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“Wow,” Collin said. “Way to go, Charlotte. That’ll teach that brat.”

“She’s actually injail, though?” I asked, still reeling and trying to mentally produce an image that just wouldn’t come. Charlotte Garafalo. In jail. It just didn’t make sense.

“Yes,” Amber said. “Tamara is down there now to bail her out.”

“I sent the money for it out of the fund I keep for your misadventures,” Luke said.

“Wait, you have a specific fund for when Jesse ends up in jail?” Collin asked. “How do I not know about this?”

Luke shrugged. “You know how I have that old car garaged that I’ve been restoring?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well, it’s been restored for a long damn time now. I don’t know how you didn’t put that one together.”

“You mean to tell me every month, from the budget, you’ve been taking money to restore old cars and putting it into a slush fund to bail Jesse out of the slammer?”

“Well, all of us,” he said. “But mostly Jesse.”

Collin was laughing now, getting past his initial betrayal of financial transparency. Luke even cracked a smile.

“I guess the important thing to talk about now is how you want to handle Oland,” Amber said. “Luke should explain that part a little more.”

“Right,” Luke said, pulling up a chair and bringing it closer. “Okay, so the situation is that they claim there isn’t much, if any physical evidence tying Oland to this other than him being caught with Lacey. They might have your DNA on the bottom of his gun, but we don’t know that yet. So Oland has cooked up this idea, and essentially is willing to flip on Lacey if you admit you don’t know for sure that Oland had anything to do with the actual assault and attempted murder.”

“Wait, so I’m supposed to believe that Lacey did all this?”

“Yes.”

“She hit me with the gun, she dragged me into the car, then drove me to the woods, dragged me out of the car, and left me for dead?”

“Yes.”

“And Oland would get away scot-free?”

“Well, no,” Luke said. “He definitely was an accomplice. But they would only charge him with what they could prove, which was that he helped her try to escape, which he claims he was trying to talk her into turning herself in, and possibly that she stole the weapon from him and he tried to cover it up.”

“Wow,” Collin said. “What a snake in the grass.”

“It’s worse,” I said. “They weren’t just in on this together. They are… or were… a couple. I believe Oland is the father of her baby, assuming there is an actual baby at all.”

“Wait, you think she was never pregnant?” Amber asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s a serial liar. I think it’s entirely possible, yes. But I think the most likely situation is that I broke up with her, Oland dated her and knocked her up, and then they concocted this plan to pin it on me and get money from me by way of child support. When I denied it, they went all in on it, thinking that they could take me to court, win without a paternity test, and somehow get access to the ranch through litigation.”

“I’ve said it before,” Collin said, “Oland Anderson might just be the dumbest man on Earth.”

“Dumb, but not that dumb,” Luke said. “He’s figured out a plausible way to get out of most of the trouble. It would be a slam-dunk case on Lacey if you went through with this. The implication is that the Andersons would be willing to work with us a lot more, maybe cool their jets on us, if we did them this favor.”

“Wow,” I said again. “Just wow.”

“So that brings us to you,” Amber said. “We can save ourselves a lot of legal headache and time if we go with their plan. But…”

“No,” I said. “The answer is no.”

Luke grinned. “Thatta boy.”

“Oland tried to kill me,” I continued. “Lacey wanted me dead, absolutely, and was the most upset that they weren’t able to put a bullet in my head, but Oland not only is the one who actually hit me, but he thought he killed me and was fine with dumping my body and blaming someone else. I even heard his first plan, which was to blame you, Luke.”