Page 29 of Killer on the Homestead (Bent County Protectors #2)

Duncan hated the roiling feeling of betrayal in his gut. Hated worrying that a man who’d been his father’s friend and right-hand man for…forever, really, might have… What? Murdered a kid? Shoved drugs down Owen’s mouth?

It didn’t make sense.

But nothing else did either. Until Dad came back with a list. Duncan looked at the clock on the oven. It was taking too long. And since Rosalie hadn’t called Duncan back, he was going stir-crazy. There had to be something he could do .

He’d just walk out to the bunkhouse or stables or wherever Dad was. He’d just walk around until he found someone to give him something to do .

But when Duncan stepped out of his cabin, he saw Dad walking across the yard. He looked…gray. Not the exhausted pale he’d been dealing with for the past few days, but a kind of wounded gray. Like he was bleeding out from the inside.

“Dad…” Duncan met him at the bottom of the steps, then took him by the arm and led him inside.

He pushed him onto the couch, a strange terror jittering through him.

Because Dad was fine , so it shouldn’t be scary, but Duncan had never seen his father look quite so weak and old, and it upended the way everything was supposed to be.

“Everyone was accounted for,” Dad said, staring at his hands.

“Granted, someone could be lying, but Dunc…” He lifted his gaze.

Heartbreak in the dark brown eyes. “No one’s seen Terry this morning.

He was gone before sunup, before we got the call about Owen.

Jeff stepped in and handled assignments this morning.

Didn’t tell me because he didn’t want to worry me. ”

Something cold and foreboding settled in Duncan’s gut.

“It can’t be Terry, Duncan.” Dad’s head fell into his hands. “It has to be a mistake.”

But Duncan knew Dad didn’t actually believe that any more than Duncan himself did. “We’ll figure it out,” he muttered to his dad. He pulled out his phone and dialed Rosalie.

She didn’t answer. If she was talking to the detectives, she might ignore the phone. So he didn’t let himself worry. He just texted her. Call me. Emergency.

The text went unread.

She was just ignoring him. He wanted to believe that. Had to hold on to that possibility. It was the only thing that made sense. He knew that.

But he also had to act.

“I’m going to call the detective and give him this information,” Duncan told his father. “And you’re going to stay right here and rest for a minute, okay?”

Dad nodded without arguing, another terrifying turn of events. Duncan strode out onto his porch, not wanting him to hear this.

Heartbeat slamming into overdrive, he called the Bent County Sheriff’s Department and jammed in the number for Detective Beckett’s extension.

“Beckett,” the man answered.

“Detective, it’s Duncan Kirk.”

“Great,” he muttered. “What do you want?”

“Is Rosalie there?”

“I’m not an answering service, Kirk. You want to talk to your girlfriend, call her.”

“She’s not answering. And last I heard she was on her way to talk to you—”

“Me?” There was a slight hesitation. “You sure about that? Because I haven’t seen or heard from Rosalie today.”

That cold ball of ice in Duncan’s gut turned into a full-on glacier. “What?”

“Do I need to repeat myself? Look, I’m busy, I—”

“I talked to her thirty minutes ago. She was leaving the hospital, and she was heading over to the sheriff’s department to talk to you.”

“Maybe she got sidetracked. Maybe she lied. Listen—”

“No, I need you to listen.” Duncan took time for one careful breath, then laid everything out. Terry having the window of time to place that map. Terry not being on the ranch today. Everything pointing to Terry, Terry, Terry.

When he was done, the detective was silent so long Duncan was worried he’d lost the connection.

“Were you or your father aware that Mr. Boothe has been quietly buying up small sections of land in Idaho under an LLC?” Detective Beckett asked in that cop voice devoid of any emotion, even his usual irritation.

Duncan didn’t fully understand the question, the information, but if they were looking into Terry… He just had to answer the questions and then this could all be over. “No. I wasn’t, I can ask my dad but… No, I think he’d have mentioned it if he’d known.”

“It also appears he’s been stockpiling weapons—legally, in fairness—and storing them on this property. We haven’t been able to get a search warrant yet since it’s across state lines, but since the weapons confiscated from your parents’ house don’t match the murder weapon, we’re trying.”

Duncan felt like his foundation was crumbling. “You think he did it.”

“It’s a lead we’re following, and your added information is helpful. It should put some weight behind the search warrant.”

Which was essentially a “yes, we think he did it.” But… “What about Rosalie?”

