Chapter 4
ONE LEVEL OF TRUST
“What the hell are you talking about, Ford?” his older brother, Clay, asked him thirty minutes later.
He’d left Reenie in the bakery kitchen with his mother, sitting in the corner and having a coffee.
His mother wouldn’t question anything because she knew he’d fill her in the minute he could.
Clay was the first person he needed to talk to.
He found his brother in the mill. The newest venture of Ridgeway Orchards.
“I need the old cabin for a bit. I’ll clean it out, but I need your help to watch someone.”
There was no one he trusted more than his siblings. They’d all be getting a call soon enough.
“Watching how?”
“I need you to keep her safe. Reenie will be just as safe here with you as she would be with me.”
Clay snorted. “She’ll be safer.”
His brother was bigger than Ford. Had more muscle. More mass. More meanness if he was pushed.
Hell, you didn’t even have to push his ex-Navy SEAL brother for the meanness. Most just took one look at Clay Ridgeway and ran for the hills.
But the guy had a heart of gold that only a select few got to see.
Family were those few.
“I won’t get into it with you,” he said. “I don’t have time.”
“Give me something,” Clay said. “Not that I care if you use the cabin. It’s sitting empty.”
He felt bad that it wouldn’t be modern, but he knew damn well Reenie wouldn’t stay with him, nor in his parents’ house.
His father was just getting back on his feet in the past few months, but he’d never be the same after he’d fallen and broken his back.
“I doubt you remember Reenie. We were friends for a year when she lived here. Eighth grade, then she moved.”
“The little mousy girl that came around all the time?” Clay asked. His brother’s phone rang on the desk, but he ignored it. He knew he’d get one hundred percent of Clay’s attention unless the building was burning down.
“She wasn’t mousey,” he argued. “She was shy and had a shitty home life.”
“We all saw that,” Clay said. “And the fact you had the biggest puppy love crush going on. She didn’t see you that way.”
He didn’t need the reminder. “I’m not arguing there either. She’s on the run.”
“Whoa,” Clay said. “My brother, the sheriff, is going to harbor a criminal? That’s taking a childhood crush too far.”
“Don’t be a dick. You’re lucky we aren’t kids anymore or I’d be ramming you against the wall.”
“Dude,” Clay said, putting his hands up and waving his fingers. “Try it. It’s been a while since I’ve gone a few rounds with someone.”
He’d be stupid to lock horns with his brother. Anyone would be.
There were many afraid of Ford in this area, but his brother wasn’t one of them.
Shit, he’d learned how to fight by defending himself against Clay.
“Reenie isn’t a criminal.” At least he didn’t think so. He was going to have to do some digging without alerting anyone as to why or where she was. By her words, he still had most of this day to do it, but he wasn’t so sure he was going to trust that.
“Then what is she running from?” Clay asked. “Tell me everything or I won’t know what to do.”
“I doubt that,” he said. He filled his brother in on what Reenie had just confessed to him not even twenty minutes ago.
“Damn. Do you believe her story?”
“I do,” he said. “I know what I saw years ago. She’s never lied to me. She might not have given me all the facts back then, but she didn’t outright lie.”
Just like he knew she wasn’t lying now.
Was she withholding information?
Yeah, he was positive she was.
The fact he could convince her to stay was only one level of trust.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t change her mind in an hour and take off though.
“Do you trust her knowing that she set this guy up? That’s pretty damn sneaky to leave her blood in places in the house, clean it up so that it’s not visible to the naked eye. That’s a lot of planning too. To the point she’d bought another car without him knowing.”
“I know,” he said. “She said she’s been planning escapes in her mind for years. Try living like that. To feel as if you’re in a cage and every time you open the door and walk out and see a piece of freedom, something yanks you into another one.”
“That’s her choice to hook up with men like that,” Clay said.
He shoved his brother against the wall and tried to lift him in the air by the shirtfront. Pure rage managed it.
Clay smirked. “See. You’re in trouble. You can’t react like that and never have before. Are you sure this is a wise decision?”
He let go of Clay’s shirt and stepped back. “Fuck.” He ran his hand over his face. “I’ll be fine. Just listening to her talk, it makes me sick. And I don’t think she’s always been in relationships like that. I didn’t ask. I only care about this last one.”
He wanted to vomit over what she’d endured.
Did he internally question why she stayed? Yeah, he had.
But she’d already said she’d run once and Oliver came and brought her back.
She’d never lived alone, she’d said. She struggled to survive financially with no education and dead-end jobs.
Maybe she thought Oliver was a lifeline she needed. Ford was going to get as many facts as he could at some point.
There was too much to do now for that conversation.
“I’ll watch out for her,” Clay said. “That’s not an issue. I can see the cabin from my place.”
His brother lived in a smaller ranch house his parents had been in for years. His grandparents had the big house back then.
Once his grandfather passed, they moved in and his grandmother went to the ranch. It gave her privacy and space that she craved, but allowed her to be looked after.
Over the years, others rented the place, but it was empty when Clay came home.
The cabin wasn’t right next door to Clay’s, more like a football field away, but Clay could see it from the back of his ranch.
It was the perfect location for Reenie when few even knew the cabin existed and it was far enough away from the operations of the property that had grown in the past year.
“What’s the security like around here?”
He should know more about it. He had until Clay came home.
“I’ve made changes for obvious reasons,” Clay said. “There is a lot going on. We’re going to have more people on the property in a few months. You know that.”
The old barn was being converted into an events hall for parties and weddings. He thought it was a great idea to go with the hard cider that Clay was producing and had hit the markets last fall.
Their once-dying apple orchard that had heavy income only part of the year was now going to bring in money year round in multiple forms.
But it also meant that things could be tricky with Reenie.
“We’ll figure it out. She doesn’t want to live here for free,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have her on the books.”
“Breaking the law,” Clay said, laughing.
“She can work where you see fit. Maybe she can wait tables and just take tips. She wants to work off the rent. She told me that. Otherwise she’s heading to Canada.”
Clay shook his head. “This all seems so farfetched. She has a plan and money if she’s going there.”
“Sounds like a half-assed one to me.”
Reenie thought far enough ahead to get out of the US and hoped to find a job and be able to live on her own. She didn’t know if she could or not.
She had no family to contact. No friends.
Whoever helped her in Florida, she was keeping quiet on now.
“Yeah, well, I’m fixing that. I’m going to see Mom and talk to her. She should have finished baking by now.”
“I’ll come with you,” Clay said. “I can at least cover while she’s talking to you.”
“You’re going to wait on people?”
“We’ve all done everything on this farm,” Clay said. “And we’d all do it again if we had to.”
His brother wasn’t wrong.
On the weekends, if his mother was short staffed, or his father had needed help, they were all here pulling their weight.
It’s what family did.
He and Clay climbed into his SUV and drove across the property to the cafe. There were seven cars in the parking lot, people walking out with bags of baked goods. Not everyone stayed to eat, but came to pick up.
They went around back. Reenie was pulling muffins out of the oven, then turned to pack orders that had come up on the screen.
“Hey,” Ford said. “What are you doing?”
“Helping your mother,” she said. “I’m not sitting here while she works.”
“It’s like we are a team,” his mother said. “I told her to sit and relax, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Can you take a break and talk?” he asked his mother. “Reenie, this is Clay.”
“I remember,” she said. She held her head up and walked over to his brother to shake his hand. Not the shy, mousy girl that Clay remembered her as.
Not even as he had.
In just the short time she’d been with his mother, she seemed like a different person.
Was Clay right? Was he being played?