“That looks so cool,” Tad remarked, staring at the automatic pistol in its holster.

“What, the gun?” Banks asked.

Tad chuckled. “No. The star.”

“It’s a new gun. I had the handle modified,” Banks told him.

“It looks nice,” Tad said. He studied Banks. “Have you ever had to shoot anybody?”

Banks nodded solemnly. “Not often, though.”

“Clancey can’t really shoot a pistol,” Tad said solemnly. “Cal tried to teach her, but he said she’s just hopeless.”

“My hands aren’t strong enough,” she replied with a laugh. “I couldn’t even cock the darn thing.”

“Wheel guns don’t require cocking,” Banks pointed out.

She glared at him. “I am not using a sissy wheel gun when everybody who works in law enforcement carries a cannon.”

Banks’s eyebrows arched under his creamy Stetson. “I don’t carry a cannon.”

“Those things sound like a cannon going off,” she pointed out. “No wonder you guys have to wear earplugs on the firing range.”

Banks just chuckled. “Half the old-timers were deaf from that noise. Modern accessories reduce the damage.”

“Good thing,” Clancey said with a nod.

Banks put them both in the big SUV and climbed in beside them. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m starving.”

“I could eat a horse!” Tad exclaimed.

“I’ll tell them,” Banks said with a grin.

Tad blushed. Then he laughed.

Clancey listened to the two of them talk without saying much. She kept thinking about the threats Morris had made. Banks didn’t know about her family, about her very dangerous stepbrother. Somehow, she was going to have to find the courage to come clean about it, before he found out the hard way. She didn’t want him to think she’d lied about it, or worse, covered it up. She’d done those things, of course. She couldn’t afford to lose her job. Banks was, in many ways, a by-the-book lawman. He could bend the rules when he needed to, but he never broke them. He wouldn’t like having to find out from somebody else what Clancey didn’t trust him enough to tell him.

Besides that, he was investigating her grandfather’s disappearance, and he didn’t know a thing about the man except the sketchy information in the old case files. She could tell him many things that might help him find the truth.

“You’re quiet,” Banks remarked to her when he pulled into a space in the restaurant parking lot.

“I’m enjoying the ride,” she lied, forcing a smile. “I’m used to walking everywhere.”

“It’s raining!” Tad exclaimed.

Banks glanced at Clancey. “Think she’ll melt?” he wondered aloud with twinkling eyes.

Clancey glared at him. “I will not!” she exclaimed. “I don’t even own a pointy black hat!”

Tad grinned. “And we live in the wrong state,” he pointed out. “That was Kansas, not Texas.”

“Exactly,” Clancey said smugly.