Chapter Twenty
Audra’s head ached from the effort not to cry. They’d all gone up to her room, dragged out the tub of Dad’s things, and the box of files Audra had kept for the ranch—just in case—then sat down on the floor to go through it together with an eye toward…
Well, she wasn’t quite sure. Franny was right, though, it centered around Dad. So they had to dig in to what they had from the man and see if it sparked some idea of what was going on with his other family.
But it was mostly like digging in to an old wound she thought she’d healed, but instead had just festered under the scar of it all. Maybe she was bitter, she thought to herself as she shuffled through the paperwork of Dad signing the ranch over to her.
“He should have shared it,” she grumbled.
“Why? We grew up here,” Rosalie said. She was flipping through papers in another file. Taxes, maybe. When they were done, they handed things off to Franny, who organized them back where they belonged.
“You did everything,” Rosalie continued. “Kept this place going when no one else would or could. Why should he have shared it with them?”
“Because they were his kids too. Like it or not.”
Rosalie stopped her flipping, glanced at Audra. “Yeah, I don’t like it. But I guess you’re right. Maybe they think we’re the ones who kept it from them? Maybe that’s why Austin is doing this.”
“But then why not take my offer after the funeral?” Audra looked back down at the documents in her hand. Especially then, she would have… If they had even been remotely receptive to a relationship, no doubt she would have martyred herself then and there and given them all pieces of the ranch.
For good or for ill.
Would she now? She didn’t know. Certainly not if Austin Young was the one behind these threats, and if Karly Young was the one trying to protect him… At the same time, she couldn’t change the fact her father had other kids, that the Young Ranch was part of their family legacy.
And yet, how could she give up pieces of everything she’d shed blood, sweat, and tears over? Everything she loved?
It didn’t matter because she didn’t have the opportunity, and that above all else settled in Audra like a grudge. But maybe that was the core of all this—grudges, even if she didn’t understand them.
“Wait. Did we know this?” Rosalie asked, scooting over to sit next to Audra. She held out a piece of paper. “He sold this back strip of land to the lumber company just a few months before he died.” Rosalie held out the map, the bill of sale.
Audra studied the papers. “Oh, right. I do remember that. I was mad because he didn’t run it by me first, but he said he needed the money.
They cleared the land years ago, and it’s mostly been empty ever since.
Can’t remember the last time I saw or heard anyone back there cutting trees or otherwise. ”
Which had a cold chill slithering through her. She thought back to the strange goings-on over the past few weeks, and wondered…
“When the windows were shot out, I didn’t hear anyone drive up or leave. Usually I can hear cars come and go on the drive. The gravel. The engines. The house just isn’t that soundproof. I didn’t hear anything. I chalked it up to being half-asleep, but what if they didn’t come up from that way?”
It would make sense. The hole, the fire. Things that seemed impossible to do sneaking in from the road, or the boundary with the Kirks. But if the lumber company wasn’t doing anything on the land in the back, couldn’t someone set up a little home base there?
Rosalie was already on her feet and at the bedroom door before Audra could fully formulate a plan. But she knew her sister, and so did Franny, because they both jumped up at the same time and trailed Rosalie down the stairs.
“You can’t just go running out there,” Audra said authoritatively.
“Why not?” Rosalie replied. She went straight for the coat closet, where one of the gun safes was.
Audra’s heart beat erratically, but she forced herself to breathe. To think. She knew the answer, even though it was…asking someone else for help. “We have to tell Copeland. He should have uniformed officers do it.”
Both Franny and Rosalie slowly turned to face her, expressions registering shock. Audra tilted up her chin. “What?”
Franny wrapped her arms around Audra. “It is love,” she said dreamily, earning her a bit of a shove from Audra.
“He’s the detective on the case. This could be dangerous. It makes sense.”
“Yeah, but when have you ever worried about being sensible? Come on, let’s go see where—”
But Rosalie was cut off by the sound of the back door opening, so they filed into the kitchen.
It was only Duncan who entered. Alone. Hours after he and Copeland had left. Audra felt one quick lurch of panic before she set it aside. She managed a smile.
