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“Maybe I’ll get poisoned by gluten, fall off a horse, and then get stampeded by cattle.”

“Lila.”

“Tell me why this time is different,” I insisted. “Tell me what makes you so sure you’re not going to freak out and run away again.”

His gaze went sideways as his mouth opened and closed. No sound came out. No reassurances, no protests, no nothing.

My heart fell. “You’re not sure.”

His brows pinched together, and he stared at me wordlessly. I could see his brain turning the question over and over again, searching for an answer. But there wasn’t one.

Gently, I wiggled away from him and stood. “I’m going to take a shower now.” I hiked a thumb over my shoulder. “When I get out, it would be great if you weren’t here.”

23

SEB

Dead man walking.

That was how I felt.

Except I wasn’t dead, that was the miserable part of it. I was very much alive, forced to feed fucking chickens and collect fucking eggs with this bloody, gaping wound in my chest where my heart should be. Absolute horseshit. I shouldn’t be expected to do ranch chores under these conditions. I should be half a bottle into Tequila Land, a magical place where I didn’t have to relive the way Lila’s eyes turned wet and shiny when she asked if I would stay.

When I fucking froze.

And if that weren’t bad enough—which it was, it was plenty fucking bad—I did it again, not even twelve hours later. There was a desperate, pathetic part of me that believed if I could say the right words, everything would be fixed between us. But it was just another fucking loop, and we ended up back where we started.

What the hell was wrong with me? I wanted to be with Lila. But every time I imagined her in that hospital bed, it was like I stepped into a black hole. No emotion, no thought. Just paralyzing darkness. I had no idea how to fight my way back to the light.

Jeremiah’s office was dark when I arrived at the lodge. There was a horse he was working to bombproof for trail rides, which meant I had at least a good hour to usurp his computer. Maybe I could never be the husband Lila deserved, but I could do this. I could find the asshole who was stalking her. I could make the world a safe place for her again.

Even though it meant she would leave Mercy River.

So for the next hour, I devoted myself to finding out every single thing about Lila’s family connections to New Mexico that I possibly could. Her mother’s side, the Fords, were easy to rule out. They were spread across the U.S., but most of them were in Michigan, where Vanessa had been born. Vanessa had gone to New Mexico for college, but she’d dropped out after she met Ronald, who had charm, a motorcycle, and an aura of danger that squeaky-clean Vanessa found appealing.

Ronald Jenkins was born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas. An only child, he’d gone to Albuquerque for the movie scene there, got work as a stuntman, proceeded to get injured from those stunts, and followed that up with an opioid addiction. It was a sad story. I would have felt sorry for him if he weren’t such a goddamn nasty addict who beat his wife and nearly murdered his infant daughter.

But Ronald was a dead end in Albuquerque. His rap sheet continued to grow after Vanessa left with Lila. It looked like he had a girlfriend at some point, and beat her, too. No mention of subsequent children—which wasn’t surprising, considering how things had ended with Vanessa.

I kept digging. Petty theft, DUI after DUI, housing evictions. A funeral announcement published nearly a decade ago in Corpus Christi for Mary Jenkins, his mother. I clicked to read more.

Mary Jenkins is preceded in death by her beloved husband, Walter Jenkins. She is survived by a son, a granddaughter, and a grandson.

Grandson? My spine snapped straight. I read it again. There was a paragraph about Mary’s volunteer work with the local church, her love for gardening, and her monthly bridge club. And then those two brief lines about family. Her husband was the only one named. My guess was that whoever was hosting the funeral was a friend—not her son Ronald—and didn’t know their names.

Maybe it was a mistake. If Ronald had a son, there should have been a mention of him somewhere. A birth certificate, school enrollment forms, something.

But I’d gone as deep as I could. Maybe Mateo could go deeper.

The sound of footsteps coming closer pulled my attention, and I looked up as Sheriff Sherwood appeared in the doorway. He rapped his knuckles on the partially open door. “Hey, Seb. Got a minute?”

“Come on in.” I closed the file as he entered, which sent his eyebrows up.

“You find anything?” he asked.

“Nothing concrete.” I tipped my chin toward the sealed white envelope in his hand. “Is that for me?”

“It’s for you. Nothing to do with the case, though.” He tilted his head, studying me. “I don’t think so, anyway. I sincerely hope I did not misjudge that.”