Chapter 25 Rogue
Rogue
Rebel strides toward me determinedly, a worried scowl turning down his mouth. Something is very wrong. I pick up the pace. “What is it?”
Rebel says nothing.
My gaze falls on Dizzy and West, who are deep in an argument if their stiff body language is anything to go by. It’s hard to tell with West. He’s stiff at the best of times. It’s clear Dizzy is tense though.
Tense Dizzy sets off warning bells in my head. I scan the area around them. Did they find the goat or…
There’s a rock near them. No. The closer I get, the less rock-shaped it is. The more legs it has. Horns too. What the hell is going on?
“Rogue. Stop.” Rebel puts himself in front of me, blocking my path so I can’t break into a run. “We have a problem.”
“Tell me I’m imagining things. That I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing.” Because it looks like I’m seeing a dead goat. “That’s not Stains, right?”
“It is,” Rebel says sadly.
“They’re going to kill you.” Owen seemed awfully attached to the goat. And so did his son. This is not going to help them accept Rebel any time soon.
“They’re going to want to.” Rebel’s shoulders slump.
“And then I’m going to have to pick a new best man. And that’s if they will even let us have our wedding here at all. Am I going to have to tell Ivy that we’re not getting married? Again?”
“It’s going to be okay,” Rebel tells me.
Like I’m going to believe that lie when I can see with my own eyes that the goat is dead. But maybe we can find a way to hide it. “Perhaps if we put it in its paddock, we can pretend it died of natural causes.”
“That’s not possible.” Rebel squeezes my shoulders. “Its throat was slit.”
Seriously, this cannot be happening. How am I supposed to fix that? “We could try Super Glue—”
“Rogue.” Rebel shakes me. “That’s not… We’re not doing that.”
“You might not be.” I push him out of my way and move toward Dizzy and West. I’ll do whatever it takes to marry my woman.
“Rebel didn’t do a good job of softening the blow,” Dizzy says softly as I join them. I don’t bother paying attention to her and West as I walk over to the goat.
There’s blood all over the ground. The earth moves under my feet in a rush. I’m no longer in the paddock, but back in Narnia. The carpet is covered in Ivy’s blood. Her broken body surrounded by it. My hands… I lift them, palm up, and they’re covered too.
“It’s okay.” Dizzy wraps an arm around mine. “It always fades.”
“Huh?” I blink and we’re back in the paddock, but I’m afraid to look at my palms. What if they are still stained crimson?
“The blood.” She lifts her arm to show me her palm, smeared with the goat’s blood. She wriggles her fingers before dropping them back to her side. “With time the memory won’t be so strong.”
“I used to think I would never get the image of Ivy’s blood all over my hands out of my head. Although, I haven’t thought about it in weeks.” I groan. “I hope I can go back to not seeing it.”
“You will.” She tugs on a tendril of her pink hair. “That’s how memory works. Whether you want to remember something or not. Even when you commit every detail to memory, the brain slowly erodes the details.”
“Good.” Hopefully sooner than later. I push the trauma back into the dark. I don’t have time to get lost in it. The things that are going wrong are starting to add up. Which is concerning. “First Nicole, now this. I’ll never get Ivy down the aisle.”
“What about Nicole?” Rebel asks.
“She’s been sending threatening messages,” I admit. “It doesn’t matter. I checked with the prison. She’s still behind bars. This wasn’t her.”
“Unless it was,” Rebel says.
West speaks up. “Whether my aunt is involved or not—”
“Or Alec,” Rebel interrupts.
“You think this was Alec?” Is that why I was immediately drawn back to Narnia? Because this is totally something he would do.
“Alec has been missing for months. He has no idea you’re getting married here,” West says.
“And he wouldn’t get within a hundred feet of your security team if he tried.
It’s not him. But even if he had something to do with it, whoever physically did this is here,” West reminds us.
“That’s what we need to concentrate on.”
“That and dealing with the body so it doesn’t ruin the wedding.” Dizzy gestures, red handed, at the dead goat.
My gaze sticks to the stain on her hand.
She notices because she says, “It wasn’t me. Animals are not in my repertoire. That’s sick.”
“Now is not the time for jokes, Dizzy,” Rebel snaps at her.
“Don’t talk to her like that again, brother.” Frost coats every syllable that comes from West.
“Okay, let’s not start arguing between ourselves.” I turn my back on the goat. If I look at it any longer, I’m going to vomit. “We need to work out what’s going on. And how to make sure this doesn’t impact the wedding.”
“We should tell Burke. Let him work out how to handle it,” Rebel says, though his expression says that’s the last thing he wants to do.
