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“So you went to L.A. to find Jackie,” Becca surmised. “Did you locate her?”

Brig’s expression remained grim. “Yeah. I found her and her mother . . .”

“Martha.”

“Let me tell you, there’s no love lost between Jackie and your brother.”

“I know,” Becca replied as she reflected on Dean’s cruel statement about the girl. How had she been so blind to her own brother’s deceit?

“Jackie was more than willing to tell me everything she knew about the situation, which was only that Dean had been doing a few things for my father. She couldn’t, or wouldn’t, admit that he had injected Sentimental Lady. Maybe she really doesn’t know, or maybe she was protecting herself. If she knew about the crime, there’s a chance that she could be considered an accomplice.”

“So you’re sure that Dean was involved,” Becca whispered dryly. She held her tears at bay though they burned hotly behind her eyelids.

His fingers rubbed her shoulder. “The way I’ve got it figured is that Jason paid Dean to inject Sentimental Lady within the last hour before the race, after the racing soundness examination. Dean got a bundle of money from my father and Jason Chambers’ horse, Winsome, kept his flawless record intact.”

“Becoming all the more valuable at stud . . .”

“Exactly.”

Becca tried one final, futile denial. “But Dean, he never had any money . . .”

Brig pressed a silencing finger to her lips. “Because he spent it—”

“On what?”

“According to Jackie, your brother gambles, and I can speak from personal experience to tell you he’s a lousy gambler—at least at poker.”

“Then how do you know that Dean got the payoff?”

“Somehow he managed to give Jackie five thousand dollars to help with the medical costs of having the baby and to give her enough money to establish herself somewhere else, to get her off his back.”

“No wonder Martha never bothered to write.”

Brig’s voice was soothing. “She never blamed you, but couldn’t stand the sight of your brother.”

Becca slumped lower on the worn couch, as if the weight of Brig’s explanation was too much for her slim shoulders to bear.

“So Jackie is willing to testify against my brother and tell the police that Jason and Dean were in this together.”

“I’m not sure she’s that strong.”

Becca’s green eyes urged him to continue. “Then what?”

“I think that Dean will make a full confession when he understands that the circumstantial evidence points at him and paints a rather grim picture. He’d be smarter to play his cards right and try and keep this as quiet as possible—for everyone’s sake.”

“They’ll be back, won’t they?” Becca asked. “The reporters will be back.”

“As soon as they get wind of the story.”

Becca sank her teeth into her knuckles as she thought about her brother and the frightened man he had become. “Dear God,” she whispered, feeling suddenly chilled to the bone. “That’s why he took care of me, because of his guilt.”

“And so that you wouldn’t find him out.”

The pain in her heart was reflected in the tortured emotions on her face. “Sentimental Lady was so beautiful. . . and so innocent. I can’t believe that he would intentionally—”

“Dean never intended to kill the horse, Rebecca. He only wanted to disqualify her. It was the misstep and her temperament that finally killed her.”

“But if he hadn’t injected her—”