Blame It on Texas (8 page)

“And she egged you?” Dallas half-grinned.

“Not on purpose,” he said.

“Did you find out why she was snooping around our office?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “It’s crazy.”

“Let me guess. She was looking for Austin?”

“No. I was right. She was looking through the Bradford files.”

“Why?”

“She thinks she’s the Bradford child who was kidnapped.”

Footsteps sounded behind Dallas, and Tyler looked up. Mr. O’Connor walked into the room. “Did you say Bradford kid? You know, I went to school with that girl’s mama. She was a pretty thing.”

Tyler nodded at Dallas’s dad. “Hello, old man.”

“Who you calling old?” Mr. O’Connor said. “I’ll bet you fight like a girl.”

Tyler grinned.

“Wait,” Dallas said. “The kid who was kidnapped… They found her body.”

“I know,” Tyler said. “I tried explaining it to her.”

“So she’s a whacko, huh?”

“No. Maybe.” He stopped himself from defending her. “She believes they identified the body wrong.”

“They said the mom was whacko for a while,” Mr. O’Connor said. “She was actually a suspect, too. I didn’t believe it. Nancy Bright was a nonconformist in high school, but she wasn’t the type who’d hurt a fly. Smart, sweet, and built in all the right places.” He held his hands out from his chest.

“She died, right?” Tyler asked. “Both her and her husband, right?” He’d been trying to remember everything he knew about the Bradfords on the drive here.

“Yeah. They were killed in that plane crash only weeks after the kid was kidnapped. I asked her to the Junior Prom. That’s before I started dating Dallas’s mom.
But Nancy had already been asked by a football player. Not that I wasn’t a catch.” He chuckled. “As a matter of fact… Where did I put that box?”

He walked across the room and flipped open a box and pulled a book. “Here.” He turned a few pages. “Tell me I wasn’t every woman’s dream.” He handed the book to Dallas.

Dallas laughed. “Damn, Dad, you looked like Tony.”

“He couldn’t have been that good looking.” Tony, Dallas’s brother, walked in from the bedroom with a box in his hands and continued toward the front door. “Are we going to load furniture and boxes today, or are we gonna stand around and shoot the shit? You see that’s the difference between PIs and cops. We actually do the work.”

“Kiss my ass.” Dallas laughed and passed the book to Tyler.

Tyler looked at the picture. “Actually, I think you look like Dallas, too.”

Mr. O’Connor reached in and flipped a couple of pages, and put his finger on a face. “There’s Nancy Bright. Soon to be Nancy Bradford. Pretty thing.”

When Mr. O’Connor’s finger shifted away, Tyler’s breath caught. Holy hell, but it was as if he was looking at Zoe Adams.

“Damn,” he muttered.

“What?” Mr. O’Connor asked.

“That’s… her. I mean, that looks like the waitress.”

Dallas walked over and glanced at the picture. “Maybe it’s because they’re both redheads.”

“No. The eyes, the mouth, everything.”
The breasts.

“Don’t tell me you’re actually thinking she might be this Bradford kid,” Dallas said. “That’s crazy.”

“And absurd.” Tyler remembered Zoe saying,
Admit it. There is a possibility that I’m right.
“The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth. Albert Camus.” Tyler looked back at the picture. “The resemblance is uncanny.”

Tyler looked back at Mr. O’Connor. “Can I borrow this?”

“Sure.” The old man pointed a finger at him. “I know where you work if you don’t return it.”

Tyler remembered something else Zoe had said.
And now someone is telling me to leave.

It hadn’t made a bit of sense, especially when she admitted she hadn’t told anyone why she was here in Texas. But… if anyone knew her mother, and took one look at Zoe, they wouldn’t have to be told.

Did that mean someone really had been threatening Zoe Adams?

He set the book down on the bar. “Let me help you guys load a few things, and then I’d better head out.”

“We’re going to end up taking her case, aren’t we?” Dallas asked.

“Maybe,” Tyler said. The look Zoe had sent him when she told him thank you flashed in his head. “Show me some furniture that needs carrying out. You aren’t going to have me long.”

