Chapter Fifteen
“Ilied to Jory.”
Four sets of eyes focused on him. Nonjudgmental but waiting for more. He hadn’t even meant to say this much, but he’d trusted them with his life. And he would quite possibly be trusting them with his money—not that he thought he’d ever use his grandmothers’ trusts they’d left him, so any potential loss would not keep him up at night. But he wanted his brothers happy. Safe. Together.
But he still wasn’t ready to jump in the picture frame with them.
He ran both hands through his hair.
Damn. He really was going to break the pact. Ask for help, even though Rohan kept checking his email for news of the auction. He didn’t bother checking his email. If he didn’t win the bid, they most likely wouldn’t. And even if he won, that wasn’t going to go over too well that he’d outbid them so that they could keep their money for start-up costs.
They wouldn’t like knowing he came from obscene money and that he’d never once mentioned his family.
“Jace left a medallion along with his task.” Everyone perked up at his confession, even Kai, who lay across his feet, head on his paws, adoring gaze on him. He reached down and touched Kai’s head and stroked his ears, as much for his comfort as for the dog’s.
Ryder who knew that much clearly waited for more.
“He wrote ‘find out if the bodies are buried at the northeast border to McBride and Telford property.’”
The air went electric, and it would have been funny if it hadn’t been so dang tragic and serious. His brothers were hard to shock.
“Bodies?” Ryder choked out.
“What the hell?” Cross sat forward. “What else did he write?”
“That’s all. And the medallion.”
“What’s that got to do with Jory?” Huck asked. “Why’d you have to lie?”
“Jory has a medallion just like it.”
Even Ryder hadn’t known that. Rohan’s green gaze was laser-sharp. “Holy shi—” He broke off. “That’s why you were asking my dad about all the changes in the property boundaries and the roads when he started buying up land again.”
“And you kept digging for more information about the curse that Willow’s mom said darkened the McBride land over twenty-years ago,” Huck added, also sitting forward.
“Twenty-two, maybe twenty-three years ago, Jesse Quinn and his ten-year-old son lit out of town,” Rohan said slowly into the unsettled quiet. “No one thought much about it. Jesse had been a rodeo star in his day, the quintessential cowboy—always on the road, hard life, hard living, booze and buckle bunnies, in and out of county jail—nothing big but nothing good either. He was devoted to his son, but not so much his ranch or working.”
“Wait, do you think…?” Huck didn’t complete the sentence.
Calhoun frowned. Jory had thought a lot about her father’s and brother’s disappearance. And her mom, by all accounts, had never fully recovered, but who would? Not everyone despised their offspring.
“Where’s the medallion come in?” Ryder asked.
Calhoun sucked in a deep breath. “I think Jesse and his son never left town. I think they died in some kind of an accident, and Jace knew something about it when he was a kid. Maybe he saw something. Heard something. Maybe he was there with his dad or granddad. I don’t know. Could have been a hit-and-run. Hunting. Jace didn’t say anything, but it ate at him enough that he was determined to figure out what happened once he moved back home.”
Everyone seemed too shocked to say much.
“But I remember Jace said he was wild in high school—got in trouble a lot. The military straightened him out. Maybe seeing a man and his son die is what changed him. Maybe he suppressed it, but as he matured, became a leader, thought about coming home, he wanted to make amends.” Calhoun felt foolish. Who was he to psychoanalyze anyone?
He waited to be mocked, but everyone just sat on the couches, staring at the floor.
“Jace’s granddad drank,” Rohan said after the silence stretched out. “Maybe he was driving under the influence and hit and killed them.”
“Someone would notice a wreck—and what about his car?” Ryder speculated.
“I found something.” Calhoun pulled the medallion and chain out of his pocket and swung it back and forth like he was a cheesy party hypnotist.
The air in the room chilled.
“Yesterday morning I drove out along a back access road that Jory said the four of five families who’d purchased land her dad had subdivided and sold to try to stay afloat, used when they were heading into town even though it wasn’t really an official road.”
