Chapter Eleven
T he fairgrounds were crowded on a Friday night and there were midway rides, food tents and trucks, and a huge carnival of games set up. In the tented booths, dotted throughout the grounds, exhibits of artists and artisans were on display, including a craft section that was popular every year and the traditional 4-H exhibit that touted the Youth Encounter coming the next night. The school fundraiser-silent auction Cami had volunteered to help with was in full swing and had lines near all the sign-ups happening in the tent toward the front, where it would be noticed. The Hard Eight had donated several packages as well. There were pumpkins and baskets of apples and the smell of autumn everywhere. Even the trees cooperated by turning beautiful shades of orange and red and dropping a carpet of color on the way in.
Cooper’s brain was on overdrive, thinking about the deputy’s call and the implications behind it. If the intruder was, in fact, Evan Clulagher, right here in Marietta, what the hell was he doing out at the Hard Eight, breaking into their office? And what did all that mean? What connection could Evan have had with their ranch? Or was it Ray who had drawn him there? But he’d made no attempt to see Ray, which made sense since he could have no desire to be recognized.
On the lookout for Evan’s face as they moved through the crowd, he shoved these questions to the back of his mind to focus on Shay as they walked in behind the others. He said nothing about the deputy’s call to anyone. He needed time to sort out his thoughts, because he could sense an answer lying just below the surface. He just couldn’t grab it.
He felt her fingers brush up against his surreptitiously.
“I’m starving,” she told him as they reached the food tents. “I think I need one of those.” Pointing to a truck selling decadent-looking apple fritters, she grinned at him playfully. “Dessert first at the autumn festival, right?”
“Absolutely.” They ordered two and strolled the grounds, enjoying the sweet treat.
“What do you usually order at these things?” she asked him, watching Ryan disappear with school friends toward the midway. They were meeting for a sleepover at one of the other boys’ houses tonight. “I mean, what’s your vice?”
“You,” he murmured close to her ear. “You’re my current vice.”
She punched him playfully in the arm. “Shhh. I mean food.”
“Oh. In that case, it would have to be the deep-fried pickles.”
“Pickles?!”
“Or, okay, how about deep-fried Texas BBQ shotgun shells?”
“That requires an immediate explanation.”
“Ahh, yeah. Gooey cheese and brisket and jalape?o, all wrapped up in pasta and deep fried. Guaranteed to clog your arteries with no help from the fried pickles.” He shrugged. “Maybe Montana has yet to discover this delicacy.”
She finished the last bite of her apple fritter and tossed the paper bowl in the trash. “That does sound fascinating. And, honestly, it would have sounded yummier pre the deep-fried apple fritter. But you apparently, are a fair connoisseur.”
“Or, an unfair connoisseur, depending on your point of view.”
She snorted. “Then please, tell me which carnival game I can actually win and isn’t rigged against me three ways to Sunday?”
“Oh, no. Sorry. That’s part of the unfair fun. They’re all rigged, at least two ways to Sunday.”
She laughed and hurried him toward the games. They bought an arms’ length worth of tickets and spent them on all the games that were impossible to win. Ring toss, coin toss, squirt gun target games, and a fake shooting gallery. Just as he was about to lose hope, he managed to win a large pink bear for her by striking down three bowling pins with a baseball.
Bear in hand, they rode the Ferris wheel that pulled them high above the fairgrounds with a bird’s-eye view of Marietta, all lit up for the event. Alone up there, he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into him as the cool night breeze ruffled through their hair. Around and around they went, as Cooper scanned the fairgrounds for any sign of the man Shay had seen. If Evan was here, he clearly didn’t look like the Evan who’d lived and worked here eight years earlier.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the connection to the Hard Eight. If his father’s partner had returned to Marietta, there must be a good reason. Trey had said he’d gone through all of his stolen money in the Bahamas and was nearly broke. Which meant he needed—was desperate for—more. If he thought, somehow, that he could find it at the Hard Eight, that meant he had reason to believe there was money—blackmail money?—or the means to get it somewhere at the Hard Eight. Ergo, that also meant someone from that ranch had been the blackmailer.
