Free Death Rides Again (A Jocelyn Shore Mystery) by Janice Hamrick

darting from Carl to me as though not sure who posed the biggest threat, an attitude that puzzled me. I’d broken up fights between testosterone poisoned boys at school before and had encountered something similar. Usually the smaller boy was worried that the bully would wreak vengeance on him later for any official punishment, a fear that outweighed the pain of whatever abuse he was getting at the moment. Seeing the same thing in supposedly grown men was disturbing and kind of pathetic. And a little scary. I’m tall, which I use to great advantage when dealing with the undesirable element at school, but Carl Cress topped me by at least six inches and probably a hundred pounds. There was no way I was going to be able to intimidate him.
    Nevertheless, I lifted my eyebrow and used my best teacher voice, the voice that had once quelled a dozen cheerleaders in a full-out Justin Bieber frenzy. “Let him go, Carl, or I’ll call the police.”
    I saw his lips curl into a cruel sneer and remembered too late that he was pals with Sheriff Bob. So I added, “And I’ll scream.”
    He dropped Eddy like a used tissue. “This is none of your business,” he repeated.
    I stared coldly at Carl, reminded strongly of the black malevolent stares of the Brahman bulls Kyla and I had seen earlier in the day. “For better or worse, Eddy’s a Shore now, which makes it my business. And I’m telling you to leave him alone.”
    Hopefully Eddy wouldn’t be a Shore for long, I thought to myself, but as long as he was married to Ruby June we could hardly let someone like Carl Cress beat the snot out of him.
    The three of us stared at one another for a long moment. Above us, the stands had grown relatively quiet, the rodeo obviously between events, patrons moving about more than usual to stock up on beer and peanuts and fried things on sticks. Eddy met my eyes with a look I would be unable to forget, an odd pathetic gaze, half grateful, half pleading. Then he darted off, leaving me alone with a very large and very angry Carl Cress.
    I lifted the beer cans I still clutched in a death grip and announced, “I’ll be getting back to my friends.”
    I walked forward, moving within a couple of feet of the belly with its gleaming buckle and feeling Carl’s angry eyes on the back of my neck as I passed. I suppressed a shiver and managed to keep a sedate and hopefully nonchalant pace until I rounded the corner. Then, I allowed myself to bolt back to the stands where Colin waited. I’d never been so glad to see anyone, I thought, taking in his broad shoulders and lean hard muscles. Even Carl Cress would hesitate before taking on Colin. I slid very close to him on the bench, feeling much safer.
    Colin took the beer I handed him with a word of thanks and a questioning look.
    “Long line?” he asked, popping the top.
    Beer spewed like a geyser at Yellowstone, catching him in the chin and frothing over his hand in an icy golden flow. With a yelp, he leaped to his feet trying to stop it from drenching his clothes.
    I jumped up, too, clapping a hand over my mouth. It hadn’t occurred to me that breaking up a fight while holding a can of beer was likely to shake it up a bit. My mind worked quickly and decided there was no way for him to know it was my fault. After all, the vendor might have handed it to me like that. I went for a look of appalled innocence, although I wasn’t entirely successful at preventing my shoulders from shaking.
    Colin just stared at me and then shook his head. “I know you’re laughing, and I know this is somehow your fault, so you might as well tell,” he said.
    It was hell dating a detective.
    “You know, the smell of beer is really sexy,” I said in my best sultry voice.
    “And trust me, I’ll be reminding you that you said that a little later on. Now, what did you do?” He was trying to look stern but not pulling it off very well. His lips kept wanting to twitch into a grin.
    “I’ll tell you later,” I said,