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“You think we’ll catch this fucker?”
Shane looks at the house before he leans down. “Between you and me? This guy’s fucking trouble.”
“How?”
He pulls out his phone. “I ran a search on him. At first, I thought he was just a standard trust fund baby. Frat boy idiot who has fucked up his chances of ever being a real boy, all that.”
“Takes one to know one,” I say, grinning at Shane.
“Fuck you, man.”
“Sorry. Keep going.”
“I dug a little deeper, and there’s a lot more. His dad’s a developer. Real estate, mostly, down in Colorado and New Mexico. But he’s recently acquired some land out near Helena.”
My heart drops. “You think that he’s interested in Nora’s ranch?”
“I think that’s entirely possible.”
“And the kid?”
He shrugs. “Who knows? Again, he seems like just a standard asshole. Nothing remarkable, a couple of closed cases that have been sealed.”
“Can you find out what’s in those?” I ask. If he has a history of something like arson, or he has some kind of assault record…
“Already on it.”
I clap him on the back. “Good man, Shane.”
“She and Clint fucked last night.”
“Yup.”
“It doesn’t feel right,” Shane says quietly. “To be so involved and still be waiting to buy the ranch out from under them if they can’t make it happen.”
“I know,” I say. “But Clint is convinced that she’ll leave. One way or another, he sees this as something temporary. Something that’s going to end at some point.”
“Doesn’t have to be,” Shane grunts.
I grin. “That’s what I’m saying. If we could just come clean to her, tell her how it started and how it is now?—”
He tilts his head. “How is it now?”
I shrug. “I don’t know about you, man. But I do know that right now, I’m more inclined to help her save the ranch than wait for it to fail.”
“Because…”
“Because they’ve earned it.”
Shane gives me another sharp nod. “That they have.”
We’re quiet for a minute, watching the ranch around us. The smoking ruin of the barn seems to glare at me, a reminder of the near-disaster of last night.
“Can’t believe that motherfucker burned their barn down.”
“I think he’s definitely been behind the other shit, too,” Shane says in a thoughtful tone. “Which means he’s been here for a while.”
“A while?”