He tightened his arm around Shay, a sick feeling crawling up his throat. Could it have been Sarah? He could not wrap his brain around that possibility. Besides, she seemed to be in love with Ray. Then and now. She would have had no motive to set his father up to take the fall for Evan. Unless—
No. It couldn’t be her. If there was one thing he’d learned working both with horses and the cowboys on the Four Sixes, it was how to read people. Sarah was good people. All of them were. Including Liam, who—despite co-running the cattle operation with his father for several years—would have been too young to have done something so dangerous or foolhardy as to blackmail Evan. But could he have known about the blackmail? That didn’t make sense either, because from everything Cooper had seen, the ranch was struggling hard before Shay’s twin, Will, had returned to infuse it with cash. If there was some cash in some bank account that Liam knew about, surely he’d have used it. And he flatly dismissed the possibility of Cami or Shay.
That left only one person with the potential to blackmail his father’s partner—Sarah’s late husband, Tom Hardesty.
A cold chill raced through him as the Ferris wheel spun to a slow stop. Tom Hardesty. A dead man who could not defend himself. The patriarch of the Hardesty clan, who was both feared and respected by his family. Yet in all the time he’d been at the Hard Eight, Cooper had rarely heard his children or widow speak of him or even remember him fondly. That didn’t make him a bad man, but it made Cooper wonder. It also made him wonder—if he had blackmailed Evan Clulagher, simultaneously setting up his father to take the fall for him, just... why? And had he been involved with Evan’s rustling scheme itself, or did he simply discover it and take advantage?
“You’re far away tonight,” Shay said, dragging him out of his thoughts as they walked away from the ride. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. Of course,” he said, flustered that he’d allowed her to notice. “I’m just enjoying being out in the world tonight. Quite a crowd, huh?”
“Okay. You don’t have to tell me.” She bumped into his shoulder playfully. “You’re a deep river, Cooper Lane.”
She threaded her hand through his arm as they walked toward the tented 4-H exhibits and the kids who’d entered the Youth Horse Encounter.
“I guess you know about Ry withdrawing from the competition.”
Cooper nodded. “That was a big decision.”
“He was scared you’d be upset with him.”
“Me? Why would I be?”
“After all the time you two spent together. He thought you’d be disappointed with his decision.”
“Actually, I’m proud of him.” He tightened a hand around hers. “He chose the bond with the horse over a cash prize. In my experience, that’s a choice well made.”
“Says the cowboy in you,” she teased. “But I agree.”
“That wasn’t how it was for you as a kid?” he asked, easing her into a topic close to her childhood.
She sighed. “Money was always a priority in our family. There never seemed to be enough of it. At least when we were kids.”
“So... what? That changed at some point?” he asked carefully.
“Well,” she allowed after a moment, “there were some good years when the struggle wasn’t so great. Financially, at least. But after my father died, it seemed that we were back at square one. Which is why Will’s personal investment in the ranch and all our hard work toward making it a profitable guest ranch is so important.”
They wound through the 4-H caged rabbit exhibits in one of the tents, bumping into proud 4-H parents and fairgoers at every turn.
He tried again. “You don’t talk about him much. Your father.”
She swallowed thickly, studying the long-haired calico bunny sniffing her fingers. “He was... not an easy man. He was a good provider, not much of a dad, and a very complicated human being. I mean, we loved him in our own way. Most of us, at least. I think he loved us back? Or maybe it was just the ranch he really loved.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. That’s way more than you need to hear.”
“Don’t apologize. He’s part of you. Your family is a big part of who you are.”
“And you, too,” she said. “The way you are with your dad, after all you’ve both been through, it says everything about who you are. What kind of man you are.”
