“It’s a nice place,” Joelle said when Dallas opened his truck door.
Dallas followed her gaze to the white limestone house. It wasn’t a new structure. The ranch had been in Kirby’s family for six generations.
“Most people just describe it as big,” he mumbled. And it seemed to be constantly growing. After Kirby had taken him and his five foster brothers in, he’d added a second floor and expanded the kitchen and living areas.
Joelle got out slowly, and even though she was no longer wobbling when she walked, her steps were tentative. “I’m still not sure this is a good idea.”
Before Dallas could remind her again that they were short on options, the front door opened and Declan stepped onto the porch that stretched across the entire front of the house.
“Joelle,” Declan greeted. He said her name with some disdain. No doubt because of her inquiry that could ultimately burn Kirby.
Dallas frowned, grabbed her overnight bag and joined them. Joelle looked a little hurt by Declan’s frosty welcome, and there was good reason for that. Back at Rocky Creek, she and Declan had always been friendly in a big sister, little brother kind of way. But Dallas really didn’t want her welcomed back with open arms.
“You look good,” Joelle said to Declan. “I’ve missed you.”
That didn’t sit well with Dallas, either, and he didn’t take the bark out of his tone. “We have to talk to Kirby,” he said as he put her bag on the entry floor and pulled off his Stetson. He hung it on its usual hook next to the door.
“Yeah,” Declan acknowledged. “Clayton called and filled me in. Kirby knows, too.”
“And he’s up to seeing us?” Joelle asked.
Declan shook his head and tipped his head for her to follow him inside. “Not really up to it, but he insisted on the visit.”
“Then we’ll keep it short,” she promised.
Declan started toward Kirby’s bedroom at the back of the house. “Is Joelle staying the night?”
“No,” she answered, probably because she felt about as welcome as the flu.
“Yes,” Dallas contradicted. “Until those gunmen are found, she’s staying with one of us.”
Declan didn’t argue with him, though Dallas thought Joelle might.
“I’ll have Loretta fix up the guest room,” his brother commented. “Loretta’s our housekeeper,” Declan added, glancing back at Joelle.
“Loretta Wiggins,” she said as they wound their way through the hall.
“You know her?” Dallas asked, surprised.
Joelle nodded. “When the governor asked me to look into Webb’s death, I asked for background checks on all of you, including your help here at the ranch.”
It made him wonder what else she’d done. And learned. She certainly hadn’t learned anything from his immediate family firsthand but had instead sent her assistant, a pasty-faced lawyer, to interview him and his foster brothers. Maybe because Joelle hadn’t wanted to personally confront what she thought would be a bunch of riled lawmen.
Or maybe she just hadn’t wanted to confront him.
They stopped in front of Kirby’s door, and Declan looked at them. “He’s been out of it most of the day. Asking for Stella again.”
“Stella Doyle?” Joelle immediately asked. “The cook who was at Rocky Creek?”
Declan nodded, then scratched his head. “Didn’t even realize Kirby and Stella knew each other that well, but he wants to see her.”
“One of my people interviewed her,” Joelle offered. “I’m sure we have current contact information.”
Dallas huffed. He already had too much on his plate, but if Kirby wanted the woman to come to the ranch, he’d figure out a way to get her there. As long as Kirby didn’t want to see Stella for some deathbed farewell, that is. He didn’t want Kirby giving up on the treatments.
When Dallas reached for the doorknob, Joelle took several deeps breaths. She opened her mouth, probably to repeat that this wasn’t a good idea, but Dallas opened the door anyway. And there Kirby was on the bed.
Hell.
He looked worse than he had earlier when Dallas left for the church to stop Joelle’s wedding. Kirby opened his eyes. Not without some effort. And he turned his head in their direction. He even managed a watery smile for Joelle’s benefit.
God, it hurt to see him like this. Kirby had always been so strong. A hulk of a man. And now the cancer and the treatments had reduced him to practically a skeleton.
