Page 57 of Sheriff's City Girl

We rode in the car in silence the rest of the way, while my head spun, thinking about what I needed to get started on for the nursery. Though, I was waiting to know the gender before I really got into the nursery décor…

Oh, and I still needed to tell my mom.

Ugh.

I dug my phone out of my purse, opening it up to see a few missed messages. Surprisingly, one of them was from Mason. I opened it first, figuring I would get to the ones from my mom later.

Wanna come over tonight for dinner around 7? Jess will be there, too.

“What is it?” Lily asked, giving me a curious look.

“He asked me to come over for dinner this evening,” I said, quickly typing back a text to accept the invitation. My heart fluttered in my chest… Maybe he had just been busy with everything.

“See,” she nudged me over the console. “Don’t give up yet. It could work out.”

I nodded, the excitement draining as I read the texts from my mom. Ugh. She was frustrated that I hadn’t taken the time to call her in a while and accused me of dodging her.

“I have to tell my mom,” I muttered, letting out a sigh. “She just keeps hounding me about avoiding her—but I’ve been avoiding her because I don’t wanna tell her about it until I know where everything is with Mason.”

“While I don’t blame you, you’re still going to have to stop dodging her. You know as well as I do, that if you avoid her any longer, she’s going to just show up at the café one morning—and I know you don’t want her to do that.”

Oof.

“That would be the worst, and I know she would be able to tell just by looking at me. She has that sixth sense about things like that. She knew my sister was getting married long before she had come out and told her.”

“Exactly,” Lily shuddered. “She’s basically a psychic or something. You probably should call your mom and tell her.”

I took a deep breath and- exhaled sharply. “Yeah. I guess I’ll call her before dinner.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Mason

“Can’t believe more heads have gone missing,” Jackson muttered under his breath. “We’re starting to look like we ain’t got our shit together.”

“That’s because we ain’t got our shit together,” I snapped, ignoring the warning look from Ron in the passenger seat. I had picked up our mentor while we headed out to talk to another rancher, John Calvin. He had a small place—only a few hundred acres—but he had lost twenty head of cattle in the last twenty-four hours.

“We’re gonna figure this out. I just find it so strange they’re staying here in the county instead of branching out and stealing cattle across the state.”

“You think there’s any connection to the rustling that happened in the nineties?” I asked, not having been old enough to really remember the events at the time. I mean, yeah, I did remember them, but I wasn’t working as a cop yet.

“I don’t know if there’s a connection. You’re talking about thirty years passing. I know that the Lowe place took a heavy loss during it though.” Ron hesitated, and I could tell the wheels were turning in his head. “Feels like that was a different time. There wasn’t all this talk of development going on, you know what I mean? For some reason, I just can’t let that go.”

“Me neither,” Jackson and I said in unison.

“But at the same time,” I added, choosing my words carefully. “I don’t know why the hell a developer would be going through the hassle of stealing cattle. That’s a tall order, and no white-collar worker like Graham is gonna know how to pull it off.”

“Maybe not,” Jackson hummed. “But what if he’s just taking advantage of the situation? Maybe they’re not connected, necessarily—but they could be in cahoots now.”

I let out a heavy sigh as I turned onto the old, narrow gravel road that led to Calvin’s ranch. “I don’t know. That sure seems like a stretch.”

“But so does all these damn cattle that have gone missing.” Jackson leaned back in the backseat of the Bronco, folding his arms across his chest. “I think that in and of itself just don’t make any sense out here.”

“Yeah, ranchers are gonna start taking matters into their own hands,” I said wearily, already having heard a group of them talking about it in the café. I made it a point to stop in every morning to see Emma—that was the best I could do at the moment with all this shit going on…

And I was trying to help Lucas at the ranch.

Well, and keep an eye on Jess and Cody.

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