He was apparently the kind of a man who would ask sketchy questions under the guise of simple curiosity. Guilt washed over him. But he had to know how these two disparate parts were connected. And as the pieces ticked together in his mind, there was only one piece that connected all three men—Tom, Ray, and Evan. And that part was walking toward them right now with her arms full of a stuffed toy horse.
“There you are!” Sarah exclaimed, dragging Ray in their direction. “We lost track of you on the midway!”
Shay pointed to the stuffed horse. “Look at that. Ray, you’ve made my mother’s night.”
Sarah, with her arm wrapped around Ray’s, laughed at his blush. “Who knew he was a master of the ring toss? He won another toy, but he gave it away to a little girl who was having a meltdown in front of the cotton candy.”
“Nice,” Shay said. “I don’t know about you, but we spent more than I care to divulge winning this three-dollar stuffed pink bear.”
Cooper couldn’t help but enjoy watching his father with Sarah and how easy they seemed with each other. There was no hiding the fact that they were together. They were comfortable with it. “Have you tried the food yet?”
“Oh, we did.” Ray rubbed his belly. “There were fried sausages involved.”
“Yeah, apple fritters here. Protein’s overrated,” Shay quipped.
Only then did Cooper notice the infamous gossip, Carol Bingley chatting with a man and his wife and looking in their direction. He remembered seeing Carol in town outside the café when he and Shay were having lunch. Cooper rolled his eyes, wanting to steer everyone in a different direction, but it was already too late. The man was walking up to them a bit aggressively.
“Well, if it isn’t the local crime family. The ex-con, Ray Lane and his slippery son,” said the impressively large man in cowboy gear and a silver belt buckle.
Cooper realized then that he had forgotten to brace himself for this tonight. He’d almost forgotten that there were those in this town who still hated them for what had happened so long ago.
Ray immediately put Sarah behind him and held Cooper back with one hand. “No call for name calling, Messer,” he told the stranger. “We’re just here like you. Enjoying the fair.”
“Oh, not like us,” Messer said, looking around at his clearly distressed wife and grown son. “No, you’re probably spending your rustling money right here in Marietta. You’ve got some balls coming back here.”
“I did my time.” Ray’s jaw was clenched, and he didn’t take his eyes off either man.
“Not nearly enough for what was lost here. You nearly ruined me with your thievery.”
“Let’s go,” Ray told Cooper and Sarah. Shay was biting her lip, holding onto Cooper.
“He didn’t steal your money,” Cooper snapped. “He was set up. Not that you’d care even if the truth bit you.”
“Truth? Yeah, that’s what he said. But a court of law convicted him. That means something in America. You should get out of these parts, Ray Lane, if you know what’s good for you. Nobody wants you here. Either one of you.” The younger Messer’s fist clenched and unclenched with warning. “And it’s mighty surprising to see you with a man like him, Ms. Hardesty. Maybe you should rethink your priorities.”
“Shut up, Jim,” Sarah told him. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Messer’s wife was tugging on his sleeve, begging him to back off. “Let’s go, Jimmy. Just leave it.”
Jimmy Messer took in the half-dozen children nearby who were stopped watching them with wide-eyed looks. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Trash like you ain’t worth my time.”
They ambled away, leaving the four of them shaken and temporarily speechless. It wasn’t as if his father had expected a welcome here. But the hope that the past might be a dim memory was dashed in that moment.
“Let’s go home,” Sarah said, tugging Ray toward the exit. “I’ve had enough of the fair for one night.”
Fury knotted in Cooper’s throat as he watched his father walk with Sarah toward the exit. He didn’t deserve this. He’d never deserved this.
In the next moment, he felt Shay thread her fingers defiantly through his and pull him toward the exit. Her deep blue eyes met his with some emotion he couldn’t quite name. Compassion? Empathy? Pity? Maybe all of the above?
With one last look at the retreating Messers, he tightened his fingers around hers and stalked toward the exit.
