Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
K elly tried to act tough but her back and legs hurt after the fall. The walk probably had helped like Sam said, but she couldn’t be thankful for that yet. Right now, everything just hurt. Plus, Sam had quit talking to her about ten minutes before and had been looking at his watch every few seconds. Was he late for something or just tired of being with her?
“Sorry, I have a longstanding riding appointment with Rebecca. Even though Junior took over as her wrangler, they still want me there to help her mount since she’s not able to do it on her own and Junior doesn’t feel confident using the hoist.”
“A hoist?” She hadn’t met Rebecca or any of the others at Wayside yet, since she’d mostly stayed in her cabin when she wasn’t with Sam. Reaching out to others was work, both physically and mentally. She wasn’t ready to tackle anything so emotional yet. Especially when the first thing she had agreed to do had left her really sore.
“Rebecca is in a wheelchair. She loves riding but needs assistance getting onto and off of the horse. She’ll eventually get to the point where she can do it herself, but she has a lot of muscle to build before that, and I’m happy to do it.”
Kelly nodded, wishing he sounded that happy about helping her. Instead, he had agreed but it felt like a duty. He was doing it because she felt most comfortable with him, not because he wanted to. He was also a man driven by principles of what was right and good, so he’d always been willing to put his own feelings aside for others. Now, she wished he wouldn’t. She wished he would tell her what he was feeling so they could move past the old hurts.
“Maybe I’ll get to the point of loving to ride at some point.” Kelly curled her toes in her tennis shoes and wished she’d thought to wear two pairs of socks. Her feet tingled in the cold.
She opened her mouth to comment about the chill when her watch buzzed again. She couldn’t look at it in front of Sam or he would know she was receiving communications from Nathan. He didn’t look up or seem to notice the sound and she hoped that was the case. If he knew but wasn’t saying anything, he might tell Connor which would mean she’d lose her watch. Without it, she wouldn’t ever know what happened to Jasmine.
They came to the barn and found Junior and Rebecca waiting for them. Sam grinned the moment he saw them, and her heart jolted. Did Sam care for Rebecca? He’d said there wasn’t supposed to be any feelings between guests and wranglers, but Rebecca’s face certainly lit up when she saw Sam.
Jealousy stabbed her so hard it took her breath away. When Sam laughed at something Rebecca said, the knife twisted. Kelly headed for a chair so she could rest and be alone for a minute. Sam would understand. After falling off her horse and walking all that way, he wouldn’t question her actions. With her back turned, she checked her watch to see what Nathan wanted.
Perhaps you’ve forgotten that I’m here. I can see you. If you tell anyone about these messages, Jasmine will die.
Kelly frantically looked through the watch options, swiping left and right but she couldn’t see how to respond to Nathan. Why did technology have to be so hard? She hadn’t told anyone about the watch.
That’s right. You’re scared. You should be. You will meet me tonight by the new section of fence where you were about a half hour ago. Come alone. If you don’t, you know what will happen.
Keeping her fear to herself no longer mattered. She needed to know where Nathan was that allowed him to see her. How had he known she was by the new section of fence? How had he known she was frightened? She glanced down at the watch again. He had to be tracking her or watching her with the watch, but what could she do? If she took it off, he would know.
Kelly turned around, committed to telling Sam about the watch and what she thought. He was crouching in front of Rebecca’s wheelchair, smiling up at her with a happiness she hadn’t seen from him in a long time.
“Are you alright?” Edwyn approached her from the other end of the barn. “I saw you head away from them like you were being chased.
In a way, she was. Only it was from her memories, not from anything physical. “Yeah. It’s just that watching Sam be so happy with someone else hurts. You know?” He probably didn’t but at least he’d tried to be nice this time. He’d moderated his voice to a low rumble instead of his usual direct attack.
“I imagine so. Can I tell you something?” He gestured down the path and she took a deep breath, considering her options. Her back was in no shape to take a longer walk. “You can tell me all you want as long as you do it on the way to my cabin. I have a hot date with a bubble bath. I took a fall off my horse while we were out.”
To his credit, Edwyn flinched. “I’ll even run the hot bath for you, then, of course, I’ll leave. I’m not sure why it is, but when you’re sore, running a bath takes so much more energy than it should.”
“Thanks.” Part of her didn’t want him anywhere near her bathroom, but Edwyn was so black and white when it came to rules that she wasn’t worried about anything from him. “What did you want to tell me?”
“All of us, all the men who work here at Wayside, had regrets pertaining to women. Many of us have reconciled with those women in the past few months. I can’t even believe how fast it’s happened. All of them were ‘the one who got away’, if you know what I mean.”
