A Lone Star Christmas (Texas Justice Book 3) Page 3

  “Smartass. Watch it or I’ll move you over to traffic.”

  Sean shrugged. In a way, traffic accidents were puzzles too, and sometimes figuring them out, exactly what had happened and how, the points of impact and the contributing factors, was fascinating.

  “Maybe writing parking tickets,” Shane said, upping the threat Sean knew he would never follow through on.

  “Yeah, yeah. Hit the road, will ya?”

  Shane grinned at him before he turned and headed out. Sean watched his brother go, mulling over the new lightness in his step. Shane had always been so serious—as if he’d had any choice—but now… Sean would always be grateful to Lily Jones for giving his brother the happiness he’d missed out on when he’d had to step into their father’s sizeable boots.

  And now of course there was Slater and Joey to be happy for. He found it faintly amusing that his most brilliant brother hadn’t seen what the rest of them had known for a long time, that Joey was the perfect match for him. She was the only one who could keep up with his mind leaps, or who could match him quotation for quotation, the only one outside of his family that Slater had ever looked at with unfailing interest rather than one-step-back amusement. And Joey had awakened them all to something they should have realized long ago, that they were, albeit unintentionally, causing their little sister great pain.

  And that thought brought him to the one thing that was always able to distract him from the thing he most needed distracting from. The thing Joey and Slater had discovered, which the cops in the family had not. The clue that had been a step further on the trail of the other missing piece of the Highwater family.

  Kane.

  Grasping at the diversion, he checked his email again, even though he’d checked it this morning and it was the day after Thanksgiving and the likelihood of anything having hit wasn’t even within spitting distance of slim. And he was right; there was nothing on the APB he’d put out monthly since they’d gotten that license number from the campground near the Grand Canyon. Slater and Joey had discovered, thanks to her prodigious memory, that their missing brother had gone there when he’d taken off the day their father had been killed.

  He didn’t do it.

  Sean didn’t care about the rumors—one letter off from tumors for a reason, he’d always thought—or who believed them, didn’t care what anyone thought except his family. And they all refused to accept the possibility that their father’s death had been anything other than an accident.

  But they had also refused to talk about Kane, knowing how close he and Sage had been. They’d thought they were protecting her from even more pain, but it had taken Joey to show them they’d been hurting her instead.

  Unexpectedly, he found himself smiling as he thought of the family meeting Slater had called. All of them except Sage, including Lily and Joey, had been gathered at the big kitchen table as usual, while Slater explained. Sean guessed Shane had felt the same churning in his gut as Sean had when the truth of what Joey had figured out hit them, and when Sage had come in from the barn shortly after, their apologies had been so heartfelt that she hadn’t even teased them about it. Instead, his irrepressible, fierce little sister had burst into tears, pounding home just how right Joey had been. And later, when he’d seen her in the den holding Kane’s abandoned guitar as she often did, no doubt remembering the days when his beautiful voice had filled that room with music, she’d been smiling instead of crying.

  They owed Sage for that. Enough that he might even forgive her for the little stunt she’d perpetrated today. After all, it was over now, and now he could go back to avoiding the one woman in all of Last Stand who made him feel like that nerdy kid longing for the regal, royal heroine of his imagination’s fantasy.

  *

  Elena left her mother to put the bow on Marcos’s chastisement for the day. She’d already delivered her verdict; he would be going with her tomorrow to the tree trimming at the Corbyn mansion, and he would wear his suit and tie when he did. When his grandmother had not felt up to going, he had been delighted to think he would escape spending a couple of hours in those clothes, with mostly adults having boring adult conversations, having to be on his best behavior. She had considered simply making him stay in the house, but she knew he wouldn’t see that as punishment if he could play his games, and she didn’t want to make her still not quite well mother enforce a ban on it.

  “You’ve shown you can’t be trusted to look after your grandmother,” she’d told him. “And so you will go with me.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. It will take some time for you to prove yourself worthy of that trust again.”

  The boy had flushed, and she knew the lesson had reached him. She hated being harsh with him—she’d always intended to be the kind of loving mother her child would run to for anything—but life had had other plans for her. At least the ache she felt now when she was so missing Enrique’s steady hand for their son was a manageable one, not the tearing, ripping agony it had once been. Not that it was not still that powerful on occasion, it was merely that it was no longer clawing at her every moment of every day.

  Her family had gotten her through it. Marcos had no shortage of male influence in his life. Her cousin Esteban—despite the fact that he was an incurable ladies’ man—in particular had stepped up when needed. But she couldn’t turn to him every time she needed help with her son, especially in this matter that had ended up much less seriously than it could have.

  Thanks to Sean Highwater.

  She allowed herself a moment to consider again the man he had become. That he had chosen the approach he had, that he had delivered a lesson instead of pure punishment to those bullies and, in a more subtle way a different lesson to Marcos, said a great deal to her. True, she knew it was in part because of the tone set for his department by Chief Highwater, but this had seemed instinctive, as if in this way the detective was cut from the same cloth as his brother.

