Page 57 of Cowboy Don't Go

“Those fingerprints in their barn, the fresh ones? Well, it’s impossible, you see, but they belong to a dead man.”

Chapter Eleven

The fairgrounds were crowded on a Friday night and there were midway rides, food tents and trucks, and a huge carnival of games set up. In the tented booths, dotted throughout the grounds, exhibits of artists and artisans were on display, including a craft section that was popular every year and the traditional 4-H exhibit that touted the Youth Encounter coming the next night. The school fundraiser-silent auction Cami had volunteered to help with was in full swing and had lines near all the sign-ups happening in the tent toward the front, where it would be noticed. The Hard Eight had donated several packages as well. There were pumpkins and baskets of apples and the smell of autumn everywhere. Even the trees cooperated by turning beautiful shades of orange and red and dropping a carpet of color on the way in.

Cooper’s brain was on overdrive, thinking about the deputy’s call and the implications behind it. If the intruder was, in fact, Evan Clulagher, right here in Marietta, what the hell was he doing out at the Hard Eight, breaking into their office? And what did all that mean? What connection could Evan have had with their ranch? Or was it Ray who had drawn him there? But he’d made no attempt to see Ray, which made sense since he could have no desire to be recognized.

On the lookout for Evan’s face as they moved through the crowd, he shoved these questions to the back of his mind to focus on Shay as they walked in behind the others. He said nothing about the deputy’s call to anyone. He needed time to sort out his thoughts, because he could sense an answer lying just below the surface. He just couldn’t grab it.

He felt her fingers brush up against his surreptitiously.

“I’m starving,” she told him as they reached the food tents. “I think I need one of those.” Pointing to a truck selling decadent-looking apple fritters, she grinned at him playfully. “Dessert first at the autumn festival, right?”

“Absolutely.” They ordered two and strolled the grounds, enjoying the sweet treat.

“What do you usually order at these things?” she asked him, watching Ryan disappear with school friends toward the midway. They were meeting for a sleepover at one of the other boys’ houses tonight. “I mean, what’s your vice?”

“You,” he murmured close to her ear. “You’re my current vice.”

She punched him playfully in the arm. “Shhh. I mean food.”

“Oh. In that case, it would have to be the deep-fried pickles.”

“Pickles?!”

“Or, okay, how about deep-fried Texas BBQ shotgun shells?”

“That requires an immediate explanation.”

“Ahh, yeah. Gooey cheese and brisket and jalapeño, all wrapped up in pasta and deep fried. Guaranteed to clog your arteries with no help from the fried pickles.” He shrugged. “Maybe Montana has yet to discover this delicacy.”

She finished the last bite of her apple fritter and tossed the paper bowl in the trash. “That does sound fascinating. And, honestly, it would have sounded yummier pre the deep-fried apple fritter. But you apparently, are a fair connoisseur.”

“Or, an unfair connoisseur, depending on your point of view.”

She snorted. “Then please, tell me which carnival game I can actually win and isn’t rigged against me three ways to Sunday?”

“Oh, no. Sorry. That’s part of the unfair fun. They’re all rigged, at least two ways to Sunday.”

She laughed and hurried him toward the games. They bought an arms’ length worth of tickets and spent them on all the games that were impossible to win. Ring toss, coin toss, squirt gun target games, and a fake shooting gallery. Just as he was about to lose hope, he managed to win a large pink bear for her by striking down three bowling pins with a baseball.

Bear in hand, they rode the Ferris wheel that pulled them high above the fairgrounds with a bird’s-eye view of Marietta, all lit up for the event. Alone up there, he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into him as the cool night breeze ruffled through their hair. Around and around they went, as Cooper scanned the fairgrounds for any sign of the man Shay had seen. If Evan was here, he clearly didn’t look like the Evan who’d lived and worked here eight years earlier.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the connection to the Hard Eight. If his father’s partner had returned to Marietta, there must be a good reason. Trey had said he’d gone through all of his stolen money in the Bahamas and was nearly broke. Which meant he needed—was desperate for—more. If he thought, somehow, that he could find it at the Hard Eight, that meant he had reason to believe there was money—blackmail money?—or the means to get it somewhere at the Hard Eight. Ergo, that also meant someone from that ranch had been the blackmailer.

He tightened his arm around Shay, a sick feeling crawling up his throat. Could it have been Sarah? He could not wrap his brain around that possibility. Besides, she seemed to be in love with Ray. Then and now. She would have had no motive to set his father up to take the fall for Evan. Unless—

No. It couldn’t be her. If there was one thing he’d learned working both with horses and the cowboys on the Four Sixes, it was how to read people. Sarah was good people. All of them were. Including Liam, who—despite co-running the cattle operation with his father for several years—would have been too young to have done something so dangerous or foolhardy as to blackmail Evan. But could he have known about the blackmail? That didn’t make sense either, because from everything Cooper had seen, the ranch was struggling hard before Shay’s twin, Will, had returned to infuse it with cash. If there was some cash in some bank account that Liam knew about, surely he’d have used it. And he flatly dismissed the possibility of Cami or Shay.

That left only one person with the potential to blackmail his father’s partner—Sarah’s late husband, Tom Hardesty.

A cold chill raced through him as the Ferris wheel spun to a slow stop. Tom Hardesty. A dead man who could not defend himself. The patriarch of the Hardesty clan, who was both feared and respected by his family. Yet in all the time he’d been at the Hard Eight, Cooper had rarely heard his children or widow speak of him or even remember him fondly. That didn’t make him a bad man, but it made Cooper wonder. It also made him wonder—if he had blackmailed Evan Clulagher, simultaneously setting up his father to take the fall for him, just . . . why? And had he been involved with Evan’s rustling scheme itself, or did he simply discover it and take advantage?

“You’re far away tonight,” Shay said, dragging him out of his thoughts as they walked away from the ride. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Of course,” he said, flustered that he’d allowed her to notice. “I’m just enjoying being out in the world tonight. Quite a crowd, huh?”

“Okay. You don’t have to tell me.” She bumped into his shoulder playfully. “You’re a deep river, Cooper Lane.”

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