“I’ll get Loretta started on that guest room,” Declan said, excusing himself.
Kirby lifted his hand and motioned for them to come closer. “Tell me about Owen,” he mumbled, and his hand eased back onto the bed.
Dallas wanted to keep this as short as possible because he knew even a simple conversation would be exhausting for Kirby. “Owen claims someone sent him a knife containing Webb’s blood and my prints and that it was wrapped in your handkerchief. He just turned it over to Saul, who’s sending it to the lab.”
“Owen always was a wormy little snake,” Kirby mumbled.
That wasn’t exactly what Dallas wanted to hear. He’d wanted Kirby to say the evidence had to be fake, that there was no way his handkerchief could be wrapped around a murder weapon.
“Saul wouldn’t let me look at the knife,” Dallas continued. “He wants me to stay away from all of this.” He motioned to Joelle. “But she had it tested, and they’re apparently my prints.”
“Dallas could have handled that knife at any time,” Joelle said, her voice a whisper. “And Webb’s killer could have used gloves during the murder so that only Dallas’s prints were the ones on it.”
She stayed back from Kirby’s bed and dodged his gaze when he turned his head in her direction.
What the heck was going on?
Maybe the idea of a dying man bothered her. Well, it bothered him, too, especially when that man was the only father Dallas had ever known.
“Owen’s setting you up?” Kirby asked, his voice already so weak that it barely had any sound.
Joelle nodded.
“He’s blackmailing Joelle to marry him,” Dallas explained when she didn’t say anything. “That won’t stop the knife from being processed.”
Or stop Dallas and maybe others from being arrested.
He walked closer to Kirby. “Look, I know you’re not well enough to leave town, but I want to hire you a good lawyer. One who’ll make sure that no one tries to include you in this mess.”
The corner of Kirby’s mouth lifted. “You’re a good son, Dallas. But let the chips fall where they may.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Dallas snapped. “I’m not letting them arrest you, especially for something you didn’t do.”
Again, Kirby didn’t jump to say he was innocent, but Dallas didn’t care. Jonah Webb had been a scum of a man, and no one should be going to jail for stopping him.
Especially Kirby.
“You need to go back to Rocky Creek,” Kirby said several moments later. “Talk with the people who were there the night that Webb disappeared. Look around and see what you can find.”
“Joelle and her people have already done that,” Dallas reminded him. But Dallas did intend to examine all of her notes and statements.
“No,” Kirby said. “You and Joelle go. You talk to them. You look for something that others may have missed.” He drew in a labored breath. “I don’t know what answers you’ll find there, but you’ll find something.”
Yeah. But he damn sure didn’t want to find anything to corroborate that knife and handkerchief.
Kirby lifted his hand again, pointed at Joelle and motioned for her to come closer. She froze for just a split second. But Dallas definitely noticed. He also didn’t miss the uneasy look in her eyes.
Yeah. Something was definitely going on here.
Dallas waited. Watched and listened. Joelle inched her way to Kirby’s bed. When she was close enough, Kirby reached out and took her hand.
“You have to tell hi
m,” Kirby said. “Dallas needs to know.”
“Know what?” Dallas immediately asked.
Joelle shook her head, and now she dodged Dallas’s gaze.
“Yes,” Kirby insisted. “Tell him. No more secrets.”
Secrets. There it was again. That blasted word that Dallas was beginning to hate. One of the gunmen in the woods had said something about a secret, and Joelle hadn’t brushed it off.
Well, she wouldn’t brush it off now.
Dallas took her arm and led her back to the hall so they could talk in private.
“Go easy on her,” Kirby mumbled. “Everything she’s done is because she’s still in love with you. Even a dying man can see that.”
Dallas cursed. In this case the dying man was wrong. The only thing Dallas saw when he looked at Joelle was a woman who’d abandoned him sixteen years ago. She wasn’t keeping secrets for love; she was keeping them, well, he didn’t know why.
Yet.
