Page 14 of Austin (The K9 Files #29)

“And if something happens to you?” Austin asked.

She paled, pinched her lips together, and whispered, “I have a will myself, and mine says that everything I have… goes to my husband first, then to Rox second,” Amie shared. “Except for a few things in a trust fund that I set up for Chris, he gets nothing else.”

“Did you ever turn over his trust to him?” Austin asked.

“No,” Amie said, shaking her head. “It was supposed to take effect when he turns thirty-five, but I changed the age because it seems as if he’s always been on the brink of problems.”

“Are you sure you didn’t tell him at some point about this trust?”

“I might have.” She shrugged. “At one point I realized that he should be mature enough to handle it, and I was really afraid of the outcome.”

“Even though you say he doesn’t know about it, I’m not sure we can trust that. Over all these years, it would have been so easy to say something, like, Oh, honey, it’ll be okay. You’ll be taken care of, not to worry .”

She flushed at that and then nodded. “I can see myself telling him something like that, particularly when he was being difficult, but I certainly wouldn’t have taken anything away from Rox.”

“No, but she was already well covered with the larger share and the controlling interest in the ranch, per Jake’s will, so, unless Chris got everything else, it would appear to him as if he wasn’t getting his full share again. When did you change the age on the trust fund?”

She frowned and sighed. “Gosh, I don’t know. It was after you left. Soon after one of the times Chris and Jake got so riled about everything,” she shared.

“So, in the last few years?”

“No, wait,” she corrected, “not that long ago. It was this last year.”

“You mean, when all this trouble started on the ranch?”

She frowned and then slowly and reluctantly nodded. “That’s possible, yes.”

Austin continued. “So, we have an angry son, who’s only getting a minor share of the ranch from his stepdad, was expecting to get a trust fund that you had set up from your own inheritance, I presume?”

She nodded. “From my family, yes.”

“Money that you surely could have used when you were a single parent, but you set aside for him?”

She nodded again.

“So, now he finds out that you’ve changed the age on his trust, and he has to wait how many more years?”

“I changed it to forty,” she replied. “So, in theory, he still has to go another ten years from now.”

“So, you did it just before he was about to turn thirty?” he asked, feeling his own incredulity kicking in.

She winced and nodded. “Yes.”

“So had you changed it before?”

She nodded, rubbing her face. “Yes, I kept thinking he would grow up.”

“So, each time he got closer to getting that trust, you’ve changed the age.”

She stared at him, tears coming to her eyes, as she slowly nodded. “Oh my God, I did this, didn’t I?”

“It doesn’t matter who did what at this point.

The problem though is that, in Chris’s mind, he’s probably now taking it all to mean that he’ll never get anything.

While we don’t know for sure how he handled it or what he actually knows, but, if you dangled that carrot once or twice and then pulled it away from him, that combined with finding out he’s not the heir apparent to Jake’s ranch, we have a very angry man who had expectations that have now been taken from him. ”

Amie slumped deeper into her chair, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“I did it because he was being so irrational,” she explained.

“I didn’t want him to just take that money and to blow through it.

It’s not a lot of money, but it’s enough that would have set him up nicely, if only he would be responsible with it. ”

“That’s the thing about trust funds though,” Austin noted. “You hand them out, but you don’t get to dictate what people do with it.”

She bit her lip and nodded. “The lawyer did say something like that to me, but he also told me it was my money, and I can do what I wanted with it,” she told them.

“I didn’t want my son to just blow it all.

His friends are rough. I thought that he was using drugs, and I just didn’t want it to go by the wayside. ”

Austin nodded in understanding. “Oh, I get it. I totally understand, but I highly doubt that Chris did.”

“No, he didn’t.” She nodded. “He was pretty angry when he came to me, asking how much money was in his trust and when he would get it. That was when he was turning twenty-five, and I told him that I’d raised it to thirty, and he was beyond angry,” she explained.

“Then, when he got close to thirty, I realized he wouldn’t change, so I raised it again, and yes,” she admitted, “if I need to, I will raise it again.”