*
Liam was at home, in the upstairs bedroom that was being converted to a home office, building shelves when he heard a noise downstairs. He stilled, listening, sure he imagined the sound of breaking glass.
But then, it came again with a couple of short punches coming from the back of the house. The puppies, who Ray had brought up to the house for the evening, roused from their sleep at the sound, too, looking quizzically at Liam.
His first thought was that his shotgun was far away in a downstairs room. His second was—he was alone here and foolishly vulnerable.
He picked up his hammer and moved quietly to the top of the stairs and shouted, “I’ve got a gun. Whoever’s down there, get the hell out of here!”
Downstairs, a shadow passed across the front hallway.
Inside.
Whoever it was, was already inside .
The pups whined and tumbled against his legs. Liam lifted his cell phone and dialed 911. It rang and rang.
“The police are on their way!” he lied, scanning around for a sturdier weapon to confront the man with. Downstairs, he heard a drawer full of stuff hit the floor and the crash of something breakable.
Again, the shadow of someone passed between the kitchen light and the hallway. “Tell me where it is!” the intruder yelled, surprising Liam so he nearly fell backward. “Tell me!”
“Get out of here,” Liam shouted back. “We’ve got nothing you want.”
From outside, the flash of headlights illuminated the front windows followed by the sound of tires crunching against the gravel driveway.
“Nine-one-one,” said a faint voice on his cell. “What’s your emergency?”
“Hard Eight ranch. We have an intruder. He’s in the house.”
Liam heard the back door slam and the sound of more glass hitting the floor. He pushed aside the curtain in the window to see his family truck had pulled into the front yard. The crew from the fair had come home early.
He rushed down the stairs to head them off at the door, the 911 operator still peppering him with questions. He held up his hand to stop them from entering. “We just had another break-in. I don’t know yet where he is exactly. I think he ran out the back door. But we wait outside until Cooper and I clear the house.”
A stunned shock registered on all their faces as the pups tumbled down the stairs after Liam and spilled into the front yard in a black and white furry jumble. Ray and Cooper caught them and picked them up. Sarah touched Liam’s arm. “Are you all right, darlin’?”
He shoved a hand through his dark hair. “Fine. Just shook up, is all. Back door’s busted. Just wish I’d had my gun.” He returned to the 911 operator and told her they had it handled.
“What is going on?” Sarah gave a shudder. “That’s twice in one month. What in the world does that guy want with us, anyway?”
“This guy,” Liam said. “He just yelled at me. Kept saying, ‘Where is it?’”
“Where is what?” Sarah asked, confused.
“That’s a damn good question.” Liam had the look of a ruffled-up stock guardian dog.
Cooper scowled at the darkness beyond the yard. He should tell them about Clulagher. Tell them now. But that was bound to go badly for everyone. He was in no position to accuse anyone of anything. Least of all a dead husband and father. He needed to talk to Trey Reyes first, and he needed some kind of proof that Tom Hardesty was involved.
The flip side of that coin was implicating their father-husband in a crime. The deeper Cooper waded into all of this, and the more involved he got with Shay, the more certain he was that, if he wasn’t careful, all of it could go very wrong.
A sick feeling hit the back of his throat as Shay took his hand in front of the others.
“He’s probably just some crazy looking for drugs,” she said. “Or drug money. On the positive side, we outnumber him by a lot. And the alarm system we ordered goes in later this week. I say we stick close to home. Strength in numbers and all that.”
Everyone was staring at her hand in his.
She blinked at them in confusion. “What?” Then she realized. “Oh.” She flicked a wry look up at him and cleared her throat. “Yes. Yes, we are. Seeing each other.”
It was a moment that should have made him very happy. He tightened his fingers around hers and met her family’s stares. And his father’s. “We are.”
“Oh!” Sarah exclaimed. “Well, darling, that’s...”
