Chapter 28
Kinsley Aspen
July
Kinsley took the turnoff onto what used to be Stribling Road just as the sun began its slow descent toward the horizon.
The wooden sign at the entrance was new, the edges sanded smooth and sealed against the weather.
She’d driven past this property a hundred times over the years without giving it much thought, just another stretch of faded dairy land that had been aging quietly since Old Man Stribling stopped being able to keep up with it.
Now, as her Jeep rolled down the long gravel driveway, she understood what Dylan must have experienced the first time he’d stood at this entrance and decided to make it his.
The driveway stretched for nearly a quarter mile, cutting through fields that showed the first evidence of her brother’s work.
Fresh fence posts stood at regular intervals along the eastern boundary, their wood still pale and unweathered.
Dylan had always been a dreamer, the kind of person who drifted from one enthusiasm to the next, never quite settling into any of them long enough to build something permanent.
Their mother used to say he had the attention span of a hummingbird and the ambition of a hawk, which meant he wanted everything and couldn’t stay still long enough to get it.
But this was different.
This was permanent.
The farmhouse emerged as she rounded a gentle curve, its white clapboard siding gleaming softly in the amber light.
Several of the black shutters hung at odd angles, others chipped and faded from years of neglect, and the roof bore signs of age, sagging slightly in the middle.
The wraparound porch, while inviting in its bones, had patches where the paint had begun to peel, revealing weathered wood beneath that would need sanding and sealing before winter.
Dylan had plans for every square inch of this place, and those plans would unfold in their own time, measured in seasons rather than weeks, the way farm life demanded.
It was what lay beyond the house that caused Kinsley’s breath to catch.
A lake.
Large and private, surrounded on three sides by dense woods that would hide it from any neighboring property or passing road.
The surface glittered in the fading sunlight like hammered copper, perfectly still, reflecting the sky above in shades of gold and pink that seemed too vivid to be real.
It was beautiful in a way that made her chest tighten, beautiful in the way that certain landscapes are beautiful when you understand what they’re hiding.
She pulled her Jeep to a stop near the porch and cut the engine.
For a long moment, she sat there with her hands resting on the steering wheel, staring at that water.
The lake was maybe three hundred yards from the house, close enough to see clearly but far enough that it existed in its own space, separate from the daily rhythms of the farm.
Movement on the porch pulled her back.
Dylan emerged from the screen door with two beer bottles in hand, wearing the same easy smile he’d had since the day he’d signed the papers on this property.
Jeans worn soft from work, a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his forearms, boots that had seen better days and were finally being used for their intended purpose.
He came across as settled.
Content.
Like a man who’d finally found the place where the restlessness stopped.
Kinsley climbed out of the Jeep and made her way up the porch steps. She accepted the beer he offered, and the bottle was cold against her palm, condensation forming immediately in the humid evening air.
“Thought you might stop by eventually,” Dylan said, settling into one of the rocking chairs on the porch. They were old but solid oak, built in a decade when furniture was meant to outlast the people who sat in it. “Alex back from his fishing trip?”
“Yes. He came back last night.” Kinsley took the chair beside him, the smooth wood familiar beneath her hands. She twisted the cap off her beer but didn’t drink. Her gaze had already drifted back to the lake, pulled there by a gravity she couldn’t resist.
“Place looks good,” she said after a moment. “You’ve done a lot on the eastern field.”
“Still got a ways to go. But yeah, it’s coming together.
” Dylan gestured with his bottle toward the milking building, a long, low structure that sat between the house and the nearest pasture.
“Getting the dairy operation running has been the biggest project. Fixing up the house, clearing some of the overgrowth, all of that’s just sweat and patience.
But the dairy side needs real infrastructure. ”
He took a sip.
“It’s been keeping me busy.”
They fell into silence, rocking gently, the chairs creaking in alternating rhythms. The evening air smelled of cut grass and turned earth and something sweet that Kinsley couldn’t quite identify, maybe clover.
Somewhere beyond the tree line, cattle were lowing, their voices carrying across the open fields with a patience that belonged to a world far removed from the one she spent her days in.
But her attention kept returning to the lake.
That still, copper surface.
That depth.
“The lake covers about seven acres,” Dylan said quietly, and his voice had shifted.
The easy, conversational tone was still there, but beneath it was something more deliberate, something that had the cadence of a man who had been waiting for this conversation and had thought carefully about how to have it.
“Fed by an underground spring. Old Man Stribling used it mostly for irrigation. It’s deep, though. Real deep in the center.”
Kinsley nodded.
She didn’t trust her voice.
“One of the reasons I wanted this place,” Dylan continued, and the words landed with a weight that had nothing to do with agriculture or real estate.
“Privacy. Space. Nobody around for miles. Two hundred acres between here and the nearest property line. The kind of place where a person can do their work without anyone watching.”
The words hung between them, weighted with meaning that neither of them was willing to state directly. Kinsley took a long pull from her beer, and the cold liquid did nothing to ease the constriction in her throat.
“I remember when you were on my cell phone plan,” Kinsley said, her voice barely above a whisper.
They were speaking in a language that only the two of them understood, a dialect built from implication and omission, and she needed to hear it stated more plainly.
She needed to know for certain. “I added the extra line for you when you first came back to town. Until you could find the time to go in and set up your own account.”
“I appreciated all the help you gave me when I came home.” Dylan took a sip of his beer, his rocking chair maintaining its steady rhythm. “It took me a while to settle back in, but I’m glad I came back.”