Dallas practically dragged her from the room, and when he shut Kirby’s door, he got right in her face.
“Start talking,” Dallas demanded. And this time, he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
Chapter Eight
It was too late for Joelle to try and duck around Dallas. He backed her against the wall and pinned her in place with his body. Despite all the things going through her head, she still noticed the close contact.
His chest pressed against her breasts.
Dallas obviously noticed it, too, because he glanced down between them and then stepped back a little. “That won’t get you off the hook,” he mumbled.
“That?” she blurted out. Yet another bad idea. She should have just dropped the subject completely.
“You know what I’m talking about.” He didn’t wait for her to confirm that yep, she did know. It was this blasted attraction between them. “It won’t play into this. You’ll tell me all about this secret you’ve been keeping.”
She would. No way around it now. Joelle debated where to start, but before she could figure out a jumping off point, she heard the footsteps, and Declan appeared in the hall.
“The guest room’s ready,” he said, and his gaze slid to the still close contact between Dallas and her. “Looks like old times.” Declan didn’t exactly seemed pleased about that, either.
Dallas cursed. “Mind your own business. And if you remember correctly, those old times weren’t always good.” But he stepped away from her again. “Come on. We’ll have this discussion in private.”
He was right. Kirby had been stressed out enough without having to listen to them argue. And there would be an argument if she didn’t tell all. The trick was to do that without making things worse.
Latching on to her arm again, Dallas scowled at her and then led her down the hall and into what she assumed was the guest room. Her bag sat near the bed.
“Talk,” Dallas ordered.
Joelle gathered her breath first. It wasn’t easy, and even when she managed to do it, it didn’t help. “One of the first things I discovered when I started this inquiry was that neither you, Kirby nor any of your foster brothers have foolproof alibis for the time Webb went missing.”
“Not exactly a secret,” Dallas pointed out.
“No. But my boss was pressing me to name some top suspects, preferably not any state officials or employees with ties to Rocky Creek.”
Dallas stayed quiet a moment. Cursed again. “He wants to pin this on a federal marshal.”
“Only if a marshal is guilty,” she corrected. “This isn’t a witch hunt, Dallas. The governor wants everything aboveboard, but he wants it handled discreetly, too. And that’s why I didn’t interview you or your brothers personally. I didn’t want anyone to think that I’d manipulated or influenced your accounts of that night.”
“So you sent a lackey to talk to us.”
“My assistant,” she corrected. “And I used the info from those interviews and others to come up with a timetable of who was where and when for all sixty-one residents and the staff.”
He stared at her. “You found something.” And it wasn’t a question.
“I found that the time window was short for you to have committed a murder, but it was still possible.” She had to swallow hard and tried not to allow the images of that night into her head. “Webb was last seen at eight in the evening, and you met me by the creek at eight-thirty. I didn’t want to put in my report that you could have murdered Webb and then calmly had sex with me.”
“Calmly?” he questioned. “We never did anything calmly, especially sex.”
Joelle couldn’t help it, she smiled and then had to choke back a laugh. Why, she didn’t know. There was certainly nothing laughable about any of this. Including those memories. But Dallas was right once again—when they’d been together in those days, it’d been anything but calm.
The images came so fast, so hard that Joelle couldn’t push them all away. Sixteen years was a long time, but for some reason her brain and body just wouldn’t let her forget Dallas’s touch. His scent. His taste.
It was always there with her.
“Yeah,” Dallas mumbled, and the corner of his mouth lifted as if he were about to smile. He didn’t. The moment came and went, and the steel returned to his eyes.
With reason.
He was never going to forgive her for leaving him, and part of Joelle would never forgive herself. No use going back down that road because reliving it would only make matters worse.
“The timeline,” she said, hoping to get her own mind back where it belonged—on this investigation. “You aren’t the only one with a short window for an alibi. Eyewitnesses put Harlan and Clayton in their room around eight-fifteen. Slade was unloading boxes in the kitchen about that time. Wyatt was apparently in one of the storage sheds making out with Amy Simmons, the caretaker’s daughter.”