“I’m surprised the lawyers have it set up that way,” Austin noted.

“It’s a different kind of a trust,” she said, “and I don’t even know if trust is the right word for it, but he was supposed to get this chunk of money when I deemed him suitable.”

“And you haven’t deemed him suitable?”

“No,” she stated defiantly. “He’s just been hell on wheels, and getting that money would not benefit him at all.”

Austin didn’t say anything for a moment and just sat back and nodded. “I don’t have any kids, so I can’t imagine. But one of the things I do know is that the minute you try to dictate what they do with anything, it’s enough to mess things up on a pretty big scale,” he shared.

“Which apparently is what you think I’ve done,” Amie said, staring at him. The tears were still in her eyes, but so was that hard glare of a woman who had been through tough times and had come out the other side and wasn’t prepared to give an inch.

He smiled at her and replied, “It’s your money, and, in retrospect, it would have been better to not tell him about it, and he could have gotten it if and when you ever felt he was ready to have it.

If you didn’t want to give it to him, it would come to him at your deathbed, if that’s how you wanted to dole it out.

This way, it’s more like, if you behave yourself, we’ll give it to you.

However, if you don’t, we’re not . Since Chris was already a pretty angry man, it’s likely been just enough to fuel that fire. ”

“Even if it is him,” Rox jumped in, unable to stay silent any longer, “that still doesn’t explain what he’s doing and what he’s planning.”

“No, it doesn’t, but he is planning something, and it’s all about revenge.

I thought maybe it was revenge against Jake, but it could very easily be revenge against all of you.

You because you exist,” he said, pointing to Rox, “and I know that’s not fair, but that doesn’t really matter when you’re as angry as Chris is.

Because of what Amie’s been doing with this trust money, and Jake because he wants the ranch to stay whole and to remain in his family’s bloodline, all just makes Chris angrier and angrier. ”

Rox groaned. “So, we are all on his hit list.”

“We don’t know if there even is a hit list. All of this is wrapped up for a fire that anybody close to him could very easily set off.

What I don’t know is what they have planned.

That’s what we have to figure out before he gets a chance to put those plans into motion,” Austin said, “and I need to find out if it has anything to do with Cowboy.”

“What could it possibly have to do with him?” Amie asked, staring at him. “Chris doesn’t even like animals.”

“I know, but what does Rox really love?”

“Animals,” Amie muttered, without even thinking about it.

“So how can Chris hurt Rox the most?” Austin asked.

At that, both of them winced.

Austin nodded. “Now the question is whether he’s done something to hurt that animal, in which case that’ll set off a whole different level of anger on my side. Or did he just take Cowboy, making sure you suffer”—he pointed to Rox—“and that is something else altogether.”

“It doesn’t make any sense that he would go to all this trouble,” Rox murmured.

“Maybe not, but it could also mean that he was a prime target for somebody else, who might have something else in mind. If Chris has no money, how is he making any? Jake mentioned he was just working part time, but is he working full time now?”

“I don’t know,” Amie murmured. “That’s something we’ll need to find out.”

He nodded. “In that case I guess that’s where I’m going next,” Austin announced. “I need to make a few phone calls and also a few visits in town. I’ll be gone for a good share of the day, and then I’ll head back out and see what I can find out about where Cowboy went.”

“You really think you’ll find anything?” Rox asked, staring at him. “It’s been weeks.”

“Yeah, it’s been weeks, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence somewhere along the line,” he stated, “and, if it’s there,… I’ll find it.”

Rox knew better than to doubt Austin, and if anything good could come from any of this, it was that he was back, at least for the moment.

He had always been the kind of person who, when he said he would do something, he would do it.

Whether you liked it or not, he was there, and he would follow through.

The trouble was, all too often nobody really liked what he had to do, including him, but he never shirked that duty, and, like her, always stepped up to the plate and did what he needed to do.

Now, for the first time, she wondered at how crazy and lost her life had been since he had walked.