Page 17 of Tempting Fate
“She’s busy with her brother’s wedding and then she’s going back to LA, sweetheart.” Clay shot Raylene a warning look.
Message received.
“Clay’s right, I’m leaving soon.”
“But you said you can teach me.”
“Stop.” Emily draped her arm around her daughter’s back and drew her in. “It was lovely of Raylene to offer, honey. But we don’t want to take advantage. She’s here for a short amount time, and probably wants to spend it with her family.”
Raylene pretended to check her watch. “I’ve really got to go. It was nice meeting you, Harper.”
She swung into the driver’s seat and drove down the hill without looking back, a lump in her throat. The sooner she got out of Nugget the better.
Halfway to Logan’s, her cell rang. She took one look at the caller ID and let it go to voicemail.
Chapter 5
Gabe kept his eyes peeled. He and Rhys had been riding around the backcountry for more than an hour.
“This is where you saw them?”
“Yep.” Rhys parked his SUV next to a tree and pulled a pair of binoculars from the back seat. “It looked as if they’d made camp over there.” He pointed at a thicket of pine trees.
“You think they’re growing pot out here?”
“I didn’t find any evidence of it, but they didn’t look like your garden variety campers, either. But, to be fair, they were too far away for me to get a good enough look. Just a gut feeling.”
Gabe wagged his hand for Rhys to give him the binocs. “You said there were three of them.”
“One was small. Could’ve been a child; another red flag, if you ask me.”
“I can see that. Maybe they’re a homeless family.” Gabe scanned the area but didn’t see anything but trees, leaves, and a few patches of old snow.
“Maybe, but it would be pretty unusual in Nugget. Too cold. If it was one of our own, we would’ve heard about it.”
Rhys was right. If someone had fallen on hard times, the whole town would’ve banded together to help. That’s one of the things Gabe loved about Nugget.
“Looks like they might’ve just been passing through.” Gabe handed him back the binoculars.
“Yup, could be. I’d appreciate you keeping your eyes open, though. Like I said, something about it didn’t feel right. Over the years, I’ve learned to listen to my spidey sense.”
Absolutely. It had saved Gabe’s life more times than he wanted to think about. That eerie chill running up his back or that gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach. In the spec ops world, he’d learned very quickly to pay close attention to that sixth sense. “Roger that.”
Rhys restarted the engine and took the rutted dirt road back in the direction of the highway. “Thanks for coming along. Usually, I’d take Jake, but he and Cecilia took a few days to visit one of his daughters.”
The detective had five of them. All grown, all hot. All wrapped in caution tape as far as Gabe was concerned. Jake was protective, and Gabe wasn’t ready to put a ring on it.
“Cecilia upset about Raylene being here?” he asked Rhys.
“She’s Lucky’s mother, what do you think?”
The way Gabe had heard it was that Cecilia Stryker had practically raised Raylene when she kept house on Rosser Ranch. “She doesn’t seem all that bad to me. Spoiled, maybe, but not as terrible as everyone makes her out to be. And she cares about Logan. I know it wasn’t that way in the beginning, but she’s come around, and I think it’s legit.”
Rhys drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I always suspected that Ray had her wrapped around his little finger. It was a power thing with him, and she was daddy’s little girl.”
“Logan says he abused her.” Gabe was probably talking out of turn, but there were two sides to every story. He’d seen it firsthand, traveling around the world, fighting wars. “I’m not saying that’s an excuse for what she did, but I think she was under his thumb. And later, under Butch’s. Truthfully, I think she was scared to death of her ex-husband, and I don’t think Raylene scares that easy.”
Gabe remembered Denver, when she went nose to nose with Butch as she was leaving him. He suspected she wouldn’t have been so tough if she hadn’t had two former Navy SEALs backing her up. There was a reason she’d called Logan in the first place. At the time, they weren’t on the best of terms.
