Chapter 52
FIFTY-TWO
MEREDITH
I finish wiping off the large wooden table Calder’s grandfather made for Julia. Now it’s ours, placed in the kitchen where it should be, and hopefully, another generation will get to share meals around it.
The front door crashes open. “Meredith!”
I jump at the urgency in Calder’s voice. I barrel into him at the entry to the kitchen. A gasp bursts out of me at what’s in his hands.
I grab Holly’s camera as he holds it out to me. It’s warm, like it’s been sitting in the sun for days. At this point, it’s been weeks. Calder moved in two weeks ago, and it’s been more than two months since the accident.
“Where did you find it?”
“Next to the shop. Sitting beside some old scrap metal.” He looms next to me, inspecting the camera as I do.
I frown at the cracked lens. It looks rough, like it got tossed out the car and clattered on the pavement. “You think she set it down and forgot about it before they went driving?”
“I don’t know how else it would’ve gotten there.”
No saying how long.
I try to turn it on, but nothing happens. I open the SD card slot. “That’s weird. It’s empty.”
“Could be why she forgot it?”
I shrug. I have Holly’s camera, like I wanted, and in a way, it feels like I have a piece of her back.
Calder and I finally packed away hers and Ransom’s belongings, donating what we didn’t keep, and what his brothers, Sawyer, or Carlos didn’t want.
Now I have the camera, but the pictures were what I wanted.
I wanted to see the last of what she was shooting.
“I’m glad you found it.”
“Me too.” He drops a kiss into my hair and hugs me close, like he senses my disappointment.
I clutch the camera regardless. It was still hers. Fitting that Calder found it the day we dug his mom’s table out. We each reclaimed a part of two important people in our lives.
“The table is clean enough to eat on.”
Calder releases me and walks around our handiwork. He pushes the chairs back around it. “That looks nice. Thank you.”
“It looks right.” I didn’t mind how Holly had made over the house, but her taste wasn’t mine.
The grays are gone in the living room. I found some of Julia’s old framed photographs when we got to the table.
I’ll send them away to get updated frames and put them back up, along with Holly’s images, if I can find her SD card. She had to have more than one.
Calder pulls me into him, kissing me until I think we’re going to strip down and use the table for more than eating, but he smiles. “Want brunch or lunch before we go?”
This simple moment is everything I’ve dreamed of—making a home ours and having a quick bite with the man I love.
I’ve gotten two weeks of it. We ride to work together, we eat together, and we’re going to hire a couple of new staff together.
Then we can continue spending our evenings making this house a home.
Calder messages his brothers every day, and every day, they tell him he can back off. They aren’t going to avoid him. Yesterday, he sent a picture of the cuddle puddle the cats made in their bed upstairs. Landry even asked for a few more pictures of them.
Carlos and Sawyer have returned to working the ranch. The guys and I discussed infusing each business with funds, but they agreed to pay all the loans and start fresh. It’s important to all of us to succeed because we’re good at it, not because we threw money at it.
I didn’t toss a cent into the pool, and that bothered me, until Calder explained it was important to him that I had a safety net. He also claims I won’t need it—and I believe him.
“Do we have calzones?” I ask.
“I stocked up.”
He lets me go to start prepping our meal. I set out the flatware and grab two lemonades.
When I’m almost done eating, I run my hand over the smooth finish of the table. “I’m glad it’s no longer in the shop.”
Affection fills Calder’s expression. “She would’ve liked you,” he says softly.
Touched, I reach across the table to hold his hand. “I wish I could’ve known her better.” A smile plays across my lips. “She used to bring me root beer.”
“I remember. That one time we went to Rolla, she stopped in every town looking for homemade root beer. We grumbled the whole way.”
“Jules Creek is going to be that place for the next Julia trying to spoil her best friend’s kids.” I have a root beer recipe I’m working on. Bowen and Landry didn’t hesitate to make the decision unanimous.
“And we’ll stock it in grocery stores all over the state.”
Excitement rises inside. Calder returned with so many plans to improve the bottom line.
He’s asked Sawyer to submit a list to our owner’s group chat of what needs to be done with the ranch to increase income.
He even talked Landry into making a down-and-dirty marketing plan to get us through the holidays.
Next month, Calder wants to meet with all the retailers who stock our product, personally talk to our local suppliers, and continue to network the shit out of Jules Creek.
Meanwhile, I’m working on the root beer, and I’ve ordered the roasted barley I want to use for the Irish red I have planned, Rosy Creek. So many changes are coming, but adjustments to our process and welcome additions are needed. And I’ll get to do it all with Calder.
If we weren’t sitting, I’d throw my arms around his neck.
I’m pushing out of my chair to do just that when our phones buzz. I exchange a startled look with Calder, and we check our devices.
Bowen: We need a team call in ten minutes.
