Page 25 of Backtrack

“Youchaseoutlaws,” Lucy scoffed. “It’s not in your nature to be one. Now, describe the scene for me.”

“Sweetie.” He sighed. “It was a bloody mess. I—”

Lucy’s eyes flicked open. “Humor me,” she said. “You know I enjoy putting on my detective hat.”

The truth was, talking through cases not only got Lucy’s mind off her illness, rehearsing everything out loud helped him square the timeline in his mind. Beyond that, his wife was incredibly smart. Often as not, she figured things out before he did.

“Bad deal all around,” Cutter said, remembering. “No witnesses except for the wounded guard.”

“Did they run the truck off the road?”

Cutter shook his head. “The driver must have been an inside man. From the looks of things, he just pulled over on the side of the Interstate.”

“And they gunned him down anyway?”

“Yep,” Cutter said.

“Pure evil …”

Cutter heaved an exhausted sigh. “Honestly, Luce, there’s not much else to tell. Driver stops the truck. Bad guys pull up and shoot both the driver and the passenger, a local man named Foster. Looks like Foster got off one round with his shotgun before he was gunned down and fell into the tall grass by a culvert that crosses under the Interstate. Likely as not, the bad guys figured the shotgun blast to the chest did the trick. Didn’t think to finish him off. They gassed the guard riding in the back and then gunned him down when he opened the doors.”

“You’ll find the men who did this,” Lucy said. “You always do.”

“Five million in diamonds,” he whispered. “They’re in the wind.”

“So, what if they run?” Lucy gave a little shrug. “They’ll just be tired when you catch them.” She toyed with the compass rose medallion that lay against his chest. “Has the sheriff still got that boy following you around like a puppy? Lafayette something?”

“He does,” Cutter said. “Sadly.”

“It’ll do you both good.” She was quiet for a time, breathing softly, fragile and warm against him. “I am worried about our little Ethan,” she said out of the blue. “Not to mention this new baby brother. It makes me incredibly sad to say it, but I fear Bodie’s just not up to the task of fatherhood.”

“Sweetheart,” Cutter said. “Bodie’s a grown man.”

“It’s unchristian, I know,” Lucy said. “But for the life of me, I cannot figure out what happened to that boy. He lets Ursula trample all over him. We could have helped if that woman hadn’t dragged him off to Florida.”

Cutter could do nothing but nod. Their son was a good kid, but he’d always been the sickly sort. Cutter had imagined taking him camping, fishing, teaching him how to shoot and ride and even shoe horses, but Bodie had allergies and got a bilious stomach at the slightest hint of Sturm und Drang. It wasn’t his fault. He seemed to have been born under an unlucky star. Ursula was about as hardhearted a woman as Cutter had ever seen, but she was easy on the eyes. Bodie, who’d never had anything close to a sweetheart in high school, fell for the flamboyant girl the moment she batted her eyes at him. Cutter always assumed going out with Bodie was a drunken dare. It was a hell of a thing to think about your own son, but if D Wayne Cutter was anything, he was a man who saw things as they were, not how he wished them to be.

Mostly.

Lucy snuggled in even tighter. “Wayne,” she said. “You have got to move to Florida.”

“We can’t move to Florida. Your doctors are here. My job is here.”

“You know what I’m trying to say. After—”

“After this investigation is over,” he said, though he knew exactly what she meant.

“After—”

He cut her off again. “Maybe this second baby will make Ursula settle down. And anyway, who’s to say I would even be able to get a job in Florida? It takes a while to build up a clientele horse shoeing, and in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little long in the tooth to start over at some Podunk police department. I doubt anyone would even look at my application.”

Lucy shifted a little to glance up at him, blinking incredibly soft eyes. “A peaceful gunman like you,” she scoffed. “You’ll have no trouble getting another job.”

“I wish you wouldn’t—”

She stiffened and then sat up straight. Fierce, like the old days before she got sick. “D Wayne! Promise me you will look after those grandsons. Help Bodie teach them to be good men.”

“Of course I’ll look after the grandsons,” Cutter said. “I promise. Now, can we please talk about something else? I thought you wanted me to tell you more about this case.”