  Both brought up by the man who died in my arms.

  And in that moment she was glad she had the Corbyn tree trimming to look forward to. Death had touched her life too often. It would be nice to celebrate a birth for a change.

  Chapter Four

  Sean stood in front of his bathroom mirror, contemplating giving up on the string tie and going for a bolo instead. And wishing he didn’t have to do this at all. But he knew he had to put in an appearance. Not because of his job, but because he was a Highwater. The Corbyns were a very prominent family. The patriarch ran the bank in town, and they commanded respect just as, in a different way, the Highwaters did.

  That didn’t mean he was looking forward to it. One thing that had never changed since he was a child was that he was not comfortable in large groups of people. It didn’t bother him among strangers, like at a ball game or a movie or a concert, but large groups of people who knew him and who he would be expected to interact with? Way, way down on his list of things he wanted to spend time doing.

  He’d spent way too much time already today trying to decide how he could get away with the least amount of that interaction. Go early, when there might be fewer people? But then he’d be expected to chat—God, he hated that word—with everybody who was there. So go later, when everybody was well into whatever socializing they were doing, and he could slip in and out without getting sucked into anything sideways? But then the crowd would be bigger, pressing in on him by sheer numbers.

  In between, then. Maybe, if he was really lucky, he could hit the sweet spot between the two, not so few people he’d be expected to make contact with every one of them, but not so many that he started to feel twitchy.

  Not for the first time he envied Shane’s ease with people. That was one of the things people always said about him, that he was so approachable. And Slater was just amused by it all, and somehow managed to stay that half-step back. As for his sister, she seemed to genuinely enjoy gatherings like this. She joked that after days spent trying to fathom the equine mind, it was nice to talk to c
reatures who could talk back.

  His family, at least, understood that this was not the easiest thing for him, and they wouldn’t come down on him if he dodged out as soon as he could. Neither would his friends. The others…well, they’d think what they always had; he was the odd Highwater, the one who was a bit different. When he’d been a kid that had been embarrassing. But now, thanks to Shane, it had put him where he was, in the absolutely perfect job for the way his mind worked. And there he’d gained a reputation that gave him respect, even among those who thought him a degree or two off.

  His thoughts had distracted him just enough, and he got the string tie to where it hung neatly instead of looking like a five-year-old had done it. But even as that five-year-old, focusing too much—sometimes to the exclusion of all else—had been his MO. As Shane said, sometimes he’d worried at things until they were trickier than they needed to be. And Slater had sat him down one day and explained Occam’s razor to him.

  “You can do both, Bro,” Slater had said. “Go for the simplest answer because it’s usually the right one, but if it’s not, you’ve got the kind of brain that can follow the most tangled paths.”

  Even Sage, smarter about people than he at only twelve, had contributed. “Sometimes you just need to take a step back. Think about something else for a while.”

  He’d taken the advice of all three to heart, and it had helped make him what he was today. He considered his near perfect clearance rate a tribute to his family as much as to himself.

  As it turned out, his visit to the annual tree trimming was both easier and much, much more tense—for him, at least—than he could have imagined. Easier because he hit it just right, with a number of people he could deal with but not so few it would be noticeable if he didn’t talk to them all, and worse because on his way out he spotted Marcos de la Cova. Which meant his mother was here somewhere.

  But he was distracted from that thought when he realized the boy was rather nervously peeking around the big shrub he was behind. As if he were hiding from something. Or someone.

  Sean scanned the gathering, saw no sign of the boy’s earlier tormentors. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t acquired a new set; he knew from personal experience that certain types of kids simply couldn’t resist going after a different type of kid.

  Acting on instinct and those memories, he dodged behind the bush himself. Marcos whirled, startled.

  “Hey, Marcos. Guess we both had the same idea about the best place to hide,” Sean said.

  The boy stared at him. Clearly recognized him; his attire for this occasion wasn’t that different. He’d only added the tie and a more formal jacket. Items that would see more action in the next five weeks than the entire rest of the year.

  “What are you hiding from?”

  The boy put some emphasis on the “you” as if he couldn’t believe Sean would be hiding from anything. Or more likely a police officer; Sean didn’t consider himself particularly intimidating, beyond his six-foot height and fairly solid build. At least, not compared to Shane. But thanks to his oldest brother, he’d been able to handle himself since he’d been Marcos’s age and had come home with a bloody nose and a black eye. The then fifteen-year-old Shane had been ready to take on the bullies himself, but Sean had stopped him.

  I don’t want you to fight them for me.

  What do you want?

  I want you to teach me how to fight them.

  Shane had studied him for a moment. Sean knew he’d been a lightweight, small for his age, and he’d half expected Shane to say he was too wimpy to fight. But he’d underestimated his brother’s ability to rise to a challenge.

  I’ll teach you. But it won’t just be fighting, because to fight you have to be fit, and you’re not.

  And suddenly he had a reason, beyond his father’s orders that he do his share of the ranch chores, to spend less time tethered to his beloved games.

