Chapter 16
Sawyer found Cash sitting in his living room with the AC turned up when he got home.
“I let myself in when I realized no one was home. Your truck was still here, so I figured you were either taking your time walking home or you were with Gina.” His mouth quirked to show that he knew that Sawyer had been spending a lot of time over at her place.
It was impossible to keep anything a secret on the ranch.
Or in all of Dry Creek, for that matter.
“What’s up?”
“I’m not sure.” Cash lost the grin and his expression turned sharp. “My buddy, Ken, got squirrelly all of a sudden.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s not returning my calls, which isn’t like him.
The guy’s solid, not flaky. Initially, I feared he had some kind of family emergency…
something that took precedence over sending me a quick text that he was still working on tracing the email, or whatever.
But I checked with another friend who says Ken’s been at work every day this week. That everything seems fine.”
“So what do you think’s going on?”
“Don’t know.” Cash shook his head. “It isn’t like him to say he’s going to do something and then not do it.
Even stranger is the radio silence. He knows Angela is my cousin.
We worked cases together when she first went missing.
Knew the toll it took on me. On our family. This isn’t something he’d blow off.”
“Maybe his supervisors told him he couldn’t use Bureau resources.”
“There’s so much going on in that lab, no one knows what anyone else is doing. Ken spends his day in a cubicle the size of a shoebox, doing cyber searches. Most of it sleep-inducing. That’s not it.”
“Sounds like you might have a vague idea.”
“Yeah, I think he found out something he doesn’t want to share. Why? That right there is the million-dollar question.”
“Or are you reading way too much into it? The guy could’ve just gotten busy.”
“Maybe.” But Cash wasn’t buying it, Sawyer could tell. “If I don’t hear anything in the next day or two, I’m taking a little trip. A little face-to-face time with Ken.”
“You have time for that?” Sawyer walked to the fridge and grabbed two bottled waters and tossed one to Cash. His cousin spent the good part of the day driving across Northern California, investigating livestock thefts.
“I’ll make time.” Cash took a swig of the water and put the bottle down on Sawyer’s coffee table.
“Speaking of…Aren’t you working today?” It was after ten.
“Yep. I left the morning clear for the meeting with Tuff. At noon I have a cattlemen’s lunch in Placer County.
” Placer was just next door to Mill County.
When Grandpa Dalton was alive he sometimes went to the Placer cattlemen’s lunches at the Auburn Fairgrounds.
A few of those times, he’d taken his grandsons with him.
Sawyer took a sip of his water and eyed Cash over the rim of the bottle. “What are some of the things your friend Ken could’ve found that he wouldn’t want to pass on to you?” Sawyer couldn’t let it go.
He had his own ideas, like maybe Angie had been the victim of someone on the FBI’s radar and agents didn’t want to blow their case.
Hell, for all he knew, Angie was involved in something illegal and was under investigation.
But that didn’t sound like his sister. She’d been caught up in some wacky causes but none of them were criminal.
Perhaps Ken’s reticence had something to do with the New Mexico commune.
The timing was certainly suspect. Sawyer had gotten the email about the same time he’d been trying to unearth information about the farm.
Or whatever the hell it was. Could be that the FBI was interested in the commune too.
For all Sawyer knew the Bureau was dealing with another Branch Davidian situation.
“Why speculate?” Cash let out a sigh. “There’s dozens of reasons. Let’s see what I can find out.”
It was a fancy way of Cash saying he didn’t want to go there right now. But Sawyer was pretty sure they’d come up with the same possibilities.
None of them good.
“So what’s the deal with you and Gina?” Cash unartfully steered the conversation away from Angie. “I see you sneaking over there a few nights a week and her driving over to your place the other nights.”
Sawyer could’ve pleaded the Fifth. Cash would’ve let it go. All three of them tried hard to respect one another’s space. Living in a fishbowl, you had to. But why? His cousin wasn’t an idiot. He saw what he saw. Knew what he knew.
