The sudden tension in his expression told her more than he probably realized. Clearly, she’d chosen the wrong topic to get Tom talking. Fortunately, she was rescued from the awkward silence by his cell phone ringing. He snatched it from the clip on his belt and answered with a terse, “Dawson.”
Elle turned away to give him some privacy but came to an abrupt halt when she saw the man watching her from the pickup truck parked across the street from the mechanic’s. He looked familiar. But as her mind raced, trying to figure out how she knew the driver, the truck slowly pulled away from the curb and drove off. Not exactly the hallmark of a person trying to avoid being seen, but then, maybe he’d wanted her to see him, wanted her to know he was watching.
Goose bumps prickled her flesh at the thought that it might be the same man who had so viciously slashed her tires. Worse, she finally realized where she’d seen him before. She could’ve sworn that it was one of the Monroes sitting in the driver’s seat. One of Jeb’s sons. At least that’s what she suspected. She couldn’t be certain, but she knew she had seen him in the courtroom during the trial, sitting with the other family members and looking nervous, as if he were on trial himself.
She heaved a sigh and turned back to her ruined tires, frowning at how the rubber had been shredded with such savagery, and wrapped her arms around her torso, suddenly cold in spite of the summer heat.
“I gotta go.”
Tom’s announcement was so abrupt, Elle started at the sound of his voice. She cleared her heart from her throat with a cough before asking, “Everything okay?”
“That was Gabe,” he explained. “He wants us to come back to the hospital. Something about Jeb Monroe paying him a visit.”
She nodded and headed for his Tahoe. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”
“By us I meant us Dawsons,” Tom called after her. “I wasn’t—”
She whirled around to face him, cutting him off. “I’m not letting you Dawson boys sideline me just because I don’t have a badge,” she snapped. “I was there yesterday, Tom. Remember? And it’s because of me that Gabe is lying in that hospital bed now.”
Tom gave her a sympathetic look. “We put our lives on the line every day, Elle,” he told her. “We knew the risks when we chose this career. You can’t blame yourself for what happened to Gabe.”
“I’m not blaming myself,” she insisted. “I’m stating the facts. And here’s another fact for you—I’m going to nail that bastard Jeb Monroe to the wall when we prove he’s behind this.”
*
Jeb Monroe slid the sharpening stone slowly along the blade of his hunting knife, studying the gleaming edge of the steel, searching for any pits that needed to be ground out. It was the fourth such knife he’d sharpened that day. And it was completely unnecessary—he kept his weapons in immaculate condition, as his father had taught him. But it helped relieve the ache that had settled in the center of his chest.
Mark is dead.
The horrible truth echoed over and over again in the cavernous depth of his soul. His eldest son. His right hand. The man who would’ve inherited the farmland that had been passed down in their family since the first Monroes had settled there over two hundred years before.
He heaved a sorrowful sigh. He had three other sons who would be eager to carry on the family name, the family legacy. But they weren’t Mark. Weren’t his courageous, brave boy who’d been willing to give his life in the fight for freedom against a tyrannical government.
The hole his absence left could never be filled. But Jeb was damned well going to try. The first steps toward filling that hole had already been put in place with his visit to that bastard Gabe Dawson.
The arrogant pretty boy had thought he was untouchable because of who his father was. But Mark had proved otherwise. Now that little shit was scared. Jeb had seen it in his eyes. He’d seen that look before, in the eyes of other men who’d looked into the face of death and had seen their sins staring back at them. Gabe Dawson was no different. And the pretty little whore who had prosecuted his son Derrick would pay her own price. He’d sent his son Jeremy to deliver that message.
Jeb slid the stone down the edge of the blade again, the soft scraping oddly comforting.
Oh yes, they’d pay for their transgressions. No one oppressed the Monroes—not the federal agents who had tried to keep his people from running booze during Prohibition, not truant officers who’d tried to make his father send him to school, not the IRS agent who’d darkened his doorstep to try and force him to pay his taxes a year ago.
Most of them had been run off and had eventually given up, seeing they were no match for the Monroes. Only the IRS agent had refused to heed Jeb’s warnings. And now that agent of evil was buried fifty miles west of their property in a little patch of woods. But he wouldn’t be so subtle with the Dawsons. He wanted them to know what was coming, to live in fear, to know whose hand delivered final justice.
Movement in the corner of his eye brought his gaze up briefly, and he saw his only daughter entering the kitchen as quietly as possible so as not to disturb him.