I gritted my teeth and one by one uncurled my fingers from around the throttle. “We both know someone found those guys and sent them on a mission to give me a beat down. Someone called in that bogus call to you so that you were out of town and set this in motion. This is all tied to the stuff that’s been happening since Dixie and I left Denver.”

“I agree, but I still don’t think it tracks with a vendetta drug dealer might have with towards you.”

“Then what? I didn’t piss anyone else off in Denver except for a few drunks that got handsy with some of the ladies. I put the fear of God into an abusive boyfriend of one of the cocktail servers but he’s locked up now as well. So who could it be?”

Jules chuckled and reached out a hand so that he could grab my shoulder. He gave me a little shake and looked at me with lifted eyebrows. “You’re smart, Dash, so think it through. If you didn’t piss someone off in Denver and the trouble followed you from there then it must be the other person with the unseen adversary. Dixie is a sweetheart, but that doesn’t mean the whole world is in love with her. We all have skeletons, even if hers are pink and fluffy.”

I couldn’t imagine Dixie having any kind of enemy. She was everyone’s best friend. She was the constant cheerleader and sun that never stopped shining. “I’ll ask her. I doubt she’s got skeletons, pink or otherwise, but something’s gotta give before someone ends up dead.”

“I agree. I’m taking your brother to get him checked out and then dropping him off at the house.” He looked at me over his shoulder with a smirk. “That was a good call with the tape. Those are instincts not everyone has. You know that if you stick around we could always use another deputy on the force. You have more training than most of my guys and since you started off as an MP in the service all you would have to do is take the state’s test and do the physical.”

I stared at him for a long minute and then shook my head. “You didn’t want me to be a soldier but you’re okay with me being a cop?”

He gave a shrug as he stopped at the door of his patrol car. “What father doesn’t want his son to follow in his footsteps? I’m gonna send a cruiser out to Sassy’s. I’ll let you know when we round up the suspects, though something tells me you’re going to find them first. Make good choices, son.”

I stared after the car for a long minute until it was gone from sight. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to fire the Harley to life and go exact justice for my brother. My muscles were tense, my jaw was clenched, and my heart was beating so fast that it was all I could hear. I was used to letting my family down. I was comfortable doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. I promised Dalen I would show the fuck up and that was exactly what I was going to do.

Dixie

I got Elma home without further incident. Getting the wheelchair inside took a little finessing and some muscle but I managed it. I made a mental note to ask Church if he was handy with a hammer and a saw because she was going to need a ramp to help her navigate coming in and out of the house until she was healed enough to use the walker. Once I had her comfortable on the surprisingly chic leather couch (no giant cabbage flowers or pastel prints for Elma Mae) with all her recorded shows fired up on a flat screen I knew most men would be envious of, I went to work finishing the laundry that had caused her tumble in the first place.

After I had that easy chore handled, I discovered that the hand rail leading up the stairs was loose, another thing I was putting on Church’s list of things to look at, and I asked for a rundown of other things I could help her with while we waited on Church to get back. He’d sent a message that Dalen was with Jules and that the cop had gone all kinds of protective parent and insisted the younger Churchill get his head checked out. My brooding biker was on his way back home now, and I could tell that Elma was excited to finally get some time with him.

She asked me to organize all the food that people from the community had brought by and stocked her fridge with. There was no way she was going to get to it all before it went bad, so she asked me to find something that would feed all of us, plus the nurse that was coming in and staying with her for dinner, and divvy up the rest and freeze it. She also asked me to water her flowers in the yard and to bring all the stuff she would need that was upstairs in her master bedroom downstairs since there was no way she was making that trip until the brace came off. Her kitchen was something that would leave even the Barefoot Contessa impressed, so it was no chore to bop around the fancy marble countertops and stainless steel appliances.

I left something that looked like a giant dish of lasagna in the fridge for dinner and then made my way outside to tackle the flowers as the sun was going down. Being from the city and living in an apartment most of my adult life I’d never had a garden. We were lucky to have a small square of grass in our front yard to play on when we were kids, so Elma Mae’s sprawling, lush landscape was like something out of a fairy tale. I had no problem picturing Alice and the Mad Hatter at tea amongst the flowers and fauna. I spent more time touching the velvety soft petals and smelling the fragrant blooms while daydreaming about the perfect intimate garden wedding than I did actually watering the plants. It was so very easy to get lost in all the wonderful things Church’s home had to offer that I couldn’t imagine how hurt and how scared he must have been to leave it all behind without a backwards glance. I knew he would hate it, but it made me feel sorry for him. He was absolutely right that there was a lot of goodness here to turn your back on.