Chapter 26
TRIG
I didn’t know how long we slept when my cell rang, but Ellie hadn’t moved at all. Her hips were still propped up with the pillow. She didn’t even waken from the ringer.
Grabbing the phone, I saw my brother’s name. Slipping from the bed, I stepped out into the hall. I didn’t give a shit I was naked. If Ellie really was pregnant, she needed all the rest she could get. Was I crazy saying that? Hell, yeah. Didn’t matter, because I’d take care of her, no matter what.
My dick started to stir. Again.
“Yeah?” I said once I answered, pacing down the length of the carpet.
“Lance Mann is dead,” Colt said.
I froze in place, all thoughts on another round with Ellie forgotten. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Fell down his stairs.”
Fell down the– “Are you serious?”
“Yup. He’s very dead.”
“You think he tripped?”
“Over Conrad Trout’s foot, probably.”
“Shit.”
“Did you arrest him? Again?” The thought of that guy’s original plans for Ellie, but now moving ahead with ridding him of people in the way of the Mann land made me want to hunt him down.
“No. We’ve collected evidence but there’s nothing so far that puts him at the scene. In fact, Trout has an alibi.”
Well, shit.
“A good one?”
“Preliminary report says the time of death was sometime yesterday morning. Trout was at the Sip N’ Serv drinking coffee with a bunch of his cronies then. Mabel confirmed it.”
She was the owner and had run the place for as long as I could remember. She was somewhere between fifty and eighty, having not aged since I was a kid. If she said he was there, he was there.
“Then why do you think it was him? I mean, this is murder.” I ran my hand over my hair because… fuck. The guy was a dick, but a premeditated murderer?
“Yeah. If he didn’t actually push him, it doesn’t mean he didn’t get someone else to do it,” Colt added.
“Yeah.”
He was quiet, which meant a lot.
“You don’t think he did it, do you?” I prodded. I knew my brother well and if he thought Trout had killed Mann, he’d have been all over him.
“I don’t,” he admitted, which was not comforting. “He’d be stupid to murder Mann now after the confrontation last week.”
Made sense. Trout was an asshole, but he wasn’t stupid. The last thing he wanted was to go to prison for the rest of his life.
“Your wife’s now the sole owner of Rocking M Ranch.”
I made enough money to take care of her and our children from my decade-plus of rodeo winnings. I also had this house, perfect for the brood I was gonna fuck into her. We didn’t need that Mann land or the money associated with it. It seemed… tainted anyway.
“Is Ellie in danger then?”
“Definitely. Because if Trout didn’t do it…” he said, tapering off.
There was more? I rubbed the back of my neck, glancing toward the bedroom door where my wife was safe and all mine. “What? Fucking tell me.”
“If Trout didn’t kill Mann, then there’s a fucking murderer on the loose in Devil’s Ditch.”
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