happened…
He’d looked after Tyler while she’d been gone. Had made sure her brother got his education.
She just couldn’t believe it.
Wished she’d known. And it still wasn’t enough. Didn’t make up for ditching them in the first place. For choosing wealth over love.
Because even if, as a kid, he’d felt he had no choice, five years after that last ultimatum, he’d been an adult. And yet he’d waited twenty-three years…
Seriously, what did you do with something like that?
Rafe studied the information about Tyler’s death so he didn’t have to look at Kerry. Or feel her home around him, reminding him of everything he’d once had and never found again. Not the room. Or the furnishings. It was a sense of being fully and completely alive.
She hadn’t said a word since he’d broken his promise to himself and told her what he’d done for Tyler while she’d been at the police academy. He’d gone away to college, too, but he’d had a helicopter that brought him home for three days every weekend. Payne’s insistence. His way to keep control, Rafe had figured. “Why are you so certain that this wasn’t an accident?” he finally asked, closing the folder when he couldn’t bear to look at the pictures any longer. The cliff face. The tire tracks and footprints in the dust.
The funeral he’d missed because he’d been at an international oil summit in Washington with a couple of his siblings—or the biological Colton heirs, as he sometimes thought of them. Although, why she had a picture of the people gathered at the grave site…
He glanced again. Noticed the man standing in the back of the small gathering. And then looked at the wall again. And through another file. “You think Odin Rogers had something to do with this?”
The man was little more than a scumbag with no morals, no class, who lived like a member of royalty—thinking his word and desires carried the weight of a king. He’d tried to take on Rafe once—when Rafe had been looking out for Tyler. Not face-to-face, of course. But word got around that the Coltons couldn’t save Tyler if the punk didn’t finish some job for which he’d been paid. No job that was on any record, of course. It hadn’t ended well for Rogers. And yet, the hefty white man continued to live well. And free.
Rogers’s one success was that he had enough minions willing to do his dirty work so that his hands were clean when it came to actual proof of dealing drugs.
“I know he’s behind it,” Kerry said, standing to join him by the wall. “I know Tyler got into trouble, that he made some horrible choices there for a while…” She paused and Rafe felt the sting of guilt, whether she’d intended it or not. “But he was on the straight and narrow for almost a year before he was murdered. I know that he’d been running with some of Odin’s people. I saw him downtown, talking to Odin once, but when I asked him about it, he denied knowing the guy. Kept trying to convince me that I’d seen it wrong. Then something went down that either scared him, or opened his eyes to what he was becoming, because he came to me and apologized for all the worry and trouble he’d brought me over the years. He told me that he knew how much I’d done for him, that I was always there for him. Told me how much that meant to him. And he swore that he was going to make it all up to me…”
She’d been sounding all police-like…until she didn’t. Her voice didn’t break, it just trailed off. And she stared unmoving at the wall.
Collecting herself, Rafe knew. Not because it was anything she’d ever done around him before; on the contrary, she’d always shown him everything she was feeling, when they were kids. But he knew she wasn’t going to let herself show him anything, anymore.
The practical adult man he’d grown into was glad about that. Because if Payne lived, and Rafe truly hoped he did, the old man would likely still carry through on his threats to a thirteen-year-old Rafe. Back then all he’d have had to do was fire her father. Which would have been akin to sending Kerry and Tyler straight into hell. With Tyler Sr.’s drinking, the kids would likely have been left to fend for themselves. Or become wards of the state, and risk being split up. At least on the ranch they were always looked after by the other cowboys’ wives. And Tyler was looked after, too, by the men who trusted him to work hard come morning. At the RRR they could be together as a family. And one thing Rafe had always known was how much Kerry loved her little brother. And her father, too.
But even now that Rafe and Kerry were adults, Payne could wield his power. Have Kerry pressured out of the Mustang Valley Police department, forcing her to leave the town that had been her home her entire life to seek out other employment. The man meant well—he was fiercely loyal and loved his family—but he also believed that he knew best and used his power to see that his will was done.
And he believed that where Kerry Wilder was concerned, Rafe was weak. Or he just held a grudge because Rafe had managed to carry on a secret friendship with her for eight years before the man found out.
Either way, Rafe wasn’t going to be the cause of that power being unleashed on Kerry.
“There has to be a reason that he was up on that mountain.” Kerry’s words, calm and professional again, broke into his thoughts. “That’s not where he ever climbed, or hung out. There’s nothing up there. Not even a good view. And the tire tracks don’t match his car,” she added. “They’re bigger, the tread is wider.”
“So what’s the official explanation for that?”
She shrugged. “There’s no proof that those tire tracks had anything to do with Tyler’s death. Someone could have been up there before, or after he went over. As dry as it was, they could have been there for a couple of days. And there’s no proof that anyone else was with him. You see the footprints…there are several partials, different shoes…so we know people were up there, but not necessarily when he was. The theory is that it was a new hangout spot, but no one has come forward saying so. Or admitting to having been up there. And it’s not like there’s a surveillance camera…
“If it hadn’t been for a hiker finding his body down below, we would likely never have known what happened to him…”
“How long was he down there?”
“A couple of days.” She shook her head. Studied the wall as though the answer was there for her to see.
And maybe it was. She seemed so certain. He followed her gaze.
“It could be that the prints in the photo were from people who heard about his death and went up to look,” she continued, “but there’s got to be evidence there, too. He was up there. We know that. I need to know why. Because I am certain he didn’t climb a mountain and jump. Or go hiking and fall off. There was no evidence of him having slid off, no ground broken away, no sign of a body hitting the sides, or sliding, on the way down.”
“So let’s go back and take another look.” Rafe didn’t think before he spoke. But didn’t regret the words.
Kerry stared at him. “What?”
He looked her straight in the eye. “Look, I know some of the responsibility for this lies on me. I knew he looked up to me, and I just quit his life. Let me at least do this. Let me help. I’ve got an analytical mind. And fresh eyes.
