Page 79 of Cowboy Heat

She wants a real answer.

Grant nods again; he’s slower to talk. “Bailey and I go back a ways,” he says. “I hadn’t seen him in church in a while and decided to stop by since I was already in town.”

If he was looking at her when he spoke, Grant might’ve seen Kissy frown. Instead, his gaze has gone over his shoulder toward the path we all walked in from.

Her eyebrows pull in together. I give her a questioning look. She opens her mouth, then shuts it. Then she goes again. “Yeah, now that you mention it, I haven’t seen the sheriff in his normal pew the past few Sundays. He’s usually right there at the front, singing his hymns. That was good on you to check on him. Most people don’t have that common courtesy anymore.” She gives Grant a look of unbridled appreciation.

“I do what I can,” Grant responds. “That’s all any of us can really do, you know?”

“Absolutely.”

They share small smiles between each other.

Polite.

When Kissy breaks eye contact with him, she shakes her head to herself. Then those brown eyes swing to mine and widen. She shakes her head a little to me.

Grant’s looking at me. “I heard you’re new in town. You bought the ranch?”

I readjust my stance. “I inherited it, actually,” I correct. “I’ve been here a few weeks.”

Grant motions to my face. I’ll give it to him, he’s the first person to outright address my scar. “I bet that has something to do with why you’ve come to our little parish. I have some unpleasant memories like that on me. You know what helped me come to terms with them? Faith.”

I’m waiting for the wind-up pitch to get me to go to church, but he stops the story there. “Just because I have some scars doesn’t mean I don’t have faith.”

He waves his hand dismissively. “Oh, no, of course not,” he recants. “But communityandfaith? A perfect salve for any and all pain of the past.” He looks over his shoulder again toward the opening of the path.

Kissy outright points at him and shakes her head. She mouths out two words:He’s lying.

Adrenaline doesn’t surge through me, but it does start climbing up around my boots. If my gut had the time, I’m sure it would’ve been cussing me for not listening to it earlier.

I glance in the opposite direction of the path Grant is watching. I think of Guidry’s map. We’re in a clearing surrounded by trees, but there’s a waterway on the backend. Past that, more trees. The parish line is a mile keeping in that direction.

A door shuts off in the distance.

I pretend not to hear it. “Hey, Kissy, while we’re waiting, why don’t we go ahead and show Grant here the other spot we saw earlier? The one behind the tree over there?” I point to the trees to our side.

Grant’s interest is immediate. “There’s another spot? Where the dirt’s been disturbed?”

I nod.

Kissy plays right on along to perfection. “We didn’t want to mention it, since this seems like a bigger deal, but maybe it’s a big deal too?” she asks. “It definitely was hard to find.”

If I hadn’t known he was lying because of Kissy, I would’ve sensed something really wrong now.

Grant seems hungry for the new intel. Not your average church representative trying to cover up backsides in old grave digging. “Yeah, let’s see it.”

Kissy and I haven’t been together long, but she does exactly what I need her to do without uttering a word. She quickens her pace so she’s in front of me by a little, while Grant keeps to my side. She leads us right to where I’m thinking we need to go.

The second we’re inside the tree line, I chance a look back behind us.

There’s someone walking into the cemetery from the path.

And it’s not the sheriff.

It confirms my newly formed suspicion. This is an ambush.

We go a few more steps before Grant comes to a full stop.