“Crazy timing.” Liam looked befuddled. “But yeah. We already knew.”
Ray patted him on the back as Cami’s truck pulled into the driveway coming back from the fair. She hopped out with a curiously wary expression. “What are we all doing standing out here? What did I miss?” She immediately caught sight of the handholding. “Ohh-hhh!”
“Yeah, it’s way more complicated than that,” Shay told her. “I’ll tell you inside.” She kissed Cooper on the mouth, and he grinned back at her.
“’Night, Cooper. ’Night, everyone.” As she and Cami walked away, he made eye contact with the others without a word, then turned and headed back to the apartment, feeling like a Judas.
*
The next morning, Liam drove into town to buy glass to repair the door while Cooper helped Shay unpack the boxes from Tom’s old office in the new one upstairs. The shelves Liam had built would hold most of it and after they got the desk cleared, it would look like a real office again.
The two of them had shaken off last night’s troubles and after working for an hour, stopped to share some experimental cappuccinos Shay made in the new espresso machine they’d just unpacked for the main guest lobby. It was an extravagance, but necessary. The cappuccinos, on the other hand, would require some work.
She made a face. “Oooh. That’s a leeeetle bit strong.”
Cooper struggled to swallow his. “Nah. It’s just... perfect.”
She tilted an amused look at him. “I promise, it’ll get better. Once I figure out that milk steaming thingy.”
“It’s the grind.”
“The grind? Really? How would you know that?”
“Did I not mention I worked as a Starbucks barista in college?”
“No.” She lifted a box onto the desktop. “But you were on full scholarship.”
“With a work-study component.” He shrugged. “Learned everything you never needed to know about making coffee.”
“Then you are absolutely in charge of Kendall.”
“Kendall?”
“The espresso machine. Unisex name for a beautiful workhorse.”
“Good call,” he said, glancing at his watch and setting down his drink. “Speaking of which, Liam wants me to start the round barn demo today, so I’d better go. Your mom was supposed to meet me out there at one to go over some design ideas.”
“Really?” She tugged him toward her by the front of his shirt. “You sure you have to go right now?”
“Well.” He kissed her briefly on the lips. “I do work for you. I am at your disposal.”
“Oh, in that case, you’d better go. Or Liam will never let me hear the end of it.”
He brushed a finger against her cheek. “See you later?”
“You’d better!”
After he’d left, she unpacked several boxes of books, including a raft of notebooks and old accounting folders. She sighed. All of those were mostly outdated taxes which would need a file cabinet to store until the IRS didn’t require them to save them anymore. Her father had diligently saved everything, which was good, but exhausting when doing this kind of a move.
She picked up a few books and put them onto the shelf. The number of books surprised her because he wasn’t a reader. But there were novels and nonfiction books alike looking for space.
She heard the ding of a text and reached for her phone, only to realize the sound had not come from her phone. A few seconds later, it dinged again. This time, she searched underneath a pile of papers and found Cooper’s phone! He must have put it down while they were working, and it had gotten buried there.
Trey Reyes was the name on the text message. Nothing more.
Trey Reyes?
She knew that name. Wasn’t he the private investigator for the Canaday Law firm?
Why would a private investigator be calling Cooper? Confused, she stood there for a moment staring at his screen. Until a second text came in from Trey Reyes.
Whatever it was, it was no business of hers. She put his phone down and decided to run the cell out to him later when she finished up here.
She picked up several more books and slid them into place. But with the next book she selected—a small black, leatherbound family bible—a small, folded piece of paper fell out to the floor. Frowning, she reached for it and slowly unfolded it. The hand-written note appeared to be in her father’s hand.
T O THE F OUR OF Y OU,
T HE PRICE OF YOUR MOTHER’S INFIDELITY IS WITHIN THE WALLS OF THE PLACE WHERE I PROPOSED TO HER MANY YEARS AGO. I THOUGHT IT WAS FITTING.
