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“You’re late with your payment.”

Jesus Christ. They were working for his supplier over the border. “I don’t believe this shit. I’ve got to have time to sell the product.”

“That’s not how it works.” The bigger of the two goons got in his face.

“You tell Bedier…” Jackson started to say, but the goon slugged him hard in the gut.

It dropped him to his knees. Pain short-circuited everything in his brain and body. He retched up his jelly doughnut and struggled to breathe. He’d kill them for this. He’d kill all of them.

“Half upon order.” The big goon followed up with a short kick to his face.

Fireworks exploded behind his eyes. Jackson rocked back, clutching his broken nose.

“And the other half upon delivery.” The next kick was to his groin.

Black and red colors hammered into his brain. He couldn’t breathe. He was nothing but a streak of misery. He was going to pass out. He was going to die. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a tortured moan. Coiling into a fetal position, Jackson rocked back and forth trying to ease the screaming agony that battered into him with every breath.

“The goods were delivered last week. Where’s the money?”

“I’ll…” Jackson tried to suck in air. Tried to talk around the blood that was streaming down his throat.

“You’ll wire it by this afternoon, or we’ll be back. We won’t be as agreeable as we are now,” the smaller of the two goons said, sweeping a hand across Jackson’s desk and knocking everything on the floor. “Do better next time. Or it will be the last shipment you ever get.”

“The last shipment you’ll be alive to get,” the bigger goon clarified. They kicked him a few more times to make sure he got the message.

As Jackson shook on the floor, the two goons rifled through the rest of his office. They took his personal stash of blow and all the money in his wallet and in his special drawer in his desk.

“This is for our trouble,” the smaller man said, fanning the bills out and waving them at Jackson. “It doesn’t cover what you owe Bedier.”

And then they thankfully left, closing the door behind them.

Needless to say, when Dolly Keller walked in a few minutes later, he wasn’t in any condition for a blow job. And her piercing scream was like a nail through his eye.

Chapter Fourteen

Nash

Nash woke uplate and glared bleary-eyed around his motel room. He had liked the cozy feel of home, sleeping in Dolly’s bed in her Winnebago. He hadn’t liked that she still didn’t trust him about what was going on with her. Last year, Nash would have put her on the suspects list because she knew something about the rodeo that she was keeping a secret. He hated to admit it, but her past as an escort might have even colored his opinion a bit.

Except over the past year, he had gotten to know her. She was a good person and she genuinely wanted to succeed in her job. That put her on Shelby’s side and so Nash was willing to give her time to come to him. But he was suspicious about what she was hiding. Maybe her future brother-in-law, Shane, wasn’t as on the up-and-up as he should have been.

It gutted him that being with Dolly might be a big mistake. Her default was to spin things and work around the rules. His was the exact opposite. He thought he could bend a little about that, but he couldn’t. While he realized she might not be ready to tell him that she used to be an escort, she should be able to be honest with him about the investigation they were working on.

He needed her for Laredo, to be his cover while he looked into what the stock suppliers were bringing into the rodeo. She could get him into the back areas and then distract everyone with her smoke and mirror social media show.

Rocky Ridge was coming in from Canada. Jaripeo was coming in from Mexico. And Viking was in the United States. Nash couldn’t rule any of them out. And out of all of them, Dollyhad a stake in keeping Nash away from Shane and the Viking Ranch.

His phone rang just as he had finished checking out of the motel.

“Hey, Shelby,” he said. “I’m heading off to Laredo.” He needed to get the lay of the land before the stock suppliers headed into the rodeo grounds this weekend.

“Actually, I need you to come here. To Dallas. To my office. Right now.”

Shelby was talking fast and he could hear the panic in her voice.

“What’s going on? Did Blevins do something?”

“You need to be here for a meeting at ten.”