Page 5 of Smokescreen

Finally, she found the one she needed . . . she hoped.

She grabbed her phone to take a picture. But as she did, the door rattled, and voices sounded outside.

Her lungs froze.

If the men behind what was going on were as dangerous as she thought, then Olive was in a very bad position right now. One ranch hand working for Reid had already disappeared, and Olive suspected foul play was involved.

Olive quickly put the folder back and closed the drawer.

Then she ducked beneath the desk . . . just as the door opened.

Two men stepped inside the office.

From the small space at the bottom of the desk, Olive saw two sets of feet.

One wore cowboy boots: brown leather and well-worn with equally well-worn jeans. The other wore muddy work boots and jeans with dried mud on the edges.

Olive drew herself into a ball and willed herself not to move.

“We need to make this quick,” a deep voice said.

“Here’s the gun,” the other man said.

The gun? More tension spread across Olive’s back.

“Put it in his drawer,” the man with the deep voice said. “He’ll never know it was missing.”

“You really think we’re going to get away with this?” The guy wearing the muddy work boots shuffled his feet as if uneasy.

“We’ve got everything under control.”

“You do know the consequences if we mess this up, right?” Work Boots was clearly the more nervous of the two.

Their dialogue brought back memories of the conversation Olive had overheard her dad having with those two men downstairs all those years ago.

Still to this day, she had no idea who her dad had been arguing with. But she thought about it all the time. If only she’d gotten a glimpse of those men’s faces . . . maybe she’d be closer to finding answers about what had happened to her family.

Because a year later, they’d all been killed.

Everyone but her.

An ache pulsed through her heart at the memory. Olive was pretty sure the hurt would never go away.

Swallowing hard, she shoved her grief aside. She had to focus on her current situation.

One of the men stepped away from the other and paced around the desk.

If he pulled the chair back . . . the light from the window would leave her exposed.

“No one is going to know anything,” Cowboy Boots said. “Stop worrying about it so much.”

Work Boots paused near the desk chair and jerked open one of the drawers.

He dropped the gun inside with a loud clank.

Olive caught a glimpse of the weapon. It was a Glock. Notably one of the most popular handguns in the world. They offered more than fifty models, and more than two million were thought to be in existence.

The pistol wasn’t usually used by cowboys, who seemed to prefer rifles.

---