B.J. Daniels - Atonement

Also, he was curious why Halbrook Truman had hired Luke Blackwell. Felons had a hard time getting jobs. If the rancher had checked into Luke’s past at all, he would have found out just how unreliable the man was—not to mention that he’d gone to prison for theft. But maybe Luke had proved he could change and now still worked at the ranch.

With Sheriff Frank Curry back at work, there was no reason Dillon couldn’t follow up on this. He called the cell phone number Tessa Winters had given him before he’d left her at the ranch. She answered on the second ring, sounding breathless.

“Are you all right?” he asked alarmed.

“Fine, I left my cell phone on the porch. I was down at the corral admiring your horses.”

With relief, he asked, “Did Ethan ever mention working on a ranch called the Double T-Bar-Diamond?” He heard her start to say no just before he quickly added, “For a man named Halbrook Truman?”

“Halbrook,” she said. “I have heard that name. Who is he?”

“A rancher over in western Montana. I think Ethan might have worked for him before he left for Arizona. I’m going over there to talk to him.”

“Not without me.”

He smiled and shook his head, telling himself he should have known she wouldn’t sit tight for long. The woman was resolute. Look how she’d found him. He wondered if he would have ever known there was even a chance Ethan was alive if she hadn’t shown up at his door.

“In that case, how do you feel about a road trip? It will also give us a chance to talk.” There was so much he wanted to know. About Ethan—and whatever trouble his twin had gotten himself into.

But he was also very curious about Tessa Winters.

CHAPTER SIX

DILLON GLANCED AT the young pregnant woman in his passenger seat. Not for the first time, he saw her turn to look behind them.

“Is everything all right?” he asked.

She seemed startled by the question and reticent to answer. “You’ll think I’m silly, but I’ve had the strangest feeling I was being followed.”

“All the way from California?”

“Crazy, huh?”

Maybe. Maybe not. Who knew what kind of people his brother had gotten involved with? It scared him, though, to think that the trouble might have followed her.

“You said on the phone earlier that you recognized the name Halbrook,” he said.

She nodded. “A man stopped by a day or two before Ethan left. Ethan went outside to talk to him, but I overheard them arguing. Ethan mentioned the name Halbrook. It’s unusual enough, I remembered it.”

“Did you ask Ethan what the argument was about?”

“He told me he owed the man money. I asked how much and suggested he use the money I had in savings to pay the man. I hadn’t liked the look of the man and didn’t want him coming back around.”

“Ethan didn’t jump at that?”

“He said he didn’t want my money, that it was for our house.” She scoffed at that now. “He knew I’d put the money in both our names. Talk about trusting.”

“Tell me about you,” Dillon said, and glanced over at her. “If you don’t mind.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you’d like to share with me.”

* * *

TESSA THOUGHT ABOUT that for a moment. More to the point, what did she really know about Dillon? He wasn’t his brother—that much was clear. He was a man who worked both as an undersheriff and at his own ranch. He was kind and generous and compassionate, and he’d taken an entirely different route in life than his brother had.

What scared her was that in Dillon she glimpsed what she had wanted to see in his twin. She knew it was crazy, but Ethan had been just enough like his brother that she felt she already knew Dillon. She trusted him, and trust didn’t come easily to her. Ethan’s betrayal had only made her less trusting.

“I was born and raised in California. My parents were killed in a car wreck when I was two. I was in the car, but I miraculously survived. A neighbor lady took me in and raised me until her death, when I was sixteen. After that, I was on my own.” She’d purposely left out the part about the foster homes the county had put her in. She’d barely survived those with her life. That had been the real miracle.

Dillon studied her for a moment before turning back to his driving. He seemed to sense the parts she’d left out and was kind enough not to ask.

“You want more for your daughter,” he said after a moment.

“Of course I do,” she said. “I suppose that is the real reason I came all this way looking for Ethan. I wanted to give him another chance to be a father to our daughter.”

“What about another chance with you?”

She shook her head. “He used up his last chance when he left the way he did.”

* * *

DILLON COULD SEE what his brother had seen in Tessa. Ethan would have liked her independence, the fire in her, not to mention her beauty both inside and out. Ethan had chosen well. So why had he burned his bridges when he’d left?

Because he’d known he wouldn’t be back?

“I’m sorry my brother hurt you,” Dillon said as the Montana countryside blurred past, a tableau of shades of green from the new bright grasses to the deeper, richer shades of the cool pines. The mountains rose around them, most still snowcapped.

“It was my own fault.” She turned as if to gaze out at the passing landscape.

“You must have seen something good in him. Isn’t it possible he really did want to change? Really did want everything he said he did?”

She let out a sound that made him hurt inside. “Better to think that than I’m a fool who was taken in by a handsome cowboy, right?”

He could see that Tessa had thought herself smarter. She’d let herself be fooled by a man. She hadn’t yet learned that love was a heart thing, often with no brain involved.

He glanced in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t thought to check for a tail. Then again, he hadn’t thought he needed to. There were cars and pickups and a couple semis behind them. If they were being followed, he couldn’t tell.

“There was no warning?” he asked, hoping to get her talking about Ethan.

“The signs were there. I just chose not to see them.”

“Signs?”

“He’d been more moody in the days right before he left. Antsy and uncharacteristically impatient. More secretive, too. If I asked him where he’d been or what he was looking at on the computer—”

“He had a computer?” This surprised Dillon. Ethan had ranted about the new technologies on his visit two years ago. He’d said that was why he worked on ranches. He didn’t have to learn how to use a computer, let alone a smartphone.

Tessa’s chuckle had a bitter edge to it. “No, he didn’t own a computer. Other than his old pickup and his saddle, had he ever owned anything?”

“So he used yours. Do you still have it?” He could see that she understood at once.

“I checked it after he left. I thought...” She looked away.

He knew exactly what she’d thought. An online romance with another woman.

“He had said he was looking for a new saddle. I showed him how to use a search engine. He wasn’t dumb. He didn’t ask for my help after that.”

Dillon knew his brother wasn’t shopping on the internet for a saddle. So what had he been looking for? “Did he find a saddle?”

Another short laugh. “He wasn’t looking for a saddle. He was looking for a gun.”

“A gun?” Dillon asked.

“He had guns—a .357 he kept rolled up in its holster beside the bed, and a hunting rifle, a .30 Winchester, that hung on the rack in his pickup. Both were old. I suspect they meant something to him?”

“Our uncle Jack gave him the .357 before Jack died. The Winchester was our grandfather’s.” Dillon was a little surprised, given his brother’s lifestyle, that he’d somehow managed to hang on to them.