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

“I did have one idea, but he’d be so angry with me if I butted my nose in even more than I already have.”

“I’ve never known you to care about getting Dad’s temper up,” Duncan said. He meant it as a joke, but Mom didn’t smile, laugh, or have any of her usual responses.

He suddenly felt the years he’d been away. And the fact that no matter that he’d always come home for holidays, or flown his parents out for a visit and a game, it was a lot different than living under the same roof. Or even in the same state.

Mom looked down at her hand. Her left hand, where the simple wedding band she’d worn for almost forty years had always been. “It’s weighing on him, and it’s weighing on us,” she said very quietly.

Quiet enough that Duncan’s whole stomach knotted and knotted hard. The idea that his parents might have marriage problems was just…

God-awful.

She inhaled deeply, then looked up at him with her usual smile. Though he thought he saw a shininess in her dark eyes, which made the knot of dread in his gut tighten. His mother didn’t cry . At least not in front of people.

“But you know, his only child, freshly moved home. Well…he might not be so angry at him.”

Duncan blinked. He didn’t particularly like the idea of crossing his father either. “You want me to…do what exactly?”

“Talk to Rosalie.”

He wrinkled his nose. “The neighbor girl?”

“She’s not a girl any longer. She’s a private investigator with a company in Wilde, like I just told you.

Maybe she could look into this without Dad knowing.

Sheriff Hudson said there hadn’t been any other missing cattle in the area, but maybe Rosalie could just…

look into it. I can’t ask her to do it—it would get back to Dad—but you could. ”

Normally he’d balk at the idea of getting involved. Usually, he’d talk to his dad himself. But everything about this conversation had him unsettled and he just wanted to make everything easy and right.

“Sure, Mom. I will. Don’t even worry about it. I’ll handle everything.”

He didn’t have baseball anymore, so maybe this was his new thing to focus on.

Duncan woke up late , the sunlight streaming in through his window. No doubt Dad would have a few comments about that , but he’d probably spent more of last night awake and in pain than sleeping.

Duncan pushed himself up in bed and cursed the dull ache in his shoulder.

Cursed a lot of things on his way to the tiny kitchen of the cabin—his new home .

He had the presence of mind to set up the coffeepot last night, so all he had to do this morning was press a button and wait for it to brew.

Mom had stocked the pantry and fridge, including some breakfast sandwiches he only needed to pop in the microwave.

Bacon, egg, and cheese with a homemade biscuit. Not exactly the kind of food that he usually allowed himself. He’d always been so determined to stay in the best physical shape he could—exercise, diet, limited alcohol.

Fat lot of good that had done, he thought grumpily.

But once he’d eaten, sucked down two mugs of coffee and taken his pain pill, he felt better and more like taking on the day.

He could unpack, but that sounded horrible.

He doubted he’d be much help around the ranch with his shoulder in a sling.

The thought of riding a horse like this had him wincing.

So he figured the best option for his day was to drive out to Wilde and see about Rosalie Young and private investigators.

He texted his mother that he was taking her car—she’d given him an extra set of keys. Maybe he’d take a detour to Fairmont and see if the car dealer there had anything that’d work for him long-term. None of the cars he’d kept in LA would survive ranch life, so he’d sold them off.

He drove off the ranch. It was a cloudy spring day, and rain started to spit from the sky about halfway to Wilde. He preferred that to sunny blue skies, which reminded him of summers at the ballpark.

Wilde was still little more than a postage stamp of a town.

Duncan didn’t know how they managed to have an actual private investigator’s business here.

He supposed the historical tours that started here and wound around Bent County might help with that, but it wasn’t like they had much else to offer.

He pulled into a parking spot along the street. The office was in some kind of historical building, and had no doubt been something else in the past. Maybe a bank? He jogged inside to avoid as much of the rain as possible.

Inside, it smelled like fresh paint, and there were a lot of pretty feminine touches. There was a woman behind the big counter, but he wouldn’t say feminine as a descriptor quite fit her.

She looked…tough. Wild. Pretty, no doubt, but not like she’d been the woman to arrange the flowers on the counter or put potpourri out on tables. Then again, looks could be deceiving.

The woman glanced up from whatever she was typing into her computer, but her gaze was distracted.

“Be with you in a second.” She immediately looked back down, then stilled, sneaking a glance at him.

He watched as the recognition crossed her face.

Then, with some amusement, watched as she decided how to handle it.

He was used to it, to an extent. He didn’t like the new layer of embarrassment that went with people recognizing him, but still.

He’d been a young phenom with plenty of attention, then a young man with a record-breaking contract, and he’d lived the high life in LA when he’d wanted to. So he got noticed.

But it was still weird back here, where he felt more like a kid with big dreams than the adult who’d achieved them. Then lost them.

When she addressed him, her smile was bland, and any reaction she’d had to recognizing him was hidden behind an easy smile. “What can I do you for?”

“I don’t suppose Rosalie Young is here?”

“You know Rosalie?” the woman replied, studying him carefully.

“Sort of. We’re neighbors. Or were, growing up.”

“Huh.” She shrugged. “Rosalie’s out, but I can leave her a message for you.”

Duncan considered. Would leaving a message get back to Dad? Bent County itself wasn’t a small town, it was a large, sprawling county made up of ranches, mountains, and a handful of small and almost medium-size towns, but he knew the way information snaked through those places. One to the other.

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

The woman looked up at the wall behind him, so he did too. There was a big old clock up on it. “Sometime this afternoon.”

“Maybe you could give me her phone number.”

The woman’s expression hardened a little. “I can give you her extension. You’re welcome to leave a message on her work line.”

Duncan considered that. It would be private if it was her own extension. But before he could decide what to do, a bell on the door tinkled. He turned and watched as a redhead whirled into the lobby.

“If that lousy SOB had talked instead of giving me the runaround, I wouldn’t be caught in a damn downpour,” she muttered as she wiped her boots on a mat by the door.

Sure, she wasn’t the only person in the world with red hair and blue eyes that leaned toward violet, but he knew it was her.

And that on an adult woman all those little details landed…

differently, in a kind of jolt . Because she didn’t have skinned knees and falling-out braids any longer.

She was dressed in tight jeans, heavy boots, and a black T-shirt.

He didn’t know much about guns that weren’t meant for hunting, and even then, he’d never been into it.

But he knew she had one strapped to a holster on her hip.

She was short, with a medium build, but something about the way she carried herself gave the aura of someone taller, someone who could kick ass.

But her face somehow looked delicate on that tough package. Maybe it was the raindrops in her hair and on her face that seemed to tease out the little smattering of freckles across her nose.

Something about the whole of her was surprisingly attractive . Not that he had the time or presence of mind to be noticing just how attractive. Even if it had been a while in that department, and he—

No. He was here to help out his parents. Not flirt with the neighbor girl.

Who, as his mother had pointed out, was not a girl anymore.

He saw the recognition on her face right away, and in the slight pause in her stride. But her expression didn’t give away much more than that. Just that she recognized him.

He didn’t know what possessed him then. He hadn’t seen her in something like fifteen years, and it wasn’t like they’d been friends or even enemies.

They’d been neighbors. Their parents had been friends.

And they’d had to take the same interminable bus ride into school for the years they’d been going at the same time, which was quite a few since the bus ran ranch kids in kindergarten all the way up to seniors in high school.

But an old memory struck him, of someone calling her Rosie, and her coming unglued. And no doubt it was a bad instinct, but he leaned into it anyway.

“Heya, Rosie. Long time, no see.”