“We’ll go into town.” Colt held a spoonful of muesli suspended over his bowl. “John wants to talk to you, and I can get more details from Nick then.”
Colt lowered his spoon and pushed his bowl away too, his breakfast as unfinished as Mason’s. He reached for Mason’s hand and squeezed tight.
“I promise I will do everything in my power to protect you,” Colt vowed. “I’m not losing you again now. Not for anything.”
Mason had to look away. His knee-jerk ego rankled that he couldn’t protect himself while his heart swelled at Colt’s oath. Last week, he would have argued with Colt. But things had changed. Drastically. He knew now that it wasn’t because Colt didn’t think he couldn’t look out for himself. It was just his job. It was his nature to look out for people. It was how he cared.
And Mason had underplayed just how serious the threat to him had been. He could admit now that it was his own ego that had been in charge. Though he would never tell Colt that.
So instead of fighting Colt, he leaned over and kissed him. “Let’s get going.”
Mason rose and took both his and Colt’s unfinished breakfast bowls to the sink to deal with later.
Mason was quiet for the drive, as was Colt. The tension in the truck was so thick Mason could have cut it with a knife. Neither of them was happy with another turn on the amusement park ride.
They pulled into an open parking spot in front of the sheriff’s station, and Mason was the first one through the front door, Colt hot on his heels.
Nick stood and stepped around Maeve’s desk to meet them. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his complexion was wan, as though he hadn’t slept all night. Chances were, he hadn’t.
“I’m sorry we’re still no closer to having this wrapped up than we were yesterday,” Nick said by way of greeting. His voice was rough around the edges, like he’d been drinking whiskey and smoking all night long, which Mason knew for a fact Nick did neither. “I hadn’t foreseen there being more than one person.”
“But we have John in custody,” Colt said at Mason’s side. “So we are closer to putting an end to this.”
Nick nodded in acquiescence and then tipped his head toward the doors that led to the holding cells.
“You can come back.” Nick led them to the back of the sheriff’s office.
Deputy Santiago was sitting in a chair next to a small side table, legs crossed at the ankles and a newspaper in her hands. She looked up when Nick and his entourage entered, folded the paper, and stood. She tipped her hat to Mason, turned to Nick, and said, “I’ll go watch the front.”
Nick motioned Mason toward the first cell in a row of three, where John was sitting on a cot. He stood when he saw Mason and moved to the front of the cell, wrapping his hands around the iron bars. He looked like shit. That was the politest way Mason could describe him. Like Nick, John had dark circles under his eyes and looked like he also hadn’t slept a wink, which wasn’t surprising given where he’d spent the night and why. But unlike Nick, John’s complexion was sunken and sallow, in stark contrast against his black hair. He usually looked grumpy in general, but now he looked like he’d aged a decade overnight. His whole demeanor screamed defeat.
John watched him with dull eyes, but his voice was riddled with pleading when he said, “I’m so sorry, Mason.”
But Mason didn’t want apologies. He wanted answers. He wanted his pound of flesh.
“How could you do those things?” Mason demanded. “After all the years you spent with us. Like family.”
“I had no choice,” John whined. The skin over his knuckles turned white from his tight grip on the bars. “I—”
“There is always a choice,” Mason snapped and clenched his hands into fists. His short nails dug into the skin of his palms.
“No, no.” John shook his head, and beads of sweat glistened on his brow. “No. Mason, please. Let me explain.”
Mason snorted. It sounded foreign even to him. Bitter. Wrong.
“By all means.” He waved his arm in front of John. “Explain to me why you assaulted my horse, meant to kill me, nearly killed Thad—”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen!”
“What did you think would happen when you cut the brake lines on my truck?” Mason shouted back. Rage tinged the edges of his vision red and vibrated under his skin. He saw Nick take a step closer to him out of the corner of his eye and Colt shake his head. “One of my sisters could have taken the truck that day!”
John dropped his forehead against the bars and muttered unintelligible words. He lifted his head and stared straight at Mason.
“They said they would kill Julie and Sandy if I didn’t do what they told me to,” he implored.
Who the hell were Julie and Sandy? The names were familiar, and then they clicked in his memory. John had been married, and Julie was his wife’s name. Ex-wife as of about ten years ago. They had a baby daughter named Sandy. When Sandy was only two years old, she’d wandered into a bull pen and had nearly been gored, if not for the quick reactions of one of the hands, who’d quit when Mason had taken over. Following the near-death experience, Julie had refused to raise her daughter in such a dangerous environment and gave John an ultimatum: quit the ranch or quit his family. Mason couldn’t remember if John had left the ranch or not, but if he had, it had been short-lived. Ranching was the only life he knew, and so they had divorced.
“Who said they’d kill them?” Mason asked finally, the red ebbing from his vision.
