Chapter 12
Knowing a person’s last name makes being an amateur online detective much easier.
I scroll slowly through the search results for ‘Shayne Donovan, Idaho.’ Thankfully, no wedding announcements or troubling social media profiles pop-up.
About half-way down the second results page, I find an article from a Boise newspaper that seems promising.
I click on it, and my heart instantly drops.
It’s an obituary for Shayne’s sister, Lila Donovan:
What an absolute tragedy. My search into Shayne himself has been derailed.
I change the search from his name to his sister, Lila’s.
Her name yields the same article first. The second link is to a social media page.
I click on it, but it takes me to a private page I can’t access.
I click back to the search results and click on the third link.
It’s to another social media page. This one leads to a public profile.
I can’t see much, but there’s no question this is the right woman.
Lila’s beautiful, smiling face fills the top half of my screen.
She’s standing in front of a large body of water, a lake by the looks of greenery around the her.
Her hair is tied back in a loose braid, and her resemblance to Shayne is obvious.
Same wavy dark hair, although hers is much longer and subtly highlighted.
Same ridiculous cheek bones. Same stunning eyes, although her features are softer and her expression more open than her brother’s.
The next picture is of Lila and two other young women, standing in front of a neon cowboy boot sign with their arms thrown around each other.
They look happy and somewhat buzzed. All three are wearing chaps and cowboy hats, and the photo is captioned “Say cheers to the regional barrel racing champs.”
So she and her brother not only shared the same features but also the same interests it seems. The final available photo is Lila in profile, her forehead pressed against the forehead of a young man in what looks to be a karaoke bar.
They look like they were caught mid-song.
His sandy blond hair is on the long side, tucked back behind his ears.
His eyes are closed, and she has one arm wrapped around his neck while her other hand holds a microphone between them, which partially obscures the rest of his face.
The photo is slightly blurry, but Lila is radiant.
She looks like someone who knew how to have a good time and was most certainly a woman who deserved a much longer life than the short one she was served.
I lean back against the couch and close my eyes.
I didn’t even know this person, barely know her brother, but my heart aches all the same.
I can’t imagine living through a loss of this magnitude.
I feel like a creep now, digging into Shayne and his family.
Whatever he’s hiding, maybe it has nothing to do with Jo, maybe he’s just grieving the loss of his younger sister and unwilling to make himself vulnerable.
I press my fingers into my eyes and let out a long breath.
I’m tangled into a thousand knots, and I don’t know where to start the unwinding.
On one hand, I have Jo, who is dealing with an impossible amount of shit—the note, the fight with Andy, Andy’s injury.
Add Shayne into the mix. Is he the person who sent the note and broke into the office?
He’s admittedly hiding something, but is it anything to do with Jo and Andy?
According to Jo, he’s been nothing but a blessing on the ranch.
But things did start going wonky the moment this tall, dark, mysterious stranger waltzed into town, so it’s not a hard connection to make that he’s got something to do with it.
My attraction to Shayne has really muddied things up. I can’t keep my head straight around him. I know I can’t trust him—he even told me I can’t trust him. He’s the last person I should feel safe with, and yet…?
I groan in frustration and am about to close my laptop when I stop.
I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before.
I grab my phone and type in the year. I scroll past a host of photos of John, terrible selfies, some adorable photos of Jo in early pregnancy, until I find it—Jo’s baby shower.
I know I took a photo of her and Andy in front of their barn in almost the same pose.
Seconds later, I find it. Jo and Andy have their foreheads touching with her arms around his neck and his arms around her waist. It’s a much clearer, well-lit photo from it being outside in the middle of the day.
I hold my phone up next to my laptop screen, and even though the quality of the first photo isn’t great—there’s no question it’s Andy in both photos.
The side profiles of the two men are identical.
Same jawline, same small bump at the bridge of their noses. It’s fucking Andy.
I check the date on Lila’s photo. It was posted on August 17, 2017.
That’s two months after the photo I took at Jo’s baby shower and a month before Andy and Jo got married.
Kody would have been barely a month old.
Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with Andy singing karaoke with a beautiful young woman while his fiancé is at home with their infant, but…
it would make me feel shitty if I were in Jo’s shoes.
And while there’s nothing explicit going on in the photo, they do seem pretty comfortable with each other.
There is a very short list of people I would let sing that close to my face.
There’s got to be some explanation. Andy is absolutely obsessed with Jo—and creepy notes notwithstanding—there’s never been any indication he was trying to hide anything from her.
Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe the fact that Andy knew Shayne’s sister really has nothing to do with why Shayne is here now…
They’re both in the rodeo world…maybe they met at a group meet up…
Maybe it’s completely innocent. Maybe the notes really are a practical joke.
Maybe there are too many damn maybes flying around.