“Where’s Copeland? We’ve got something we want him to look in to.”
Duncan stilled in the middle of moving toward Rosalie. He looked at Audra, blinked, and that feeling of dread in the pit of Audra’s stomach dug deeper.
“He didn’t come back?” Duncan replied, clearly confused.
Audra refused to panic. She absolutely could not let herself panic. She kept the placid smile on her face. Maybe he’d just been tired of chores, of having too many people in the house. Maybe he’d simply gone into Bent to work.
She didn’t want to believe those things, but worse, she couldn’t. He wouldn’t have left without telling her, no matter the circumstances.
“I haven’t seen him since you two left this morning,” Audra said, choosing her words very carefully.
Duncan looked behind him at the door they’d left through. “He was just supposed to finish up some things while I went over to my parents’. He was going to come in for lunch.”
“Lunch.” That was at least two hours ago.
All eyes turned to her.
“Call Laurel,” she said, very calmly, because she felt like there were two versions of herself right now.
One that had flown off into the terror stratosphere, and one right here, who needed to handle the reality of whatever this was.
“Tell her what we found, Franny. Tell her Copeland is missing. The cops will take it from there.”
Franny scrambled for the phone on the wall, but Audra didn’t stick around to listen to what she’d relay to the police.
“What are you going to do, Audra?” Rosalie asked, following at her heels as she moved to the back of the house, where her rifle safe was. Calmly and quickly, she turned the dial to unlock the safe.
“You can’t go searching for him if you actually think he’s in danger,” Rosalie said sternly. “What happened to letting the cops handle it?”
Audra said nothing. She calmly pulled her favorite gun from the safe, then a box of bullets.
“You can’t go out there, Audra. Do you hear me?”
Only once she had calmly loaded the chamber did she look at her sister. “I can. I will. I am. You can either bring your gun and join me, or you can stay here.”
COPELAND HAD TO blink against the roiling sense of nausea. He was glad he hadn’t passed out when he sat up, but he didn’t really know the medical risks of a broken bone that wasn’t seen to right away.
Of course, he had more pressing concerns. Karly Young pointing a gun at him chief among them.
“Put the gun down,” she said, very calmly.
It was the calm that worried him. Calm meant…in control. It meant…planned. It meant, she knew what she was doing, and it’d be harder to talk her out of whatever she was trying to accomplish.
And it made it very hard to relinquish his one chance at stopping whatever this would be. Not that he could use his right hand to shoot the gun, but still.
“Stand up and move away from the gun. If you don’t, the next bullet will hit its target.”
“Aren’t you going to kill me anyway?” Copeland asked, unwilling to let the grip on his lifeline go just yet. “Since I know you’re behind everything now. And you’re holding a gun on me.”
Karly seemed to give this some thought, eyebrows beetled together as she surveyed him.
“I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” she said, still far too calm for comfort.
“I just wanted what was mine. I am just taking back what is mine.” She started to move closer, the aim of her gun squarely on his chest the entire time.
“She could have just left,” Karly mumbled, maybe more to herself than him.
“She should have just left. It’s on her now. Her fault. All her fault.”
“Audra?” He almost couldn’t believe what she was saying. “She… She reached out to you. She thinks of you as a sister. I watched her try to talk to you, be kind to you.”
Karly scoffed. “You believe that? You’re a sucker.”
For several seconds, Copeland could only stare. He’d dealt with people who refused to engage in reality plenty, but this… It didn’t make any sense. But he was starting to realize, it wouldn’t. Because Karly… She wasn’t dealing in reality, and she wasn’t calm or collected any longer.
“I know what they are. I know what she is.” Karly stood next to him now. He could see her chest rise and fall in exaggerated puffs. He could feel the anxious, vibrating anger coming off her. He could see the intent, and the wild desperation behind it, now that she was close.
Copeland didn’t want to relinquish his grip on the gun, but with the broken arm, he wouldn’t get a shot off aimed properly or in time anyway.
“You don’t think my father told me exactly what she is?” Karly demanded. She kicked out, her heavy boot meeting both Copeland’s hand and the gun. The gun went flying. New pain shot up Copeland’s uninjured arm and he fell back, unable to brace his fall with his broken arm.
