Page 13 of Austin (The K9 Files #29)

“Sure, I do,” he stated, “and I also remembered as soon as I saw him last night that he was always heavily influenced by those around him, and that is unfortunate. He’s older than you by what?” He frowned as he thought about it. “Four, five years?”

“Five.” She nodded. “Yet, if he’s dealing with people like those at Rusty’s Pub, where women are seen as next to nothing and shouldn’t even be allowed to own property,… I can only imagine how that may have screwed with his head.”

“Got to love that sexist attitude still hanging on out there,” Austin muttered, with a headshake, “and you’re right. It’ll just keep firing up that resentment. One, you’re female, and two, he’s the elder son.”

Rox grimaced. “Yeah, it’s got to be something like that.”

“What about his dad?” Austin asked.

“No idea, I’ve never really met him.”

He looked at her in surprise. “All this time living with Chris, and you haven’t met his dad?”

“Not really. Seen him at a distance once or twice, picking up or dropping off Chris. Remember that Chris lived with his father for a time, but it didn’t seem like that extended visitation went that well.

Chris came back with a bad attitude, and, as far as I know, he’s not in contact with his father now. ”

“Yet it’s quite possible that he’s getting fed something dysfunctional along that line from somebody, so we have to take a closer look at who those somebodies are.”

She snorted. “Anybody in town who’s feeling as if they’re hard done by,” she suggested, “that’s who.”

“Maybe, and it could just be this group of friends I just met, especially if—what was his name? Todd? If this guy Todd was cut out of his inheritance or just feels like it because his uncle is now running the family business, then it really could be just angry men sitting around with no jobs, keeping each other stirred up. I hate to say it, but they can be quite dangerous.”

“Yeah, so we’ve noticed,” Rox noted sarcastically.

Austin turned to her. “You know, Rox. You can cut out the attitude at any time. I came here to solve the War Dog problem, and I can just do that and leave, or I can stand by and try to help out,” he clarified, and enough hardness filled his tone for her to shift back.

“But, either way, I’m really not into facing arguments and bad attitudes all the time.

” And, with that, Austin got up, refilled his coffee, and sat back down again.

Jake looked at him, over at his daughter, then shrugged and interjected, “You guys need to work this out. We tried so hard back then, and it didn’t do a damn bit of good. You still left.”

“I left because I was given an ultimatum,” Austin reminded them both, “and I didn’t like it.”

“You didn’t take the ultimatum very well.” Jake nodded glumly.

“We all suffered for that too,” Austin declared, “but, right now, that is not the foremost problem in my world.”

Jake said, “You guys will either make it or you won’t. Then you’ll get divorced, and maybe she’ll move on. I don’t know, and I don’t care. We invested heavily the first time around, but I don’t think we’ll do it again.”

She stared at her father, and Austin could see the hurt in her eyes. Yet he understood. They’d all been really close and the separation, as it had happened, had hurt a lot of people. At the same time, Austin also understood that Rox had probably paid a much higher price than she had ever intended.

He turned his attention back to the problem at hand. “Does Chris have access to everything on the ranch?”

Jake growled at him. “As in what? We’ve got cattle out there in open pastures.”

“Is he an animal lover or an animal hater?”

“Neither. I think he considered the animals a paycheck,” Jake replied. “Other than that,… he didn’t really have a whole lot to do with them.”

“You’re not having any rustling issues, so what problem could Chris possibly have, and does he have any legal leg to stand on?”

“Legal?” Jake eyed him in surprise. “I don’t think he’s got any legal standing at all. Why would you say that?”

“Because the other guy—Stubby, aka Todd—appeared to be the leader, and I had my boss look him up. He’s the son of a lawyer,… and he’s actually quietly doing his own legal work.”

“Legal work?” Jake repeated. “One of the group with Chris?”

Austin nodded. “The one who left first, Todd, as soon as he found out Chris and I were still family.”

At that, Jake sat back, clearly confused. “It’s not as if I have anything that Chris could challenge in some way,” he muttered. “Yes, there’s a will, but it’s filed with the lawyer—a good lawyer at that. He passed away not very long ago, and that was upsetting, but… age will do that.”

“What happened to the will then?” Austin asked.

“What do you mean?” Jake asked.

“Who is looking after your legal matters now?”