Zoe sat at her kitchen table with her lunch—a bag of carrots and a bowl of ranch dressing—and her computer in front of her. She leaned her elbow on the table, and it wobbled. Looking under the table, she toe-kicked the piece of folded newspaper back under the table’s right leg.

Not that she expected much from the prefurnished one-bedroom rental. She’d been fortunate to find one at
all. Still the bland, run-down place and furniture did make her long for her own apartment. Her place in Alabama wasn’t anything grand, but it was cozy, colorful, and filled with things that belonged to her. She’d never thought of herself as materialistic, but she missed her things. Stupid things, like the bright red throw pillows her mother had made her, her favorite frying pan, and her microwave that had the perfect popcorn setting on it.

Glancing over at the stain-spotted sofa, she frowned. She never sat on the piece of furniture because it looked… filthy, and for some reason every time she looked at it, she imagined some hairy, heavyset couch potato stretched out with half his dinner spilled on the sofa. Hence the stains.

Refocusing on the computer, she finished reading another article on Tyler Lopez and frowned. “How could they do that to him?” Zoe muttered, feeling angry at a system that could have convicted someone for something they didn’t do. He’d been a cop, and it sounded like the whole police force had turned their backs on him and his two partners.

As soon as Tyler had left, Zoe got on Dixie’s computer and downloaded all the files she could find about Tyler Lopez and his case. Hey, he’d Googled her, so it was only fair. Only difference was, she wasn’t laughing at what she read. Just the opposite—her heart hurt for the man.

She reached for a carrot and dipped it in dressing. “Seriously. I hope he sued the state.” Her cat meowed at her feet as if certain Zoe had been talking to him. And hey, it was probably better than the idea of her rambling on to herself.

The feline leaped up onto the table, something that he seldom did. “Can you believe that even after all that, he’s
still a nice guy?” She munched on the carrot and watched Lucky poke his face into the dressing.

He yanked his orange face back, squinted his one eye, and stuck his tongue half out, making a comment about what he thought of her menu.

She grinned and gave him a scratch behind his bobbed ear. “I told you it wasn’t ice cream.” Lucky moved in, sniffed her half-eaten carrot, and then rubbed his face against her cheek. “I’ll share if you really want it.” She sighed and leaned into his soft affection. Considering he was all she had, she treated him more like a family member than a pet. Perhaps it wasn’t completely emotionally healthy, but she suspected she wasn’t the only person in the world whose pets were their best friends. Besides, how could she not love such a brave little fighter?

When she’d seen the news about the kitten that had been trapped in a burning building, and was severely burned but refused to die, she’d been one of about ten cat lovers who’d showed up at the vet offering to help pay his vet bills.

Within a year, Zoe had lost her mother, her boyfriend, and her twenty-one-year-old cat Henry, and had discovered her birth certificate, causing her to question everything she knew about herself and her parents. The kitten’s spirit had been just what Zoe needed to focus on. And after visiting the cat almost three times a week for two months, Dr. Shoemaker had asked her if she wanted to take Lucky, a name given to the kitten by local press, home. Zoe had jumped at the offer. She’d been lucky to get Lucky.

“I have one more article to look at and I’ll get your paté,” she told the feline as she dipped her carrot into the dressing again.

The last article had a picture of Tyler. His warm brown eyes stared from the computer screen, and Zoe remembered how her heart had taken flight when she’d shaken his hand. The crazy thing was that she actually thought she’d seen some of the same feeling in his expression. Not that anything could ever come of it.

She had a microwave waiting for her in Alabama.

Her heart did a small lurch when her cell phone rang. She couldn’t help but think that it might be Tyler. Then again, he’d said it would be Monday or Tuesday. Still she didn’t waste any time answering the call.

“Hello?” Something akin to giddiness sounded in her voice.

Silence reigned for a moment, and then…

“Let me spell it out for you,” a gravelly voice said. “Leave town now or die, bitch!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
YLER HELPED CART OUT
the larger pieces of furniture to the moving van. While everyone joked and laughed, his mind stayed on Zoe Adams. And not just on how sexy she looked, or how he’d been so damn eager to make her smile. He started listing questions in his head about her possible case. Was someone really threatening her to force her to leave town? Why? Was it someone in the Bradford family who didn’t want to share the old man’s inheritance? Or did the threat stem from someone who was involved with the kidnapping?

