Branded

“I think I have everything I need for now,” Halley said a few moments later as she and Millie came out through the screen door to the porch and started down the steps to where Colton was waiting.

As she headed for her patrol SUV parked in the yard, she shot him a look. He could tell that she’d found more of Jessica’s handwriting and it matched the letter he’d received fourteen years too late—not the ones someone had been sending her parents in the interim.

“I’ll let you know what we find out,” the deputy promised Millie who’d followed them as far as the vehicle and stood looking even smaller and even more terrified.

Colton saw her glance back toward the house. Sid stood in the doorway. Millie Granger visibly shuddered at the sight of her husband. As Colton looked toward the man in the doorway, he thought of the man’s temper, his obsession with Jessica, his hatred of Colton. What if Sid had followed his daughter that night and caught her at the secret spot on the creek?

“You all right?” the deputy asked as she started the SUV.

He could feel her gaze on him as he suppressed a chill at the thought of what Sid Granger might have been capable of when it came to his daughter—was still capable of doing when it came to his wife.

“You didn’t know she was pregnant.”

It wasn’t a question but he answered anyway. “No.”

“I assume the baby was yours?”

He looked over at her, anger hitting him again with sudden heat. “Why would you even ask that? You saw the letter. She wanted me to run away with her.”

Halley nodded, but said nothing until they were back at his pickup parked at the edge of the road where he’d left it earlier. As he started to get out of the patrol car, she said, “I’m going to need a sample of your handwriting.”

EMMA WOULD HAVE SAID she was the luckiest woman in the world if anyone had asked her just three seconds ago.

Moments before she’d been lying on the soft warm blanket on the pile of hay beside her husband, his arm around her, trying to catch her breath after their love-making. She’d been wondering if other people their age still felt like this, and felt bad for them if they didn’t.

But then Hoyt’s cell phone had vibrated on the blanket beside him and he’d snatched it up, checked to see who was calling, then he’d seemed to hesitate as if wanting to take the call and yet—

“Go ahead,” Emma had said, sitting up to stretch. She knew how he was about business. Running this ranch was what kept him young.

“I really need to take this.” He rose stark naked and walked down to the end of the hayloft.

Any other time Emma wouldn’t have paid any attention, but something in the way Hoyt was standing, his back to her, his shoulders slumped over slightly, his voice low …

Her heart suddenly took off at a gallop as she noticed something that hadn’t fully registered before. This wasn’t the first time he’d checked to see who was calling and said, “I need to take this,” and hurried out of the room. Or taken the call out on the porch. Or rushed downstairs. Or, like now, moved to the other end of the hayloft. These calls weren’t about ranch business.

Ice-cold fear moved through her. She couldn’t hear what he was saying but she could read his body language. There was secrecy in the way he spoke into the phone.

Emma tried to fight the terror that clutched her heart like a fist. She told herself that she was being foolish. Hoyt loved her. Only her. She had no reason to question his love.

He snapped the phone shut, turned toward her and she saw his face and knew. Her husband looked guilty as hell.

Emma had never thought she’d be one of those women who didn’t want to know the truth. But right now, she felt too vulnerable, lying naked on a horse blanket in a hayloft after making love to the man she loved.

Quickly she hid her own face so he couldn’t see her fear as she reached for her clothes.

HALLEY CALLED SHERIFF MCCALL CRAWFORD, who was in Great Falls tied up on a federal case, to update her on the Granger case.

“Sheriff Winchester, I mean, Crawford,” McCall said with a small laugh.

The sheriff wasn’t the only one who was having trouble getting used to her married name. Most everyone in town still referred to her as Sheriff Winchester. When Halley filled the sheriff in, McCall told her to let the state crime investigators take the case from here on out—and to wait for their arrival.

When the team arrived by small plane that afternoon, she drove them to the crime scene, which a deputy had cordoned off, and waited to make sure nothing was disturbed.

Earlier, she’d told Colton to go home, warning him not to leave town.

He’d actually pulled himself together enough to chuckle at that on the drive back to his pickup from the Granger house.

“You must think I’m an idiot. You probably already suspect I’m a murderer. But do you really think I’m going to make a run for it?”

“I don’t know, are you?” He’d given her an impatient look and she’d had to ask, “So tell me about Jessica.”

“What do you want to know?” He’d sounded despondent.

“What was she like?” Halley remembered Jessica Granger, the girl Colton had started chasing at the end of junior high. Shortly after that Halley had talked her father into moving away from Whitehorse. “You were in love with her, right? There must have been a reason.”

He had looked out the side window for so long she’d thought he wasn’t going to answer. “You’re not going to understand because she wasn’t like you.”

She’d shot him a look, not sure how to take that, but taking it badly, just the same.

“Jessica wasn’t strong. She needed me.”

“That was the appeal?” Halley asked in surprise.