“Another law firm in town. Why?”

“Because I’m a little worried that there might be some legal finagling going on. I just need to know that you have that will locked down, safe and secure, that it still says what you want it to say.”

At that, Jake hopped to his feet, gave him a hard look, then took off to his home office.

Rox looked over at Austin, frowning. “They can’t really do anything about that, can they?”

“It depends on whether they’re planning on killing your father or not,” Austin shared in a low tone, “and believe me that your father got that message pretty-damn fast.”

“Jesus,” she muttered, “I don’t want that to happen.”

“None of us do,” Austin said. “I don’t know to what extent any of this can be done legally or with so much finagling that it’ll be tied up in the courts for a long time.

Meanwhile, they could be up to something.

It all sounds far-fetched, I know, but it depends on how much Chris really thinks he’s owed this ranch. ”

“He’s not owed anything,” she stated, staring at him. “I’m not owed anything. It’s my father’s family’s inheritance, and his legacy to do with as he chooses. None of us are owed any part of it.”

“I understand, and that’s part of the problem. Maybe Chris somehow had this expectation all along. I just don’t know where he would have got it from.”

At that, a tired and worn-out voice came from the doorway. “From me probably.”

He turned to see Amie, standing in the doorway. She used to get massive migraines, and it looked as if she had one coming on right now. He helped her to a chair and asked, “And why is that?”

“Because he always wanted to play farmer, and he always wanted to play rancher, and we used to joke about it all being his someday,” Amie explained, “but he was just a little child at the time. Rox hadn’t even been born, and Jake’s grandfather was still alive.”

“So, maybe, somewhere along the line in those early years, he got this idea in his head that someday it would all be his?” Austin asked.

“But it was just a game we played,” she whispered, “and it would never have involved hurting anybody.”

“Unless he believed he wasn’t getting what he thought he deserved.”

“Depends on who he is influenced by at the moment. I don’t like anything about this conversation,” she whispered, wiping a hand across her forehead. “It never occurred to me that my son would feel this way about his stepdad, who took him in and who did so much for him.”

“But, in Chris’s mind, you also had another child, and he lost out because of it.”

Amie snorted at that. “Welcome to life. We’ve all lost out on various things we would have liked to have had go differently. That’s just life.”

“Would Chris’s father have reinforced that he’s lost out feeling?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, Chris’s biological father was very much a person who believed the world owed him everything,” she murmured.

She looked back over at Rox. “Remember when Chris came back from his father’s that one time?

All Chris could talk about was how his dad would buy him a new motorbike, so he would have the best motorbike on the place? ”

Rox frowned at that, as if trying to search out the memory, then her face cleared as she remembered. “I do remember that, and then the bike never showed up, and Chris was devastated.”

“Exactly. And that was his father, through and through. He used to make big promises and then never follow through with any of them.”

“What ended up happening?” Austin asked.

“Honestly, Jake bought him one, a really nice one. No, not better than everybody else’s, but something that would work nicely for here, for this land and for this space,” she clarified.

“I just don’t think Chris ever really understood that he wouldn’t get everything he was always expecting and demanding.

I mean, none of us do. Yet Chris saw it as a consolation prize for having lost his father and for being second best to Rox somehow. ”

“He wasn’t ever second best though,” Rox stated painfully. “Is all this about me? Is he focused on hurting me because of all this?”

“Quite possibly, yes,” Austin stated, looking at her. “If you’re the one who’s inheriting the bulk of it, then it’s quite possible that’s what it’s all about.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Amie wailed, as she continued to massage her temples. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“And yet, in his childish mind, he might have very well been thinking that he is now family and that he does deserve to have a full share, at least equal to Rox’s.”

“But he’s demanding it all, which is total nonsense. And after all this,… no way he’ll be getting anything because of the way he’s acting,” Amie said, staring at him, “so that makes even less sense.”

“Depends on if… depends on what their plans are.… I know it’s far-fetched, and I don’t even want to bring it up because we haven’t gotten very far down this pathway.

Also we don’t know just how dedicated Chris and his buddies are.

But, considering whatever trouble is happening, what if neither Rox nor Jake were still around to inherit anything? ”

Amie frowned. “Everything goes to me, and I don’t know whether the will’s been changed or not, but it still won’t go to Chris.”