Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Rhett
Alma came back and got into the car with me, giving me a tight smile. “All locked up,” she said. She glanced around like she half expected to see someone else, then pulled out and turned her car toward the highway.
My pulse raced and cold sweat dripped down my back. At first, I thought it was fear for Cheyenne’s safety. But I closed my eyes and had a flash, a memory. Something hazy and broken, a piece I was trying to grab on to.
“Looks like you need a ride.”
I turned around, relieved. “Man, am I happy to see you. But the ranch is out of your way. You sure you don’t mind?”
“Not at all. Hop in.”
Alma. Alma had offered me a ride that night.
But she wouldn’t have… Would she?
It didn’t make any sense. She was practically Cheyenne’s second grandmother.
Cheyenne’s second grandmother. I suddenly felt sick. She had been best friends with the woman who had deliberately sabotaged my relationship with Cheyenne ten years ago.
“Hey, do me a favor? I need a smoke. Grab my cigarettes from the glove compartment?”
The pieces kept coming back. I’d been in this seat and she’d asked me to get her cigarettes. I’d leaned forward and then my head had exploded in pain before everything went dark.
Alma Moore had tried to kill me. And she’d tricked me into getting back into her car again. I was in trouble. The realization sank in like a lead weight in my stomach.
I glanced over, wondering about jerking the steering wheel out of her hands, fighting for control of the car. But we were already going too quickly down the switchbacks that led to Cheyenne’s place. One wrong move and I’d send the car over the side of the mountain. It was too risky.
“Cheyenne’s not really hurt, is she?” I asked, gripping my knees with my palms.
Alma glanced over. “No. She’s not. Your memory coming back to ya?”
“Yep.” The words were tight. “Why did you do it?”
“Because I made a promise.”
“To Gran?”
She nodded. “That’s right. A promise to watch over Cheyenne when she couldn’t. She didn’t want you and Cheyenne together. You’re no good for her. So I’m keeping my promise by making sure you’re out of the picture.”
Alma was crazy. She didn’t want me and Cheyenne together, so she was going to kill me? Thomas I understood. But this? This was insanity.
“Shouldn’t Cheyenne get to make her own decisions?” I asked.
She looked at me sharply. “She does make her own decisions, or at least she did before you came back. But when it comes to you, she can’t see clearly enough to know what’s good for her. You’ve always been nothing but trouble, and you dragged Cheyenne right into it. Underage drinking, sneaking out to spend nights with you, letting you in her window at night. Oh, we knew all about it. Could have gotten her knocked up and ruined her whole life. Barb was worried sick about what might happen to Cheyenne after she was gone, and she knew the most important thing she could do for her was to get rid of you.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “We were kids. Kids do stupid stuff.”
“No.” She shook her head. “ You did stupid stuff. Getting into fights, acting like rules didn’t matter. Too wild for our girl. And Barb was right. Once you left, she straightened right up. Made a good life for herself.”
“I’ve made a good life for myself, too. I grew up, Alma. I’m not a kid anymore. I love Cheyenne, and I’m going to take care of her, be the man she deserves.”
Oh, God, give me that chance. It was a prayer I’d prayed more than once since waking up in that ditch, but the stakes were higher now. I watched the road carefully, looking for a chance to take control. But Alma was driving like a maniac. I couldn’t risk it.
Alma snorted. “You’re not good enough for her. I tried to warn you. You should have left when I told you to.”
“The note?” My jaw dropped.
She nodded. “I watch the bar from my shop. Had a bad feeling when I saw your bike out front and watched Cheyenne go in anyway. She was a wreck when she walked back out, after seeing you again. Hoped you’d leave town, but you didn’t. Knew you were going to be trouble. And I was right, wasn’t I? You hadn’t been in town a week before you got into that fight with Thomas Smith.”
“So you tried to kill me?”
“Thought I had,” she admitted. “You didn’t seem to be breathing when I pushed you out into that ditch. Never thought you’d make it, and I’ll admit I was sweating when I heard you were in the hospital. But I’ll do things right this time.”
She spoke matter-of-factly, like we were talking about mundane chores, not murder. Ranch life could harden a person, that was certain. Managing things on her own for so long had probably toughened her up quite a bit. But even the tough ranchers I knew were still human. She didn’t seem to have a heart.
“They found the tire iron in Thomas’s car,” I said, putting the pieces together. “You framed him?”
She nodded. “Had to. Once Cheyenne told me that fight was about him threatening her, I knew I needed to keep her safe from him, too. Easiest way was to make it look like he attacked you.”
“How’d you do it?” Keep her talking. Think—there has to be a way out of this. Maybe when we turned onto the flat highway roads, I could take a chance, get the wheel.
But she didn’t head toward the highway. She turned off onto a narrow side road that went back up the mountain. We were heading toward her place: a desolate ranch in the middle of nowhere.
“Thomas never keeps his vehicle locked, so it was easy as pie to put the tire iron in there,” she bragged. “Swiped his lighter, too, in case I needed it. Glad I did. That came in handy. Couldn’t finish the job until he got out on bail, but now they’ll have more than enough evidence to put him away. And Cheyenne will be safe from both of you.”
“You burned Cheyenne’s barn?” My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe it. This woman who claimed to care about Cheyenne had destroyed something that meant everything to her.
But Alma blew it off. “That old barn needed to come down anyway. It was a piece of junk. Cheyenne will rebuild and be better off for it.”
“You’re crazy,” I said, the words slipping out before I could think better of it.
She gave a hoarse laugh. “You have to be to survive out here alone.”
“But you’re forcing Cheyenne to do the same. I love her, and she loves me. I want to take care of her, build a life with her. You may not think much of me, but I know you think highly of her. She’s decided I’m worth a second chance. She loves me. If you kill me, you’ll hurt her far more than I did by leaving.”
She scoffed. “You’re still a child. You’ve been back together, what, a week? If that? She’ll get over you faster this time than she did the first time around. At least now I’ll never have to worry about you coming back here and stirring things up again. It will be over for good this time, and I’ll have fulfilled my promise.”
She pulled up to her house, a lonely one-story ranch sitting in the middle of a thousand isolated acres of red soil dotted with stones and sagebrush. It was somewhere no one would ever think to look for me.
This time, Alma never intended for me to be found.
“Get out,” she said, pointing a small revolver at me. “We’re going for a walk.”