Page 38 of Hideaway Whirlwind (Big Boys of Berenson Trucking #4)
Sheriff grouses and takes his cowboy hat off, throwing it sideways like a Frisbee toward his cruiser parked in the grass, his tires having chewed up Russell’s dead lawn. “I knew it,” he says, pointing at me and hustling up the porch. “Step aside.”
“You’re not coming in here without a warrant,” Russell says, feet braced wide.
“Here’s your warrant.” Sheriff gives my brother the middle finger before he muscles his way inside.
I reach for my shotgun, but Russell stops me with a quick, discreet shake of his head.
Sheriff points to the back of the house. “Someone let Green in before he breaks the da–ang glass.” He waves to the side door. “Lopez, too.”
Harold hurries to flip the back door’s lock, letting in Cooke’s fiancé, Deputy Joshua Green, whom she became engaged to shortly after Layla and Russell got hitched.
Green gives his bride-to-be a waggle of his brows, lifting them toward his tightly coiled black hair, when Cooke follows Sheriff deeper into the living room, keeping me within sight at all times—until she invariably scowls with annoyance at her fiancé.
Paul opens the side door for the new Deputy Daniela Lopez, whom I haven’t officially met. I’d guess she hadn’t heard about my reputation just yet, but the way she immediately narrows her focus on me tells me I’m wrong in my assumption.
“Aww, who’s this little puppy?” Green asks in a baby voice, distracted by Storm when she lifts her blocky head off the floor. He squats to pet Storm’s side, and thankfully for him, she’s too exhausted to give so much as a snort of warning.
“Are the kids upstairs or with a sitter?” Sheriff asks Layla with a huff, who is sitting on the bottom step of the staircase. An ill-timed thump and ensuing cry from upstairs answers him before any of us can. “Bring ‘em on down,” he says.
Layla looks to Trace at the top of the stairs, who turns and asks Cora and the kids to come out—all except for mine, of course.
“Line ‘em up.” Sheriff shoos them with his hands until the kids are with their respective parents, none of whom have made a peep. “Seems we’re missing a few, ain’t that right, Elliott?”
I fist my hands, my heart rate spiking as the dial is turned up on the static in my head, red blooming at the edges. If he doesn’t want any more trouble , then he shouldn’t come looking for it, because trouble is exactly what he’ll find if he tries to cart my woman and daughter off.
“Calm down, Berenson,” Cooke says, backing away toward Lopez with her hand on her service weapon.
“I am calm,” I bark, cracking my neck side to side, trying to think of a way out of this where I don’t get sent back to prison for shooting an officer or two.
“Bull—” Sheriff coughs. “You tell them to come out here right now.” When I start cracking my knuckles, he says, “I’m giving them to the count of three, and if they’re not down here before I get to zero, I’m going to haul you off on suspicion of—”
“Of what?” Birdie asks, standing at the top of the stairs with Kendall crushed to her front, resting atop her baby bump that’s grown even more obvious in the last few weeks since we met.
Dustin and Sydney poke their heads out from behind her, clutching her legs.
Birdie’s nostrils flare when she glares at Sheriff with disdain. “He’s done nothing wrong.”
Sheriff goes white as a sheet. “Your accent…You’re from out of state?”
Birdie lifts her chin in confirmation.
“You didn’t, by any chance, hitch a ride to Texas with one of the Berenson Trucking boys…say, with Elliott…did you?” he asks, sliding his eyes to me briefly.
“Something like that,” she says, growing impatient with his questioning, continuing to glare.
“And those are your kids?” he asks, mouthing as he counts them.
“They’re ours,” I growl, wanting his eyes on me so he doesn’t look at them too closely.
“Oh, gotdang it all to fudging heck!” Sheriff rushes to unbuckle his duty belt and tosses it to Cooke to catch.
“What are you doing?” Cooke asks uneasily, trying to hand it back, but he won’t take it.
“I told them last time I can’t take any more.” Sheriff roughly yanks apart his uniform top, the buttons flying. He balls the material after wrenching it off his shoulders, throwing it at her, too. “Consider this the official start of my retirement. You’re in charge, now. I’m out of here.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Cooke says, her color draining too.
When Sheriff charges through the foyer, she follows him out and yells, “You can’t just leave!
” And when he doesn’t stop to reconsider, leaping off the porch and running to his cruiser, she gives chase, throwing the belt and uniform at Sheriff, but he dodges so that they land with a splat in the muck.
Green slides up next to me with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, then nods at the door. “Uh…I’m gonna go.” He motions to Lopez to follow him, her long, dark brown hair secured in a thick braid past her shoulders. She gives me a withering I’m keeping my eye on you glare when she passes.
When they take off, Russell stands with me at the open door, watching the three deputies try to corral Sheriff between them before Sheriff feints left like he’s the star running back on a football team and flat out starts sprinting down the driveway.
“This town is so weird,” Birdie mutters with evident exhaustion, making me leap out of my skin because I hadn’t heard her come down the stairs.
“Yup. Welcome to our slice of Texas,” Russell says, closing the door and leaning back against it. “Now, what the eff are we going to do?”