“She might be driving. She might be at her office or following a lead. What do you want me to do? She’s a grown woman. I can’t go searching for her when I’ve got a murder to solve.”

“Fine. Don’t do anything,” Duncan muttered, and he hit End on his phone. “I’ll do it.”

He was in his truck before he’d shoved the phone into his pocket. And he was out on the highway in under a minute.

Rosalie ran.

She’d managed to unbuckle herself, kick open the door of her truck, and then crawl out of it. The pain didn’t register at first. She was moving on adrenaline and the desperate need to get away from Terry and his gun.

She didn’t look back at the wreck of her car. Didn’t worry about seeing how long it would take him to crawl out of the wreck. She had to get out of gun range, then she could worry about all that.

She knew where she was, and the closest safe place to run would be toward Bent and the sheriff’s department. The ranches were too far away and so was the hospital.

Oh, she was miles from Bent, and it’d be a miracle if she reached it considering there was a wet sticky substance dripping down her face. She didn’t allow herself to think of it as blood. Acknowledging just how hurt she was would only slow her down.

She risked a look back toward the truck as she ran. She could see Terry crawling out of the back door. So she turned her attention forward and focused on running.

She had to get off the side of the road, even though someone might see her there and that might be help. It was too big of a risk considering how little traffic existed on this road. She needed to get out of Terry’s line of sight. Or at least out of the range of his gun.

She pawed at her hip as she ran toward a cluster of trees. Her gun wasn’t there. She’d lost it somewhere along the way. In the crash or the scramble out of the truck.

“Stupid,” she muttered to herself. Careless. Panic . She knew better than to panic, but that’s what she’d done. She cursed herself some more, but did it inwardly, so she could save all her breath for the run.

Once she was in the shade of the trees, she tried to get a better sense of her surroundings.

She couldn’t run much more. Her vision seemed to be getting…

fuzzy, and not just from the sticky substance that kept leaking into her left eye.

She was unsteady. Much more running and she’d fall and really hurt herself.

She leaned against a tree with both hands as she tried to catch her breath, tried to think through the whirling, nauseating chaos in her head. Pounding, pounding pain. By ducking the gun’s aim when she’d crashed, the dashboard had given her a hell of a knock to the head.

But she wasn’t shot, was she?

Luckily, her legs seemed to be holding her up. She just had to catch her breath and come up with a plan. She twisted so now it was her back leaning against the tree. She blinked her eyes a few times until she could see straight. Sort of.

She was in a copse of trees, probably planted by some long-dead pioneer. It gave her some cover, but no doubt if Terry thought she was hiding, this was what he’d go for.

She couldn’t stay here. Not without a weapon. Not without her damn cell phone, which she’d left in the console of the truck.

But that wasn’t too big of a mistake. If someone was smart enough to trace it, they’d find her truck crashed in that ditch. They could hopefully track her.

If Terry didn’t first.

If worse came to worse and she was the next victim, surely some of Terry’s prints or DNA would be in her truck. They’d find him. Justice would be served.

She tried to find some comfort in that, but was that all she wanted? Justice?

She thought about what this would do to Audra. Franny. Vi. The people who loved her.

Duncan. And maybe love wasn’t in that equation.

Too early, too soon for all that, but in this moment, Rosalie could be honest with herself, as little as she liked to be.

It was somewhere in there, like a seed planted.

Possibilities in all the things that brought them together, tied them together, made them like each other.

And sure, that was scary, but in this moment, the scarier thing was not getting a chance to see all that through.

So hell no she didn’t just want justice. She wanted to live. She was going to have to fight. Creatively, sure, but fight nonetheless.

She hadn’t paid close enough attention to how far she’d run off the highway route, but it couldn’t have been more than a mile or two.

Which meant she was smack-dab in the middle of nowhere on foot.

The closest hint of civilization she could think of would be Hope Town—the former ghost town turned into a kind of community as a safe haven for people who needed it. But that still had to be miles off.

She could walk miles. She had concerns about the head injury, but she could walk miles. If she was slow and careful. If she kept to cover, like these trees. She could get there and then she could call the cops.

Something too close to panic bubbled in her chest.

But she couldn’t panic. She had to think. Get out of the trees. Find new cover. Maybe if she could lure Terry deep enough away from the highway, she could double back and get back to the highway.

She pushed off the tree, had to close her eyes for a minute and breathe through the dizziness that threatened to take her out. She wouldn’t let it.

She damn well wouldn’t let anyone take her out.