Chapter Two
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Cassidy watched Kincade stare at the phone screen as if the words might rearrange themselves. “Why the hell does someone think Travis killed a county prosecutor?”
Cassidy didn’t answer right away. Didn’t have an answer that would make sense anyway.
“He’s not just a suspect,” she said, forcing the words through the tight muscles in her throat. “He’s their only one. They put out the bulletin statewide. Everyone with a badge is hunting for him.”
Kincade swore under his breath, the word sharp and raw. He dragged a hand down his face, then looked out the windshield. She’d expected anger. Maybe disbelief.
But what she saw was something worse.
Guilt.
Like part of him already felt he’d failed Travis.
She got that. Cassidy was feeling a crapload of guilt, too.
Travis was her brother. Her protector. And now that the tables were turned, she hadn’t been able to protect him—not from the lies, not from the manhunt, and not from some trigger-happy cop itching to be the one to bring in a murder suspect.
The weight of that failure settled deep in her chest, coiled tight like barbed wire.
Cassidy kept one hand on the wheel, the other fisted in her lap. She didn’t add to the explanation she owed Kincade. Not yet. Not with everything building in her chest like a storm she didn’t know how to stop.
“Two nights ago, Travis called me,” Cassidy was finally able to say, her voice as steady as she could manage. “Said he had answers about Alisha.”
“Alisha,” Kincade repeated. Not a question. Of course, he knew who she was.
“Our cousin,” she provided, though he knew that, too. She just needed to say it to try to level out herself and the rest of what she had to tell him.
Cassidy gripped the wheel tighter. “She was murdered when she was seventeen. Strangled. Dumped in a field outside town. There were no witnesses. No weapon. Just a terrified teenager, Aaron Clegg, who cracked after hours of interrogation without a lawyer. He confessed to killing her, and the cops stopped looking at anyone or anything else.”
Kincade didn’t respond, but the tension in his jaw told her he remembered. Everyone in the small ranching town of Blanco Pass remembered. The case. The outrage. And later, the silence when it was ‘solved.’
“That was what, ten years ago?” he asked.
“Eleven,” Cassidy said, and she added a few more details.
Personal ones. Ones that still ate away at her like acid.
“She came to live with us after her mom died. Slept in my room. Wore my clothes. Travis picked her up from school, taught her how to throw a punch and use jumper cables. She was… ours. And when she was murdered, something in Travis broke.”
She swallowed hard, her throat thick. Something had broken inside her, too.
“He wouldn’t let it go,” she went on. “Started digging into the case. Said the timeline didn’t make sense. That the confession didn’t hold water. He requested the transcripts, tracked down witnesses that no one had talked to in years. And when he became a cop, he got even deeper access.”
Kincade’s voice was low. “The county prosecutor, Daniel Harlan, shut him down. And now Harlan’s dead.”
She nodded. “Two nights ago, Travis called me and told me he had something real. Proof that Aaron Clegg was innocent. That Alisha’s killer was still out there.
He wouldn’t say what kind of evidence, just that it would blow the whole case wide open.
He said once I saw it, I’d understand why they killed her. ”
“They?” Kincade echoed.
“That’s exactly what he said,” she verified. “That Daniel Harlan wasn’t the only one. That it was bigger than we knew.”
They drove in silence for a beat. “Now Harlan’s dead,” she said flatly. “And Travis is missing and being charged with his murder.”
Kincade turned in the seat to face her. “Is your boss, Sheriff Moran, helping find Travis?”
“Not sure help is the right word.” Cassidy stared straight ahead. “In light of what Travis said, I’m not completely sure I can trust him not to bury Travis along with the truth.” She paused, muttered more profanity under her breath. “But I did contact Travis and your boss.”
“Ruby,” he immediately said, and he shook his head as if trying to clear it. “Yeah, you can trust Ruby Maverick.”
“I do,” Cassidy let him know. “She said Travis reached out to her, too, nearly a week ago. Asked her to dig into something off the books. She’s been pulling strings, quietly using Maverick Ops resources to trace his movements.
She’s the one who gave me the location of the safe house.
” Her voice dropped. “The last one on my list.”
Kincade leaned back, head against the seat, jaw clenched. She could see it hit him—that Travis had gone to Ruby first. Had trusted her before his own partner. That he’d known whatever he was chasing was dangerous.
“My brother didn’t kill Daniel Harlan,” she stated flatly.