He laid there in the grass, feeling like a chump. He was a cop, damn it, and this unstable woman, who was trying to paint Audra, of all people, as some kind of villain, was winning.
He couldn’t let that happen. Unable to bite back a groan of pain, he managed to sit up again. He was sweating despite the freezing temperatures, his teeth chattering now as the pain seemed to come in strange waves that were both numb and excruciating. But he met Karly’s wild gaze with a calm one.
“I think you’ve got a lot of facts mistaken, Karly. But I think we can clear it up. If you put the gun down, if you stop trying to scare Audra…”
“You’re right. I need to stop scaring.” Karly was nodding now, swallowing as her eyes filled with tears. “I need to start hurting. The way she hurt my father.”
Copeland had been in dangerous situations before, and he knew how to keep his calm. He held her gaze, and spoke low and firm. “Audra didn’t do anything to your father.”
“He was trapped by them!” Karly yelled. “Trapped. She was always keeping him here. It was her. It’s all their fault. Everything he did. Every promise that didn’t come true. It was their fault.”
She’d known. Before Tim Young’s death, she’d known about Audra and Rosalie and she…blamed them. And if Copeland wasn’t mistaken, Tim Young had leaned into that blame. Let it fester there in his child.
Copeland didn’t know how to work around that. Clearly, Karly believed it wholeheartedly, so trying to convince her otherwise wasn’t going to get him anywhere.
“What about your brother?”
Karly’s scowl dug deeper, but Copeland’s gaze was on her other hand coming up to steady the dominant one pointing a gun at him.
“Austin was supposed to stay put. He was supposed to take the fall. A little connection to her, and you would have picked him up in Idaho. You think he was smart enough to create a persona and fool that woman?”
Karly shook her head. For a second, the gun came down a little and Copeland thought if she took one more step toward him, he could use his own legs to kick out, to catch her off guard.
“What woman?”
Karly looked at him like he was somehow completely brain-dead.
“You’re supposed to be a detective? That woman.
I won’t speak her name. But her connection to Austin’s fake identity was supposed to lead you to him.
She fell for it. Hook, line and sinker. Of course she did.
But Austin didn’t stay put. He wouldn’t listen to what needed to be done.
He didn’t care about our legacy. Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. ”
She was all but shrieking now, and she sucked in a breath. Clearly trying to center herself. The gun came back up steadily, and was aimed at his chest. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but you all are making me.”
“I’m not making you do anything, Karly,” Copeland replied, keeping his voice calm as he tried to inch closer to her without her reading anything into it.
As he tried to make sense of what she’d just told him.
Karly was behind making Austin the internet boyfriend of Audra’s mother?
This wasn’t just…scaring or grudges. It was full-on insanity.
So he had to keep his cool, his calm. He held Karly’s wild gaze. “I just went on a horseback ride, Karly.”
“You looked in to me. Not him. You kept poking in to me, not him!”
“I investigated both of you.”
She curled her finger around the trigger, and Copeland stilled his movement forward. Close range, that bullet was going to end him in less than a second.
He couldn’t let that happen.
“She’ll come looking for you,” Karly said to herself. “I bet she will. And then… I’ll just have to kill all of you. I’ll just have to. I don’t want to, but I have to. It’s mine, and it’ll never really be mine if I don’t kill you.”
The poor woman was crying now. Copeland had been in a lot of messed-up situations, but he’d certainly never felt a modicum of pity for the person holding a gun on him.
But he did now, and it made it difficult to go after her the way he knew would save his life.
“Karly, the wires got crossed somewhere.” He got onto his knees, carefully, watching for any indication she might shoot.
“But if we take this step by step, we can uncross them.” He managed to get to his feet, even though the pain threw off his balance.
He held his hands in the air, a sign of surrender, even though he wasn’t surrendering.
“And no one has to get hurt. I promise you. No one has to get hurt.”
Karly stared at him, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You believe that,” she said, almost like it was a revelation. But then she shook her head. “What a shame you believe that.”