Chapter 25
DAISY
The county road unfurls west toward town, and for the first time all day, I can hear myself think.
“All of them ended up with Silas Blackwood.” Wyatt says it out of nowhere, like we were in the middle of a conversation. “Which is the part I keep catching on.”
“Me too.”
“If Silas is running Mountain West, why bother?” He glances at me, then back at the road. “Man’s got the money to buy any of those places in broad daylight at auction. Nobody’d blink. That’s just what Blackwoods do.”
“So it’s not his.”
“Doesn’t fit. Blackwoods don’t hide.”
“Then Mountain West exists to hide someone else.” I watch the road unspool. “Someone who couldn’t be seen doing the work Silas benefits from.”
“Like what?”
“Picking out which ranches are close to going under. Timing the squeeze. Moving the paperwork through a notary who wouldn’t ask questions and a law firm that doesn’t exist. Handing Silas the deeds at the end of it so his hands stay clean.”
“A middleman.”
“A middleman.”
He’s quiet for a beat. “Someone close enough to the valley to know which families are bleeding.”
I don’t name anyone. Neither does he.
Wyatt’s hand moves to the back of my headrest as he checks the mirrors, scanning the road behind us before settling forward again. He’s been doing it since we left the ranch. Casual glances that aren’t casual at all.
“You expecting someone?”
“No.” He shakes his head, eyes still on the road as he murmurs, “That’s the problem.”
Then, as though he’s not spoken, he asks, “And what about Alma?”
I take a breath. “Umm, Danny’s in the hospital. Alma’s been running Sky Country Books alone. My editor Glen tracked her down for me, but I didn’t want to approach her until I had enough of the chain to ask the right questions.”
“What makes you think she’ll talk?”
“Her father notarized documents for a shell company that I can tie to land fraud. Either she knows something and she’s scared, or she doesn’t know but she’ll want to.
” I tuck my phone back in my pocket. “Either way, I’m not going in as an investigator.
I’m going in as a journalist writing a feature on ranch families in the Blackstone Creek valley. Friendly. Curious. No pressure.”
He shoots me a look. “You’ve done this before.”
“I’ve done this before.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, not quite a smile but close enough that I feel it in my chest.
We pass the turnoff for the cemetery and I don’t look. Not yet. Not today. Not until I get to the truth.
Soon, Dad.
Wyatt adjusts his grip on the wheel. “The call from the bank.” His tone is tight. “That morning. You think that’s connected.”
“A flag that nobody at the bank could explain, timed to keep you off a truck that went off a cliff twenty minutes later.” I keep my voice soft and even. “Yes, I do think it’s connected. Nothing about this is random.”
“Then someone at the bank flagged the account on purpose.”
“Or someone told the bank to flag it.”
His knuckles go pale on the wheel. I let him sit with that because some things need room to breathe. And hearing that the phone call he’s spent three years blaming himself for might be the only reason he’s still alive qualifies as one of those things.
“One more thing.” I swallow before continuing. “Whatever we find today, it stays between us. Nobody else.”
He frowns. “The family—”
“Nobody, Wyatt. Not the siblings, not the hands, not a single soul back at the ranch.” I hold up a hand before he can argue, refusing to back down.
Not on this. I’ve worked too hard, and our fathers deserve justice.
“I know they lost Bill too, and I know what I’m asking.
But our fathers died because someone talked.
The second we get proof, they’re the first people we tell. ”
He doesn’t like it. I can see the resistance in his shoulders, the instinct to defend the people he trusts. But the journalist in me learned a long time ago that the most dangerous leaks come from people who mean well, and right now I need Wyatt to think like a partner, not a protector.
“Fine,” he concedes after a beat. “You and me.”
He reaches across the console without looking away from the road. I take his hand, and he squeezes once before letting go and putting it back on the wheel.
“You and me.”
He turns onto Main Street and I watch Blackstone Creek slide past the window. This town held my whole childhood and a whole lot of my dreams, and now it might be holding the answer to who took my father from me.
Wyatt parallel parks in front of Sky Country Books with practiced ease, then he kills the engine and sits for a moment, both hands still on the wheel as he looks at the shop front through the windshield.
“Daisy.”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever she tells us in there.” He turns to look at me, and his green eyes are steady and clear and carrying something that makes my breath catch. “We follow it. Wherever it goes. Even if it goes somewhere we don’t like.”
