Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Drew handed her the phone. “You play it.”
“You’re crossin’ a line, Will,” Maria said.
“I know.” She looked at the highlighted recording in a list of them that was apparently several pages long. Rather than listening to what she’d already heard, she picked the one from the day when they’d first kissed and tapped Play.
Jeremiah’s voice came, deep and soft. “Everything’s goin’ better than I could’ve hoped. How can I fail to find it when I have the help of a deputy who looks at me the way she does? I think Willow Brand’ll do just about anything I ask.”
Willow felt like she’d been gut-punched, and her breath gusted out of her as if she had.
Lily said, “Listen to the most recent one, Will. Or the first and the last, since there’s no time to hear ‘em all.”
“They’re comin’,” Maria said.
Drew snatched the phone, tapping out of the app as she lurched toward Jeremiah’s chair, dropped it into the cup holder, and kept going past it toward the beer cooler, as if that had been her goal all along.
But she hadn’t clicked the phone off, so its screen was still lit up. And the guys were coming closer. Lily rubbed her baby bump and whispered, “You okay, Willow?”
And then Maria said, “That’s not the whole story. It’s out of context. You shouldn’t have listened to any of it.”
But Willow was still locked on that phone screen, willing it to go dark before Jeremiah noticed it. He was at the head of the gang, his arms full of deadfall from the scrub lot nearby. Ethan was beside him, Baxter on his other side, Orrin, Trevor, and Harrison brought up the rear.
Jeremiah got all the way to back of his chair, with the phone still lit, facing her, its back to him, and she was forcing her eyes to stay on his, and not shift downward, forcing her smile to not look like panic.
He frowned, though, dropping his armload of wood beside the fire pit, then turning back to reach for his phone, which was still lit up.
It went dark just before he made contact.
She sighed so heavily her back bent, and her cousins were exchanging looks of relief. And then, crisis averted, she let her smile die.
He was using her, had been the whole time, to find his father’s treasure. And she’d given him everything Uncle Garrett had on his old man, and run a background check on Juanita Lopez to boot.
It hurt like a knife in the back. It pissed her off, too, but she couldn’t find her anger just yet beyond the feeling of betrayal. She couldn’t hope to hide it, either. There were some angry, ugly tears coming and she’d prefer to be alone when they spilled.
She got to her feet. “I’m more tired than I thought. I’m headin’ home.”
“Oh, hey, I got you,” Jeremiah said, pocketing his phone, then pulling his keys from a pocket.
“No,” she said, and she said it too fast. His eyes met hers, full of questions. She didn’t have any answers.
Drew got to her feet. “I’m stayin’ over at Will’s tonight, so you’re off the hook. She’s helpin’ me study.”
“Oh.” Jeremiah said. The word seemed heavy. He was still searching Willow’s eyes and she was trying hard not to reveal a thing. But it probably showed.
“You guys can keep the party goin’,” she told her cousins. “Love you.” She headed around the bunkhouse and got into Drew’s little car.
Jeremiah found himself alone with the Brand men shortly after that. Maria and Lily muttered to each other, and then to their spouses, and then waved goodbye and left together.
So he sat there with his half-brother Ethan, Ethan’s cousins, Trevor and Baxter, and Ethan’s brother-in-law Harrison. Orrin was missing as he’d gone inside to use the bathroom. Ethan kept clearing his throat and it finally hit Jeremiah that he was trying to get his attention.
“So about you and Willow,” Ethan said, being the de facto leader of the gang.
Jeremiah looked around and realized this was going to be some sort of family talking-to.
So he got to his feet, picked up his hat, and plunked it onto his head.
“That would be between me and Willow,” he said.
“Night, fellas. I’m hittin’ the rack. C’mon, Beans.
” He strode directly into the bunkhouse with his dog as close as his shadow.
Orrin came out, dang near bumping into him in the doorway.
Jeremiah let him pass then went in and closed the door behind him. He had a feeling he’d been about to get the third degree about his relationship with Willow, and was glad to have avoided it.
Willow.
Something was up with her.
And he knew what, because she had a terrible poker face. The whole time he’d been walking back from the woods, she’d been shifting her eyes between him and his chair, or more specifically the phone in his chair, as had become apparent when he’d got closer.
And he’d seen the shift in the area immediately around the phone when its light had gone out, which told him it had been on. Someone had messed with his phone. They wouldn’t know his password, of course, but then why was Willow acting so off?