“I know that,” Kincade replied without hesitation. No doubt. No hesitation. Just solid conviction that hit her straight in the heart.
She let out a slow breath. “Then we need to figure out who’s trying to make it look like he did.”
Kincade leaned back against the seat, his posture stiff with pain and frustration. “What evidence do they have?”
She shook her head, her gaze locked on the winding road ahead. “Not enough. Not if you ask me. But it was enough to get a judge to sign off on the APB.”
Kincade didn’t speak, but she could feel his stare, heavy with questions. So she gave him the rest.
“Daniel Harlan was found shot in the head in his lake house two nights ago. No forced entry. No signs of a struggle. Whoever did it walked right in, pulled the trigger, and walked out.”
Kincade’s voice was low. “And Travis’s name came up… how?”
“Anonymous tip,” she said bitterly. “Claimed Travis had a grudge. That he’d threatened Harlan more than once over Alisha’s murder. Which is true. Travis did push. Hard. But he’d never cross the line and murder Harlan.”
Kincade made a quick sound of agreement. “Everyone in Blanco Pass knows that Travis and Harlan locked horns on this.”
“They do,” she admitted. “Alisha’s case was Harlan’s big win. He built the whole thing on circumstantial evidence and a shaky confession. And when Travis started digging into the old files last year, he found enough inconsistencies to make the conviction look suspicious. But Harlan buried it.”
“Of course he did,” Kincade muttered.
Cassidy swallowed hard and kept going. “Alisha was like a sister to us. She was family. And the man who went to prison, Aaron Clegg, had always claimed he was innocent. Said the confession was coerced. Said he was set up.”
“He wasn’t exactly credible,” Kincade said.
“No,” she agreed, and she took the final turn into town. “And Travis couldn’t let it go. He spent years off and on, trying to connect the dots, get someone to listen. But no one wanted to reopen the case. And then… suddenly, two days ago, he told me he had proof. Real, hard evidence.”
“And now he’s vanished,” Kincade said, “and the man who shut down that evidence just turned up dead with Travis’s name on the warrant.”
Cassidy didn’t respond. She couldn’t. The knot in her throat was too tight.
They crested the ridge overlooking town, and Blanco Pass came into view.
Quiet, sun-bleached. A single main street split the heart of it, lined with faded brick buildings, rusted metal awnings, and decades-old storefronts that had more dust than business.
The courthouse clock had stopped years ago.
The diner still had a flickering neon sign out front that read Open, even when it wasn’t.
It was home. But right now, it felt like a place filled with people she wasn’t sure she could trust.
She turned onto the road leading toward the east side, where the town’s only hospital sat wedged between a water tower and an overgrown field of sunflowers that had long since wilted.
Blanco Pass Hospital wasn’t much, just a squat, two-story building with stained stucco.
But it was the closest thing they had to trauma care for forty miles.
Cassidy pulled into the nearly empty parking lot and slid into a space near the entrance. She turned off the engine and rested her hands on the wheel for a beat longer than necessary.
Out of nowhere, the image flashed. Kincade in her bed, bare skin tangled in sheets, heat in his eyes, his hand skimming along her thigh like he knew exactly what she needed and wasn’t afraid to give it. Her breath had caught then, just like it did now.
She shoved the memory away like it hadn’t curled around her spine for the past year and a half.
Now wasn’t the time. Hell, it had never been the right time.
“Maybe the doctor can help fix that head of yours,” she said, her voice low, trying for light but not quite making it. “And your memory while they’re at it.”
Beside her, Kincade let out a dry breath that might’ve been a laugh. Except there was nothing funny about any of this.
“Good luck with that,” he muttered. “Feels like someone took a sledgehammer to my skull and scrubbed the inside clean.”
She didn’t say it out loud, but she hoped the doctor here could fix whatever damage had been done. Because if the answers they needed were locked inside Kincade’s head—they didn’t have time to wait for them to come back.
Kincade pushed the truck door open with a grunt, boots hitting the pavement as he moved stiffly toward the entrance. She followed, her heart thudding faster than she’d admit.
Inside, the air was blessedly cool, smelling faintly of antiseptic and old coffee.
The lobby was quiet. Just a couple of older patients sitting under the muted drone of a mounted TV playing local news.
A gray-haired nurse behind the check-in counter looked up from her keyboard, startled for a beat before recognition set in.
“Deputy Prescott,” she greeted.
“Ina May,” Cassidy greeted back.