“I get that’s the right thing to do, but it isn’t going to change the fact that someone killed their pet,” Dizzy says. “And they seem to be hell bent on using any excuse to get rid of you. We don’t want them to decide we can’t have the wedding here.”
“It’s a little broader than that,” West says.
“None of you have thought this all the way through. Someone killed the goat on purpose. Whatever that purpose is, that much is obvious. If any of the guests or staff sees the body, there will be panic. They’ll worry about how long it will take whoever did it to move on to a person.
Are they safe? Should they stick around to find out? ”
“Double fuck,” Rebel says.
“We have nothing to go on,” I say. “There’s no reason to make people panic until we do, right? Why cause chaos if we don’t have to?”
“Ivy would be devastated,” Dizzy says.
“She deserves to have her dream day without worrying any more than she already is.” After everything that we’ve been through to get to this point we deserve a little joy and peace.
“As long as we keep it to ourselves. And your security team,” West says. “Everyone will be as safe as they were before we found the goat.”
“What are you proposing?” Rebel asks. “We pretend this never happened?”
“No. We work out who did it,” Dizzy says. “After we hide the body. Because we are not ruining this weekend for my sister.”
“It’s only until we work out who is behind this,” I say.
“And if we don’t?” Rebel asks.
“Then we’ll tell the Hearts. After Ivy and I are married.”
“I don’t like it,” Rebel says. “But I also don’t particularly want to tell Summer’s brothers without someone to pin it on. I can see the sense in keeping it to ourselves a little longer. My only question is where are we going to hide it?”
Dizzy jumps up and down with a squeal. “I know. The pit. We can take it to the pit.”
Rebel’s face drains of color. “I am not going there. I almost drowned in mud.”
“That’s why it’s perfect,” she insists. “It should sink. No one will find it there.”
“We’re all in agreement?” This is the only way.
“Yeah, okay.” Rebel gives in. Reluctantly.
“Great.” Dizzy claps her hands like an adorable and excited hummingbird. “We have a plan. Now we need to work out which one of us is taking the goat.”
“I’ll get a quad bike so we can load it up,” Rebel says, and runs back toward the homestead.
“I’ll take it to the pit,” West says.
“Can I come with?” Dizzy stares up at him with a pleading look. “I’m supposed to be getting ready for the party with Ivy and the other girls, but I really want to see the pit. Do you think we can do this and get back to them in time?”
“If we’re quick,” West says.
“You don’t think it’s Alec. And you don’t think it’s Nicole.
” There are dozens of people on the ranch.
Security. Guests. Catering and other workers.
While Nicole could have had a hand in it, this seems too messy, and quite frankly, too dirty for the scheming bitch in Louboutin.
And he’s right that Alec has been completely off grid for months.
“Do you have any thoughts on who you think is behind this?”
“It could be about Summer,” Dizzy says. “When the florist delivered the flowers for the brunch this morning, I overheard her tell the curly, dark-haired brother that the gossip about Summer being home has spread into town. And he said Summer never goes into town when she comes home, so it doesn’t matter. ”
“That’s it?” I ask. It’s not enough to draw any real conclusions.
“The florist’s face was bruised,” Dizzy adds. “When the brother saw that, he was real mad and turned the topic to some prick she’s seeing. He said the brothers should have made that piece of shit disappear in the pit years ago.”
“I wonder if it is one of the guys Summer avoids…” Something happened to her that makes it hard for her to wanna come home.
And that same thing made it possible for her to help Rochelle when none of us could get through to her.
I don’t need to be a genius to put two and two together.
“They got away with hurting her. Maybe they’re worried she’s no longer scared of them. ”
It seems plausible.
The sound of the quad bike’s engine reaches us, and then Rebel appears in the distance. A few minutes later he pulls up next to us. “No one saw me. The brothers are all still looking for the goat.”
West and Rebel load the goat onto the tray and secure it with rope.
“The pit is on the other side of those trees,” Rebel points out the opening for West as he straddles the quad bike.
“If my sister asks, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Dizzy climbs on behind him and loops her arms around his middle. “Hey, West. Do sheriffs in small towns bother themselves with missing livestock?”
“Hold on,” West growls, ignoring her question, as he sends the quad bike rocketing toward the trees.
“We should get back to searching for the goat.” Rebel heads in the opposite direction. “Run interference. The last thing we need is Summer’s brothers stumbling on us out here.”
“Yeah.” I stride after him.
All I want to do is promise my life to the woman I love in a nice, quiet, and intimate setting. Nothing and no one is going to stand in my way.