He paused. Took a swig of his water. “Kai and I were on one side of a field on a narrow track and Jory was on the other. Road hadn’t been used in a while since it was all Telford land now. She was so innocent.” He could picture the sun shining on her blue-black hair, haloing her, the smile that teased her generous lips when she looked at him. “Not really thinking we’d find anything, I damn near tripped over two small, very weathered crosses.”
He had everyone’s attention now.
Cross swore under his breath.
“Could be for pets—farm animals,” Huck suggested half-heartedly.
“What’s your next step?” Ryder asked. “Do we dig? Call the sheriff? What does Jory think?”
“I didn’t tell her. Didn’t want to upset her before I had to,” Calhoun said. “Do you think we should…?” He stopped a little stunned by how he had automatically included his brothers.
“Sheriff,” Rohan said decisively. “I’ll go with you. We’ll tell my dad about our suspicions first. We’ll let the sheriff’s department take it from there. It may be a crime scene even if it’s decades old. They’ll probably have a process—maybe a cadaver-sniffing dog. I’ve heard some are so good they can smell skeletons after thirty years. That’s probably better than digging up a bunch of dirt, disturbing potential bodies and evidence and…wow.”
“Kai alerted,” Calhoun confessed, proud but disturbed.
“Damn.” Rohan whistled through his teeth and he picked up his phone. His features more closed off than usual. Calhoun saw that he too had an email.
Just what he needed. More drama and tension with his brothers.
“We lost the bid.” Rohan looked at his brothers. Calhoun saw their quickly masked disappointment. Surreptitiously he read his congratulatory email and then the list of next steps.
“It’s okay,” Rohan rallied. “We can still use part of the ranch. My dad can lease us some land, and we can modify our plans. We’ll start small. Build.”
“About the land and the business,” Calhoun said slowly feeling like he was lined up in the cargo hold of a plane, just realizing that he hadn’t packed his own chute or checked it properly, and yet he was next up to jump. “There’s something else I didn’t tell you.”
“What?” Cross seemed to be the only one able to speak.
“My full name.”
“Huh?” Ryder roused himself. “You related to Thor or something? I always thought you’d make a good Viking.”
“Otis Calhoun Lael-Miller V.”
“What’s that mean?” Huck squinted at him.
“That Lael-Miller with the ranch that spreads over three state lines? And has their wine served at presidential inaugurations?” Rohan clipped out.
“Guilty,” Calhoun confessed, feeling like everything he’d tried to build was about to tank. “It also means you got the land.” He held up his phone, shocked when Cross knocked it out of his hand and swore at him.
“There’s no you,” Cross growled his gray eyes glowed like hot mercury. “There’s only us. Brothers. We. All. Coyote Cowboys. You’re in the pack. You don’t got another option.”
Four serious gazes stripped him of his attempt to other himself for their protection.
“All in or all out. That’s the way it’s gonna be,” Huck’s voice rasped at him.
“We do it together or we don’t.” Cross’s silver-eyed gaze drilled into him.
All four of them nodded, solemnly, and he remember the same nod when they’d stood in the circle, Wolf handing around Jace’s bloody helmet. They’d agreed then to travel to Marietta. Carry out Jace’s task. Memorialize Jace. Make his life and his death matter.
“What do you think the business plan is about?” Rohan demanded. “It’s in honor of Jace. He wanted us to be together. To help each other. To build new lives. To work the land, but have a side hustle where we could use our skills and knowledge and spend time together. Jace wanted that for all of us.”
“He’ll be with us in spirit, man. I know it,” Huck said.
Calhoun wanted to flip them off. Make a joke to dial down the intensity. Instead he felt like the cracks in his ribs expanded.
An unexpected smile bloomed on his face. “Then I suppose it’s good that I put an offer in on another hundred fifty acres.”
The expressions on their faces—the shock, the awe—as they processed, the excitement answered his own dumbed-down questions. Yes, he was staying. Yes, he was all in. Why the hell would he go anywhere else?
