He’d heard the back door open, just hadn’t paid it any mind. Muffled music and voices came from the bar, competing with distant traffic sounds. You couldn’t’a heard a cricket if it had a bullhorn. The night was so humid his face felt damp.
“Mr. Brand, please, hold up a sec.” The fellow let the door close behind him, dulling the noise again and heading Ethan’s way.
Sighing, he turned to look back. The fellow hurrying across the parking lot was wearing a vest over a shirt and tie.
“Can I he’p ya?” he asked the little guy. Maybe he wanted an autograph. That happened from time to time. After all, he did have one hit song. It always made Ethan’s face hot and his neck itchy when someone asked, but he always obliged them all the same. The only thing this fellow was carrying, though, was a fat file folder with page edges sticking out unevenly.
“I’m Jonathon Harper,” he said. “I’m an attorney.”
Ethan arched his brows. That was not what he’d been expecting.
“I have news about your father, Vincent de Lorean. Is there somewhere we can?—”
“Only news I want to hear about that man is that he’s dead. Is he dead?” He glared at the guy, expecting him to say no, to which he would reply by getting into his truck and slamming the door. He tapped the key fob to unlock it and took hold of the door handle.
“Yes, I’m afraid he is.”
Ethan’s hand fell to his side.
“He died peacefully in his sleep.”
“That’s too good a death for a man like him.”
“There um…there was a will. You?—”
“Nope.” Ethan held his hands between them like a double stop sign. “He was in prison for killin’ my mother. You must know that.”
The smaller man blinked behind his glasses, backed up a step, and said, “I know.”
“Sorry I raised my voice,” Ethan said, softening his tone, banking his temper. His size was intimidating enough all by itself. Uncle Garrett had always told him the bigger a man was, the gentler his nature ought to be. “You’re just the messenger, after all. Can I refuse it or somethin’?”
“You can disclaim it, yes. But um, there’s one item that was transferred into your name before your father died.”
“Don’t call him that.”
The man nodded. He still seemed nervous, and no wonder. Ethan was a foot taller, twice as wide.
“I apologize,” the lawyer said. “I’m botching this badly. Look, um, despite its source, you could do something good with this.” He said that with a nod at the folder he held. “And even if you want to disclaim, you’ll first need to know what it is you’re disclaiming. And you’ll need your own attorney.” He held out the fat folder. “I can send these digitally if you prefer. I’ll just need an email?—”
“This is fine.” Ethan took the folder. He didn’t think the guy would have been able to hold it out at arm’s length like that much longer anyway. A semi blew past, its wake blasting them with parking-lot grit.
“My advice—if you were my client, Mr. Brand—would be to go home, go through the documents, talk to the people you trust most, and consult with your own attorney.”
He heaved a sigh. “You said there was one thing that had already been put into my name. Could he do that without me signin’ off on it?”
“I don’t know how it was done. I wasn’t involved. But yes, there are ways.”
He nodded, moving around the truck’s nose to the passenger side. The lawyer followed. Ethan opened the passenger door and set the file folder on the seat. When he closed the door, he asked, “So what is it?”
“What is…?”
“What’s the one thing that’s already been put in my name?”
“It’s a taco joint-cantina in a town called Mad Bull’s Bend.”
Lily Hyde pressed her palms flat to the shiny hardwood bar and leaned over it, trying to see through the porthole windows into the kitchen in back.
Manuel, the short and increasingly round owner, saw her there as he passed, balancing trays full of burritos in both hands. His jet-black hair bore plenty of silver—more than it had when she’d first met him.