  He yanked himself out of the memories as he realized Marcos was still looking at him for an answer to what he was hiding from. He dropped down to sit on the ground, still behind the wide, sheltering plant.

  “People,” he answered honestly. “Too many of them in one place make me feel crowded, and I get edgy.”

  “Me, too,” the boy said, almost in a whisper, as if it were something to be ashamed of.

  “Worse,” Sean said, “they want to talk to me.” Marcos’s eyes widened. As if Sean had spoken his very thought. And it seemed to stun him enough that the boy sat down next to him. And so he went on. “I kind of live in my head. My brother Shane says as a kid I was really smart, but frequently surprised that there were other people in the world who sometimes spoke to me.”

  Sean recognized the stare of a kindred spirit who had thought he was the only one of his kind in the world. “Really?” Marcos whispered.

  Sean nodded. And whispered back conspiratorially, “And sometimes it still surprises me.”

  That got him a rather shy smile. Followed by a startlingly adult, assessing look. “You’re big and strong, though. Nobody would hassle you.”

  “I wasn’t always,” Sean said. “I was small, as a kid. I shot up six inches one year.” Marcos looked hopeful at that. “As for strong, Shane took care of that. He taught me to defend myself, when I was your age.”

  The boy’s eyes widened again. “That’s…he’s the police chief, right? He’s big.”

  Sean nodded. “He was then, too. And four years older than me. But he taught me until I could take him down at least half the time.”

  Marcos’s jaw dropped. “You could beat him? When you were my age?”

  “Still can, on a good day,” Sean said with a grin. Then, carefully, he added, “You might want to think about that. Learning to defend yourself, I mean. There are ways that don’t take size, just fitness and brains. That’s what Shane taught me.”

  “Would you teach me?” The words burst from the boy as if he were afraid if he didn’t get them out in a rush he’d chicken out. Sean remembered the feeling.

  “There are better teachers around,” he began, but stopped when Marcos shook his head almost fiercely.

  “No. I want you.”

  It was understandable, Sean told himself, after what had happened yesterday that the boy would want the person who’d helped him. But he couldn’t deny the words warmed him in a way he wasn’t used to. Sort of like when he used to help Kane when they were little, and his brother had looked up at him with that same sort of expression.

  With the ease of long practice he shoved Kane back into the compartment of his mind where that case lived. Sometimes he simply had to think about it that way, as just another case, keeping it that step back Sage had spoken of. Otherwise it became a huge, emotional tangle, complicating things and clouding clear thinking.

  And speaking of emotional tangles, teaching Elena’s son would come with a tangle he wasn’t sure he could deal with. He tried to think of a way out of what he’d inadvertently gotten himself into.

  “You need a real teacher,” he began.

  “You’re a police officer,” Marcos said, sounding a bit urgent. “My mom says your job is to help people like you did yesterday.”

  “Yes.” In its purest form, as I wish it always was.

  “So help me. Teach me.”

  Sean sucked in a deep breath. Looked at the boy sitting beside him, looking up at him with eager eyes. Marcos didn’t have a father, or even a brother to teach him. And he’d lost his father much younger than Sean had.

  He had a sudden feeling of inevitability. And let out that breath in a long, apprehensive sigh.

  “We’ll talk to your mother about it,” he said, not quite believing he was really saying it.

  “No! She’ll say no. I can’t tell her.”

  “Marcos—”

  “She’ll say no,” the boy repeated. “She’ll be afraid I’ll get hurt.”

  So will I. “Aren’t you?” he asked.

  Marcos shook his head. “Not if I learn, so they can’t hurt me wors
e.”

  He had, Sean supposed, a point. But the crux of the matter remained. “You want to sneak around again? It looks look like you didn’t learn what you should have from what happened yesterday.”

  “That was different,” the boy said stubbornly.

  Sean wondered if deep down he was hoping she would say no, saving him from having to deal with her with some kind of regularity. Because he was too much of a coward to simply say no to the kid? Maybe because the kid reminded him too much of himself?

  He suppressed the sigh this time.

  “I can’t do something like this and not tell her about it. She’s your mother.”

  Marcos glared at him then, and scrambled to his feet. “I knew you wouldn’t want to do it. You think I’m just weird like everyone does.”

  And before Sean could speak the boy had run, leaving him sitting there on the ground with those last words echoing in his head.

  You think I’m weird like everyone does.

  Words the kid Sean once was had said and thought so many times.

  Chapter Five

  Elena was not panicked.

  Yet.

  But she’d been looking for nearly fifteen minutes now and hadn’t been able to find Marcos. She did not wish to disrupt the holiday cheer the Corbyns were so good at kicking off every year, but she needed to find her son so they could get home and make sure her mother, already upset at missing this town event, was all right and resting as she should be, and not up cleaning house as she had a tendency to do, whether it needed it or not.

  She checked the powder room once more, thinking he might have darted in there where he could lock the door and avoid people. He was so antisocial these days she was truly becoming concerned.