Chapter Two
Audra couldn’t say that leaving the remains with Copeland made her feel any better about the situation, but it took something off her plate. And she could dislike the man and still trust him to do his job.
Everyone she knew talked about what a good detective he was.
He’d helped find Vi when her ex-husband had kidnapped her.
And even though he hadn’t handled the case with Duncan and Rosalie last year very well, he’d apologized to Rosalie.
It took a big man to do that, she knew. She was all too familiar with small men, having grown up in the shadow of one.
That being said, no one she knew talked about what a good man Copeland was.
Not like Thomas, for example. Also a Bent County detective.
She was certain she could survey a hundred Bent County residents about their impressions of Thomas, and the very first thing they would say would be: Thomas Hart is a good guy.
Copeland Beckett? Not so much. Maybe it could be chalked up to a little insider bias.
Thomas had grown up here. Copeland was from Denver, which was considered a big city by most people around here.
Audra didn’t like to believe she carried any biases.
People deserved to move into Bent County just the same as people deserved to stay or leave.
But it was hard to deny that she didn’t feel comfortable around the guy and she didn’t know what else to chalk it up to.
He had an abrasiveness but she worked in a male-dominated industry—even if it was a lot of solitary hours.
She helped with the agricultural society.
She entered target-shooting contests. All more men than women.
It was hardly that every male rancher in Bent County was somehow nice and good and not abrasive.
It was just a different kind. The kind she’d been learning to handle her whole life.
There was…an assessing nature to Copeland. In some ways, Bent County residents’ distrust of him seemed to match his distrust of them. He made no overtures, no attempts to fit in or smooth over a challenging attitude—deserved or not.
He was just…himself. And himself didn’t seem to fit in Bent County. But he didn’t leave. And he was a good detective.
That was all she needed. She didn’t need him to be like Thomas.
She didn’t need to be his friend—it rather worked in her favor that he wasn’t.
She just needed an answer. And instead of turning her away, laughing at her, or doing what any of her family or friends would have done—gone into overprotective mode—he’d taken on the case.
So there was that.
She just kept picturing the urn with her name on it. It had to be a mistake, but that was someone’s very expensive mistake. And when she paired it with the other things…
Well, it was Copeland’s mistake to figure out now. She was free of it.
She really wished that was true.
Back home on the ranch, she threw herself into work. She had already spent the morning breaking ice on the cattle troughs before heading into the police station, but now she needed to work on feeding and getting the protein supplements organized for tomorrow.
She skipped lunch, because she just didn’t have time for it. And if she went in and warmed up, it would be even harder to motivate herself to go back out into the cold.
By the time she walked back to the house for the night, she was exhausted and starving. Food. Shower. Bed. God, she hoped she’d actually sleep tonight.
The sight of Natalie Kirk on her front porch brought twin feelings—one of relief, since Natalie almost never came empty-handed, food-wise. And one of dread, because Audra just wanted to be alone and not fussed over.
She was on the brink of a breakdown, and she could mostly blame it on lack of sleep and food. But there was a layer of stress she couldn’t seem to let go of that meant she was always a bad night of sleep or a skipped meal away from a breakdown.
But she fixed on a smile, lifting her hand in a wave until she was close enough to call out a greeting.
“Brought by some leftovers,” Natalie said. “I still haven’t adjusted to Duncan not being here.”
Which was a lie. A kind one, but a lie nonetheless.
Duncan had spent his entire adult life, aside from holidays, chasing and succeeding at his professional-baseball-playing dreams far away from Wyoming.
He’d only returned to Bent County and the Kirk Ranch last year, when his career had ended.
And even then, she doubted he’d eaten every meal at his parents enough for Natalie to be so used to making food for three.
Still, Audra would take it, as she always did, no matter Natalie’s excuse. “You’re the best.”
Natalie smiled, but as Audra got closer, she saw a strain in Natalie’s expression.
“Audra. Norman came across an issue with the fence this morning.”
Audra paused midstride up the steps before forcing herself to finish climbing the porch stairs. Just a portion of her fence was the boundary between hers and the Kirk Ranch. “No damages, I hope?”
“No. A few of yours had wandered over, but Norman and Mac got them back on your side and the fence patched up.”
“Why didn’t he call? I would have…”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that. He was there with Mac already, so they handled it. No harm, no foul. We just wanted you to know what happened. If you go by that area of the fence, you’ll notice the repairs.”
Ranching was hard work. Full of failures and setbacks. Ever since she’d taken over for her parents, Audra had worked hand in hand with Norman when it came to their shared boundary line. The Kirks had been like surrogate parents or tried to be. As much as Audra let them be.
She knew she should not feel ashamed or like she’d made some kind of mistake. These things happened.
But she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “I’ll expect a tally for my half. I’ll write him a check.” She said this firmly. So there’d be no argument. No charity.
“Audra. Come on now.” Natalie put her arm around Audra’s shoulders. Audra stiffened against the contact. Not that it wasn’t nice. Just that if she leaned too much into it, she might break. Or cry, which seemed just as bad in the moment.
