Chapter 15
Rarely did humans or cougars have identical triplets. Lacy couldn’t believe there was another brother who was the spitting image of Timothy and Manning. Canton wasn’t listed as one of the PIs at the agency Timothy and Manning had been at. She wondered what he worked at.
Canton didn’t seem to buy Dan’s story. Maybe because he realized most of the people that he was meeting in Yuma Town were all cougars, and they could be protecting her.
She couldn’t help that her heart was pounding like crazy, and she felt sick to her stomach. She had thought this business with Timothy and Manning was over. But she loved that Rory was standing by her side, comforting her and offering his support.
Dan said, “Your brothers were stalking Lacy. She came here trying to get away from them. We’ll be glad to look for your missing brothers, but don't bother Lacy about this. She has already told you she hasn’t seen them.”
“All right.” Canton gave Lacy a dirty look, as if she were the one responsible for all this.
Then he followed Dan out of the shop, and Lacy breathed a sigh of relief. Rory hugged and kissed her. “If he tries to harass you at the ranch or anywhere, he’ll meet the same end as his brothers.”
She hugged him back, glad that he was her mate.
Lacy and Florence continued to make food for the customers while Rory and Frank delivered meals to the tables. They seemed to be all right with working at the coffee shop. She was surprised they were so busy, but suspected it was because everyone had been stuck at home for so long.
They had lunch there, and then when they were done at the end of the day, they headed to Florence’s house to drop off Frank and Florence.
They left off the snowblower. They didn’t have any bags at Florence’s house, just their Christmas presents, so they grabbed them and hugged and thanked them for a delightful Christmas.
Then they drove to the ranch so Rory could get back to work.
“He’s not going to bother you, Lacy. We’ll all see to it,” Rory said.
“What if Canton is as much of a bulldog as his brothers?” Lacy asked.
“He can look for them all he wants. No one will tell him what happened to them, and he won’t find any clues. If he did go to Florence’s house, he might be able to smell his brothers’ scents on the outside, but he won’t be allowed inside, and that will be the end of that,” Dan said.
“Unless he breaks in like they did. And there are bullet holes all over the place upstairs in the hallway.”
“If anything, since no one will tell him that you were staying with Florence, he might come out to the ranch. But he won’t smell their scents around the ranch. By the waterfall, maybe. If the blizzard didn’t get rid of them,” Rory said.
Then Lacy got a call from Dan. “Hi, Dan, what’s up?” She put the call on speakerphone.
“We found one of the brothers’ cars. It was buried in the snow near Florence’s house. We’ve impounded it and notified Canton so he can take a look. But it’s in the impound yard, not by her home. We don’t want him connecting the dots.”
“He’ll ask where you found it.”
“We’ll tell him near the motel. They had stayed there a night. They’d been wearing disguises. The owner didn’t recognize them when they stayed there.”
“Oh, that’s awful. I mean that they were there, and none of us knew it. What about the other car?”
“We were going to turn it into scrap metal, but since Canton’s here, he can make arrangements to take both home with him, if he wants.”
“He’s not going to leave, is he? Not before he finds his brothers.”
“There are still two of them. They’re quadruplets, all identical. The other is Ren. He says he wants to return home, that they are on a fool’s errand. That they should never have come after their brothers. That they were wrong to go after you.”
“At least one of the four of them has some sense.”
“Let’s hope he convinces Canton to go home with him and leave well enough alone. But they might leave the cars here in case Timothy and Manning show up.”
If the men were close to each other, she didn’t believe they would leave without finding their brothers. They wouldn’t have come all the way there otherwise.
“They are cremated, right?” she asked.
“Yes, and down in the mine. So they’ll never find them.”
She sighed deeply. “All right. Oh, what about their cell phones and ID?”
“Destroyed, down in the mines with them. Hey, Ren’s coming into the office. I’ll let you go.”
“All right, thanks, Dan.”
She sat back in the passenger seat. “There are four of them—identical quadruplets.”
“Ahh, hell,” Rory said.
“I know. But at least the fourth brother, Ren, sounds more reasonable. He was against coming out here.”
A few minutes later, Dan called back, and she put the call on speakerphone again.
“Hey, Ren said he has convinced Canton to return to Florida with him. He said that they put in the missing persons’ requests, and if we find them, to let them know.
Otherwise, they would assume they came to a bad end in the storm, and they’ll deal with that if it comes to that. ”
“So they’re really leaving town then?” Rory asked. “Were you able to get Bridget to the sheriff’s office to read their thoughts to see if they were being sincere?”
