Page 9 of Playing Dirty (Millionaire Cowboys of Lucky Ranch #2)

Chapter Nine

The Truth Ain’t Always Pretty

Rhett

W e hit the edge of Casper just after seven, the sun slanting low through the windshield. Four hours of driving, mostly in silence. Not the comfortable kind either. More like the kind that settled between two men before one started asking questions the other would rather not answer.

Sawyer didn’t talk much, but I could feel him thinking, same as me. Both of us were stewing in what we might find, what it might mean—for Callie, for me, for whatever the hell Matt thought he was doing living two lives.

We slowed near the address on Matt’s license. I expected something dingy. Run-down. A little sketchy. Something that screamed I’m hiding something.

What we got instead was… normal.

The house across the street was clean and quiet, the porch swept, the blinds open, and the flowerpots on either side of the door. The yard was edged. The damn grass looked like it got weekly trims. A silver SUV sat in the driveway, clean enough to be smug about it.

“So much for the secret villain lair,” I muttered. “This is domestic as hell.”

As if on cue, a yellow school bus rounded the corner and squeaked to a stop right out front. The front door of the house opened, and two kids—maybe seven or eight—came running out with backpacks bouncing and sneakers untied.

“Mom!” one of them yelled, laughing as they bolted for the bus. A woman’s voice called after them—something about lunches and don’t forget your jacket. I couldn’t hear the words exactly. Didn’t need to.

The pit in my stomach turned heavy.

Not a bachelor pad. Not a weekend crash spot. Not even some secret man cave where a guy might hide from the world for a while.

This was a home.

With kids.

With her.

And suddenly, this wasn’t just a fact-finding mission anymore.

This was a gut check.

And Callie? She had no idea what was coming.

We coasted another hundred yards down the road toward the barn before Sawyer pointed toward a break in the overgrown tree line. An old gravel drive barely wide enough for the truck opened up beside a warped fence and what looked like a forgotten barn slouched in the weeds.

He didn’t say anything, just nodded once, and I turned in slowly. We rolled to a stop just behind a cluster of scrubby pines that half-blocked the view from the road. Engine off. Silence settled in like fog.

Sawyer got out first. He moved like he was in someone else’s war—eyes scanning, boots soft, one hand near his belt like something might be holstered. There wasn’t. Not today, anyway.

I followed him toward the barn, stepping over busted boards and waist-high grass. A tree limb had snapped and fallen across one section of the fence, creating a natural entry point. I gave it a light shove. Sturdy enough to crawl under, low enough not to be seen from the house across the street.

He swept the perimeter, checking for game cams, trash piles, signs of squatters. Nothing. No old tents. No weird smells. No tire tracks.

Too easy. Too quiet. Like the calm before you realize the bomb’s been under your chair the whole time.

“Clear,” Sawyer said, low and clipped, his eyes still working.

I nodded, turning slowly in place. “It’ll work. We’ve got the angle. Light’s decent too. The streetlight near the front of the house is perfect. If we’re lucky, we might be able to pick up some audio too.”

“Good access. Good cover,” he said. “We’ll come back after dark.”

I didn’t answer. Not right away.

Because in that moment, it hit me. This wasn’t about proving a point. It wasn’t about catching Matt in a lie, just to say we did.

It was about Callie.

And I needed to be sure.

The diner inside the Casper Inn looked like it hadn’t changed since 1970—and I kind of liked it for that.

Faded booths, cracked leather, and the smell of coffee that had been brewing since dawn.

Our table by the window gave us a view of the street, and more importantly, the Frontier Market across from it.

I’d just taken a bite of my sandwich—some sad excuse for a turkey melt—when I nearly choked.

Matt.

Walking down the sidewalk like he belonged here. Like he hadn’t left a girlfriend back in Lovelace with her heart in her hands and a calendar full of question marks.

But it wasn’t just him.

Next to him was a woman in a white blouse and black slacks—the Frontier Market uniform. She laughed at something he said and nudged him with her shoulder. Like they’d done this a hundred times before. Like this was normal.

“Tell me I’m hallucinating,” I said, swallowing hard.

Sawyer leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. “That’s him.”

They disappeared inside the store.

I pushed my plate aside and stood up fast enough to rattle the saltshaker. “I’m going in.”

“No, you’re not,” Sawyer said flatly. “You walk in there, he sees you, and bolts. We lose the only advantage we’ve got.”

I clenched my fists. “So, we just sit here?”

Sawyer was already sliding out of the booth. “ You sit. I’ll go.”

I watched him cross the street like he was on a grocery run and not about to confirm the worst-case scenario. He vanished through the automatic doors.

And I sat.

Fuming. Pacing.

If he came back with a loaf of bread and no intel, I might’ve thrown it at his head.

Because I already knew the answer.

I just didn’t want to be right.

Sawyer came out five minutes later, casual as hell, a plastic grocery bag swinging from his hand.

He didn’t speak until he reached the truck and got in. “It’s him.”

I didn’t move.

“They both work there,” he continued, voice low. “She works in the deli. He’s the damn regional manager.”

He reached into the bag and pulled out a pack of gum, tossed it in the console. “Picture of him is on the wall by the breakroom bulletin board. Suit and tie. Big smile. Frontier Markets Inc. under his name.”

“And her?” I asked, already knowing.

“Wedding ring. Left hand. Didn’t look new.”