Then came the big question. If the girl they found dead all those years ago wasn’t Caroline Bradford, who was she? Had the same person who kidnapped Caroline killed the other kid? Supposing of course that Zoe was Caroline Bradford, instead of an eerie lookalike.

The more he thought about why someone might want to get rid of Zoe, the more eager he was to get back to her. Then he tried to recall what he had learned in the ten minutes he’d watched of the damn show that started it all. The child’s body had been burned according to the
authorities. Cause of death had been listed as violent. It hadn’t been pretty. Remembering he had Zoe’s cell number, relief went straight to his solar plexus. He took a break and gave her a call.

The phone rang four times and then went to voice mail. He left a message and asked her to call him back. When his phone didn’t immediately ring with her return call, he grew more concerned.

Looking up the diner’s number, he called and asked to speak to her. He was informed that Zoe had left work an hour ago. He gave his name and was about to ask for Zoe’s home address when the waitress said she couldn’t talk. She hung up.

Shit!

He dialed back, but no one answered. After a quick, almost-rude good-bye to Dallas and the others, Tyler headed back to the diner. As he drove, Zoe’s smile flashed in his head again, and he found himself pushing the speed limit. He just hoped the knot in his gut was the
huevos rancheros
and not a foreshadowing of something bad.

When he got to the diner, the parking lot was full, so he had to park on the street. He walked inside and sought out Dixie.

“Hey.” He stopped beside her and a table of three women. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

She gestured to her customers. “I’m kind of busy here.”

“Yeah, but I promise only to take a minute.”

“Let me get this order,” she said.

He looked over at the table where Zoe had spilled a tray full of food on him, and her smile filled his mind. Looking back at Dixie casually conversing with her customers, his patience snapped.

“Okay, I’ve waited long enough,” he said. “I need to know Zoe’s home address. Now.”

Her eyes widened, and she led him away from the table. “Why would you think I’d give it to you? That girl never dropped a French fry until you showed up. You walk in and say something to her, make her so nervous that she slings plates of food everywhere.”

“I’ll pay for the expense,” he said.

“I don’t give a crap about the money—it’s her I’m worried about.”

“That makes two of us.”

Dixie’s expression grew hard. “Look here, buster. I know all about you and what some people think you did.”

Tyler felt the punch straight to his gut. He ought to be used to people’s reaction by now, but it still surprised him. “Then you also know I was exonerated. Look, she’s not answering her phone and I’m worried about her.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“I think she would. She trusted me enough to talk to me this morning.”

Another waitress walked by. “Zoe seems to be the popular girl of the day,” she said as if she’d been listening in on the conversation. “She’s had two people calling for her.”

“I called once,” Tyler said. “Who was the other person?”

“He didn’t say. But he hung up as soon as I told him she would be getting off in an hour.”

“Does she usually have anyone calling for her?” Tyler looked to Dixie.

“No.” Worry made the wrinkles in the older woman’s face deepen. “The girl’s a loner. She doesn’t know anyone in town.”

His gut tightened even more. Logic told him he might be overreacting, but instinct told him differently. His stomach clenched harder. It definitely wasn’t the
huevos rancheros
. “I want her address and I want it now.”

Tyler called Zoe at least four more times while he drove, all of which went to voice mail. It only made him drive faster. He knew where the high-ticketed spots were for the Glencoe PD, and he avoided them. Getting closer to the address Dixie had given him, he recognized the neighborhood as one that had the highest crime rates on this side of town. Why was Zoe living here? Was she hoping to become a statistic?
Gorgeous redheaded Alabamian falls prey to Texas crime.

He turned onto her street and slammed on his brakes when he caught an address. Half a block down the road he found it. Her place was actually a run-down house turned into run-down apartments. He actually remembered a suspect he’d investigated once who lived here a few years back. The place had been a pigsty then.

He parked in the street, and the tightness in his chest lessened when he saw her car. But the hair on the back of his neck stood up as if someone was watching him. Looking around, he reached into his shirt and released his shoulder holster.