He hit the bathroom and the shower, a deterrent, in case Ethan decided to come in for a one-on-one chat with him. He needed to find his father’s gold and get the hell out of this town.
He took his time in the shower, and by the time he finished and came out, stepping over Beans who laid on the bathmat outside the shower door, it felt quiet. Everyone had gone.
He went to the back door wearing a towel. The firepit was black, beer bottles picked up, cooler gone, folding chairs folded and returned to the shed where they kept ‘em. Someone had even piled up the scrub wood he and the guys had gathered.
Crossing the bunkhouse to the kitchen, he looked through the front window behind the kitchen sink, and saw all the vehicles had gone except his own.
His spine relaxed a little. Beans yipped. He was standing in front of his bowl.
“Shoot, you had dinner at six.”
He barked again.
“Yeah, okay.” Jeremiah obediently put some kibble in the bowl and watched the pup dive in. The vet said to feed him all he wanted for the first year. He had not found the “all he wanted” point yet.
Then he filled a glass with water and turned off lights on his way to the rearmost bottom bunk he’d been using since he’d moved in. Being flush with the rear wall gave him the fullest view of the place, both entrances.
He dropped his towel on the way, then slid between the fresh, clean sheets. He could barely turn his back without Miss Chelsea cleaning the place. She must’ve had a field day, him being out of the bunkhouse overnight.
The thought of Willow brought a sharp stab to his chest, and it surprised him. He missed her. He’d enjoyed being with her, regardless of his reasons. He sighed heavily, laid back on the pillows and reached for his phone. When he unlocked it, he frowned.
The journal app was open.
He hadn’t journaled today.
He swore under his breath, reviewing what had happened before Will had turned on him.
He’d taken photos with his phone. One, and then another just before he’d walked away.
Why the hell had he left it behind? His brain had said he’d be apt to lose it in the woods, but she was the law. Had he even locked the dang thing?
He was getting sloppy, entirely too comfortable with this family. With Willow, especially. And now she’d probably seen something she thought was incriminating.
Hell.
He tapped the most recently opened files, one of which was his most recent entry, which should be there. What shouldn’t be there was one several days old.
He thought back in his mind, realizing that was the day he and Willow had first kissed.
Son of a gun!
He played the recording, where he’d talked about using her to get the information he needed, and realized how it must look to her. An uncomfortably awful feeling unfurled from the pit of his stomach out into his body. He pushed it back with anger.
“How dare she go through my phone? No warrant, no nothing? She’s s’posed to be the law. Ha!”
The dog had been about to climb onto the bunk, but instead he stood on hind legs to lick Jeremiah’s face. He averted it. The pup sighed heavily and dropped to all fours, turned three times in a circle, then laid down on the floor beside the bed.
The law was the enemy. He’d been raised on that notion since the day his mom had abandoned him to a den of thieves. And yet he’d let his guard down. Had even fantasized that he had feelings for her. Him! An ex-con, going soft on a deputy. What a sad joke.
He went to the journal app and deleted every entry. Then he emptied the trash. He would make a new recording for every date he’d journaled, to overwrite the old files for good.
He tapped the button. “I trusted her, and she betrayed me, and I should’a known better.
” Then he saved it, and started the next.
“The law is always the enemy. Dad always said so, and he wasn’t lying.
” Funny how he’d pulled away from his criminal father, only to now realize how much he’d learned from him.
Or should’ve learned. Apparently, he hadn’t learned it well enough.
Next recording, “Just keep the goal in mind. Forget about her.”
Easier said than done. He was furious with her.
She was probably furious, too. And she had reason to be, based on what she’d heard. She ought to be mad. He tapped the phone. “She didn’t even listen to my side of it.”
His side of how he was using her to help him find his father’s likely ill-gotten gold?
“I’m damn well gonna make her hear my side of it.”
He put the phone down. The task wasn’t done, but he’d spent all his rage. The awful feeling returned, and he was out of ammo to push it back.
Willow knew. She knew pretty much everything. And he was sick inside.
The pup climbed up onto the bed, his huge paws sinking into Jeremiah’s belly, making him grunt. His hind paws followed as Beans tromped over him, dug at the blankets, turned in a circle, trampling him again, and finally dropped like a sack of feed across Jeremiah’s lower legs and feet.