Ryder cleared his throat. “So just to clarify…”
“We got the land we wanted and a bonus hundred and fifty acres.”
Ryder jumped up and everyone followed suit and soon they were chest-bumping and grappling with each other and Ryder tilted his head back and howled at the ceiling and Calhoun’s once-heavy heart slipped free of one more chain.
He’d have to tell them his father might approach them—serpent in the garden and all that—but for now he just wanted to enjoy this moment with his brothers, all of them, and him belonging, no more secrets.
*
Jory finished hershift by sharing notes with the incoming hospitalist. She would usually run into one or two surgeons making their rounds before heading to their clinics or offices, and today it seemed like a party. Drs. Sam and Wyatt Gallagher reviewed charts and discussed patients with her, but they spent even more time talking to her about how it felt to be back in Marietta. How she liked the hospital. Sam had even winked at her and said she’d seen her coming out of Sage Carrigan’s Copper Mountain Chocolates with a large box with a copper bow. Like it was a question she wanted an answer for.
“They were mixed truffle style for a barbecue I was going to,” she said primly, a little shocked that Sam had noticed her on Main Street.
“I was more interested in the hottie,” Sam said.
Rhianna, also finishing up her shift, had laughed. “Good luck getting deets out of this one. I’ve been trying for the past two weeks. She makes clams look chatty.”
“I was being professional,” Jory said.
Rhianna laughed and gave her a quick hug that shocked Jory, who stood stiffly for a second before reminding herself to hug back.
“You can still be professional and have a life.” Rhianna drew an X over her own chest. “I promise.”
“You can also keep your personal life personal,” Wyatt said.
“As if you aren’t all about the chatter in the OR.” Sam nudged her brother-in-law with her hip. “Don’t act so pious.”
Wyatt grinned.
Dr. Witt Telford approached them. “Good morning.”
“Exhibit A,” Wyatt said. “A highly professional and skilled physician who doesn’t believe in being chatty or sharing deets.”
“I ran eight miles this morning and ate oatmeal with blueberries and walnuts for breakfast and changed the twins’ diapers.”
“Hopefully after the oatmeal, not during,” Rhianna said, and Wyatt thought that was so hilarious he bent over laughing and Sam pounded on his back as if he were choking.
“Welcome to the madhouse,” Sam said. “I don’t think the ridiculousness is contagious.”
Jory looked at the three physicians. They were clearly comfortable with each other—taking the piss out of each other, her grandfather would have said. Her father would have used more colorful language, and it felt good to start remembering details of her childhood, not just the loneliness.
“I wanted to run something by you,” Sam said. “I’m done here. I’ll walk you out.”
Jory was surprised but pleased and happy she’d taken a shower a few minutes before the end of her shift. She’d changed out of her scrubs, but still had her ID tag and her white coat she’d earned at the beginning of medical school. She’d started doing that so she’d be fresh when she arrived home where Calhoun would greet her along with Kai and a hazelnut latte he’d made for her.
“I heard that you’d mentioned that you were hoping to get a dog,” Sam said.
“It’s been on my mind,” Jory replied, surprised that one of the doctors had heard about it. “Traveling around the state so much gets lonely, but my contract with the locums company expires at the end of this contract with Marietta General, so I could take a hospital staff job in the future for more stability for me and a dog.”
“That’s good news,” Sam said.
Jory was surprised by her enthusiasm. “There’s a shelter in town, but I haven’t had time to look. I’ve enjoyed spending time with Kai, my…” How to classify Calhoun. Her college roommate would have called him her F*** buddy, but Jory shied away from that. Was he her boyfriend? They’d not made a verbal commitment to anything, and Calhoun was so far from a boy it was laughable.
“My roommate has a Malinois. Kai was a military service dog. I’ve loved spending time with him. Calhoun’s training him for search and rescue. He’s going to be a volunteer and…”
“So he’s staying in town.”
“I don’t know about that,” Jory said, suddenly shy. But she was hoping. Dreaming. Imagining. All in. What if they both stayed in Marietta? What if they both stayed together?
