“Don’t you think if my brother had been there, someone would have mentioned it by now?” she demanded.
She had always been strong and determined. It was one of the reasons he’d loved her more than life. If his sister hadn’t been murdered that night, he didn’t doubt they’d be married now, probably have a couple of kids.
Did Destry ever think about what might have been? She’d made a life for herself on the W Bar G. He’d heard how she had taken over after her father’s plane crash. She was born to ranch, that’s what people said. They also said how lucky WT was to have such a daughter. Everyone liked Destry and with good reason.
Carson, though, was another story.
“I warned your brother that if I ever saw him again... Destry, I can’t live with myself unless I do something. Can’t you understand that?” He hated the pleading he heard in his voice. It upset him that it mattered what she thought of him, even after all these years.
Her gaze softened. “I can understand. But not this way. Find out who your sister was meeting in town that night.”
He flinched at the mental picture of the coroner and EMTs bringing his sister’s body out of the shallow ditch beside the road a few miles outside of town. The killer had thrown her into the ditch, leaving her for dead, leaving her to die alone beside the road.
“She ran into your brother,” he snapped.
She made an impatient sound. “How can you be so sure that Ginny wasn’t seeing someone else that she kept not only from Carson, but also from your parents and even from you?” she demanded.
He swore under his breath as he slapped his hat back on to his head. “Some mystery man? That’s just some story your brother cooked up to shift suspicion onto someone else. This isn’t getting us anywhere. It’s the same old argument. It’s why I left eleven years ago. Your brother killed her.”
“Are you willing to stake everything on it? If so, then there is nothing more I can say, is there?” She turned toward her truck.
“What if you’re the one who’s wrong, Destry?” he called after her. “Ginny said your brother had been following her. How can you be so sure your brother didn’t leave the ranch that night? It wouldn’t be the first time he lied. Or the first time he hurt Ginny, would it?”
* * *
CARSON KNEW BETTER THAN to try to reason with his father, but he had to give it a shot. As he looked down the table, he wondered if WT believed he’d killed Ginny West. Or if it mattered to him. Apparently being Waylon Thomas Grant’s male heir trumped everything—even murder.
“Tomorrow morning, I’ll show you the new grazing land I’ve picked up since you’ve been gone,” WT was saying.
“Aren’t you worried about this new evidence that’s turned up?”
WT scoffed. “The state attorney general has been putting pressure on local law enforcement to clear up their cold cases. The sheriff is just going through the motions. I doubt there’s any new evidence. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“I’d feel a whole lot better if I knew what it was.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ll get you the best lawyer money can buy.” He looked up from his meal. “But it won’t come to that. You never left the ranch that night. Stick to that story. Jack will back you up, right?”
Carson said nothing for a moment, shocked by his father’s cavalier response. “You can’t really think I could get a fair trial in this county.” When WT didn’t respond, he tried again, “With enough money, I could leave the country. There are still foreign countries that the U.S. can’t extradite from.”
WT looked up at him and frowned. “I built this ranch for my son to take over. So I’m certainly not paying to send him out of the country.”
“I can’t very well take over the ranch if I’m on death row,” Carson snapped.
“You’re not going to prison. If the sheriff had anything on you, I’d know.”
Carson shook his head in disbelief. “Frank Curry might owe you his life, but not even his gratitude is going to save me if this new evidence makes me look guilty.”
WT let out an exasperated sigh. “Stop worrying. No one is fool enough to cross me. Not even the damned state’s attorney general.”
“If you’re so powerful, why did you insist on me leaving eleven years ago? Why didn’t you let me stay and fight the allegations? If that’s all you thought they were?”
WT shook his head and angrily shoved away his plate.
For a few minutes, the only sound in the huge dining room was the click of Cherry’s silverware as she kept eating.
Carson wished he could walk away right now and not look back. But that was no longer an option. He would need a lot of money to leave the country. If WT wouldn’t pony it up, then he needed the ranch and the money he could get for it. He thought of his sister. He had to convince WT to give him the money so he could disappear.
“Dad?” The word came at a cost after refusing to call WT that for so many years. “Dad?”
His father turned on the only other person in the room. “Cherry. That your real name? It sounds like a stage name.”
Carson swore under his breath as he watched WT take off the gloves. WT would fight as dirty as he had to get what he wanted.
His father threw him a challenging look. But he was no longer that scared kid who’d been sneaked out of Beartooth in the cover of darkness. Ginny’s murder and a target on his back had changed him. Nor did he need to come to Cherry’s defense. She could take care of herself.
Cherry slowly licked her painted lips and turned her full attention to WT. She’d chosen a hot-pink low-cut top that barely covered her nipples and white capris that cupped her toned bottom. Her dyed blond hair was piled haphazardly on top of her head with stray tendrils curling down around her face. The fake eyelashes gave her a sleepy, half-soused look, but then again, it could have been the wine she’d consumed with abandon since they’d sat down to supper.
“I’m a dancer,” she said proudly, daring him to dispute it.
“A dancer?” WT repeated and added, “And I’m a high flier on the trapeze.”
Cherry smiled. “Carson told me that his great grandfather used to be in the circus but I didn’t know you—”
“He’s making fun, Cherry,” Carson said dryly.
She narrowed her eyes at WT. “Making fun of me?”
“No,” WT said. “My son. And by the way, my grandfather rode in a Wild West Show. Not a circus.”
Carson laughed and shot a wink to his fiancée.
At the head of the table, WT bellowed for Margaret to serve dessert.
CHAPTER FOUR
RYLAN TOOK OFF IN A dust devil of anger as Destry climbed into her pickup, her legs weak, her heart aching. Seeing Rylan again had sent her already spinning-out-of-control world even further into orbit. She couldn’t look as he drove on down the road toward the W Bar G. There was no stopping him, no way to call the ranch to warn her father and brother since she hadn’t grabbed her cell phone—not that she could get service often this close to the mountains. Nor could she beat him to the ranch.
She feared not only for Carson. Her father wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a trespasser. Especially a West toting a gun.
Running into Rylan like that had been a shock, one that still reverberated through her. She couldn’t tell if the trembling in her hands as she started her truck had more to do with anger—or fear. Or those old feelings that still