Page 63 of Tracking Down the Lawman's Son

Maybe the one at the ranch who’d fired those shots at Woodrow, Duncan and Slater?

When Luca and Slater had run out of the house to go in pursuit of Nathan, they’d left Woodrow and Duncan to deal with that. And Luca had to hope they had. It’d been two against one. Well, unless there had been others lurking around, butthere’d been no choice about coming after Bree and trusting that Duncan and Woodrow would eliminate any threat at the ranch.

But maybe Nathan thought that person would escape and come to help him.

It wouldn’t happen because Slater and he would hear an approaching vehicle and would prevent the person from getting to Nathan. Nathan should have realized that by now. He should be panicking and trying to run. Unless...

A thought flashed into Luca’s head. A bad one. Nathan had turned onto this trail, and that might be because he knew help would be nearby.

Luca tried to pick through the darkness and look ahead on the trail. He couldn’t see another vehicle, but that didn’t mean one wasn’t there. In fact, there almost certainly was since this particular trail fed out to a road.

“What? No questions for me?” Nathan shouted. “You don’t want to know if I killed Bree’s father? I didn’t,” he was quick to add.

Luca tuned him out because he was certain that Nathan was talking to try to distract him. It didn’t work. Luca heard the sound of something or someone moving in the ditch on the other side of the trail. He pivoted in that direction and got just a glimpse of the man. Someone he instantly recognized.

Because it was Manny.

And Manny fired a shot at him.

BREEHEARDTHEblast of a gun being fired, and for a heart-stopping moment, she thought Nathan had shot her. Or Luca.

But he hadn’t.

The sound had come from her right, and she tried to turn in that direction. Nathan didn’t let her. He tightened thechokehold, much harder this time, so she quit struggling so she could breath.

And pray.

That gunshot couldn’t have hit Luca or her brother. And soon she got confirmation they were alive.

“Manny,” Luca yelled, and she saw both Luca and Slater drop back down into the ditch.

“Manny?” she muttered.

What was he doing here? Had he come to help? Maybe he’d followed Nathan so he could try to clear his name.

But that wasn’t it. If it had been, Nathan would have dropped flat on the ground with her, or he would have moved her so she’d be facing the direction of the shot. He didn’t do either of those things.

“About time you got here,” Nathan snarled.

“I was waiting up the trail where I was supposed to be,” Manny snarled right back. “You’re the one who messed up by wrecking the truck.”

Bree heard every word they said, but it took her a couple of seconds to process it. Manny and Nathan were in this together. There hadn’t been one killer but two.

“You tried to pin the blame on each other,” Bree muttered.

“To muddy the waters of the investigation,” Nathan readily admitted. “And now we’ve got to get out of here. Sorry, Bree, but you can’t die here,” he added in a mutter. “We haven’t finished setting you up yet.”

So, that’s why they wanted her. Manny and Nathan were going to try to pin all of this on her. Unlike her mother, Bree didn’t have an alibi, but that didn’t mean anyone would believe she would kill the woman and then launch into these attacks to cover it up.

“I had no motive to murder Brighton,” Bree managed.

“There’ll be the motive,” Nathan said. “There will be texts to prove how much you loved me and how jealous you were of Brighton. They’ll be an eyewitness who saw you go into Brighton’s place that night. By the time we’re done, even your darling Luca will have thought you did it.”

Luca. Bree tried not to think of what he might be doing right now. He was no doubt trying to get into a position to save her. Slater, too. But what they wouldn’t be doing was believing she’d had anything to do with Brighton’s murder.

And that’s why Nathan would try to kill them, too.

“Why are you helping him, Manny?” Bree asked. “Why are you doing this?”

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