Chapter 29
DAISY
“Thank you, Marcus.”
The words come out almost normal.
His hand is gone from mine now, but I can still feel the weight of it. The feeling makes me want to run to the sink and scrub my hands until the skin he touched peels off.
The urge to throw my coffee mug at the wall and watch it shatter is worse.
I take another sip instead.
The coffee is too strong because Marcus makes it the way Dad used to, and the taste is so familiar it’s obscene, but I make myself swallow.
I smile over the rim on autopilot, because he’s watching me with that warm, fatherly face he’s worn for as long as I’ve known him, and the second I stop performing is the second he knows I’m onto him.
“He really was a good man,” Marcus says quietly. “Your dad.”
Worse still, he means it.
His voice is soft and real, and there’s a twitch at the corner of his mouth that looks an awful lot like grief. Marcus loved my father. Bill, too. He sat at this table with them a thousand times, and they trusted him as if he were family.
And then he had them killed.
My mouth goes bone dry, and I have to look down at my mug before my face gives me away.
Two hundred yards past the back door, a seventy-six-year-old man with one working ear is cursing at an alternator. The Suburban keys sit on the corner of the table. Marcus’s phone is clipped to his belt.
I pick my head up, dig deep, and find a smile.
“He really was the best, wasn’t he?”
Marcus nods, then lifts his mug and takes a long, unhurried drink. His actions are those of a man who has nowhere he needs to be.
Nowhere he needs to be.
Marcus Donnelly is the ranch accountant for half the county. Saturdays are not empty for him. He was supposed to be at the Mason spread this morning. Mason wasn’t home, so here he sits with his whole Saturday freed up, watching me over his coffee.
And the moment I think it, the rest slides into place the way facts do when you’ve been circling them all morning without knowing it.
Colt and Rhett chasing cattle down the east ridge.
Maggie called out to a colicky foal. June stuck at Maggie’s because my Honda and her truck are both out of commission.
Wyatt on the other side of Blackstone Creek fetching her home.
Every person between me and the county line is exactly far enough away to be inconsequential.
My pulse skyrockets as a cold shiver runs the length of my spine.
This morning wasn’t an accident, Monroe. It was a board being cleared.
“Tell me something about him,” I hear myself say, bright and easy. “Something I don’t know. Something he’d hate that I found out.”
Marcus’s whole face warms, slow and real, as a memory lifts to the surface.
“Oh, sweetheart.” He chuckles, low and fond. “Have I got a story for you.”
I smile back like I’m ready to be charmed while Marcus settles back with his mug.
“Lordy, where to even begin.”
I hold my face in the shape he needs it to be, and underneath, I count my pulse and wait.
“There was this one summer your daddy got it into his head he was gonna fix the old red tractor that’d been sittin’ in the barn for fifteen years.
Bill and I bet him twenty dollars each that he wouldn’t get it started before the Fourth of July.
Now, Tom, he never could resist a bet, especially one where Bill was involved—”
Tires on the gravel driveway interrupt Marcus’s story.
The first thing I notice is that it’s not Wyatt’s truck. I know the sound of Wyatt’s truck the way I know my own breathing. This is a lighter engine. And it’s close.
My stomach drops.
Marcus’s head doesn’t turn. His eyes stay on me, and the corner of his mouth that was soft a second ago has gone still.
Oh God.
My heart ricochets against my breast as I realize the prediction I made thirty seconds ago in the privacy of my own head has pulled into the driveway.
A knock sounds from the front door. Three sharp raps.
“That’ll be my nephew.” Marcus sets his napkin on the table and pushes back from his chair, his usual unhurried self. “He’s dropping by to pick up a check I’ve been holding for him. Won’t be a minute.”
The lie is smooth and practiced, and I’m in no doubt he’s had it on hand since before he arrived, ready to deploy.
He gives my shoulder a squeeze on the way past. The warmth of his hand stays there after he’s gone, making my skin crawl.
The second his boots leave the kitchen, I’m out of my chair and across the tile without remembering the decision to stand.
It’s twenty feet to the back door. Beyond, there are two hundred yards of open dirt between Dave and me, but the yard is exposed.
The house buys me time until Wyatt can get here. It also buys me the chance at a confession. On record.
Decision made, I make a beeline to the knife block on the counter. My fingers skip the chef’s knife and close around the paring knife, the smallest in the block, just a three-inch blade with a wooden handle. The steel clears the slot without a whisper of sound.
I slide the blade into the back pocket of my jeans, handle up so it sits against the curve of my lower back, then pull the tail of my shirt down over it.
Then I pull my phone from my jeans pocket.
Voice memo.
Record.
The red dot flares to life, and I set the phone face down on my thigh before sliding back into my chair, scooting in so my lap isn’t visible.
Down the hall, Marcus’s voice is warm and ordinary, saying something I can’t quite make out before a second voice answers lower and brief.
It just takes ten seconds, maybe twelve, and the coffee mug is back in my hand before boots start down the hall.
There are two sets this time. One heavy, one lighter.
I plaster a look I hope says calm indifference on my face right as Marcus reaches the doorway.
“Sorry about that, sweetheart.” Marcus comes back into the kitchen with his hands in his pockets.
Stan is a step behind him, filling the doorway. He’s bigger than he looked in Alma’s photo. And a long way from Sage Harbor.
“Daisy, this here’s my nephew Stan. Does some work for me around town when he’s free. Stan, Daisy is Tom Monroe’s girl, all grown up. She’s thinking about makin’ Blackstone Creek her home now. Figured you two were overdue an introduction.”
Every word of it is true. It’s also a sentence passed in a language Marcus thinks only he and Stan speak.
Tom Monroe’s girl isn’t going back to Denver. And she’ll keep digging until she reaches both of us.
He’s using my own plans to get rid of me.
The coffee in my stomach turns to cement.
Stan doesn’t say hello.
The grin that was trying too hard in Alma’s photo isn’t here. In fact, there’s no emotion on his face at all.
My pulse is so loud I can hear it in my teeth as the paring knife warms against the small of my back.
“Stan.” I force the word past the bile rising in my throat. “Nice to meet you.”
Both men just look at one another. A silent exchange I can’t read, and in the two seconds it takes, every warm minute we just spent at this table falls away as though it never existed.
For a long moment, nothing moves in the kitchen. Then Marcus sets his mug on the counter behind him without looking.
“Alright, son.” Marcus’s voice is matter-of-fact. “You know what needs doing. Make it look like whoever broke into her cabin came back for the rest of it.”
Like he’s assigning a task.
Stan says nothing.
Marcus reaches for his hat on the counter, then his keys on the table. He pockets them, then squeezes my shoulder on his way past, the same way he did two minutes ago, and every drop of blood drains from my face.
Stan steps out of the doorway, his hand sliding under the back hem of his jacket, and when it comes out, there’s a gun in it. It’s not raised, just held loose along his thigh.
My eyes land on the black shape of the barrel, but instead of spiraling, I focus on the voice memo on my lap, on the need to get justice for Dad and Bill. Everything else is secondary right now.
Marcus pauses and looks at Stan. Then he shifts his attention to the gun and nods once, as though confirming a routine appointment.
“Quick would be a kindness, son.” He drops his hat onto his head. “After all, she’s Tom’s girl.”