Lacy stared at Rory. One of the cougars could read thoughts?
“No. We didn’t expect Ren to come in and tell me they’re leaving.”
“So what do we do about Lacy’s safety?” Rory asked.
“I’m going to work at the coffee shop tomorrow.” Lacy wasn’t going to be stuck at the ranch now that Timothy and Manning were gone. She suspected that Ren was in charge of the remaining brother and would steer Canton on the right path.
“We’re going to have some of our people surreptitiously follow them out for a few miles to make sure they’re actually heading out of town,” Dan said.
“Okay, good.” Rory relaxed a little, then drove onto the ranch. “We’re just now arriving home.”
“Have a good night. Talk to you later,” Dan said, and they said goodnight, and they ended the call.
“Bridget?” Lacy asked.
“Travis’s mate is also a CSF special agent,” Rory said. “She’s able to read minds.”
“Wow. That must come in handy in her line of work. Do you have any other psychics in town other than Nina and Ava, also?”
“Well, if you hadn’t heard, Chase, Stryker, and Leyton have seen ghosts before. Chase, more so than the others, when they were on a mission in a ghost town.”
“That’s amazing.” Then she bit her lip. “Did any of them see the brothers’ ghosts?”
Rory got on his Bluetooth and called Chase. “Hey, Lacy wants to know if you saw the brothers’ ghosts when you were retrieving their bodies from the mountain of snow.”
“No. I don’t always see them, thank heavens,” Chase said. “I asked Leyton and Stryker if they had just out of curiosity's sake, but they both said they hadn’t.”
“Good. So they’re not hanging about Florence’s home to haunt her or me when I visit.”
“Right. Just to let you know, some of us are following Ren and Canton out of town to ensure they’re leaving for good,” Chase said.
“Oh, that’s great. What is Dan going to do about Timothy and Manning’s cars?” she asked.
“Leave them in case they show up looking for them,” Chase said. “We’ll let them know if we don’t find the ‘missing’ brothers after so long, and they can decide what to do with their vehicles.”
“I don’t think Canton believed me when I said I hadn’t seen the brothers.”
“Yeah. I wish Bridget could have been there to overhear the conversation. They’re pulling off the road for gas, so I need to let you go.”
“All right. Thanks, Chase.”
“No problem. We keep our own people safe.”
She and Rory left the truck and headed inside the bunkhouse, but before they could remove their coats and boots and slip off to their bedroom, Blaze and Wyatt began harassing Rory for taking an extended holiday vacation.
Rory just smiled. “We needed the extra time for each other.”
“Are the two of you all right?” Wyatt asked, all joking aside.
“Yeah.” Lacy explained about the men being identical quadruplets, but that the other two had left town.
Blaze rubbed his beard, frowning. “Were you able to tell them apart?”
“We only saw one of them, but he looked identical to Timothy and Manning. They smelled the same, talked the same, just identical in all ways,” she said.
“That had to be a shock when you saw the new one,” Wyatt said.
“It was. I nearly fainted. If I had seen both of them, I would have thought that Timothy and Manning had come back from the dead.”
“Yeah, I think all of us felt that way,” Rory said. “I hope your Christmas was good.”
His friends grunted at him. “It was, until we had to navigate the snow to feed the animals without an extra ranch hand,” Wyatt said.
Rory smiled. “I knew you could do it.”
“If you must know,” Lacy said, rubbing Rory’s back, “he really worried about you guys doing all that work and about the animals.”
“Ted and Hal were out helping us,” Blaze said. “You know how they are. There’s no job too big or small that they won’t help out when they’re needed.”
“Well, we’re pooped. We’re going to hit the shower and go to bed,” Wyatt said. “We’re glad you got rid of the menace, and you’re back home safely. All the reception was out here, and we tried to check on you, worried you might try and make it back home to work.”
“We couldn’t. The road conditions were just too bad.” Rory showed them the picture he took of the wall of snow at the garage door.
“Damn. We were glad you stayed with Florence and Frank,” Blaze said.
Then they all retired for the night, and the next morning, Lacy got ready to go to work. Rory was already out doing ranch work, but before she left, he kissed her. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right on your own?”
“Yes, I feel great. No blizzard, no more brothers to harass me, no more need for protection.”
He hugged and kissed her. “All right. I’ll see you for dinner.”
“See you, honey.” She was ready to get back to a regular routine, even though she had just started working there.