Page 21 of Drowning Her

Why was I here? I didn’t give a shit about Maisie.

“Did he hurt her?” I clarified, raising my voice.

Again, Bambi shrunk back. “You’re going to make me answer that?”

I let out a breath, then flipped through my wallet. I kept back in the shadows, then handed her a thousand dollars.

“You sure you don’t want to have more fun?” she asked. “Are you her new husband? Why didn’t you bring Maisie with you?”

I leaned over her, avoiding physical contact as much as I could, and opened her car door.

“Guess we’re done, then,” she said.

I stared ahead, waiting for her to leave. The car door slammed shut. I watched the building through the tinted windows, looking for that bastard in his white dress-up shirt, his blond hair. I had knownexactlywho he was that first night I met Maisie. At the time, I didn’t care who he was, or the arrangement he had discussed with my father, or what he had done to Maisie in the past. But now, I pleaded to the universe that he didn’t step out of that building. Because if he did, I was going to rip his fucking head off.

For giving Maisie up.

For letting her come into my life.

No. That was a lie. It wasn’t any of that.

It was for what he had done to her.

Before anything could happen, proving how I felt, Ipeeled out of the parking lot, racing back to the farm. None of the ranchers were out. My shoulders tensed. Inside of the Calving Barn, a table was stretched out between the corrals and chutes. My father and brother were near the office, the door propped open, speaking in hushed voices.

“Good. You’re here,” my father said, slapping my back. “Seems we’ve run into some trouble with the new hires.”

“Cash,” Sawyer said. “Equipment too.”

I scrutinized the table. Our employees were waiting, playing cards, talking amongst themselves, zoning out on their phones.

“One of the new hires,” I said.

“Has to be,” Forrest said.

“Could be your wife,” Sawyer said.

I rubbed my jaw. “Maisie wanders the pastures. She doesn’t go through the barns.”

“Are you helping her, then?” Sawyer asked.

Maisie had stolen from me the first night I met her, money that I had offered her and she had refused out of pride. At the time, I had found it amusing. Money hungry, but not so much that she’d take someone’s pity cash, and yet,willingto lower herself to steal it from others, as if theft gave her that much more power.

“It’s not her,” I said. But there was a big chance itwasher. My father nodded, but Sawyer examined me. Read more than what I let on. I wasn’t defending her. I just didn’t want him or my father on my case. If they thought my wife was stealing, neither of them would leave me alone, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.

So why didn’t I get rid of her myself?

“Go on. Find the thief,” Forrest said.

The new hires were seated at the far end, still finding their place in our world. Once you had developed our trustworking with the cow-calf pairs, we graduated the men to hunting, then later, to ranching in the Dairy Barn. These men were still on the pairs.

Forrest had taught me how to find traitors.

I opened a folding chair onto the hard ground. One of them glimpsed at me, then tapped his fingers against the table, his black hair ruffled. The next one wouldn’t look away from the deck of cards, shuffling them back and forth like a pendulum. The third man had dead eyes. He tipped his chair. They had to act tough. To prove themselves worthy of the Dairy Barn. There was more money in ranching for our other business.

I punched the table, and the three of them startled, finally looking at me. Card Shuffler flicked his wrist, then looked off into space again. Dead Eyes stared at me, not seeing a thing. Black Hair sniffed, then wiped his nose, not backing down from my gaze, until his eyes twitched.

He thought he could beat us.

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