U SE IT WELL. I T’S ALL I HAVE TO LEAVE YOU.
Y OUR FATHER, T OM H ARDESTY.
What in the world? Shay stared at the note and reread it four times. As if rereading it would make it make any more sense. The price of your mother’s infidelity? What did that mean? Her mother had never been unfaithful to her father. Of that she felt certain. Oh, they’d had issues, but certainly not that. What did he mean by the price being within the walls of the place where he proposed to her? It sounded sinister. And terrifying. Where was that? He’d always said he asked her to marry him in the loft. It was a kind of family joke.
But not the barn here. The old round barn. A chill ran through her.
Cooper’s phone dinged again. Twice. With two more texts. Then the phone rang. Trey again.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. She reached for it and answered it.
“Hello? This is Shay Hardesty. Mr. Reyes?”
“Yes?” The deep voice on the other end hesitated. “This is Trey Reyes. Is... is Cooper there?”
“I’m sorry. I answered his phone. I thought it might be important since you’d left so many texts. He left his phone behind accidentally.”
“It is very important that I speak with him. I’m returning his call. I was flying in from California this morning and unable to answer.”
She’d only met Reyes once or twice with the Canaday sisters, so she didn’t know him well. But there seemed to be an urgency in his voice.
“Well, he’s not here.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“He’s working out at the round barn. Is there anything I can help you with?” She was still holding the note from her father. Her hand was shaking.
“I-I think... listen, Ms. Hardesty. I have reason to believe that he and all of you out at the Hard Eight could be in imminent danger.”
Instantly, her thoughts turned to the man who’d broken into their home. “What kind of danger, exactly?”
“I really should talk to Cooper directly. It’s in regard to a case I’m working on for him.”
A case? The hair on the back of her neck went up. Cooper had hired Trey to investigate... what? Was it connected somehow to the break-ins at their ranch? Or the creep who’d passed her on the road? Why wouldn’t he tell her that though?
A drumming began behind her eyes. “Oh, the case. Yes,” she lied. “He told me about the case. You found something then?” She held her breath.
Trey hesitated again, but even as he did, she heard the sound of his car door shutting and his engine starting. “Okay, since he’s told you... It turns out Cooper was right all along about your mom being at the center of this. It was Sarah that Ray was trying to protect by going to prison without implicating your father—”
My father? What? No. Just no!
“And that might be the key to clearing Ray’s name. Cooper called me last night. The deputy had called him about the fingerprints out at your barn. Seems they belonged to none other than Clulagher. So we know now that the guy is not dead and has definitely been here in town.”
Her throat felt like it might close up. “Wait. You mean that’s who’s been stalking my family?”
“Apparently. Look, there’s no easy way to say this, but we also found that it was your late father who was blackmailing Clulagher. My guy retrieved some deleted emails that were...”
Her ears stopped working. Blackmail? Clulagher? Her father? Ray protecting her mom? What the hell was he talking about?
She stared down at her father’s note in her hand. ...the price of your mother’s infidelity...
The words all collided as she tried to take them in. All she could really seem to grasp was that her mother was somehow at the center of all this. And Cooper had, for some reason, come here to investigate her parents’ involvement in some crime his own father had committed and that now, all of them were in danger.
Her heart sank. And all of the gut feelings, all of the intuition she’d had that very first day about Cooper ruining them had been right, and she’d ignored all of it and let him in. He’d lied to her. About everything. And had he known all along who this guy was who was stalking her? Stalking her family? But he did nothing? Told them nothing ? Anger bubbled up inside her. All she could think about was making love to Cooper, him kissing her. Making her believe he wasn’t here for some ulterior motive. All so he could ruin them by clearing his father’s name.
“Shay? You still there?” Trey asked. “Listen to me. I can’t predict what this guy will do. But a dead man can do pretty much anything he wants and get away with it.”
A dead man? Not if she strangled Cooper first!
