Free Never Die Alone (A Bentz/Montoya Novel Book 8) by Lisa Jackson Page B

close to the church.” As if to close the conversation, she rounded up two backpacks, one pink, the other blue, and hauled them back to the kitchen.
    Jase followed.
    Trinity was dutifully carrying her near-empty bowl to the sink. Caleb, not quite finished, lifted his dish to his face and started drinking the remains of his milk.
    “Caleb Prescott Bridges!” Lena snapped. “What do you think you’re doing?” She shot a disgusted glance at her husband. “Did you see this? Did you? Do you let your son eat like a pig at slop time?”
    Prescott snorted. “Honey, it doesn’t matter if—”
    “It does matter, Pres. Of course it matters. That’s the problem. Out here you let these kids do whatever they please. No restrictions. I’ve had it.” She whipped Caleb’s bowl from his hands and tossed it into the sink where it clattered against a stack of dirty dishes.
    Trinity jumped and Caleb, rather than incur any more of his mother’s wrath, slithered from his chair.
    “Get in the car. Both of you!” Lena ordered, and her kids scurried out of the kitchen and out the back door leading to the garage. With a finger pointed at her husband, she said, “Deal with him!” Then pointed at Jase. “I’m losing it.” Snagging her purse from the counter near the microwave, she hurried out the same way her children had taken and let the screen door bang loudly behind her.
    Only when he heard the car’s engine cough to life did Prescott speak. “She’s always a little nuts when she’s pregnant.”
    “A little?”
    “She’s got her eye on a house not far from the Garden District,” he said, walking to the sink and staring out the window. Through the dusty glass both men watched the silver Ford disappear down the drive. “A bungalow,” Pres continued. “Three bedrooms. Big yard. Space for a garden. One block from the church. Actually, we put an offer in and the people accepted, so it’s ours as long as the bank approves.”
    “Will they?”
    “Should. But we’ll have to sell my interest in this place.” He shoved his hands down the front pockets of his khakis. “We’re moving out.” A beat. “And moving on.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    Prescott turned and faced his brother. His tanned hands gripped the sides of the counter on either side of him and he suddenly looked older than his thirty-eight years. “Maybe we both should sell this place, Jase. Just cuz it’s been in the family a few generations, so what? We don’t need it. Hell, you were going to sell to me anyway.”
    “Because you have kids.”
    “So what’s the difference if I sell to someone else? Either way, you’re out.”
    Prescott had a point, but it didn’t sit well with Jase. They both knew it. Because of the ghosts.
    “Or,” Prescott said, as if the thought had just crossed his mind. “You could buy me out. I’d give you a deal, and we wouldn’t have the Realtor’s cut. Clean and simple.”
    There it was. The reason Prescott had asked him to stop by so early in the morning. It was so like his brother to beat around the bush, hint, and sneak up on a topic rather than say what he wanted outright. In this case, Jase suspected it was because of Lena.
    “This is just the opposite from what we agreed.” And Jase had ambitions associated with his job; he didn’t need a ranch to distract him from his goal. Already he had his application in at the police department.
    Prescott lifted a shoulder. “Got to keep the peace, y’know? Besides, things change.”
    “Do they?” Jase wasn’t so sure as he walked outside to the back porch and stared across the rolling acres to a rise. Past the drying grass and a few sunbaked outbuildings, a tall oak rose in the distance. Less than a hundred yards beyond the tree’s spreading branches was the property line and the slow-moving river.
    Images seared through his brain: scenes from his youth, like photographs in an album shuffled quickly past, and he shut his mind to that part of his life, a past