Lone Star Protector by Lenora Worth

Author:Lenora Worth
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Romance, Contemporary, Contemporary Romance
ISBN: 9780373445400
Publisher: Steeple Hill
Published: 2013-06-01T05:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Slade was in an almost good mood.

Rudy Hampton had copped a plea. He still had to pay child support, but resisting an officer and possession of a controlled substance had been dropped. Since he’d had well under twenty grams of marijuana, dropping those two had been the easy part.

Getting Rudy to talk had been the hard part. He was deathly afraid of someone.

“If you so much as breathe in a fume from weed, you will be arrested, and next time, you won’t get away so easily,” Slade had told him.

Rudy only wanted to get out and get away. He’d be on probation for a few months, and Slade had even offered to help him find a job. But for now, Slade would settle for the information Rudy had given him.

“Somebody wanted to borrow my van,” Rudy explained. “My friend offered me a lot of money to rent it out for a couple of days.”

“Who was this friend?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Rudy, I can’t agree to this plea if you don’t give me the goods.”

“Okay, okay, man. He went by the name D.J. And…he’s really not a friend. Just some guy I met in a bar.”

“D.J.? No last name?”

“I didn’t ask, man. He told me—after I’d agreed to loan out my van for a couple of grand—that his boss would come looking for me if I told anyone.”

“So you kept your mouth shut?”

“That’s right, sir. I pocketed the money and rode a bike to work and back for about a week. I began to wonder if I’d ever see my van again. I’d just bought the thing a couple of months ago. Just now got the title and insurance all straightened out.”

“Where’d you buy it?”

“One of those factory places. They were replacing all their old black vans with new green ones.”

That got Slade’s attention. He jotted down some notes. “What was the company?”

“Bug Busters. Over in that town near the border.” He named the other town. “They said they’d sold several of the vans to one person.”

Slade’s pulse lurched. “Interesting.”

“Not to me. I wish I’d never agreed to loan out my van to anyone. I needed the money, though.”

“And then today they brought it back?”

“Yeah, today. But D.J. offered me an extra five hundred to do a little more work.”

“And what was that?”

“Follow that truck I found today.”

“You mean the Ford that was broken down on the road out of town—near the Lost Woods?”

“Yep.”

“Did you do anything to the old Ford before you followed it?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t do a thing. I just found the truck where D.J. said it would be.”

“So you didn’t happen to siphon any gas out of that truck?”

“Huh?”

Slade could almost understand someone hiring Rudy to do grunt work. The kid didn’t have a clue.

“Did it ever occur to you to find out why you were being paid to let someone use your van or to follow that truck?”

“I know not to ask any questions. Like I said…I needed the money, man.

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