Dallas nodded, probably because he remembered Wyatt’s string of hot and heavy romances. It seemed that Wyatt had grown up a lot faster than the rest of them had, and his rock-star cowboy looks hadn’t hurt one bit. Back then, anyway. Wyatt was the only one of them to have ever married. Of course, that hadn’t worked out so well for him. His wife had died two years ago, and he hadn’t put those rock-star looks to use by jumping back into the dating pool.
“That leaves Declan,” Dallas finally said, “and he was in the infirmary because Webb had given him a beating just hours earlier.”
Now, it was her turn to nod. “But no one can verify that Declan was actually there.”
Dallas’s next round of profanity was raw. “Declan was barely thirteen and scrawny. No way could he have stabbed a man Webb’s size.”
“I agree. But he could have gotten the drop on him and surprised him. Declan had a strong motive. And he threatened to kill Webb when he beat him.”
“Hell, I threatened Webb, too.” Dallas groaned, put his hands on his hips. “This sure as hell better not be the secret—that you’re going to tell the governor that Declan is the killer.”
“No.” And that’s all she said for several seconds. “A few weeks ago, Kirby called me and said he had proof that he’d murdered Webb.”
“He didn’t!” Dallas shouted.
Since Dallas looked on the verge of exploding, she hurried toward him and took him by the arm to keep him from storming back to Kirby’s room for an explanation.
“I don’t believe Kirby killed Webb, either,” Joelle said, blocking Dallas’s path.
Another bad idea. Because they slammed into each other again. She still wasn’t too steady on her feet, and she stumbled. Right into Dallas’s arms.
Instant contact again. Instant memories.
Instant heat, too.
She had to take a moment before she could continue. “I think whatever proof that Kirby claimed he had was fake. Or circumstantial at best. He was adamant that if it came down to one of you being arrested, that I would help him release the so-called evidence so that he’d be charged instead.”
Dallas
froze, obviously thinking about that. “You agreed to that stupid plan?”
“No. Because I knew none of you would allow it. But Dallas, I’m betting if one of you is arrested, whatever Kirby has will show up in some law enforcement office. And if he doesn’t actually have anything, he might try to create it.”
He didn’t argue with that because he no doubt knew it was true. Joelle also figured it would be impossible to talk Kirby out of it. Even though until this incident she’d been out of touch with him for years, the man had always been a little pigheaded. And a lot pigheaded when it came to his foster sons.
Dallas again noticed the close contact between them and he moved away from her. Not far though. In fact, they ended up leaning against the same wall. Practically shoulder to shoulder.
“What specific evidence did Kirby say he had?” Dallas asked. He blew out a long breath and scrubbed his hand over his face.
“He didn’t. But when Owen told me he had the knife, I thought maybe he’d stolen it from Kirby. Kirby denied that.”
“You and Kirby have been having a lot of conversations,” he grumbled.
“Not long ones, I assure you. I know how sick he is, and I didn’t press him on anything. In fact, I didn’t want anyone to know about what he told me.”
“A secret,” Dallas repeated in the same tone as his profanity. “How did Owen find out?”
She blinked, and Joelle could have sworn her heart skipped a beat.
“Owen said you had secrets,” Dallas clarified. “How did he find out this possible package of evidence that Kirby has?”
“I’m not sure,” she answered as soon as she got her mouth working. “Maybe he bugged my condo. Maybe Lindsey did.”
Oh, mercy.
With everything else going on, she hadn’t considered that until now. Of course, either Lindsey or Owen was capable of doing something like that. Especially Owen. He would have definitely wanted to learn everything she’d found out about him.
“What exactly do you have on Owen that would make him go to these extremes?” Dallas asked.
Finally, an easy question, but she doubted he’d like this answer any more than the others she’d given him. “Investments with shady businesses, and Owen wasn’t an innocent party in this, either. I believe it amounts to loan sharking.”
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