“Okay. Thank you,” she said. “I’ll tell him.”
“No. Wait. Shay. Listen to me. Don’t go by your—”
“Goodbye.” She punched the end button on Cooper’s cell phone. She let out a frustrated growl and tossed it roughly down on the desk. Then she picked it back up and angrily punched that end button over and over.
Then, she raced downstairs and out the front door. She jumped in her truck and spit gravel behind her as she headed out to find him.
*
Sarah and Cooper were up at the round barn, discussing design possibilities, even as Cooper was tearing out old sheetrock from the interior tack room.
“This right here isn’t a supporting wall.” Cooper banged his hammer along the wall, punching holes in it. “So, we can tear this down to make room for a kitchen, if that’s what you have in mind.”
“We’ll definitely need kitchen facilities up here along with redoing all the electrical wiring and the box. I don’t think a couple of string bulbs are going to cut it for wedding receptions.” Sarah chuckled as she inspected the joists under the loft. Old bits of hay still drifted down from the spaces between. “They look pretty sturdy. They must be a hundred years old though. Maybe there’s something we can do with the loft. Build a staircase up to it. Use it as a changing room? Then the stairway could even be an entrance for the bride?”
“That’s a lot of work, but it’s a great idea.”
He hammered again and pulled some drywall out with the claw part of the hammer. And with the drywall, unexpectedly came a fist full of currency.
Bills.
Money.
It fluttered to the floor like autumn leaves. Cooper just stared at it.
Sarah turned at his silence and gasped. “What... is that?”
He reached for the bills. Hundred-dollar bills. Lots of them. He turned to Sarah, wide-eyed.
“Oh, my God—” she breathed.
Cooper turned back to the wall. Pulled off more drywall. Then a whole section of drywall pulled away from the wall in one piece. A secret door. More bills tumbled out. Stacks of bills. Some wrapped in currency bands. Others, loose. There were thousands and thousands of dollars stuffed between the studs and spilling out onto the barn floor.
Speechless, the two of them just stared at the money.
Finally, Sarah said, “Wh-where did that come from? Who... who put it there?”
Cooper pulled more bills from the wall and looked back at her. The truth was inevitable now. There was no way he could keep it from her. “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
*
“Honest?” Shay shouted, appearing at the barn doors. “Ha! Clearly you don’t even know the meaning of the word.”
Cooper and Sarah turned in shock at her sudden appearance.
“Shay—” Cooper began, getting to his feet.
Shay’s angry finger-pointing wavered at the sight of the money scattered all over the floor. She felt the color drain from her face. “What is that?”
“Money,” Sarah answered, stating the obvious. “Lots of money. Money that doesn’t belong to us.”
The price of your mother’s infidelity. Stunned into silence for a heartbeat or two, Shay turned fiercely to Cooper. “This is all your fault. You, Cooper Lane, are a liar. Is this what you’ve been looking for all along? This money? Payback maybe for your father’s suffering?”
“What?” Cooper stared at her in shock. “ No. ”
“ Shay— ” Sarah warned.
“Forget about the money, Mom. Did he tell you that he’s known all along who our stalker was? Did he tell you it was Evan Clulagher? The man who supposedly died eight years ago?”
Sarah looked at Cooper in confusion.
“And did he mention that he hired a private investigator to investigate us ?”
“No, it wasn’t like that,” he denied. “I had no idea that—”
“Just stop. Trey Reyes told me everything. How you believed Mom was at the center of it all and—”
“ What? ” Sarah gasped.
“How our family was about to be implicated in this mess about Ray? All the while, he tried to... to insinuate himself into our ranch. Tried to make me think”—she teared up, her voice going up an octave as her throat closed up—“that he cared about me. That he... was falling in love with me.”
“I am. I am in love with you, Shay.”
Now actual tears squirted out of her eyes, tears as angry as she was. “Don’t! Don’t make it worse by lying again.”
