“Sorry about the interrogation,” Cullen said. “But these are questions Leigh will be asking you soon enough.”
“Why me?” Austin cursed again. “Does she think I’m a suspect? Because if so, she’s crazy. I didn’t even see Alexa tonight.”
Cullen sighed. “No. You’re not a suspect. But right now anyone who was at the party will no doubt be considered a potential witness.” Maybe even a person of interest. But Cullen kept that last part to himself. “We just need to find out who came into my house and committed a murder.”
Austin stayed quiet a couple of seconds. “And we have to stop this person from coming after anyone else. I got that,” Austin said on a heavy breath. “But give me some time to think about who it could be, and I’ll get back to you.”
“Thanks.” Cullen watched as the EMTs loaded Jamie onto a gurney. Leigh was right there, giving them instructions about keeping Jamie secure, assuring them she’d be at the hospital soon.
“That’s a lot of noise for just cops,” Austin remarked. “That sounds like an ambulance siren to me.”
“Because it is. Someone attacked one of my ranch hands. Jamie,” Cullen provided.
“Jamie?” Austin questioned. “Hell, is he dead, too?”
“No.” Cullen didn’t addnot yet, anyway, because he wanted to hang on to the hope that Jamie would pull through.
“Jamie’s alive?” Austin made a sound of relief. “Then, he can tell you who attacked him?”
“To be determined. I have to go. I want to be at the hospital when the doctors examine Jamie.” He hoped Leigh wouldn’t give him any hassles about that. Even if she did, Cullen would work his way around her.
The anger came now, shoving the shock aside and twisting his muscles into knots. Someone had come into his home and done this. Maybe had murdered and maimed to set him up. Yeah, Cullen would definitely get to the bottom of why this had happened.
“You need me there?” Austin asked, drawing Cullen’s attention back to him.
“No. Bad weather’s moving in, and I don’t want you on the roads. But if you find out anything from Kali, let me know.”
“I will,” Austin assured him, “and keep me posted about Jamie. Hell, Cullen, he was just a kid.”
Cullen didn’t want that to eat away at him. But it did. Mercy, it did. All of this would eat away even when he found out who’d done this.
He ended the call and was about to go back on the patio with Leigh and the EMTs, who were about to move Jamie to the ambulance. But Leigh looked up, her gaze zooming past Cullen’s shoulder and landing on someone behind him. Cullen turned and saw someone he definitely didn’t want to deal with tonight.
His father, Bowen Brodie.
Bowen had ditched his party clothes and was wearing his usual jeans, including a rodeo buckle that gleamed out from his wide leather belt. Obviously, he’d had time to go to his house about fifteen minutes away and change before making his way back here, but then, Bowen hadn’t stayed long at the party. He’d given his congrats to Austin and Kali and had then made an excuse about wanting to leave the shindig to the “young folks.”
“I heard about the murder,” his father said right off.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Cullen reminded him, and he didn’t bother to take the snarl out of his tone. “Since you don’t have ESP, someone must have called you.”
Bowen confirmed that with a nod. “One of my assistants is dating the Dark River dispatcher. When he heard there’d been a murder at the Triple R, he called her.”
Yeah, and had probably also called anyone and everyone in his contact list. Ditto for the dispatcher. This was big news.
“Normally, I would have cussed out anybody calling me at this hour, but I knew you’d have to deal with Jeb’s spawn,” Bowen added. “So I came straight over.”
Spawn. That was a good way to start off this visit. Cullen was a thousand percent sure that Leigh felt the same way he did about not wanting to deal with his father tonight.
To say that Bowen and Leigh’s father had bad blood was like saying the Pacific Ocean had a drop or two of water in it. Cullen knew it went all the way back to the kidnapping and disappearance of Jeb’s son. A kidnapping and disappearance that Jeb had always thought Bowen had played a part in.
Heck, maybe he had.
Bowen might be his father, but Cullen could see the man clear enough. Along with making a game of skirting the law, Bowen could be vindictive. And that vindictiveness went back to Jeb arresting Cullen’s mother for a DUI. Cullen had been five years old, barely old enough to remember, but Bowen had made an art form of keeping the incident, and what followed, alive by talking about it with anyone who’d listen. That’s because Cullen’s mother had died in the jail cell. Alcohol poisoning, according to the ME, but Bowen had considered it negligent homicide on Jeb’s part.
And so the cycle of bad blood had begun.
A cycle fueled by Jeb’s firm belief that Bowen had gotten revenge by kidnapping Jeb’s little boy. Apparently, the bad blood was about to continue if his father kept using words likespawnand glaring at Leigh.