He had finally looked in her direction. “Jessica needed someone to take care of her, to protect her from her old man. But I failed her.”

“She needed protection from her father?” Halley couldn’t help thinking about how she herself had needed someone to protect her from Colton Chisholm. She’d had to learn to fight her own battles. No one had come to her rescue. The thought drove the arrow even deeper in her heart and made her all the more angry that Colton, when he’d finally fallen for a girl, had fallen for one who he said himself was nothing like her.

“You met Sid,” was all he said before climbing out of the patrol car.

She’d watched him go, seeing the toll this was taking on him, telling herself that a murderer might act the same way, especially if he couldn’t take the guilt anymore.

Now, as Halley watched the crime techs begin the search for a body, she told herself her suspicions about Colton had nothing to do with how she felt about him today or all those years ago when he’d broken her tender heart.

The breeze stirred the cottonwoods as the creek whispered past. It seemed too beautiful a spot for the crime techs to be looking for a young woman’s remains, but there was little doubt in her mind now that Jessica Granger was dead, that she’d died here.

Whether or not they would find Jessica, though, was another story. Halley suspected it would have been a shallow grave somewhere along this creek bottom. Which meant animals could have dug up the grave and carried away the bones years ago.

“I MIGHT NEED A LAWYER.”

Emma had been picking at her supper but looked up now as everyone else at the table turned toward Colton. Like her, he’d hardly touched his food and he’d passed on apple pie. That wasn’t like him. Hoyt hadn’t eaten much, either. There was almost a full piece of pie on his plate.

“A lawyer?” she repeated. Since Hoyt’s call in the barn, she’d tried to keep busy and think about anything but her own horrible suspicions.

“Why would you need a lawyer?” Hoyt asked.

Colton rubbed a hand over his jaw. “To make a long story short, there’s at least one law enforcement officer in the county who thinks I killed Jessica Granger.”

Hoyt froze, fork in hand. “What? I thought she left town.”

Emma noticed that her husband had gone very pale.

“Apparently, she planned on leaving but I don’t think she made it. Neither does the deputy now scouring a spot not far from here for her remains,” Colton said, pain in his voice.

“I don’t understand why they would think someone killed her,” Hoyt said and Emma found herself studying her husband. Of course he’d be upset about such an allegation against his son, but when he set down his fork, she saw that his hand was shaking.

A bad feeling lodged itself in her chest as Colton proceeded to tell them about a lost letter, finding Jessica’s purse buried under a tree root and calling the Sheriff’s Department.

“Halley Robinson?” his brother, Tanner, asked with a smirk. “Isn’t that the girl that you used to—”

“She’s the new deputy,” Colton said, shooting his brother a warning look.

Emma waited for Hoyt to jump in. When he didn’t, she felt as if her world had suddenly shifted on its axis and nothing was as it had been just hours before.

“Isn’t it possible the girl isn’t even dead? They haven’t found anything yet, right?” she asked.

Colton shook his head. “She wouldn’t have left without her purse.”

“What does the sheriff have to say about this?” Hoyt asked.

“From what I’ve been able to find out, the sheriff is busy in federal court on another case. This one has been turned over to the state crime team, but a fourteen-year-old possible murder isn’t going to be at the top of their list of investigations. Even if the sheriff was in town, I’m not sure it would keep Halley from trying to railroad me.”

“Well, you’re just going to have to change this Halley person’s mind,” Emma said and saw her husband give her a sympathetic smile at her naiveté.

“Emma’s is one approach,” Hoyt said. “We’ll also get you the best lawyer money can buy, just in case you can’t convince this woman that you’re innocent. I take it the two of you have some kind of history?”

“You could say that,” Tanner said.

His other brothers had been feeding their faces, but now joined in. “Wait a minute,” Zane said. “That’s not that little dark-haired skinny girl—”

“She isn’t so little anymore,” Dawson said, laughing. “I saw her but didn’t realize she was Halley Robinson. She’s gorgeous.” He let out a whistle.

Emma could see that Colton was at the end of his rope as Logan and Marshall chimed in with similar remarks.

“Let’s take our dishes into the kitchen and let your father and Colton talk about this alone,” she suggested, then stood and gave them each a look that sent the bunch of them quickly to their feet.

Colton shot her a thankful glance as she marched them all to the kitchen and closed the door behind them.

“Okay,” she said once they were out of hearing range. “Tell me about this Halley Robinson.”

HALLEY FOUND HER FATHER out in the south forty. He looked up as she came riding in. His face crinkled into a smile at the sight of her and she knew she’d made the right decision coming back to Whitehorse, Montana, with him.

He’d missed ranching and she knew the only reason he’d left here was because she’d been so unhappy. They were the only family they had.

“Hey, didn’t expect to see you so soon,” Geoff Robinson said as he finished tightening the top strand of barbed wire, then pulled off his gloves and turned all his attention to his daughter. “Everything all right?”

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