baby ready,” Eve said. “I need to go to Austin right now.”
LAWSON HAD DONE some pretty stupid things in his life, but this might make his top ten. Top five if he didn’t figure out something better to say other than Uh, Tessie, I’m just here in Austin to check on you because my ditzy aunt Belle and your mom are worried about you.
This was definitely an example of sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. And even though he’d told Dylan he might visit Tessie, Lawson had also dismissed it shortly after the dumb-assed notion had first entered his head. So, why had he let Belle talk him into it with her repeated pestering calls and garbled texts?
Because he’d obviously wanted to be talked into it, that’s why.
Despite his dismissing this visit, he was still running with the self-serving theory that if he could smooth things over between Eve and Tessie, Eve would leave Wrangler’s Creek. Then he wouldn’t have to risk seeing her every day in a house and place that would eventually make her miserable because it would bring back old memories of why she’d left in the first place.
Every time that theory played out in his head, he felt lower than squished shit beneath a horse’s hoof. But a happy resolution between mother and daughter with Tessie would benefit Eve, too, since Belle had assured him that Eve was sick with worry about the rift with Tessie. So, even if this didn’t make Eve leave Wrangler’s Creek, at least she wouldn’t be miserable if she could reconnect with her daughter.
Following the directions of his GPS, Lawson took the final turn onto a narrow street lined on both sides with parked cars. He didn’t have the name of the building, only the address that he’d gotten from Dylan, but there’d probably be a sign for the boarding school or whatever it was called. But no school sign. It was just rows of apartments.
“Arriving at destination on left,” the GPS told him.
Yep, definitely an apartment building, but maybe the middle or high school that Tessie was attending was using some of the units as dorm rooms. Top-of-the-line dorm rooms, since this was a pricey area of Austin. Lawson knew that because his cousins’ business headquarters, Granger Western, wasn’t too far from here, and it certainly fell into the pricey category. Eve was loaded though, so she probably didn’t mind shelling out the money if this was a good place for her daughter.
There were no parking spots nearby, so Lawson kept driving until he found one at the end of the street. The August heat slammed into him the moment he stepped from his truck, and he hated to admit it, but it almost felt like some bad omen. Maybe like one of Vita’s foretellings that he dismissed but still gave him an uneasy feeling. He shook that off, went up the steps to the building, but the door flew open before he could even reach for it.
And the smell of booze came rushing out at him.
Lawson quickly saw the source of the smell. Three teenagers, two girls and a guy, who were trying to come out the door despite the fact that he was directly in front of them. They were giggling and wobbling but tried to straighten and look sober when they spotted him.
“Shh,” the guy said to the others. “Just keep walkin’.” His attempt at a whisper could have probably been heard as far away as Kansas.
The guy, who had stringy long blond hair, was on one side of one of the girls—a brunette with her head down—and he had his arm hooked around her waist, obviously supporting her weight. The other girl, a blonde, was doing the same thing on the other side of the middle girl.
Even though the trio was trying to get by, Lawson didn’t move. “Are y’all all right?” he asked.
It didn’t matter what they said because he already knew the answer. They were drunk. And clearly underage. A bad combination. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst was the flashbacks that hit Lawson like a mean kick from a rodeo bull.
Brett.
It all came back—the handful of parts that he could remember, anyway. The party. The drinking. And yeah, Eve, Brett and he had been underage, too. They’d been so sure they weren’t doing anything wrong, that it was something plenty of kids did. Kids like these. But it had been wrong, and Brett had died.
“We’re doin’ just fine, man,” the guy said, or at least attempted to. He missed a couple of syllables and slurred the ones he did manage to say. Even the smile he tried was off the mark and looked as if someone had yanked up the right side of his mouth with an invisible fish hook. “’Kay?”
No, it wasn’t okay, and Lawson felt the anger slide through him. It wasn’t anger directed at the kids but rather himself. Yeah, and Eve, too. The trifecta of Eve, Brett and him usually led to his piss-poor attempt to completely shut out what he’d failed to shut out for the past eighteen years.
And he failed today, too.
The anger was there all right, but Lawson tried to keep his touch gentle when he put his fingers beneath the middle girl’s chin to lift it. His heart felt as if it stopped until he saw her eyelids flutter open.
Alive.
Thank God. But she wouldn’t stay that way if she got any more booze in her or if her blood alcohol was already too high.
Most people wouldn’t have thought the worst-case scenario in a situation like this, but since Lawson had been there, done that in the worst-case department, he knew how fast things could turn ugly.
“All of you live here in this building?” Lawson asked.
That got the attention of the girl on the end. “You a cop?”
“Yeah,” he lied.
Her eyes widened to the size of hubcaps, and she suddenly looked as if she might puke. Good. That would get the booze out of her stomach. The guy did puke, and when he turned his head to do that, he let go of the brunette in the middle. If Lawson hadn’t caught her, she would have probably splatted on the floor. He hooked his arm around her, moving her away from the puking—which was only getting worse because the blonde girl started barfing her guts out, too.
There was nothing worse than the smell of booze-vomit, so he took the semiconscious girl several yards away to the massive stairs in the center of the foyer and he had her sit down. At least she stayed upright. Mostly, anyway. She drifted into a slow lean until her arm was against the banister.
While he took out his phone to call an ambulance and the real cops, Lawson turned back to the two pukers. They obviously didn’t have the mobility issues of the nonpuker, though, because they ran out the front door. He didn’t go after them but was about to go through with the ambulance call when he heard the footsteps on the stairs. Lawson soon spotted a young woman making her way toward them. She didn’t look much older than the brunette, but at least she wasn’t drunk.
“What’s going on?” she asked. But she got her own answer because she groaned, then made a face when she got a whiff of the brunette and the puke. “Idiot,” she muttered to the girl. She caught hold of her, pulling her to her feet before she looked at Lawson. “Are you a cop?”
He frowned because he was reasonably sure he looked nothing like a cop. Hell, he still had some cow dung on his boots from the stockyard he’d visited earlier, and he was wearing one of his prize rodeo buckles.
“You know this girl?” he asked. Yeah, it was a cop maneuver, answering a question with a question, but he wanted to know what was going on.
The newcomer nodded. “She’s a sorority sister.” She rattled off some Greek letters. “And she’s my roommate.”
“Sorority?” His frown deepened. “As in college?”
She was no longer giving him an are you a cop? look. She was staring at him now as if he was an idiot. “Uh, yes. We’re staying here temporarily until our sorority house is ready.”
All right.