Page 38 of Westin

It was a simple building, essentially one long room that was divided more by the furniture placement than walls. There was a couch and a couple of chairs scattered around a television immediately in front of the door. Beyond that was a dining-room table and a horseshoe-shaped kitchen with a full-sized refrigerator, an oven, and all the normal accessories. Along the back wall were twin-sized bunk beds, all positioned head to foot in a solid line down the wall. At the back of the building, beyond the dining table, sat an open area where another row of beds was pushed up against the front wall, just behind the kitchen. In the center of the back wall was a bathroom visible through an open door.

“You’ll stay here tonight,” Clint told her. “We’ll find you an empty room in the other guest bunkhouse tomorrow.”

Lea nodded, almost tearful in her appreciation. She barely had the energy to remove her jacket and tennis shoes before climbing onto the bed he pointed her toward. She was aware there were other people in the room, aware that eyes were on her as she lay there. But whatever it was that had made exhaustion fall so completely over her was not letting up. She closed her eyes, and the world went dark almost immediately.

***

Westin lay awake most of the night, unable to tear his eyes from her. She slept soundly in a bunk across the room, separated from the others across the wide space. He understood why Clint had brought her back here, but he didn’t like it—didn’t like that all these other guys were so close to her while she was vulnerable. Worse, he hated that he desperately wanted to go over there and lie with her, feel her body against his again. How reassuring would it be to feel her warmth, to feel her breaths? As angry as he was with her, he was more concerned with her helplessness, and that was pissing him off, too.

He finally got up a little before five and took a mug from the hook in the kitchen, pouring in it a good amount of coffee from the freshly brewed pot. Clint found him there, leaning against the counter, the mug between his hands.

“I want you to come with me to the barn to check that camera we put out on the box yesterday.”

“She tell you something about it?”

Clint poured himself a mug of coffee too, using the action to avoid Westin’s question.

“We should wake her up, make her come with us.”

Clint shook his head. “No. She needs her rest.”

Westin’s eyebrows rose. “Since when are you her father?”

“Someone has to watch out for her. I get the impression she doesn’t let people in very often.”

“You know her pretty well now? She confess all her secrets to you last night after I left?”

“Enough.”

Rage burned through Westin. He told himself it didn’t matter. Who cared if she told the fucking world about her secrets? But it bothered him. It bothered him more than it should have.

He dropped his mug in the sink, heard it shatter, and walked away. Clint caught up to him halfway across the yard, still pulling on his jacket. “Wait a second!” He caught up just as Westin yanked open the door to the barn, startling one of the horses who kicked at its stall door in response.

Clint pulled up the footage from the camera they’d set up the day before on the box Lea found. The box was obviously not there on the real-time footage, but Clint didn’t seem surprised. Had she told him it would be gone? Of course she had.

Clint rewound the footage, and when it hit the three-in-the-morning mark, they found themselves watching two men bend over the box and remove something. It looked to Westin like they also left something—an envelope that looked like it was stuffed pretty full.

“Is that a Rocking D jacket?” Westin flicked his fingernail against the screen, touching the man on the forefront of the video. “It is, isn’t it?”

“You can’t really see it,” Clint said.

“It looks like a Rocking D emblem on his chest there.” He snatched the mouse from Clint and clicked on the image, zooming in a little. The bright-red mark on the jacket only grew blurry with the magnification, but he had no doubt in his mind what it was. All Rocking D employees had a jacket that was emblazoned with a logo of a D on its belly, tilted just slightly like it were rocking. It was the stupidest emblem Westin had ever seen, and he’d seen a lot of them. But there was no mistaking it. “I’m sure that’s what it is.”

Clint shook his head. “We can’t go making accusations without proof, and you can’t prove it with that video.”

Westin cursed, but he handed the mouse back to Clint. He used it to move the video forward. About an hour later, another figure appeared in the dark. This one was dressed all in black just like the man who’d broken into Lea’s room, but Westin couldn’t be sure it was the same man. In fact, he was pretty sure it wasn’t. This man had wider shoulders, a heavier torso. As they watched, whoever the man was dug the box out of the ground and slipped through the break in the fence, taking the box with him.

“What was the point?”

Clint shrugged. “To put it somewhere that wouldn’t be associated with whoever put it there in the first place.”

“But the break in the fence makes it pretty obvious that we weren’t the ones to put it there.”

“Does it? Or would we be smart enough to cut our own fence to make it appear that way?”

“You really think Sheriff Reeves would fall for that?”

Clint took off his baseball cap and ran a hand over the top of his head. “It’s gone now. That’s one less thing to worry about.”

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