All Kinds of Tied Down (Marshals 1)

“Marshals?”

I nodded, passing him my wallet so he could check both the ID and the credentials underneath. “Badge is on my belt.”

Holley tipped his head at me. “Let’s see.”

Turning a little, I lifted my sweater and the T-shirt underneath.

“Miroslav Jones?” he asked, clearly amused, grinning at me.

“Long story.”

“Since you and your partner are not getting out of here tonight, I’ll hear it over dinner.”

“Actually,” Ian broke in, stepping up to the counter and taking my ID out of the man’s hand. “We plan to be on the road as soon as you transfer custody. Where is our witness?”

Holley squinted at us. “I don’t understand. I thought you were putting someone in our jail for the night.”

“No,” Ian said curtly. “We need you to turn over Drake Ford.”

The chief looked annoyed. “Drake Ford is at the Carter County Sheriff’s Office awaiting federal… and that’s you and… shit.” He groaned suddenly, turning to Gilman and Breen. “Get Lautner up here now, find out where Colby and Fann are, and do we know, is Kershaw getting ready to teach the self-defense class at the high school?”

“Yes, Chief,” Breen said, wincing.

“Well, get his ass back here. You, me, and Breen need to go out to the Jenner place with the marshals and fetch Drake Ford.”

The officers moved quickly, and Holley raked his fingers through his thick hair as he regarded me and Ian.

“Gentlemen—”

“Ian and Miro,” I corrected.

He smiled at me as he sighed deeply. “Three months ago, I fired Dalton Abernathy from this department because he didn’t really work for me. He worked for Franklin Jenner, who just so happens to be the richest man in this town, as well as three counties. You probably saw his land when you drove in: it was everything that ran along the hills on your right.”

“We did.”

“Well, it turned out that it was Dalton’s job to keep Drake Ford away from Franklin’s son, Cabot Jenner.”

“Oh,” I grunted. “So you think that maybe your fired officer Abernathy still has his uniform and he went with some of Jenner’s men and got them to release Ford to them.”

“I do.”

“And so what?” Ian asked irritably. “Ford is on Jenner’s land, having the shit beat out of him?”

“I hope so,” Holley said with a grimace. “I hope they didn’t just shoot him.”

My jaw dropped. I was appalled and I knew it was all over my face.

“Franklin Jenner owns a lot of land, and his mortgage company, Derby Securities, owns the notes on many of the homes in this town. No one would convict him of anything.”

“But you’re not afraid of him?” Ian asked with a smirk.

“I’m blaming it all on you two,” Holley answered before another man came charging into the building and across the floor.

Five minutes later, we were in Holley’s Dodge Durango, followed by two patrol cars, heading back the way we came, across the highway and up the hill onto the Jenner property, driving toward the house.

“Why didn’t Mr. Jenner simply go to Drake Ford’s family and tell them to keep their son away from his?”

“Drake Ford lives with his mother, but she’s hardly ever in town let alone home. They have a trailer down toward the highway that he pays the rent on by working at the supermarket as a checker every day after school.”

“He sounds like a good kid, self-sufficient,” Ian offered.

“He’s a mess and a pain in the ass, but the only trouble he ever got in suddenly started when Cabot came home from boarding school last year.”

“And what happened?”

“They met and that was it. Cabot told me the last time I was putting Drake in cuffs—running him off his father’s property—that nothing would keep him away from Drake, not even his father’s puppet.”

“Oh, you’re a puppet,” I teased.

“Apparently so,” Holley grumbled. “Let’s forget the fact that the little shit was trespassing, and that the last time they stole one of Mr. Jenner’s cars, and the time before that he caught them smoking pot in the stables.”

“That’s fantastic,” I said, chuckling.

“Oh, they should be on posters of ‘what not to let your kids do.’”

“But? I hear a but?”

He laughed softly. “The parents are both absent in all of this. Drake Ford has no one, and Cabot Jenner has a father more interested in his investment portfolio than in his own kid.”

“Where’s Cabot’s mother?”

“Rehab. Again.”

“Okay, you win. It’s fucked up.”

He turned his head to smile at me. “How old are you, Marshal?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Holley’s smile was wicked, and I liked it quite a bit. “You seem a little young to be a marshal.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m guessing what, twenty-five?”

“He’s thirty-one,” Ian broke in, his hand snaking around the right side of the front seat where I was sitting to clench on my shoulder. “Pay attention.”

What?

I pivoted in my seat to look at him. “Are you all right?”

“I would have never guessed that,” Holley said softly, returning my attention to him.