Page 10 of Killer on the Homestead (Bent County Protectors #2)

Duncan made it through the next few days on little more than caffeine and worry.

His arm throbbed, because he never seemed to have anything to eat on hand to take his pain pill with.

His head ached, both from too much caffeine and not enough sleep.

And the worry that had tied its way around his entire body got tighter every day, not helping any with sleep or the ability to eat.

Mom took too much on her shoulders. Dad seemed like he was somehow disappearing in front of Duncan’s very eyes.

It reminded him too much of a time he only barely remembered, because he’d been five or six, when his grandmother had been sick and dying.

The stress, worry, and grief had clung to the ranch then. As they did now.

He hated it. He didn’t know what to do about it. Except volunteer for every errand, every ranch chore he could manage one-armed, more or less, and so on and so forth. Trying to take some of that weight away. Any of the weight.

Three days later, on a pretty afternoon, they held a small graveside funeral in the small cemetery in Sunrise for a young man almost no one had actually known.

The ceremony was small and depressing. Apparently poor Hunter Villanova didn’t have much in the way of family. No one had wanted his remains, so Mom had taken it upon herself to secure him a plot and a stone here in Sunrise.

The entire group was made up of Duncan, his parents, Owen, and a handful of the ranch hands, including Terry. It would have just been Kirk Ranch people, but Rosalie was there.

With Audra and their cousin—Duncan couldn’t quite remember her name—but he mostly just saw Rosalie and the way the afternoon sun glinted off her red hair, and the way a little breeze teased the tendrils around her face.

And maybe, most of all, the way she held herself. A little stiff. A lot formal. Like there was something she was bracing herself against. Not a weight, exactly, but something akin to one.

When the funeral ended, and Audra and the cousin drifted over to a section of the cemetery where the name Young seemed to dominate, Rosalie didn’t follow. She stood a ways back, staring ahead at seemingly nothing without blinking.

It was then Duncan finally realized that she was likely bracing herself against grief. Because her dead were buried here.

But she didn’t go pay them any respects, and that struck Duncan as…sad. Twisted something in him, so he stepped away from his parents—who were thanking the minister for handling the small, brief ceremony—to approach Rosalie.

“Afternoon,” he offered in greeting, coming to stand next to her. He looked straight ahead too, trying to determine what she might be staring at.

“Audra thought it would do your mom some good if more than just Kirk Ranch came.”

“She’s right. It eased her heart some.”

Rosalie sighed, and Duncan thought he should understand that sigh, but he couldn’t quite reason it out. Or the almost wistful expression on Rosalie’s face.

“Any news on the investigative front?” he asked, even though he figured he knew the answer. He doubted she’d keep information from him. They’d told Detective Beckett about the cows, as Rosalie had advised, but since then, nothing had really come to light.

“Not much,” she said, and he could hear the frustration in her voice. “Anyone been back out to search the guns?”

Duncan shook his head. “Detective Beckett came out to talk to Terry yesterday, but I don’t know what they talked about.

I assume he told Dad, but Dad… He doesn’t like to talk about it.

” And Duncan couldn’t bring himself to press.

“I told Beckett about the cows myself the day after I talked to you. He didn’t have much interest in a connection. ”

Rosalie frowned a little at that, but she didn’t offer anything else.

“I don’t think anyone thinks we’re in any immediate danger. It seems the consensus is that whatever Hunter had been mixed up in back in North Dakota followed him here. And if it had anything to do with cows, it was primarily coincidental.”

“That would make the most sense, I suppose,” Rosalie said, sounding less than convinced. Which Duncan had to admit, eased some small portion of the worry on his shoulders.

He looked over at his father. Pale. And in a strange kind of daze neither Duncan nor his mother seemed to know how to get through. “But Dad is taking it personally. Someone being hurt on his land.”

Rosalie nodded slowly. “It’s a desecration of something holy.”

When Duncan stared at her, because that was exactly it and beautifully said, she shrugged in a jerking motion.

“To him,” she said somewhat defensively.

“To him,” Duncan agreed, surprised to find his throat a little tight. He understood that his parents lived in a tight-knit community. He tended to think of small-town life as one of gossip and a slow pace of running errands, but in the past few days, he’d been reminded of this.