He blinked at her anger. “Is that what you really think? That I would try to trick you? Pretend about my feelings for you?”
“Well...” she choked out. “I was the one holdout to your being here. The one you had to convince.” She shook her head. “Go on. Deny it. You can’t. You used me to get to... to all this .” Tears leaked out of her eyes against her will.
The wounded look on Cooper’s face nearly broke through her anger, nearly broke what remained of her heart, but she wouldn’t allow him to fool her again. “Oh, and here. You forgot this.” She pulled his phone from her pocket and threw it at him, hitting his shoulder before he could duck. The phone clattered to the ground. “Now look.” She pointed to the money. “How... how are we going to explain this?”
He reached down to pick up his phone. From somewhere behind them came the sound of a gun cocking. “That is the question, isn’t it?” The three of them jumped as a disheveled-looking man appeared from the shadows under the loft. Had he been lurking there all along, watching this crazy scene unfold?
He stood at the loft ladder, holding a pistol aimed at them. His hair was overlong, his jaw was covered by an unkempt beard and his clothes looked like they could use a wash. It was the same man from the road that night. He tossed a small duffel bag in their direction. “I’ll take that money now and I thank you all for saving me the trouble of tearing all these walls out in the last place I had to look. You—Sarah—you fill up that bag.”
Cooper shoved Shay behind him. “There’s no need for guns,” he told Evan. “Take the money. We don’t want it.”
“ We? ” Shay hissed in a strangled whisper. “No. We don’t want it,” she corrected over Cooper’s shoulder. “Whatever it is. We , as in us. The Hardestys.”
“That’s amusing,” Evan said. “You think you’re all above this money? This Hardesty clan that thinks it’s so upright? This? This right here is the money your father stole from me. Blackmail money. Oh, yeah, he wasn’t above breaking the law, your old man, if it meant his family would profit and Sarah’s lover would go to prison.”
Shay gaped at him in shock.
She gripped the back of Cooper’s shirt as she watched her mother’s reaction to Evan’s words. At how some dawning realization replaced the shock in her expression.
Impossible. All of this was impossible. Crazy.
Evan gestured at Sarah to hurry up. “Gotta say I’m relieved to find he didn’t spend it all.” He fidgeted, pacing along the wall, unable to stand still as she tossed the money in the bag. “But I knew he’d stashed it somewhere here on the ranch. Frugal man your husband.” He wiped his nose and sniffed.
“You’re lookin’ pretty rough there, Clulagher,” Cooper said. “Things a little shaky in your world? Once you betray everyone you know?”
Clulagher winced at the dig. “You seem to know something about that, according to the little lady here.”
Shay curled her fingers warningly into Cooper’s shirt. “Don’t—” she whispered.
“Maybe you’ll get away with it again this time. Maybe you won’t. Maybe you’re not in complete control of it anymore,” Cooper said.
“You let me worry about that. You worry about your old man who looks like maybe he doesn’t have long for this world.”
“You stole eight years of his life!”
The man shrugged. “I didn’t steal it exactly. More like he gave it away. All for love.”
“Liar,” Cooper barked.
“Yeah? Ask him.” Clulahgher hauled Sarah up by the elbow once she’d finished putting the last of the money in the bag. He pulled her close against him with the gun to her head.
“No! Mom!” Shay breathed. “Cooper do something!”
“No!” Sarah snapped. “Leave it. You protect her.”
And he did. He was. He was blocking her with his body.
“That’s right,” Evan said. “You stay right where you are. Throw me the keys to that truck of yours.”
Cooper nodded at her and, angrily, she fished the keys out of her pocket.
“Toss them over here.”
She did and he made Sarah pick them up, then sidled out toward the barn doors with her back against his chest.
“Now, I’m not a killer,” he told them. “But you never know. Things are a little... desperate right now and you never know what might—”
But before he could clear the barn doors, someone reached out from behind the wall and knocked the gun out of his hand.