“I’m with Mary on that one,” Anthony said. “Now I have something to say to you, partner. You’re looking at a kid, one who people you respect, love and care about. We’re looking at a potential criminal. If it is him, if he’s gotten himself all the way here from Wyoming? It sure as hell isn’t to shake your hand and wish you well.”
Toby leaned his head back for a moment. He closed his eyes, and Mary knew he was hurting. Then he sat up. “I know that, damn it. Mostly, I’m hoping we can stop him from doing anything even more stupid than he’s already done.”
“That will be our goal,” Adam said. “We need to verify that he’s at least in Texas. I’ve asked Joe Grant to give me a hand with that little thing. We have the day he was last seen in Casper, so Joe’s checking the flight manifests coming into DFW and Love Field. Those are the closest major airports to Waco. It’s unlikely, given his personality traits, that Joey would have chosen a regional airport or airline. He’d figure he deserved first class. Do we know how much money he’s got at his disposal?”
“No, but if he did funnel info to the Rats, he might have more than enough to keep him going for a while.”
“All right. Now, one more question. Do you think he’s devious enough—and maybe cowardly enough—to figure that rather than go for you, he’d hurt you more by going for someone he perceives as weaker? Figuring that it’ll hurt you more, if he hurts someone you care for?”
“Damn it to hell!”
“Weaker?”
She and Toby had spoken at the same time. Toby had jumped to his feet and was pacing the living room. She couldn’t say she’d known, exactly, that he had that kind of anger inside him.
“I said perceived as weaker, cousin,” Adam said.
Mary nodded to acknowledge Adam’s qualifier, but her main focus was on Toby. Judging her moment, she stood and blocked his way. She drilled her right index finger into his chest, to make sure she had his attention.
“I am not going away, you are not setting me with guards, and I sure as hell am not going to sit back and do nothing. That’s not how Kendalls do things. So deal with it.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw and appreciated Adam’s snicker. Then she felt Anthony behind her. “If he’s been watching us at all, he’ll know we’re both close to you. He might go after me, because I’m your partner, just like his grandpa was, and I’m not going anywhere, either.”
Toby sighed, and then he looked from her and Anthony to Adam. “Okay, you’re the one among us who has the most experience with these clusterfucks. What do we do next?”
Chapter Seventeen
Mary certainly understood the concept of suspense. That was, she understood it in a purely literary sense. She knew how to sow tiny little seeds and water them, as it were, through the course of a story. While she didn’t outline to the extent of actually listing plot points, she somehow knew there had to be some, and generally—at least according to the copious number of five-star-reviews she received—she did that very well.
Suspense in real life? That was a different creature, entirely. Putting it bluntly, she was not a fan.
However, as she hosted Kate Benedict and Samantha Kendall for an early afternoon tea, she had been giving herself rave reviews at hiding the way she felt about suspense in real life.
In the last couple of weeks, they’d learned quite a lot with regard to their stalker. They knew that Joey Conway had indeed flown from Casper, gotten a connecting flight in Denver, and then landed in Dallas. They knew he’d rented a car, and thanks to the private investigation firm of Richardson-Talbot-Jessop, they knew that the day after Joey landed in Dallas, he’d garaged his rental in Waco, where it still remained.
They’d learned a lot about Joey’s movements over the last week, and Connor Talbot had even located a farmer outside of Waco who’d sold Joey another car. They were pretty sure he had indeed torched the car he’d been in when he’d followed them to the roadhouse.
Adam had reported that they’d caught that car—the one he’d bought from the farmer—on their video feed a few times as it made its way through Lusty and back. But since the car had been registered to an area resident, and not reported as stolen, it hadn’t set off any alarms.
They even knew where Joey had stayed his first week in Waco. They just didn’t know where he was staying right now.
Mary knew that, in real life, investigations moved more slowly, almost boringly so, than they did in fiction. But this baby-step-by-baby-step progress was wearing on her nerves.
The only real progress she had made in this situation was she’d convinced Anthony and Toby to back off and give her a bit of space. She wasn’t the one Joey Conway had his sights fixed on. In order to ease her men’s concerns, she had admitted it was possible Joey might use her as a pawn. Though she couldn’t see how, surrounded by family the way she was. Finally, and in the further interests of their peace of mind, she had freely given up a small measure of personal privacy.
But as far as she was concerned, they couldn’t find that little peckerhead soon enough.
“You seem tense, sweetheart. Is it because they haven’t located Joey Conway yet?”
Mary looked up and encountered Grandma Kate’s sharp gaze. Aunt Samantha’s gaze was fixed on her as well. There was no trying to put anything over on either of these two dynamic women.
“This hanging on the edge, it’s driving me nuts! I’m not the only one who’s tense, either. It’s harder for Toby, of course. He wants this whole thing over, feels he’s responsible for bringing danger to the family, but at the same time, he doesn’t want anything bad to happen to