“I don’t know.” Sawyer shrugged. “I guess somewhere along the way we became more than friends.”
“Is it serious?”
“Nah.” How could it be? Gina wanted her old life and Sawyer didn’t want any part of it.
He was a writer and a rancher, not arm candy for a celebrity.
The restaurant…it had been a stupid idea.
She was too big for Dry Creek Ranch, even if she had wanted to be a restaurateur.
Which clearly she didn’t. “Just a summer thing. Passing the time until she goes home.”
Cash held his gaze. “How’s her situation coming? You figure out who’s responsible for that picture…the texts?”
“Not yet. We found the original photo, though. The one that was photoshopped to make it look like Gina was in the picture. Now all she has to do is prove it.”
“I imagine that won’t be an easy feat. You got anything better?”
Sawyer let out a wry chuckle. “You mean the proverbial smoking gun? No, not yet. Working on it.”
“You got two cops living next door. Yell if you need help. We’ll put our heads together. Of course, if you don’t want her to leave…” The corner of Cash’s mouth turned up.
Sawyer ignored the insinuation because it was too close to the truth. He needed a good assignment, something that would take him on the road. Something that would clear his head and take his focus away from Gina.
“We could use the cabin, maybe rent it out to add to our Dry Creek Ranch roadside-attraction coffers.”
Cash rubbed his hand down his chin. “Tuff mentioned looking for a place close by. He’s sharing a bunkhouse with a bunch of cowboys. He’ll need his own digs when he leaves wrangling behind.”
Though Sawyer had been the one to bring it up, the idea of someone other than Gina living in Cash’s old cabin bothered him. Boy, did he have to get a grip. He was like Travis with his first crush.
“I’ve gotta giddyup if I’m going to make it to that lunch.” Cash got to his feet. “I’ll let you know if I hear from Ken.”
“If you wind up paying him a visit, can I tag along?”
Cash grabbed his hat off the rack by the staircase.
“Don’t think that would be a good idea. I can’t even get the guy to return my calls.
He sure as shit won’t talk if you’re there with me.
I’ll get it done. That’s a promise.” He lifted his hand, waved it in the air, and ate up the stairs with that long stride of his.
Sawyer polished off his water, got another from the fridge, and booted up his laptop on the kitchen island. He promised he wouldn’t let himself think about Gina until after he got his writing done.
Ten minutes later, he trolled to find the listing for Beals Ranch.
Ten million dollars is how much Randy wanted for it.
And Sawyer had no doubt that it was worth every cent.
A contiguous, fully fenced, nearly flat thousand-acre working ranch, complete with barns, irrigation, corrals, equipment, three wells, and a couple of houses in Gold Country was rarer than the precious metal for which the region was named.
He flipped through the twenty-eight photos, starting with an aerial view of the ranch.
It was beautiful land, guarded by the Sierra Nevada mountains.
No doubt it was a developer’s wet dream.
Only sixty-five miles from Sacramento, ninety to Reno, and a hundred and fifty to San Francisco.
Despite its proximity to large cities, it felt like a world away.
And with nearby Grass Valley, Nevada City, and Auburn a person could get just about everything they needed, even Starbucks.
He closed down the real estate tab on his computer and returned to working on his article.
It was due in a few days and he needed to flesh out a lot of what he’d already written.
His editor at Esquire was already haranguing him about doing a piece on the staggering homicide rate in Central America, which would likely entail weeks of travel.
It used to be one of the best parts of his job. But now he was dreading it. He told himself it was because of Angie. He needed to stay close in case they broke the email riddle.
But deep down inside he knew it had more to do with Gina. She’d become a preoccupation. He had to keep reminding himself that they traveled in different lanes and he didn’t see how their highways could ever converge.
Nope, she’d made it clear they both wanted two very different things. Time to stop fixating and get back to work. Get back to the things that mattered.