“Jory, that’s good news.”
“Is it?” She looked up at Sam, worried. “I don’t have any definite plans, or a job offer. And Calhoun he’s…he could have anyone, go anywhere. Do anything.”
Jory had the idea Sam could see a lot more than she wanted to share. But instead of being intimidated, Jory relaxed under Sam’s scrutiny. Maybe she’d have advice. Maybe…didn’t friends help each other? Maybe she could make friendships if she tried, if she stayed.
“What do you want?” Sam asked. “That’s the first question you ask yourself. Then you go for it. And as for Calhoun, he needs to figure out his life. He’s going through a huge life change and coming off on an injury, but if you want him, tell him.”
Jory had with her body, but not her words.
“And while you’re mulling on that…” Sam smiled. “Give me your cell. I’m going to put my number in. We have a group of women from the hospital that we get together once a month—sometimes it’s a cooking class or something crafty. Sometimes a book club or we go out for drinks and dinner. You should come with us.”
For a moment Jory couldn’t speak. “Yes,” she said. It was one more step in changing her life. “Yes, I’d like that.” She handed Sam her phone who put her number in and then texted herself.
“Got it. We also have a litter of border collies at the ranch,” she said. “Unexpected, but they will be ready for homes in another two to three weeks if you want to come out to the ranch and pick one.”
Jory stared at Sam as the implications washed over her. A dog. Hers. Finally. Something for her to love and care for. And before she could think of all the reasons to play it safe. To be practical, she just said: “Yes.”
Jory was still reeling when she got in her car. She wanted to hold on to this moment, so she tucked her phone away in the center compartment.
She’d said yes to a dog and was going to visit the Gallaghers’ ranch after her shift tomorrow to pick a puppy to take home when it was old enough. It would be the end of her second week of work and maybe she could treat Calhoun to dinner. She’d heard about a steak house in town that was highly rated. Men loved steak. Maybe Calhoun would bring Kai and help her choose a pup so they could ensure the dogs were a good fit.
She was moving way too fast, but for a moment, she let herself, allowed her to savor the spurt of hope.
She closed her eyes and crossed her fingers like she was eight again and wishing, wishing so hard for something, though none of her wishes had ever come true. She’d wished for her father and brother’s return. She wished her mom would see her. Comfort her. Have fun with her again. She wished she knew how to make a friend. She wished people could see beyond her family’s poverty, deadbeat dad, and see her without pity, judgment.
As an adult she’d made the life she wanted, but she’d been lonely.
“And I’m doing something about that too.”
She made up her mind. She was going to tell Calhoun what she felt for him, let him know she wanted a future with him.
“No fear,” she whispered—it was something she’d often said when she was going to try something challenging, and she’d been full of fear, which she acknowledged and then pushed to the side.
But she was done being defined by the past.
Jory started her car and drove home, her heart soaring. She was going to email the hospital medical director about the possibility of a permanent position at the hospital—so many of her colleagues had asked her about staying on. Time to find out if she could.
Inspired, she peeled off the highway earlier. Her Subaru could handle the rough road. She’d go the back way, pick a wildflower bouquet to bring home to Calhoun. Walking along the back access road a few days ago with Calhoun had been a little traumatic and yet cleansing. She’d forgotten the rugged beauty and nature. She’d been such an unhappy child, so lost in her loneliness and dark thoughts and determination to escape she hadn’t appreciated anything around her—the people, the kindness, the riot of natural beauty, the power and intensity of the seasons.
She bounced around for about a mile, happy she hadn’t stopped for a coffee because she’d be drenched when she saw a cluster of emergency vehicles and yellow tape.
“Oh my God,” she whispered pulling over into the weeds.
She couldn’t breathe. Her heart thundered in her ears.
Leaving her car on she flung open her door and started running. Calhoun! What had happened. Had he crashed his ATV? Fallen from a horse? She ran. Screamed, maybe. Somebody was yelling, and then she saw Calhoun look up. He stood in a cluster of other men, looking grim.
