Page 25 of Killer on the Homestead (Bent County Protectors #2)

Duncan wasn’t surprised to be met with Detective Beckett’s creatively crude curses when Rosalie strode into the little office the detectives shared.

Because the man who’d been introduced as Hart was standing in a corner—he also wasn’t wearing his sling anymore.

Then there was a woman. Blond and blue-eyed, dressed in slacks and a Bent County polo shirt.

Midthirties, or maybe pushing forty. Cop, clearly , so maybe a third detective.

She looked vaguely familiar, but Duncan couldn’t place her and didn’t have the energy to try.

“We’re too busy to deal with you two,” Detective Beckett said disgustedly.

“And apparently too busy to do your job,” Rosalie returned, none of that fake cheer she usually used on Beckett. She was just straight pissed.

She slapped the bag with the map in it on the desk. “I found that in Owen Green’s bible.”

“Don’t BS me, Rosalie,” Beckett said disgustedly. “There was nothing in that damn bible, and what the hell were you doing poking around Owen Green’s room?”

Since Duncan didn’t care for this guy’s entire demeanor, he waded in. “She had the property owner’s permission.”

Detective Beckett’s angry gaze moved to Duncan. “Last time I checked you weren’t the property owner.”

“Yeah, but my father is. He knew. He was okay with it. You can verify that.”

“Your parents should reconsider just who they’re so free and easy with giving permissions to,” Beckett replied.

“Why don’t we all take a breath,” the female detective said, pushing into a standing position from behind the desk.

“I understand this is stressful and heated. We have an unsolved murder, a burglary, and a suicide attempt. This is serious, but sniping at each other certainly doesn’t solve anything. ”

“My case,” Beckett said, crossing his arms over his chest and continuing to glare at Rosalie. “I like sniping.”

“Your case, your screwup,” Rosalie retorted. “That map was in that bible. You didn’t search it hard enough,” Rosalie insisted, clearly ignoring the other detective.

“You can make a stink all you want, but you’re not a cop.

You’re not a detective. Go private investigate all you want, but this is my case, and I don’t need you screwing it up with lies brought on by whatever this is,” he said, gesturing at Duncan.

“I searched that bible. I’ve got bodycam footage to prove my point—not that I need to prove it to you . ”

Bodycam footage. Duncan frowned. Beckett had to be lying. It didn’t make any sense otherwise. “I watched her do it,” Duncan said. “I watched her upend the bible and the map fell out. It happened. So explain that with your bodycam.”

The detectives somehow all shared a look. A beat of silence.

“It wasn’t there this morning,” Detective Beckett said, sounding more in control of his irritation. More concerned and considering than offended now. “Not only did I shake out the bible, I flipped through every page. There’s not a stone I didn’t turn over in that room. So if it was there after …”

“Someone else put it there,” Rosalie said, finishing for him.

Duncan didn’t like that if still hanging out in Beckett’s sentence, but Rosalie didn’t seem offended. Like Beckett, she seemed to have turned frustration and irritation into concern with the case at the drop of the hat.

It was enough to give a normal guy emotional whiplash.

“Which means that map isn’t Owen Green’s and he didn’t put it there,” Rosalie said. “Because Owen was in the hospital in between the police search and mine.”

Even with the whiplash, Duncan kept up. “So was Terry. Terry Boothe, our foreman,” Duncan clarified for the detectives, though they probably knew all the players. “He went with my mother to the hospital to wait on word about Owen’s prognosis after the ambulance left.”

Detective Beckett nodded thoughtfully. “I guess that’s three people we can mark off the list. Who else has access to the bunkhouse?”

“It’d be the same list we gave you after Hunter’s murder. Nothing would have changed.”

“No. Nothing would have changed,” Beckett agreed, but his gaze of suspicion was pinned on Duncan. “I don’t recall your name being on that list.”

Duncan blinked in surprised. “ My name?”

“You have access to that bunkhouse, right?” Beckett asked, sounding somehow casual and deadly serious all at the same time.

Accusing him. Him. When he’d had his place trashed, his painkillers stolen. The detective was standing there throwing suspicion on him? “Yeah, I’ve got access,” Duncan replied, anger coursing through him.

Detective Beckett shrugged casually. “Seems to me you’re the new person in all this. You own any guns you haven’t told us about, Mr. Kirk?”

It was…absolutely ludicrous. Duncan had never been a guy with much of a temper. All his feelings, all his passion, had always been centered on baseball.