I nod. “Even then.”
He holds my gaze for one more second, then kills the engine and climbs out. He comes around and opens my door. When I step down, he falls into step beside me, close enough that his arm brushes mine, and neither of us moves away.
Sky Country Books smells the way every used bookstore in a small town smells: paper and dust and the faint sweetness of old glue.
Shelves line every wall from floor to ceiling, crammed with paperbacks and hardcovers and the kind of local interest titles that only sell to tourists passing through on their way to Glacier.
Wyatt hangs back near the door without me asking, understanding what I need right now. On the chair behind the door, Hemingway deigns to let Wyatt scratch behind one ear.
And in true testament to Wyatt’s connection with animals, the orange ball of fur even purrs.
A woman appears from the back, carrying a box of books balanced against her hip.
She’s in her mid-forties. Wiry, with reading glasses pushed up into dark curly hair streaked with gray, and she startles when she sees us, but quickly recovers with the practiced smile of someone who spends her days dealing with the public.
“Sorry about that, y’all. Shipment day.” She sets the box on the counter and brushes her hands on her jeans. “Can I help you find something?”
“Alma Cutter?”
The smile holds, but her eyes sharpen. “That’s me.”
“I’m Tom Monroe’s daughter, Daisy.” I let that land before adding, “And this is Wyatt Hartley.”
Alma goes still. It’s brief, just a beat before she recovers, but I’ve interviewed enough people to know what a flinch looks like when someone’s learned to swallow it.
“What can I do for you?” she asks. The practiced smile has vanished, and what’s left is polite and closed.
“I’m a journalist, based out of Denver, and I’m working on a feature about ranch families in the Blackstone Creek valley. I’ve been doing some background research into land records and property transfers over the last decade. Your father’s name came up.”
“My father is in the hospital.” Alma starts unpacking the box of books, hands moving with purpose, and generally giving herself something to do that doesn’t involve looking at us. “I don’t handle his business affairs.”
“Of course. I’m very sorry to hear about his health.” I keep my voice easy and unhurried. “It’s really just a small thing. His name appeared as a notary on some property transactions, and I’m trying to understand the pattern. Mountain West Acquisitions, for instance.”
Her hands stop on the books for half a second. Then she picks up the next one and slots it onto the shelf behind the counter.
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
Too fast. Too flat. The same nothing-to-see-here I’ve heard from every source who knows more than they’re willing to say.
“I understand.” I pull a card from my back pocket and set it on the counter between us. “If you ever come across anything in the shop records like some old files or correspondence, I’d love to hear from you.”
Alma doesn’t look at the card. She shelves another book, then another, her rhythm bordering on mechanical.
Behind her, on a shelf beside the register, there’s a framed photograph I almost miss of a young man in his early twenties.
He’s dark-haired, with the same sharp jaw as Alma and a grin that’s trying too hard.
When she notices my line of vision, her body angle shifts, putting herself between us and the photo without seeming to realize it.
“Alma.” I try once more, gently. “If someone pressured your father into notarizing documents he shouldn’t have, we can help—”
“You need to leave.” Her voice drops, but it’s not angry. Instead, her words are laced with fear. “Please. I can’t help you.”
I can’t help you. Not I won’t.
“You don’t know what you’re asking me.” She’s even quieter now, and I watch her hands grip the edge of the counter. Her eyes flick toward the door as though she’s expecting someone to walk through it. “I have family to think about.”
The way she says family carries a weight that goes beyond the old man in the hospital. She means the young man in the photo. Maybe she means herself, too.
“I understand,” I reply gently. “I do.”
I leave the card on the counter and turn to leave. She doesn’t pick it up, but she doesn’t push it back either.
We’re almost at the door when she speaks again. Her words are so low, I nearly miss them.
“Miss Monroe.”
I stop as Wyatt’s hand finds the door handle but he doesn’t open it.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for.” She’s not looking at me. She’s staring down at the box of books with both hands flat on the counter. “I truly do.”
The words follow us out the door before I know what to make of them. We walk back to the truck in silence, and Wyatt waits to speak until we’re both inside with the doors closed.
“She knows.”
My hands are steady even as adrenaline pumps through my body.
“She knows everything.” I buckle my seatbelt and stare at the bookstore’s front window, where Alma has already disappeared into the back. “That wasn’t a woman who couldn’t help. That was a woman who wanted to and couldn’t make herself do it.”