I looked down at the bag of junk he brought out—gum, candy bars, two weird off-brand sodas—and hated how normal it all felt.

The truth had never tasted so fake.

My stomach twisted. Not with just anger this time, but something else. Something sharper.

Desire.

Not for revenge. Not even for justice. But to be the one Callie turned to when it all crumbled. To be the one she leaned into—angry, aching, undone. To be the one she trusted .

Hopefully… the one she let fall apart in the dark with.

The pieces were there now, and I held the match.

We waited until full dark before making our move.

Sawyer laid the plan out like we were storming a compound, not slipping through a half-collapsed barn across from a cheater’s white picket dream life.

“We park at the Stop & Go, half a mile down,” he said, tucking the trail cam into a small duffel. “No lights, no chatter, low and fast. In and out in ten minutes.”

“You want me to roll through the ditch, too?” I muttered. “Or just army-crawl the last hundred yards?”

He didn’t even crack a smile. “Only if you trip and draw attention. Which, given your track record... might be wise.”

We left the truck in the back corner of the convenience store lot, cut across a shallow drainage culvert, and hiked the rest on foot. The night was quiet except for our footfalls and Sawyer’s steady breathing beside me.

The barn loomed up like a ghost—same broken fencing, same sagging beams. It looked even more forgotten under moonlight.

Sawyer moved with purpose, guiding us around the edge, ducking under the fallen tree limb like he’d done it a dozen times. I followed, a little less gracefully, catching my boot on a root and nearly eating dirt.

When it came time to mount the cam, I pulled out the zip ties and fumbled them twice.

“You want me to do it?” he asked, deadpan.

“I got it.”

“You sure? Because right now you’re making the squirrels look tactical.”

I shot him a look, tightened the last tie, and flipped the cam on. The red LED blinked once, then vanished into black.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s move.”

We retraced our steps in silence. No lights flipped on across the street. No barking dogs. No one yelling from a porch.

Clean exit.

But my pulse was still jacked because this wasn’t just about catching Matt anymore.

This was about proving to myself that I was different.

That I could be the guy who showed up when it counted, even if it meant playing dirty.

Back at the motel room, things were quiet except for the hum of the mini fridge and the occasional creak from the heater vents. Sawyer had the cam connected to his laptop, a beer resting untouched on the nightstand. I didn’t bother grabbing one.

We watched in silence.

The feed was grainy, black-and-white with just enough infrared to make out shapes. Trees swayed in the wind. Headlights passed by now and then.

Then—movement.

Matt’s truck pulled into the driveway across the street, the same one we’d seen earlier. The woman and two kids were with him. Same walk. Same casual lean into his side. Their family looked... happy.

Comfortable.

We picked up some audio when she unlocked the front door. He followed her inside, chatting about their day.

Lights flipped on in what looked like the living room. The shadows of kids danced past the windows. A family enjoying their evening together.

After a couple of hours, they were in the bedroom.

We watched him peel off his shirt and heard him talking like this was just any other night. Like Matt didn’t have a woman back in Lovelace whose eyes watered every time she said his name.

He unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants. She crossed the window in a silk negligee, her hair loose around her shoulders.

The bedroom light flicked off.

And that was it.

I sat back slowly, my fists curled so tight my knuckles ached.

Callie still believed in him.

Still thought there had to be some explanation, some reason he hadn’t called.

And here he was—living a second life like it was no big thing.

This would gut her.

I knew it. Felt it.

Sadly, I’d be the one to hand her the knife.

We retrieved the cam just before dawn, quiet as ghosts. The house across the street was still and dark, and the barn was just as empty as when we left it. No signs we’d ever been there. No one was watching. No alarms. No one bothered to notice.

Back in the truck, I tucked the camera case between my boots and stared out the windshield as Sawyer turned onto the highway and headed north toward Lovelace. The sun was starting to smear the horizon with pink, like the sky didn’t know what kind of day it wanted to be yet.

Neither did I.

We drove for a long while without speaking. It was a silence that didn’t need filling, the kind that said: we both know what we saw, and we both know what happens next.

Eventually, I cleared my throat. “I’m the one who tells her.”

Sawyer didn’t glance away from the road. “Yeah?”

“She deserves to hear it from someone who doesn’t want to see her break.” I flexed my hand on my knee. “Better me than someone who’d enjoy it.”

He nodded, slow and steady, but didn’t say anything right away. When he did, his voice was even. Measured.

“You don’t know how she’ll take it.”

“I know she’ll be hurt.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t do it alone.”

I looked over at him.

“Tessa,” he said. “Colt, maybe. People she trusts. People who’ll have her back when you show her that video.”

I hated that he was right.

But he was.

I rubbed a hand over my jaw, thinking it through. “You should be there too,” I said. “To tell her what you saw. In the store. Straight from you—not just secondhand from me.”

Sawyer gave a slight nod. “Yeah. I can do that.”

Still, I couldn’t let anyone else hold the detonator. “Fine,” I said. “You can all be there. But it’s me who shows her. Me who says the words.”

“Fair enough.”

I turned my eyes back to the road. We mused about car shows and gun collections as the miles of cracked asphalt stretched ahead of us. Lovelace was waiting on the other end like a town full of matches.

No part of this was going to be clean.

But someone had to stand there when the bomb went off.

Might as well be me.