She nodded and a sudden surge of hope warmed her chest. Was she Sam’s regret? Was that why she was here? Did that mean there was hope where she’d been sure there couldn’t ever be any?
“I haven’t had my chance yet and I’m worried that she won’t want to come. Connor hasn’t mentioned her or where he is in the process of finding her, but when she left . . . she was mad. I deserved it. I guess what I’m saying is, sometimes when we see someone living their life and doing the things we once did with them, it hurts. If I saw Nadine again, smiling at another man, I would have a tough time with that. But there is hope.”
“Is there? I assume you’re telling me this because I’m Sam’s regret. I want to believe it, but that’s a tall order. I didn’t leave him. He left me. No talk. No note. Nothing.”
Edwyn opened the door to her cabin and held it for her. “Have you ever read Romans 8: 28?”
Her chest clenched tightly. This was a trick question. If she didn’t answer correctly, he’d think she was a fraud. A bad Christian. He would judge her. “Um, if I did, I don’t recall.” There had to be thousands of verses in the Bible. How was she supposed to remember one?
“Don’t stress over it. I remember it because it’s one of my favorites. It says that God works all things to His glory for those who love him and are called to his purpose. What it doesn’t say is that bad things and misunderstandings don’t happen. It doesn’t say sunshine will follow us all the days of our life. It says that He’ll take the bad stuff, turn it around, and show His glory through it.”
She sat down on her couch and massaged the tops of her aching thighs as Edwyn headed back for her small bathroom. “So, what you’re saying is that bad things happened between Sam and I. I might never know what they were, but God can take that bad stuff and mold it into something that brings Him glory?” It sounded too good to be true.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m not someone who walks around spouting verses. We are more of group of guys that will show you rather than tell you what we believe to be true. Cole couldn’t tell you a single verse in the Bible, but he goes to the chapel every Sunday and listens to the service. He contributes. All the others do, too.” He turned on the water and stopped talking .
Kelly was thankful he’d decided to wait until the bath was finished because yelling over the loud water would take away all of the expectation of relaxation. She wanted to get up and gather a change of clothes, but her body just wanted her to rest for a minute. If she had to, she could wrap herself up in the robe she’d found in her bathroom when she’d arrived. That’s what it was there for, right?
Edwyn came out of the bathroom, leaving the water running. “It’ll just take me a minute to make sure all these blinds are closed. I figured you’d want privacy after your bath. Want me to ask Sam to bring your tray for you?”
“You’re making me regret my actions. I’m sorry I got you taken off my team.” She wasn’t sure what else to call it.
He shrugged. “I don’t think it was a bad decision. We weren’t immediately compatible. You look better now.” He grinned. “And don’t take Sam’s reactions to Rebecca too deeply. They are friends. He had to help her a lot when she first came because the wheelchair she had then was cheap and uncomfortable. She got it stuck a few times. He was so thankful when she was finally able to get a chair that worked, but in the time that she didn’t, they became very good friends. Probably closer than Connor would like, which is probably partly the reason why he agreed to let Sam take over as your wrangler.”
“Well, then I’ll do my best to avoid becoming too close or I’ll risk losing him again.”
Sam turned around to see where Kelly had gone and found her completely missing. She’d been there limping toward the barn one second and gone the next. He turned, looking for her, and caught a slight glimpse of her disappearing around the cabins. With Edwyn.
He tried not to let that get to him. Why would Edwyn be helping her when Connor had specifically told him that he wasn’t good for Kelly? He’d switched Kelly’s care over to Sam. But Sam still had to help Rebecca once in a while and Rebecca still felt the most comfortable with him. He took a deep breath and tried to reason with himself. If she’d been bothered, she wouldn’t have gone with Edwyn. She’d have found somewhere to sit and wait for him or she would’ve just gone back home.
Getting bothered wouldn’t solve the problem. Talking to her would. He headed toward her cabin, his long strides eating up the distance quickly. Within a few seconds he’d reached her cabin door. Muffled words hit him, and he froze with his hand a few inches from knocking on the door.
“I’ll run your bath and be done in a minute.” Edwyn’s voice left an overwhelming shock on his shoulders. He couldn’t move.
Edwyn? Had Kelly requested to work with Sam because she’d wanted a relationship with Edwyn? Had they discovered so quickly, within one day, that they were compatible for a relationship? He’d been fooled again. He’d believed she wanted to be with him when what she’d really wanted was time with Edwyn. He pulled back his hand like the door was flaming hot, turned on his heel and headed for Connor’s office. He had to direct his energy to something that would lead to good. Going down the road of questioning what was going on behind that door to her cabin wouldn’t help Kelly.
He pounded on Connor’s door a little louder than he’d planned .
“Come in,” Connor answered.