“Jory, don’t look.” He ran toward her, and she was so relieved that she stumbled, and everything went gray and fuzzy and sideways.
*
Calhoun cursed andswept Jory up, ignoring his stupid ribs and the pull of his incision that was mostly healed but still sore.
She didn’t need to see this.
He’d texted her that he’d gone to meet up with Rohan at the ranch so she wouldn’t worry about his absence. He’d hoped they could get a definitive answer before Jory learned what he’d been doing the past couple of days when she’d been at work.
Now she’d think he’d been lying to her.
I have been lying.
But Jory was his to protect.
“Hey, baby.” He put her in the driver’s seat of her car, feet angled out toward him. He saw her water bottle, pulled a bandana from his pocket—something Ryder had told him he should always have on him, which he’d thought was lame, but in hindsight helpful.
He dampened the cloth and wiped her forehead and wrists and leaned her forward, so her head was below her heart. He’d never seen anyone faint before, and if he did again, it would be too soon. Anxiety choked him.
“Hey.” A paramedic knelt down beside her, first-aid kit in hand. “What happened? Did she faint or fall? Did she hit her head?”
He tried to get in position to examine Jory who showed signs of coming around, and Calhoun could barely swallow his irritation. He had thought having the paramedics and fire department accompany the sheriff vehicles was overkill, and now it was pissing him off, which was irrational.
“Does she have a heart condition?”
“No,” Calhoun snapped, terrified. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. She’s a doctor at the hospital in town.”
Doctors had to get medicals to practice, didn’t they? She would have told him if she had any health issues.
Yeah, like you told her all about your life.
He got out of the way, reluctant to not be the one to hold her, but he wanted her to get the care she might need.
“Shouldn’t she be awake by now?” he demanded. He was being a jerk. “Sorry.”
“No worries. If it were my girl, I’d be panicking too.”
Calhoun didn’t panic. He was highly trained and cool under fire. Yet he was panicking. Kai nosed his way past Calhoun and between the door and the paramedic to nuzzle Jory’s limp hand and then lick her face, something Calhoun had never seen him do.
Jory stirred and reached for Kai.
“Hi, sweet boy,” she murmured, pulling Kai close, and he tried to climb in the car with her. Her eyes fluttered and then opened. Her gaze was cloudy, but before Calhoun could gather her in his arms to reassure her and himself, the paramedic shone a pen light in her eyes, and he had a blood pressure cuff on her.
“What’s happening?” she murmured.
She stroked Kai and kissed him, and Calhoun had never thought he could be jealous of his dog.
“Okay, big guy.” The paramedic tried to work around Kai.
“Kai. Heel,” Calhoun commanded. It took two commands to get Kai to return to him, and his dog watched the paramedic with an intensity that had him gripping Kai’s service harness.
It took Calhoun a second to realize his own cranked tension was setting Kai off, and he square-breathed through his nose and relaxed his hold on Kai’s harness and instead stroked his head and scratched his ears, relieved to see the tension leave Kai.
“Your pulse was over 140. Have you ever suffered from vasovagal?”
“No. Never,” Jory said. “I was scared. I saw the emergency vehicles, and I thought Calhoun was injured.”
Her dark eyes met his, and Calhoun saw the naked emotion in them.
He should look away. His own panic that something was wrong with her was still close. He wasn’t ready for commitment. It was what he always told himself. He’d never be ready. His parents’ toxic marriage, their social pretenses and behind-the-scenes cold, calculated fighting and undermining, their affairs—all of it had determined him to steer clear.
He’d never seen a healthy relationship until these past two weeks in Marietta. His Coyote brothers were loved up and supported, and they supported their partners. Hell, three of them already had children, and Ryder and Edi were expecting.
And what if he and Jory…instead of dismayed dismissal of the concept of an unexpected child, he wondered if perhaps they had been lucky, or unlucky that first night together.
“Are you expecting?” The paramedic casually asked Jory the question he’d been unable to voice. “That can cause dizziness and fainting and rapid dips in blood pressure.”