But something hot and dangerous erupted inside of him now. He took a step toward Beckett. “Seems to me—”

But Rosalie grabbed his arm—his bad arm—and squeezed. Hard enough he couldn’t get a word out because pain zinged through him.

“See if you can get some prints off that map,” she said, interrupting whatever else Duncan might have said.

“You don’t run this investigation, Rosalie. And you might consider your partner a liability until you know for sure…”

But Rosalie was dragging Duncan out of the office, and he didn’t hear the rest of the detective’s sentence.

“Look, I get that you’re pissed and you have every right to be,” she said in a low, seething voice, still pulling him along by his bad arm. “But if you assault an officer of the law, we’ll have big problems. Let’s cool off somewhere we’re not so likely to get arrested for assault.”

“We?” he demanded. Because she seemed a hell of a lot more in control of herself than he felt of himself.

“Yeah, we . Accusing you is a jerk move for no good reason except to get a rise. We won’t give him what he wants. So we walk away before we start swinging.”

The idea of her starting to swing, the picture of it in his head, was enough to soothe some of the roiling anger. But that didn’t make this something he could swallow.

“How do you do all this?” he asked as they strode out of the police department and into the sunny afternoon.

“All what?” she asked, still moving at a quick pace toward her truck.

“Deal with an ego like that?”

“You know what’s funny? I’d bet money on the fact that back in that little office of theirs, they’re having a conversation about how they handle dealing with me and my ego.”

Duncan didn’t have a quick retort to that, because he imagined it was true. He just didn’t happen to find Rosalie’s ego damn insulting.

They reached her truck, but Rosalie didn’t unlock the doors.

She stood at the bed and sighed, squinting up at the sky.

“Bottom line? We’re all good at our jobs.

We all want the same things. But we have to go at it in different ways.

Which means we butt heads and things get heated.

Outside that heat, I can tell you, Copeland and I are a little too much alike and that’s probably half our problem.

” She wrinkled her nose. “I’d have done the same in his position—needle you, see what came out.

As little as I like to admit that we go about things the same way, we do. ”

“That’s very diplomatic of you,” Duncan replied, because even if some of his anger had cooled, he didn’t feel like being fair or diplomatic when it came to Detective Beckett.

“Yeah, well, if I couldn’t find that diplomacy deep down on occasion, I’d have been arrested a long time ago.” She smiled at him, but it wasn’t her usual flash of personality. There was something sad behind it.

Because they could be annoyed at Beckett or the detectives, or any number of things, but it didn’t change the very clear facts of the matter.

“Someone on that ranch is the problem,” Duncan said quietly.

“Yeah.”

A problem. A murderer. Someone who had access to Owen’s room. Someone right under his parents’ nose had killed a man. And was trying to make Owen look responsible. It didn’t feel like trouble brought with them. It felt like trouble right there in his home.

“Whoever killed Hunter wants Owen to look guilty. Wants to tie the whole thing to these damn missing cows, or that map wouldn’t have been planted. But that was their first mistake. Planting that map after the detectives means we know there’s a frame job happening.”

“No one knows you looked today,” Duncan said. “Not yet.”

Rosalie seemed to consider that. “So who were they hoping would look? And when? Did they think the detectives were coming back?” She shook her head. “More questions and no more answers.”

“That isn’t true. We can cross Owen off any suspect list.”

“Except your burglary,” Rosalie said. “Unless… What if he didn’t steal those pills? What if he didn’t voluntarily take those pills?”

“Is that a leap?”

“Maybe. But it’s one I want to look into. The fact of the matter is someone was already murdered. Whoever was behind that isn’t above hurting people, so it isn’t a leap to wonder if they forced Owen to take those pills. To frame him for all of this.”

Duncan wasn’t sure. This all felt like a stretch, but it was reality. A dead ranch hand. Stolen pills. Missing cattle. “Too bad we don’t have a security camera on the bunkhouse.”

Rosalie clapped her hands. “But we can. We absolutely can, and no one has to know.”

Rosalie drove with more determination than caution, and though Duncan didn’t outwardly react, she didn’t miss the way his good hand gripped the door like it would save him.

She supposed it made her a bad person, but it amused her. So she didn’t slow down. She drove fast and only a little recklessly to Fool’s Gold headquarters.

Because these little things that didn’t add up were all steps. Maybe she couldn’t see the top of the staircase yet, but she was building it.