“Did you know,” Kinsley said carefully, tightening her grip around the bottle, “that when people share a cell phone account, they can monitor each other’s locations?”
“Sometimes that’s a good thing,” Dylan finished quietly.
She didn’t need any other confirmation.
An understanding passed between them that required no further elaboration, settling over the porch like the evening shadows, covering everything without altering the shape of what lay beneath.
Kinsley blinked rapidly, refusing to let the tears that had gathered in her eyes fall.
She kept her gaze fixed on the lake, on that still surface that held so many secrets beneath its sheen.
She didn’t need to ask how long he’d known.
Didn’t need to ask what he’d done, or when, or how he’d managed it.
The lake before her was answer enough. Seven acres of spring-fed water, deep in the center, surrounded by woods on a two-hundred-acre property that belonged to her brother.
Protected by family in a way that went beyond words, beyond law, beyond anything Kinsley had the right to accept but was accepting anyway because the alternative was to have this conversation honestly, and she wasn’t strong enough for that.
Not tonight.
Maybe not ever.
For some reason, Dylan had tracked her location on the night she’d killed Calvin Gantz.
He’d seen where she went. And at some point, after that night, Dylan had moved whatever needed to be moved to a place where no one would ever find it.
And then he’d purchased this farm with its private lake and its two hundred acres of solitude.
Her brother, the dreamer.
The hummingbird who couldn’t sit still.
He’d found his stillness here, on this land, standing guard over something that could never be spoken aloud.
“Thank you, Dylan,” Kinsley whispered, and her voice cracked on his name.
“Family protects family.” Dylan’s voice was steady and calm, carrying the quiet certainty of a man who had made a decision and had never once reconsidered it. “That’s what we do.”
He didn’t elaborate further. He didn’t need to. Kinsley understood what he was offering. Not just the physical security of what lay at the bottom of that lake, but the promise that came with it. The weight of carrying it, the twenty-one months of terror, shifted just enough that she could breathe.
They sat in silence as the sun continued its descent.
The lake’s surface shifted from copper to deep bronze, then to something darker as shadows stretched across the water like fingers reaching for the far shore.
Crickets began their evening chorus, tentative at first and then building into the full-throated song that would carry through the night.
Somewhere in the distance, an owl called out, its voice threading through the warm air with the patience of a creature that understood darkness better than most.
The farm breathed with life around them.
Peaceful.
Settled.
Eventually, Kinsley stood, her movements slow, reluctant to leave this place where the truth could exist without being spoken. Dylan walked her to the Jeep, hands in his pockets, that easy smile back on his face as though the evening had been nothing more than two siblings sharing a beer.
“Drive safe, Kin,” Dylan said as she climbed into the driver’s seat.
“I will.” Kinsley glanced up at him, her brother silhouetted against the porch lights, and for a moment, he looked like the boy she remembered from childhood. The one who used to build forts in the backyard and insist that she was the only one allowed inside. “Dylan…”
“I know.” He rested his hand briefly on the Jeep’s door frame. “We’re good, Kin. We’re always good.”
Kinsley managed a genuine smile.
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
She started the engine and put the Jeep in gear, catching Dylan’s figure shrinking in her rearview mirror as she drove away.
He stood there until her taillights disappeared around the curve, standing watch the way he always would, over the land and the lake and the secrets that would never see daylight.
Family protects family.
The gravel gave way to asphalt as she reached the main road, and Kinsley turned toward home.
She now understood why Shane’s divers had found nothing at Terrapin Lake.
Why the evidence had vanished as though it had never existed.
Her secret was buried at the bottom of a private lake on her brother’s land, guarded by seven acres of spring-fed water and two hundred acres of solitude.
But not entirely safe.
Someone was still sending those notes. Every nineteenth of the month, like clockwork, the reminders arrived. Anonymous. Relentless. Tormenting. A single sentence that carried the weight of everything she’d done and everything she stood to lose.
I know you killed Calvin Gantz.
The evidence might be gone, but someone out there knew the truth.
And until Kinsley discovered who was sending those notes, she would never truly be free.
She drove through the gathering darkness toward home, the Bell case behind her, the Gantz secret beneath her, and somewhere in the shadows between the two, a threat she couldn’t yet see and couldn’t yet name, waiting with the patience of someone who had all the time in the world.
~ The End ~
From USA Today Bestselling Author Kennedy Layne comes the fourth pulse-pounding installment in the Kinsley Aspen series, where friendship is the most dangerous disguise of all…
Click HERE
The morning after a bachelor weekend at a charming bed-and-breakfast in the North Dakota countryside, the best man is found dead.
Strangled in his room while four other men slept just down the hall.
No sign of forced entry. No sign of anyone coming or going during the night.
Which means the killer was already inside.
Detective Kinsley Aspen and her partner arrive to find a groom-to-be in shock and three groomsmen whose stories don't quite match.
Each man has an alibi tangled in the others' accounts, and as Kinsley picks apart the details, the cracks begin to show.
A brotherhood that was never as solid as it seemed.
A long-buried affair that resurfaced at the worst possible moment.
And a betrayal so deep that someone decided it could never see the light of day.
As the men turn on one another, Kinsley is pulled into a tangled history of jealousy, loyalty, and lies that stretches back years.
But the closer she gets to the truth, the more she recognizes the desperate lengths people will go to protect a secret, because she's been doing the same thing for three years.
And the walls she's built around her own dark truth are beginning to crack.
Everyone under that roof had a reason to want the best man silenced. But only one of them watched him take his last breath, and he's still playing the part of a grieving friend.