Sam headed inside and settled into the chair across from Connor. “I just saw something that I can’t explain. Maybe you can.”
Connor waited silently for a moment, giving Sam time to gather his thoughts and where he wanted to start.
“Was Kelly wearing a watch when she arrived? One of those smart watches that tracks your heart rate, whereabouts, and everything else.”
Connor’s brow furrowed. “She wasn’t wearing one when she came to seem me, but she was only in here for a minute. She was so uncomfortable in the small room that I didn’t want to make her stay any longer than she had to. Normally, my initial meeting lasts longer and I’m able to go through the rules. That wasn’t the case this time.”
“She has one.” Sam leaned on the arms of the chair, feeling the need for their support.
“Are you sure? It’s not usually an issue. Our guests come here with almost nothing. There hasn’t been a single one that had all that they needed when they arrived. She had one small bag. I’ve seen women with bigger purses. How did she get one of those? They’re expensive.”
“I don’t know, and she doesn’t have any family left who would reach out and send things to her. I can’t imagine the halfway house would’ve given it to her or let her have it with how they feel about tracking.”
Connor snorted, then cleared his throat. “That’s true.” He pressed a few buttons on his desk phone and waited a moment for the person on the other end to answer. “Dominic, can you come to my office, please? Thank you.” He set down the phone and scrubbed his face. “Nothing like testing the capabilities of the new security system right away.”
“We can test it all we want, but if someone has already gotten on the property then we need to worry about if they’re still here. Did you take apart that drone? Is that an option? Could it have gotten to her before we saw it in the field?”
Connor shook his head. “It wasn’t a delivery drone. It was for surveillance. Dominic was able to take apart what was left of it and determine that it had a camera that was sending a feed somewhere else, but it wasn’t recorded. There were no clamps or any other way to attach something to it and it was very small, too small to carry anything else.”
So, that idea was a bust. “But it could’ve been a test run. To see if they could fly one onto Wayside. Is there any way to check the cameras and see if they saw anything abnormal in the last few days?”
A knock sounded on the door and Dominic came inside. “Good afternoon,” he said as he settled into a chair. “You asked for me?”
Connor nodded and gestured to Sam. “Sam has some questions. Kelly, our newest guest, suddenly has a watch that tracks movements and we don’t know how she got it.”
Sam took a breath. “I know the cameras before weren’t detailed enough to get images of birds flying, but do you have a way to scan those images for drones. You wouldn’t have to go back further than two days.”
Dominic narrowed his eyes in thought and frowned slightly. “We have quite a few cameras to check. It’s a fairly tall order and also possible that nothing would show up at all. If you think a secondary drone came on the property that was as small as the first, there is no way we would see it.”
“I think it may have been bigger if it delivered the watch,” Sam said. It also had to be big enough to see where it was navigating because, if this belonged to Nathan like the other one, he wasn’t close enough to see exactly where the drone was going without a camera.
“Spenser and I will take a look. Teddy would usually help me, but he’s been called away.”
Connor looked at him and his brows bunched. “Called away? I can’t imagine he would go anywhere without telling me.”
Dominic shrugged a single shoulder. “This isn’t my argument. You’ll want to take it up with him. I’m merely the messenger, telling you that he’s taking this opportunity while Spenser and I are here to man the cameras to do what he called ‘unfinished business’.”
Sam shifted in his chair. Connor’s blood was obviously boiling, but he held his emotions in check quite well. Only someone who knew him would ever know how angry he was. “I’m sure he was going to tell you. He wouldn’t just leave without talking to you,” Sam said, hoping to break the tension so they could get back to worrying about Kelly.
“I’m sure you’re right.” Connor drummed the table. “Do you have anything else you need to do today?”
Other than avoid Kelly’s cabin so he didn’t say something that would hurt her and probably end his friendship with Edwyn, no. “I have nothing scheduled.”
“Good. If my dad is going to be headed off somewhere, then I’d like you to help Dominic hunt for anything of value on those cameras. Maybe, while you’re looking, you can see if we need any additional devices. I want to be able to see the entire perimeter of the property. No gaps. No one gets on or off my land without me knowing. Understood?”
Dominic gave a nod and stood. “Understood. We’ll let you know if we find anything. I know this is important, so we’ll get started right away.”
Good. Hunting through thousands of images would keep his mind busy and keep him away from anyone else. Sam stood and followed Dominic. “So, where do we start?”
Dominic laughed for about a second, before halting the sound so abruptly it resembled a cough. “Like you said, we’ll start at the very first images taken on all the cameras two days ago. Thank the Good Lord that they only take a picture when they sense movement or we’d be here for a very, very long time.”
A very long time was exactly what he needed to get his mind and his heart in the right order.