He hit a gas station and decided to fill up so as not to totally waste this waste of time so he guided the Charter to a pump. He was angling out his side as Lexie folded out of hers when his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, looked at his display, flipped it open and put it to his ear.

“Tate, can you hang on a second?” he said into it, eyes on Lexie strutting to the building.

“Yeah,” Tate replied.

Then he took the phone from his ear, whistled, Lexie stopped and turned to him.

“Money,” he called across the fifteen feet that separated them.

“I got it,” she called back.

“Money,” he repeated.

“Ty, I got it,” she repeated.

“Woman,” he growled and knew by the slight upward shift of her chin she’d rolled her eyes to the heavens behind her shades then she strutted to him.

He shoved his hand in his back pocket and slapped some bills in the opened palm she’d stretched over the car door.

Her fingers curled around it and her hand moved away as she asked, “Do you want anything?”

“No, and you don’t either.”

Her head tipped to the side just as her hip hitched the opposite direction.

“I don’t?”

He knew that tone too. It was the danger tone.

“Lex, I’d like to get to Carnal before Christmas.”

When he started speaking, her head jerked for some reason and she waited a second before she responded.

“We’ll be there before Christmas.”

“Not if you drink another two liter of coffee.”

“It wasn’t two liters, Ty!” she snapped loudly.

“Just pay for the gas,” he ordered.

“We need snacks,” she informed him.

“We don’t need snacks.”

“Okay, let me rephrase, I need snacks. We’re on a road trip. It’s a moral imperative to have snacks, the worse for you, the better,” she explained.

“Christ,” he muttered.

“Do you want anything?” she asked.

Had his wife been in another dimension the last thirty seconds?

“You seriously askin’ that shit?” he asked back.

She stared at him through her shades. Then she decided out loud, “I’ll stock up, just in case.”

Then, before he could say a word, she strutted away.

He put the phone to his ear to hear Tate flat out laughing.

He waited for him to stop and then he waited for him to talk.

And when he talked he said, “I f**kin’ love this.”

Walker remained silent.

Tate didn’t. “You two take that show on the road?”

“There a reason you’re callin’?” Walker returned.

“Yeah, but first, with what I heard, I’m guessin’ you’re on your way to Carnal.”

“You’d guess right.”

“How far out are you?”

“Depending on what snacks Lexie hauls back to the Charger, we could be there in a coupla hours, we could be there next week.”

“Good news,” Tate muttered through a distracted chuckle.

“The reason you’re callin’,” Walker prompted, moving to the gas cap.

“Right, how much time we got before she comes back?”

“We’re in the middle of f**kin’ nowhere but still, she’s in a building where there’s shit to buy so probably a lot,” Walker answered as he jerked the nozzle out of the gas pump and fed it into the car.

“Didn’t know you’d be home so soon so this could wait but while I got you, might as well give you what I got.”

Walker pressed the buttons on the pump, got the zeroes on the display then pulled up the handle and set the lever. Then he turned his back to the car and leaned into it, scanning the area, finding the SUV, clocking the driver, clocking that he knew the driver and controlling his blood pressure when he saw who it was while saying, “Talk to me.”

“Last coupla days, got a lot of info on Alexa Berry.”

“Walker,” he corrected automatically.

Silence then through an obvious smile, “Walker.” Then, quietly, “Congratulations, man.”

“You sayin’ that means the shit you got isn’t shit that’s gonna suck,” Walker noted.

“Opposite in regards to Lexie.”

Walker bent his neck, studied the toes of his boots and listened.

Jackson spoke. “She’s got a juvie file. Considering her history, not surprising. Nothin’ big. Vandalism. Disturbing the peace. A couple of times picked up for shoplifting. Started when she was around twelve, ended abruptly when she was fourteen.”

Around the time Ella Rodriguez entered Lexie’s life and gave his wife her first taste of having a motherly-type woman who gave a shit.

“Right,” he muttered.

Tate went on, “Found out what happened after the Granddad died, home for girls then foster care.”

Walker knew that so he didn’t respond.

He heard Jackson take in a breath. Then he asked cautiously, “You remember that ballplayer Ronnie Rodriguez?”

“I know about Rodriguez,” Walker told him as he heard the lever disengage, he yanked out the nozzle and shoved it back into the pump.

More caution with, “Lexie forthcoming about his chosen profession?”

“Pimp. Drug dealer. Occupational status changed when he took seven, two to the face.”

“She was forthcoming,” Tate muttered. “The news I got for you, and it surprised the f**k outta me, I got a call from a vice cop, Dallas PD. Don’t know this guy, didn’t ask for the call. He heard I was snoopin’ and he called me wonderin’ why.”

Walker felt that barbed sensation at the back of his neck and his eyes went back to his boots but he didn’t see them. He was focused on Tate.

“What’d you tell him?” he asked.

“The truth,” Jackson answered. “That she married a good friend of mine, that friend had been jacked in the past and I was taking his back.”

“You give this cop a name?”

“No, considering his interest in your new wife.”

The barbs pressed in.

“What’s this f**ker’s name?”

“Detective Peña. Angel Peña.”

Fuck.

“You get a bad feeling about this guy?” Walker asked.

“No, but she’s not my wife. She was then f**k yeah.”

Fuck.

Walker looked from his boots to the horizon still not seeing anything and he shared quietly, “She hasn’t mentioned him.”