“It can?” Calhoun demanded. He wasn’t caring for Jory properly. He didn’t know the first thing about pregnancy. He didn’t even know if she was pregnant.
“I don’t think so?” she said softly her voice raised in question, and she didn’t meet his gaze.
“Are you late?”
“That’s pretty personal,” Calhoun said tensely.
“Just doing a health check,” the paramedic said easily, as if accustomed to partners growling at him.
Partner. Were he and Jory partners? Were they going to be parents?
He felt like he might be the next one to pass out because life was moving way too fast, and this was out of the service when he’d expected everything to calm and settle down.
“You should take a test and make an appointment with your doctor just to be sure there’s no underlying health concerns.” The paramedic stood up.
“I don’t have a doctor.” Jory smiled wryly. “But I’ll get a checkup,” she conceded. “I felt great though. Happy. Then when I saw all the vehicles…here…” Jory pulled herself up using the car door. She swayed and Calhoun reached for her. “I thought you were hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
The paramedic jogged back to the grouping of his colleagues while an excavator from the Telford Ranch, driven by Taryn Telford, began digging up careful scoops of dirt.
“Calhoun, what’s going on?” she asked.
“Are you late? Are you pregnant?”
He heard his father’s voice in him. His father’s tactics. The best defense is a stronger offense. He hadn’t told Jory what he’d been doing this week. He hadn’t told her about the crosses, about his visit to the sheriff with Rohan, the call to a dog handler in Bozeman who had a cadaver-sniffing dog. How the dog had spent less than an hour crisscrossing the field before alerting by the crosses, just like Kai had earlier in the week while he, Rohan and a deputy had watched.
Nor had he told her that as he patrolled this newer area of the Telford Ranch that had been slowly added over the past couple of decades, he’d been doing more than orienting himself to the summer cattle pastures. He’d been looking for abandoned outbuildings. And he’d found several—one with an old blue truck covered in a tarp. A deputy had run the long-ago expired plate and in the DMV archives he’d learned the truck was registered to a Jesse Quinn.
He hadn’t told her any of that.
He hadn’t shared.
Something else his father had excelled at.
Hell, he and Jory weren’t partners. He didn’t know how to be.
It took him a moment to realize she hadn’t answered. Instead her gaze was glued to the activity.
“What’s happening?” she asked and then pushed off her car, her stride determined.
“You don’t want to go there, Jory. You don’t need to see this.”
“What is this?” she stopped and demanded. Her eyes were huge. Her olive skin pale with a sheen of sweat.
“I think I might have been right,” he said slowly. “I think your dad and brother never left town.”
His voice didn’t sound like his. His ears rang, and his voice sounded tinny, defensive. His heart thundered like he’d been running. “I think there was an accident, a cover-up. I think Jace saw something as a kid and went back to see and found the medallion around a cross in the ground.”
“What?” she whispered. “What? What are you…you’re just telling me now that you think…you think that my father and brother are really dead? Dead and buried in a field where I waited for the school bus!”
Her voice rose.
“You think…all the years I waited for news? I searched? I hoped? You think they were here the whole time?” she screeched.
He nodded and reached for her. She pulled away from him.
“No. No. You’re wrong. That wouldn’t happen. If someone we knew hurt them, it was an accident, and they would say something. They would have called for help. You’re wrong.”
She began walking toward the scene again, her fists balled up, arms swinging, petite body angled forward in fierce determination.
Calhoun hurried after her, and Kai left his side to walk beside Jory, his nose nuzzling her fist, which opened so he could slide his muzzle in between her fingers.
Calhoun heard a shout and then another. The arm of the excavator hovered over the beginnings of the hole it was digging. Dirt spilled from the claws and so did the grayish white arm bone of a skeleton, dangling in front of the gathered crowd.
Jory skidded to a stop and fell on her knees. Her keening cry pierced his heart and his soul, and he realized in his stupid, I’m-the-man-protecting-my-woman move, he’d left her utterly vulnerable and alone.