Calder frowns at his screen before we burst into action. We rush through the cleanup, then sit and wait for Bowen to call back.
Our phones buzz again, and Bowen’s name pops up on-screen. Calder sits and pulls me onto his knee to answer.
“You’re on speaker, and I’ve got Meredith here.”
“Good.” Bowen’s deep voice carries through the kitchen. “Landry’s on the line too.”
“He hasn’t told me what’s going on either,” Landry says.
“I’m sending you all what was in that file Calder sent me.”
The USB we found the day Calder returned to claim me and his legacy.
Calder’s brows pull together. He meets my questioning gaze and gives his head a shake. He mentioned that the drive was password protected, and the password wasn’t in Ransom’s book.
Notifications light up my phone. He’s sent several pictures. Images?
We bend over our phones and scroll through photos. I have to squint and zoom in, moving from side to side. The landscape looks familiar, with green rolling hills. Are these from this year?
This has to be around Scandal, but not Cross property.
I center the image on a yellow excavator.
Five men wearing hard hats are working in a trench in front of the digger.
Instead of yellow reflective vests, they have on work coats, grungy from laboring outside.
Whoever took the photo was quite a distance away.
Zooming in doesn’t add much more detail.
Another picture is similar, only a little farther down from the first site. More ground is dug up. Then there’s one at the actual site. The dirt that was dug up is gone. Only a wide trench remains. Then there are a few images of dirt piles—only, the dirt has a bleached effect.
“Is that the Sterlings’ land?” Calder asks. “What are we looking at. An oil spill?”
“No,” Bowen says grimly. “I think it’s a brine spill.”
I frown. “From fracking?” The Sterlings have a pipeline crossing their land that takes the saltwater byproduct of oil extraction and transports it to an underground disposal well.
Calder flips through the images. “But it’s not on our land, so why does Dad care?”
“I’m sending a video,” Bowen says.
When it pops up, I play it. A white work pickup leads the trailer, hauling the excavator, and another pickup follows. Whoever was filming zooms in until I can make out the Pedigree Oil Company’s logo.
I know the pickup. “That’s Gil. He’s got that brand-new truck now, but he was driving that Dodge for years.” I peer closer. “Yep. It has the grille guard. Pedigree has deals with him for the pipeline and some wells, I think.” Gil wears all their swag.
“Why would Dad have pictures?” Calder asks.
“I have no idea.” I shouldn’t be surprised Ransom spied on Gil, but not to this level. “He must’ve been concerned about this spill.”
“Has it affected us?” Landry asks, and I’m glad to hear he’s still taking ownership of the ranch.
“I’m sending a doc he had,” Bowen says. “All of this was behind the password protected file on the drive.”
“That drive was hidden in the desk.” Until Calder and I knocked it loose.
Heat creeps into my cheeks, and Calder squeezes my hand.
“A hidden drive.” I tick a finger up and add a second.
“Password protected.” I put a third finger up.
“Something was on his mind before the accident, and he didn’t discuss it. Why all the secrecy?”
“Fuck.” Landry’s curse drops like a stone between us. “Look at the document.”
We go still before Calder taps at the screen. There are dates and directions right to where the spill must’ve been. More dates and notes are needed on the lack of alerts regarding any spills in the area.
Lead fills my stomach as I take in the next chunk of data. It’s a list of saltwater spills in the past twenty years, the fines the companies had to pay, and the settlements awarded to landowners. The amounts range from the tens of thousands to the millions.
“At first, I thought Dad was going to sue Pedigree,” Bowen says. “That has to be what he was doing—gathering evidence and data. But he doesn’t have anything about our property in this file.”
Calder clenches his hand into a fist. “Blackmail?”
My heart skips a beat. “Ransom wouldn’t do that.” Did Holly know?
“The brewery and the ranch were in deep financial shit?” Calder works his jaw back and forth. “A lawsuit could take years.”
“What if he was waiting to see if it affected us?” Bowen says. “Sawyer said he asked her to get him stats about birth rates and loss. Illnesses. Vet bills.”
All the pieces float around in my head, and I don’t like the picture they form.
“So Ransom was spying on Gil and Pedigree. These pictures aren’t from a phone.
Holly was taking them.” That answers my question.
“Their Monday drives,” I whisper. “‘When the brewery’s closed and the roads are quiet.’ He said that the day he crashed.
” I swallow around the lump in my throat.
“Bea said he had a solution to all financial issues.”
“I can’t fucking believe it,” Calder utters.
Horror fills me. “What if Holly really had her camera on her that day? It’s weird we haven’t found any SD cards, but there are photos in this file.
” Icicles form in my chest. “What if… what if someone really was in the house that day, and not just bored kids? What if they knew Ransom had this drive, or a drive, and were looking for it? You know what that means…”
Calder scrubs a hand down his face. “It means Dad and Holly didn’t crash. They were run off the road. They were murdered.”
* * *