the drive back to the ranch, Rainier had told Laura he wasn’t afraid and that he wouldn’t run away from whatever life would bring him. But now, facing the possibility of seeing his brother after all this time, the urge was strong to tuck tail and run on back to the house. Heck, he could even pretend that when his brother questioned him about the remains and the gun that it was the first he was hearing about the findings. Wyatt would probably think nothing of it, and he certainly wouldn’t jump to conclusions like he would if he arrived and Rainier was standing by disarticulated remains.
His brother had always been like that with him—always thinking the worst. Rainier couldn’t blame him for the trouble he himself got into; he’d always been a little bit of a rebel and the family’s black sheep. But his brother’s condescending attitude certainly didn’t help. It was like every time he screwed up, Wyatt was there to let him know he had seen it coming.
Once, when they had been young boys, their parents had sent them out to collect eggs from the henhouse. Gathering eggs soon turned into Rainier picking up rocks and pitching them to see who could throw the farthest. Colter and Waylon had joined right in, using different size rocks and different throwing techniques until they had found the one that suited them best. But not Wyatt. Wyatt had stood to the side and kept warning them about how much trouble they were going to get into if their parents found them, or if something went wrong.
Of course, the other three didn’t listen, and it wasn’t five minutes before Rainier pitched the perfect pebble straight into the back window of their father’s old Jeep. If he closed his eyes, he was sure he could still hear the crackling sound of the splintering glass, almost like someone stepping on the thin crust of ice on a lake.
Breaking that window had been his first lesson in keeping Wyatt out of his affairs and away from anything fun, as well as how much work it took to raise two hundred dollars to pay for a new window. His father had been understandably angry at the time, but just like now, he’d seemed to understand that sometimes bad things happened. A person could go about living his life between the lines, or as Merle put it, “living between the mustard and the mayonnaise,” but even then couldn’t avoid trouble. Or maybe Rainier wasn’t really the kind who avoided it; maybe he was just as bad and destructive as people expected him to be.
“Rainier, are you listening?” asked Laura.
He hadn’t heard a single thing she said.
“Sorry, what did you say?” he asked, blinking away images of him and his brothers playing around the ranch and causing trouble when they were younger. What he would give to go back to those days, when they’d all still got along and had truly lived for each other.
“Why don’t I walk with you inside—you know, be your wingman?” she repeated, holding out her hand as if he was some kind of wayward toddler.
He was unsure if he should be excited or offended by the way she was treating him, but he had to admit the look she was giving him was far more comforting than the one from a few minutes before, when she had found him holding the gun.
He slipped his hand into hers, and she jerked, almost as if she hadn’t expected him to take her up on her offer. She let go again at once, but not before his father gave him a look of surprise. Rainier was sure his own expression mirrored his dad’s.
This woman continually surprised him. He’d heard so many things about parole officers when he’d been behind bars. From the stories that got filtered down to him, most sounded like real hard asses, but not Laura. Sure, she had a hard edge to her and she was a no-nonsense kind of lady, but there was something equally soft, almost maternal about her. That softness made him wonder if she had a child.
He wasn’t sure if he should ask, especially now that she had agreed to take his side and cover up his role in discovering the remains. He didn’t want to compromise her emotionally any more than necessary. More than that, from the second they had met she had made it clear to him that there was going to be nothing more than professional civility between them.
She walked ahead of him, leading the way back to the house as the sound of the sirens grew louder. As they approached the door, his mother and his brother Wyatt’s fiancée, Gwen, stepped outside.
Rainier glanced down at his mud-covered coat as he tried to wipe the dirt from his hands.
“What’s going on?” his mother asked, peering out in the distance toward the approaching police cars.
Laura smiled, but the action was forced and tight. “No worries, I just jumped the gun—” Her mouth gaped open for a moment as she must have realized what she had said.
“We just found something a little odd, and Ms. Blade thought it best if we got a crew out here to investigate it,” Rainier interjected.
“Investigate what?” Gwen asked. “And where’s your father?”
Rainier turned and looked toward the barn. “He was going to greet the deputies when they arrived. You don’t think it’s gonna be Wyatt, do you?”
Gwen frowned. “He wouldn’t come roaring out here with the sirens on. He’s been coming out here enough lately that he would know not to create any kind of scene for the neighbors. It’s gotta be somebody else,” she said, motioning toward the SUV hurtling their way. As it drew nearer, Rainier could see there was a patrol unit without its lights on following in its wake.
The SUV pulled to a sudden stop, skidding on the ice in the parking lot. A woman, her dark hair pulled into a tight ponytail, jumped out of the car and made her way over to them, with Merle hurrying after her.
“There’s Wyatt,” Gwen said, ignoring the woman and motioning toward the vehicle just pulling into the lot.
“Who’s she?” Rainier whispered.
“New recruit. Her name’s Penny Marshall.” Gwen frowned, and the look on her face held a trace of jealousy, but he wasn’t sure why his soon-to-be sister-in-law would have anything to worry about. Wyatt, above all things, was a good man.
His brother stepped out of the second car. “Penny, wait up. Jeez, woman, you seriously need to slow down. This is my family.”
The patrolwoman turned around. “Hey, if you want to drive like some old fart, that’s on you. For all you knew, someone’s life could have been in danger out here, and you were driving like it wasn’t some kind of emergency.”
“If someone’s life was in danger, Penny, we would have been told about it. That’s what dispatch is for. I’ve told you before, there’s no good reason to put our lives at risk when a situation doesn’t dictate it.”
“Okay, Deputy Fitzgerald,” the woman said, but from the tone of her voice Rainier could tell that she was just playing along and fully intended to keep living her way with or without Wyatt’s approval.
Rainier liked Penny already. From the looks of her, she was in her early twenties, and from the sound of his brother’s exasperated voice, straight out of the academy.
Wyatt’s lips puckered and his face darkened as he looked up and noticed him standing there. “So you made it back to the ranch?” He slammed his car door with a little too much force, clearly pissed off. “Is your homecoming the reason for our appearance?”
Rainier swallowed back the growl that percolated up from his core. He had known this was going to be the closest thing to a welcome he was going to get from his brother, but his expectations
