the hat that put you on my trail, wasn’t it? Cal Daily told you about finding my hat the night I came out to break up the fight.” Dixie’s eyes widened. It had been Willaby who went to the Cotton-Eyed Joe’s that night to break up the fight. Not Sheriff Miller. Willaby banged the steering wheel again. “Why didn’t Cal leave after his mama died? Why did he have to stay and keep wearing that damn hat?”
The hat explained why the sheriff had burned down the trailer. Not only had he wanted to get rid of it, but he’d hoped if their home was gone Cal and Cheyenne would move before Cal brought up the hat to Dixie or Lincoln.
“So you killed Sam Sweeney,” Dixie said.
“I didn’t plan to.”
If Dixie didn’t want to be the sheriff’s next murder victim, she needed to make him think she was on his side. “Well, of course you didn’t. I don’t believe for a second that you planned to kill Sam. It had to be an accident.”
Sheriff Willaby’s voice switched from angry to dull and listless. It was like he was talking to himself, not her. Like he was reliving the night. Something he had probably done numerous times before.
“I was scared of Sam. There was something about his eyes that gave me the willies. When I saw he was the one who had instigated the fight at Cotton-Eyed Joe’s, I wanted to turn right around and leave. But I couldn’t do that with most of the town watching. So I acted like I wasn’t scared. While the bouncers took care of the other men in the fight, they left me to handle Sam. He didn’t give me any problems at first so I didn’t handcuff him. But once we stepped out the back door, he shoved me up against the dumpsters. He said he was sick of old men and scared little kids pushing him around. His eyes looked wild, and I got scared and pulled my gun. I didn’t even know I had shot him until he fell to the ground at my feet. It was self-defense. Except I knew that the sheriff wouldn’t think so. He’d already written me up for drawing my gun when it wasn’t necessary. So when no one heard the shot and came running out, I figured I could cover up what I’d done. And I did. I got rid of Sam’s
