[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.”He huffed an irritated sigh and scrubbed at his unshaven jaw.“That kid and her glitter.I’d have that stuff banned from the county if I could.Ranchers aren’t supposed to sparkle, damn it!”Jessie looked away, biting her lip, but a bubble of laughter escaped.Ignoring it, he gestured toward the scraped spot where the bunkhouse had stood.“A couple of weeks ago, I came to check on the place, but there was nothing inside or around it.No furniture, no junk, like somebody swept it clean.”She immediately sobered.“Nothing on the porch?”He shook his head and then shrugged.“Maybe Canter and his people cleared it, logged things into evidence.”“Or had every last bit hauled to the dump,” she said.“You do have a dump somewhere around here, don’t you?”“Not officially,” Zach said, “but one of the locals has a pit dug, and for thirty bucks a pickup load, you can get junk buried.A hundred bucks if you’re not from around here.”“So welcoming to visitors.Sounds exactly like the Rusted Spur I’ve come to know and love,” she said flatly.“But I’ll want to get directions from you later.”“Clem Elam won’t like you snooping around his place.He’s a friend of Hellfire’s, for one thing, and rougher than an old cob.”“Maybe Gretel here’ll charm him into it,” she said, smiling as she scratched the Rottweiler’s sleek black ears.“Or maybe Canter’s already warned him you mean trouble.”“The way he warned you off?”Did the woman ever give an inch? “Tried to, don’t you mean? Cause I’m here talking to you.And telling you what it was I did find, right over here.” He took a few steps downward, into the depression, and pointed out a spot where the dried grasses lay flat.“Before somebody came back for it.”At her questioning look, he told her about the silvery trail of cinders.And about the charred chunks he suspected had been bone.“Human bone?” Her face paled.“Tell me that isn’t what you’re saying.”“I’m not sure.I’m no expert.But I snapped some pictures with my phone.”“Let me see.You do still have them?”Nodding, he pulled his phone out of the pocket of his jeans and found the photos he’d been so tempted to delete.As soon as he passed them to her, she scrolled through the short series, squinting at each image, pinching and enlarging, and turning her head as if she were imagining what she was seeing from a variety of angles.He knew because he’d repeatedly done the same thing, attempting to convince himself he was seeing the remnants of burnt wood or butchered animals.And not a murdered woman.“Who else have you shown these to?” she finally asked.“I tried to talk to Canter.He scoffed about ‘getting all excited over what was left of someone’s dinner’ but promised to come take a look.Next thing I knew, the grill was gone.Not only the grill, either.The whole bunkhouse.”She stared in disbelief.“What? You’re saying he was the one who tore the place down? Without your permission? How could he possibly—”“He showed up at the house while I was out on the range.Told my mama all about these kids he’d run off—kids my mama swore she’d seen, too—and said it was a safety hazard, practically falling down.”“It was definitely run-down,” said Jessie, “but the building seemed basically sound.”“I thought the same, but our opinions aren’t the ones that matter.Canter talked my mama into signing off on having Clem Elam and his helpers tear it down and haul it off that very hour.Since they just so happened to be right there, heavy equipment and all.”“That has to be illegal,” she said, her voice colder than the prairie wind.He shook his head.“My mama may have turned over the running of this ranch to me, but she still has full decision-making power when she chooses to exert it.”“Has she ever used this power before? Since you’ve come back, I mean.”“No.” Normally, his mother referred every question, no matter how small, to him, and he was still going through bags of unsorted receipts, unopened mail—all sorts of detritus—from her brief tenure as the head of the ranch.When he’d confronted her about the bunkhouse, she’d told him she’d been having nightmares about the place and the murder that had taken place there.Eden’s scared of it, too, his mother had added, as if Henry Kucharski’s death were the only reason.She’s overheard us talking about that poor man, and that reporter who stopped by—Haley’s sister.It’s upset her.“What did Canter say when you went to him about it?” Jessie demanded.“He said he had the right to see to unsafe structures, especially when he had the landowner’s permission.Unless I wanted to take a shot at having my own mama declared incompetent.”She made a rude noise.“What a piece of work this guy is.What’d he say about the grill?”“He claims he didn’t find it—and that sucker weighed a ton.”“So he didn’t see the bones? Did you show him?”Zach shook his head.“Didn’t think it was such a good idea to let him know I had those pictures.Just in case.”“So you just dropped it?” she asked, her gaze challenging him to admit the truth.That he’d been too sickened by the thought that whatever he learned would somehow implicate his mother, who had pleaded with him to let this go, to not take any action.“I went back to running my cattle ranch, taking care of Eden and my mama, and worrying about my business like I oughta,” he said, feeling heat waves rising, cooking him in his boots.Because he couldn’t help remembering the last time he’d decided to mind his own business, that time with a member of his squadron.A younger pilot who had clipped him, dooming both planes, dooming so many innocents in the sleeping city below.“Wait, what are you doing?” he asked as he noticed her fiddling with his phone again, clicking away with her left hand.He reached for it, panic stabbing through him.Stepping away, she turned her back, and that dog of hers slipped between them, hackles raised and teeth bared, a low growl rumbling in her chest.“Calm down, Gretel.Platz,” Jessie said before looking to Zach
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]