“So other than whatever Trina touched or moved, the scene should be as it was left by the vandal.” Colt motioned for Levi to enter ahead of him.
Highly skilled at tracking, Levi had an amazing eye for detail and puzzling together visual chaos. Having a photographic memory helped immensely too. He’d only been in the tack room a couple of times, but he would know every single item that had moved since, even by a smidge.
When he came back to the door, Colt stepped inside the room and looked around. There were thirteen saddles—eleven of them were Western, and two were English. Pieces of leather cinch strap lay in messy piles on the concrete floor, girths for the English saddles had been roughly cut in half, and the Western cinches were cut multiple times, the mohair pieces strewn around the floor like the guts from a murder scene.
Colt sighed loudly.
“I hear you,” Levi said at his shoulder. “Figuring out who did this is going to be a bitch.”
“I think we’re going to know who did this pretty quick, actually,” Colt offered.
“How so?”
“Whoever did this will be on the surveillance camera footage.”
Levi’s eyebrows tipped down into a furrow. “There are no cameras for this angle or in this room.”
“About that.” Colt turned to Levi and shoved his hands into his jean pockets. “I may have added a few more cameras without telling anyone.”
Colt didn’t check the footage right away. He figured Mason had probably already arrived at the medical barn and was attending to Lancelot’s wound while he waited for the vet, which gave Colt and Levi time to deal with the latest act of vandalism. They took photos of the room from every angle, close-ups of the damaged saddles and cut leather and mohair, and began dusting for any prints on the off chance they’d find a set not belonging to anyone on the ranch.
Trina appeared in the doorway and huffed. “What a mess.”
“What’s the status in the other tack room?” Colt asked as he pulled a piece of tape back from a saddle swell with a clear fingerprint on it.
“Everything is okay,” Trina said, her voice tight. “No damage to anything that I could see.”
“Good.”
Colt stored the fingerprint in a plastic pouch for Nick and his team to analyze later. Then he dug around on the shelves until he found a box of large plastic garbage bags. He pulled two out and motioned to Trina.
“Would you mind helping us clean up?”
Mason was going to flip when he found out about this, and Colt felt a niggle of apprehension at being the one to break the news. The least he could do was make sure Mason didn’t walk in and see the full crime scene.
With a nod, Trina stepped into the room, and together, the three of them quickly gathered all the pieces of leather and strips of alpaca and mohair and placed them into the bags. They would add them to the evidence collection for Nick.
“Find anything useful?” Wes asked from the tack room doorway, startling Colt.
“Where is Mason?” Panic shot into his chest like a spike, immediately followed by a burst of anger. “What the hell are you thinking, leaving Mason unprotected?”
Wes raised his eyebrows and held up a hand. “He’s fine. He’s with the vet. Dion, Katie, and Angela are all with him too.”
“We can’t trust anyone here,” Colt snapped, immediately kicking himself for his careless words. He slanted an apologetic look at Trina, who was watching them with a frown on her face.
“You think it’s one of the hands,” she said—a statement rather than a question. Colt didn’t miss the note of resignation in her voice.
“I’m sorry, Trina,” Colt said softly. “I do.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything further. Heavy silence weighed the room, and Colt began to feel claustrophobic.
“I’ll just . . .” She motioned over her shoulder with her thumb. “Go check on the horse Mason brought in.”
Colt felt for her, knowing that it could have been someone she saw every day, someone she trusted, behind everything.
“How are we going to catch this person if they keep dodging the cameras,” Wes said when Trina left the room, a note of frustration sharpening his deep voice.
“Oh, big brother didn’t tell you,” Levi said with a hint of sarcasm. “He put up more cameras without telling anyone.”
