Page 128 of Cowboy Heat

“Your mama, well, she was with the group that the cowboys ran off. That’s why it was a big secret. And, assuming that’s all true, I’d guess that would probably have put you in her belly around the time she was forced to leave town with her people.” He shakes his head again, like he’s mentallytsking. “It probably didn’t feel good to spend all that time growing up feeling like you were the bad guys, made to leave by the town’s heroes, only to come back to Robin’s Tree and see a place likeLa Lumierethriving right underneath a man like Guidry here. The bad guy with a kingdom, the law in his pocket, and all your mama and her kin got was the boot out.”

A lightbulb that’s been woefully dim finally goes off in my head.

I follow Beau’s conversational softness.

“It wasn’t Jon who wantedLa Lumierefrom Guidry. It was you. Grant Robertson and Louis Becker were working with you.”

Guidry seems to believe every word without her confirmation. He doesn’t follow our cues of staying calm.

“I built that place from the ground up, and you think you can jus’ come in and take it? You were already a part of it, Alice. You were my right hand!”

Alice’s laugh is a one-off. It’s cruel and packed tight.

Beau is right.

“You didn’t build anything,” she says. “You didn’tearnanything. Allyoudid was find that damn book, and then everything else was a breeze.”

Guidry, a man I’ve never seen slip unless he wanted to, does just that.

His expression turns to absolute surprise.

And the look of a man who’s had a target put on him and had the bullseye hit directly seconds later.

“Book? What book?” I can’t help but ask.

The knife at my throat drops away a little. I’m not breathing a sigh of relief yet.

“Don’t listen to her,” Guidry tries.

Alice doesn’t waver.

“How do you think a nobody like him, anoutsider, could come in here and bend everyone important to his will, Kissy?” she asks. “Didn’t you ever wonder how Micah went to him and an old man who could barely function instead of to the damn town doctor everyone loved? Or, heck, anyone else more capable?”

Guidry looks at me.

Alice squeezes my arm hard.

I say something I never have said out loud before.

“Blackmail,” I admit. “I always figured he had something on someone just like he had on the sheriff to get him to answer to him.”

I feel Alice move, and I think she’s nodding.

“Well get this girl a prize if she didn’t just nail the answer,” she says. “Now, imagine with me, a whole book of secrets like that. Secrets good enough to basically let anyone who has it take control of this whole damn town. Now, imagine that this book has been living with Guidry here since he took it off of the last man who had it. The self-righteous Bayou Cowboy who took it fromusin the first place and swore to never use it against anyone. To destroy it. Yet look how that went.”

My brain is starting to turn to mush.

Thankfully, Beau steps in.

“The gang made a book of blackmail and was using it. That’s why the cowboys ran them out. That’s how they could. The cowboys got the book.”

It feels like Alice nods again.

“My mama never went into the specifics, but what I got from the story was that this town’s saviors decidedtheycould use it when they deemed it necessary. At least some of them did. Those who didn’t agree with playing God with the sins of others left town over it. Not my daddy, though. He even kept the book on him. Didn’t he, Everett?”

Guidry isn’t looking good. His normal confidence and swagger has drained away with the color of his face.

For a moment, I see the boy he used to be. Reaching down into the darkness to save Micah. Taking my hand and pulling us to safety. Embracing me in the hospital after getting the worst news of my life.