It wasn’t just community—nosiness and pettiness existed here just as assuredly as they did everywhere—but it was people who understood why some virtual stranger who had no family to bring him home might mean something to his parents.

Because the land was holy, and someone had desecrated it.

“I’m going to stop by the sheriff’s department after this,” Rosalie said into the heavy silence. “Rattle some cages.” She offered him a pathetic attempt at a smile. “If there’s anything of note, I’ll let you know.”

She started to move, but Duncan moved with her. He didn’t know what he was going to do if he stayed here. He couldn’t keep standing still, trying to hold everything together with just one working arm. He needed to…do something.

“Let me come with you,” he said, on a whim, without thinking it through.

But when she looked at him with a kind of condescending refusal, the idea took root.

“Duncan,” she said, shaking her head. “No.”

He wasn’t taking no for an answer. “Why not?”

“Because I’m a licensed private investigator off to do my job and you’re…” She looked him up and down, no doubt weighing how mean she was going to be.

He kind of wished she’d be really mean. It’d give him something to fight against.

But in the end, she just said, “…some guy.”

“Let me come with you,” he insisted. He could follow her, either way, but it’d be better if they worked together. “I’ve got to do something.”

He didn’t know why it was that sentence that got through to her, but something about it had her relenting.

“Fine,” she muttered. “You need a ride?”

He nodded. “I came over with my parents. But I’ll let them know I’m hitching a ride with you. Unless you need to drop your sister off?”

Rosalie shook her head, even as her gaze darted over to where Audra stood next to a newer-looking stone.

“We came separately,” Rosalie said firmly. She turned her back on Audra. “I’ll meet you at my truck.”

Duncan wasn’t sure what was going on there, considering how close it seemed the sisters were when he’d dropped by their place.

He made his way back to his parents so he could tell them he was heading into town.

But before he made it to them, he took a little detour so he could see the name on the gravestone Audra had been standing next to before she and the cousin had moved over to talk to Mom.

Tim Young was carved clearly in stone.

Audra and Rosalie’s dad.

Duncan glanced back at the parking lot, where Rosalie stood outside her truck, her back to the graves.

It wasn’t any of his business, but he wondered what made one sister grieve and one sister turn her back on a memory.

Audra was still talking to his mother when he approached, but they both immediately stopped talking once he was in earshot and beamed similar smiles at him.

Why it felt suspicious, he couldn’t fathom.

“I’m going to head into town for a bit. I’ll be back at the ranch later,” he told his mother.

“You didn’t bring your truck.”

“I’m going with Rosalie,” he offered, somewhat reluctantly, because both Audra and Mom were already looking in Rosalie’s direction.

He didn’t want to say it was about the investigation, because they were in a graveyard.

He didn’t want them thinking it was something else, because clearly they were thinking that.

Then he figured it would really annoy Rosalie if Mom and Audra thought that he and Rosalie were off doing something together together, so he just went with it. Let them think it. He sure hoped Audra asked Rosalie about it later today. Wished he could be there.

He said goodbye to his parents, then walked back to Rosalie. She climbed in the truck when she saw him coming, had the engine going by the time he managed to leverage himself up into the passenger seat.

“Here’s the deal. I’m going to the station to see what I can find out that Detective Beckett doesn’t want to tell me. So when we get into the detective’s office, you let me do the talking. We’ll use you as a potential distraction.”

“How would I be a distraction?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Hey, everyone, look, the famous baseball player is lurking about. Ask him for autographs while I take a tour of Beckett’s desk.”

He wriggled the hand hanging from his sling. “Not much on signing these days.”

“Fine. We’ll line the women up and you can smile at them. Maybe have a few swoon so Beckett has to do something.”

“Are you calling my smile distracting, Rosalie?”

She rolled her eyes, but there was some humor to it. And that felt like such a relief, he wanted to lean into it.

“I think my mom has some suspicions. Audra too.”

“Suspicions about what?” she asked, backing out of the cemetery parking lot.

“Why we’re headed off together.”

“You didn’t tell them it was for the case?”

He looked at her, all feigned innocence that clearly irritated her. And amused him even more. “Should I have?”

She gave an injured sniff, focused on the road, and held the steering wheel just a touch too tight, if the white in her knuckles was anything to go by. “I’m sure they know,” she said stiffly.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I’m sure .”