Accidental Knight: A Marriage Mistake Romance(50)

I take a step closer to his side. “We’ve met once. Mr. Briar was at the ranch yesterday.”

The sheriff frowns and turns to Avery. “You didn’t mention that?”

“He was with us,” Mother says. “A simple business call. Regrettably, it was cut short.”

God, I hate how she looks at me, then Drake.

I’m equally disgusted at how she’s so ready to defend him.

She’s never defended me that way.

Of course not. He has what she wants. Money.

I’m just holding the key to what she thinks is already rightfully hers.

“Mind filling us in on what you were doing out at the Reed residence?” Sheriff Wallace asks.

“Trying to make us sell North Earhart Oil to him,” I say, purposefully saying us instead of me.

“That’s hardly the reason we’re here. Frankly, our private discussions don’t seem pertinent to the Dallas police, either. Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, yada-yada-yada.” Mother smiles knowingly as she looks at Avery. “Besides, Mr. Briar’s hardly the guilty one here. He caught the men trying to steal that old horse of Jonah’s.”

My spine goes stiff. Caught them? What?

Drake’s hand presses against my back a little firmer.

“That’s...odd. How’d he know someone tried to steal Edison in the first place?” I wonder out loud.

Drake looks at the sheriff. Sheriff Wallace looks at Avery. My eyes drift to Mom, whose gaze screams, shut up already.

Avery shakes his head. “I didn’t know. Not at the time I apprehended them.” He shrugs. “A black truck nearly ran me right off the road. Must’ve been doing over a hundred miles per hour. I saw that and called 9-1-1, then I chased them down myself.”

Jesus. Has this guy never heard of road rage?

He’s not a small man, but he’s not muscular either, and I’d guess he’s past his prime. Unless he’d been packing a thirty-eight, he wouldn’t have stood a chance against those two men from last night.

An odd tension fills the room. I look up at Drake, and taking advice from his stoic silence, I hold my own.

“Wasn’t that nice of him?” Mom asks, beaming a smile at Avery. “Practically a citizen’s arrest and looking out for our property without even knowing it. Now that’s a man you can trust.”

My stomach flips.

Sheriff Wallace turns to me. “I’ve taken Mr. Briar’s statement, and now we need one from you, Bella. Just tell us what you saw.”

I shrug, racking my brain. “Not much, honestly. It was dark, and Drake sent you the pictures. I went outside to check on Edison, heard him making noises, and that’s when I found them. They were trying to pull him to their truck, I think. So I yelled for Drake and they took off. That’s pretty much it.”

The sheriff doesn’t respond with more than a nod. He turns to Avery again. “Well, we’re all finished with you, Mr. Briar. We’ll be in touch if we need anything else. I’ll have my lovely wife show you out.”

Avery nods, but even though Shelia still holds the door open, he doesn’t move away from the table he’s leaning against. “Please do, Sheriff. I know Jonah was having trouble at the ranch. Petty theft. Trespassers. Property damage. Even a few wild animals, I hear.”

The coldness of his eyes as they settle on me makes me shiver.

Drake’s hand on my back slides around to my side. I lean closer to him, welcoming an invisible safety blanket I can feel wrapping snug. I’ve never felt anything like it before.

“I’m happy to help find who’s responsible,” Avery continues. “It could be someone Jonah thought he knew well. Maybe even trusted.”

I catch his meaning, know who he’s referring to, and it pisses me off.

“Really?” I ask, trying to sound dumb. “An insider? You think that’s likely?”

I can’t believe he thinks he can play me so easy against Drake. He doesn’t have a clue how close I came to turning on him myself.

“It makes perfect sense,” Mother says.

Avery smiles at her before he looks back at me and lifts a single thinning eyebrow.

Creep. His brows are too perfect. They almost remind me of mother’s, which goads me even more.

I’m not in this alone, and she might as well know it. Leaning my shoulder against Drake’s chest, I let them have it. “Thanks, Mr. Briar, for your help. We’ll take it from here, I think, and keep our eyes open because our property is very important to us. Luckily, Drake knows everyone who may have tried to weasel their way into Grandpa’s business over the past few years. We’ll look at everything.”

“This way, Mr. Briar,” Shelia says.

Avery keeps a phony smile on his face. It’s as fake as his eyebrows, which flutter one more time as he walks across the room and out the door. Shelia follows him out, and I wouldn’t doubt that she tracks him all the way to his big black Suburban.

I hadn’t noticed it in the parking lot, but my attention wasn’t on vehicles then, other than my parents’ white BMW.

“Our property, Annabelle?” Mom huffs out a breath. “You clearly don’t mean your father and I, so I wonder who you’re referring to. Surely, you don’t mean Mr. Larkin. That senile old bat left everything to you, not some old Army—”