Page 71 of Dark Side of the River

Elaine looked up as Charlotte rode into the trees to join her. They’d been meeting like this for years—since Margie had fallen ill. Elaine had taken pity on her one day when they’d run into each other in town at the store.

Charlotte had asked about Margie as if the words came flying from her heart against her iron will. Elaine had told her and begged her to forgive and contact Margie herself. “It’s your chance to put the past behind you. Do it for yourself,” Elaine had pleaded. “Do it for Margie.”

But Charlotte hadn’t been able to. Instead, she’d called Elaine, who gave her updates. When Margie died, Elaine had called and asked to meet.

That day, Elaine became her friend, the only true one she counted. Charlotte had cried over Margie’s death, the death of their friendship, the death of any hope of changing the lonely, desperate life she’d made for herself. Elaine had shared her own grief in losing Margie, who’d been a friend to her.

“Thank you for meeting me,” she said now to Elaine.

“You heard about the meth lab?”

She nodded, met her friend’s gaze and swallowed. “That has to be why Oakley was shot coming from that ravine.”

“It does seem so,” Elaine said. “You do know that Cooper and Tilly went back in there looking for evidence. They’re the ones who found the meth lab and called the sheriff.”

Charlotte hated that she knew little of what her offspring had been up to, unfortunately. She’d heard the rumors about Tilly and Cooper and let her daughter know how she’d felt about it—for all the good it had done. “Have you heard if the sheriff found anything?”

“Unfortunately, the lab burned, I believe, before the sheriff could get out there.” Elaine took her hand. “Cooper said those men at the meth lab fired on him and Tilly.”

“Oh, my heaven,” she said, feeling sick. “They could have been killed.”

“The men were using military-type semiautomatic weapons, AR15s, Cooper told his father. But, Charlotte, Oakley was shot with a bullet from a 270 rifle.”

“How do you know that?”

“I overheard Cooper telling Holden. He thinks someone else shot her,” Elaine said. “That’s why deputies collected all the rifles from the family and the ranch hands. I heard they took yours as well.”

She nodded, remembering how furious CJ had been. He wanted to get their lawyer to demand they be returned. She’d refused, only making him storm out. “It’s ridiculous. No one from our ranch would have shot my daughter.” Elaine said nothing. “Can this get any worse?”

“I think we both know it can,” her friend said. “If the sheriff is getting close to making an arrest, we need to be prepared.”

Charlotte huffed. “How do we do that? I always thought the worst thing that could happen was when I heard that Holden was marrying Margie.”

Her friend touched her arm. “Margie’s been dead now for more than twenty years. Twenty years, Charlotte.”

She didn’t need to be reminded. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what Elaine was saying. But there were some things in life a person never got over. “Thank you for the news,” she said, and picked up her horse’s reins to leave. “You’ll let me know if you hear anything.”

“It’s not too late.”

She chuckled since this was something she’d been hearing from Elaine for years. “It is way too late, and now with all this... There are some things even I can’t get over, let alone undo.” Her life was a web that she’d woven herself into and was now trapped. She met Elaine’s gaze. “I’m just sorry that I dragged you into—”

“You didn’t drag me in. I wanted to be here for you. It’s what Margie had wanted as well.”

Strange, Charlotte thought, how it was Margie and their mutual loss of the woman they had both loved that had brought them together. She swung up onto her horse and rode back toward her ranch with a sense of foreboding. It was as if she could feel the past breathing Hell’s fire down her neck. All her mistakes were coming for her—and the target painted on her back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

STUARTHADTOask again. Not just because of the raging hangover that had his head throbbing and his stomach roiling this morning. But because he couldn’t believe, maybe didn’t want to believe, what the lab tech was telling him.

“We ran all of the 270s we took from the two ranches. It is definitely this rifle.” He held it up in the evidence bag with the label on it from where the rifle had been taken. “Once we realized the slug taken from Oakley Stafford matched the slug from this rifle, we checked it for prints. It’s definitely CJ Stafford’s rifle, and his prints on the trigger show him as the last user.”

The sheriff rubbed a hand over his face. “Why would he shoot his own sister?” Stuart demanded.

“Guess you’ll have to ask him when you see him.”

COOPERWOKETHEnext morning determined to talk to Jason Murdock. If the PI had tried to run him and Tilly off the road the other night after the meeting, he wanted to know who paid him to do it.

He’d driven through town and hadn’t seen Murdock’s truck. He hadn’t seen it, he realized, since that night. Maybe he’d gone back to Billings. He was driving past the hotel when Tick Whitaker came out and waved him over. Cooper put down his driver’s-side window.

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