“I know you want to handle things on your own,” Natalie said gently. “My God, I understand it. But you’ve got to let us help now and again. It’s the neighborly thing to do, and even if we weren’t neighbors—for all your life, I might add—we’re family now. Besides, it’s our fence as much as yours.”
But Audra knew, she just knew by how careful Natalie was being, that this was somehow her mess that Norman had cleaned up, and if there’d been any way to hide it from her, they would have. “You’ve been too good to me.”
“There ain’t no such thing as too good, sweetheart.” Natalie squeezed her once more, then pointed to the bag by the door. “There’s your dinner. Make sure you eat it. I hate you being over here by yourself. You don’t take care of yourself when the girls aren’t here to poke at you.”
Audra tried not to sigh. “I do alright.”
“You do more than alright, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry. A friend’s prerogative.”
Audra managed a tight smile. “I appreciate it.”
Natalie made a kind of noise, as if she didn’t quite believe Audra. But she offered a goodbye and headed off the porch toward her truck in the gravel drive.
Audra wished she could let it go. Chalk it up to the normal ranch problems, but with everything going on… “Natalie, what was wrong with the fence? Like, what kind of damage was it?”
Natalie stopped, considered. “Well, I guess Norman didn’t say. Just that he’d taken care of it. Probably just some weather or some ornery cows.”
Audra nodded. Probably, but she’d find out tomorrow. Tonight, she just didn’t have it in her.
Except the idea of it being something more than accident or happenstance gnawed at her as Natalie gave a wave and walked all the way to her truck.
Audra picked up the bag and took it inside into the kitchen without taking off her coat or boots, even though she should have. She should sit down and eat something because she’d skipped lunch.
Instead, she turned around and walked right back outside. Only one line of the fence shared space with the Kirk Ranch. It was a bit of a walk, but Audra had to see it. She walked it until she found where the issue was, ignoring the cold and her growling stomach.
It had all been repaired—with better materials than she would have used because she couldn’t afford better materials.
She stood there in the fading light, just staring at the fixed fence, not getting any of the million things done that she needed to do.
And once the sun was down, the dark and cold steady around her, stars winking in a brilliant dazzle, she finally turned away from the fence and began the long walk home.
Since it was dark and there was no one around to hear or see, she cried the whole way.
But it didn’t make her feel any better.
COPELAND’S FIRST ORDER of business the next morning was to visit the cemetery that had been calling Audra. He’d tried calling them himself yesterday, but he’d been passed around to different managing entities. Never someone actually in Sunrise who could get him some answers.
So he headed out to the small town and the old cemetery that felt like it belonged more in an old Western movie than in modern day.
He got out of his car and stepped into a bitterly cold morning. He surveyed the brown, desolate landscape in front of him dotted with graves, spreading out like a wave of death.
He didn’t like cemeteries. Who did? It wasn’t the dead. He’d dealt in death his entire professional career. That didn’t bother him any. Death was a mystery to be solved, and when he could look at it like that, it didn’t weigh quite so heavy.
Or at least it hadn’t, until it had come knocking at his door. And cemeteries in particular reminded him of the death of too many things. Not just lives, but his entire future. Everything he’d believed in, hoped for.
All the things he thought he’d be, swept away in one moment.
No, it hadn’t even been one moment. Ethan getting killed in the line of duty had just been the domino that toppled over all the rest. He liked to think he could have handled the death of his best friend.
It was part and parcel of the job they’d both loved.
It was the betrayal his death had unearthed that had ruined everything.
He really hated being reminded of all that. Hence why he’d moved his ass out of Denver. Not to a new city. Not even to some bustling suburb. No, he parked himself somewhere that felt so opposite of his old life that he’d never be reminded of it.
Except there were just some things a guy couldn’t escape all the time. He moved forward through the graves and ghosts of who he’d been and headed for the little building he thought might house maintenance or records of some kind.
He didn’t quite make it. His gaze swept over the area and snagged on a little lump of dirt and snow. He could only assume it was a freshly dug grave, so he glanced at the name on the bright shiny stone.
He stopped on a dime.
Audra Gail Young.
Just like the urn.
It was strange how with the urn her name spelled out hadn’t struck him all wrong.
It had been a puzzle, just like the woman in his office was.
There had been a clear set of steps to follow.
Track down who’d sent it and send the supposed remains inside to the state lab for testing. It was all just evidence, really.
But this felt…ominous. Threatening. Because when he stepped forward, it wasn’t just a name etched into stone. This had years on it, and he didn’t have to look it up to know that the birth date would match Audra’s. The date of death was listed without a month or a day. It was just given as a year.
The current year they were in.
Mistake? Maybe. But he was starting to think this mistake was something bigger. Something more sinister. It certainly felt a lot more threatening with those dates written out.
Even if he couldn’t imagine quiet and soft Audra somehow wrapped up in anything sinister. But didn’t he know looks could be deceiving?
He could leave his entire life behind, but he couldn’t leave human nature behind.
He looked around the cemetery again. Eerily quiet. Frigidly cold.
He needed to fill out the paperwork to have that grave dug up. To have whatever was buried there looked into.
And he needed to go have another chat with Audra Young.