Page 64 of Tempting Fate
“But you’re out of the beach house, right?”
“It’s a lease.” She sat next to him and huffed out a breath. “I’ve got two more months on it.”
It just kept getting better. “Will selling your land cover you until you can make some money?”
She didn’t answer, letting the silence stretch until he couldn’t take it anymore. “Raylene?”
“Sort of, except I kind of promised some of the proceeds to Lucy’s House.”
“How much?” She really was batshit crazy.
“Half. But it won’t matter, because when I find the gold—”
“There’s no fucking gold, Raylene. Did you cut a deal with these Moto Entertainment people?” He didn’t think so, because if she had she wouldn’t have offered the land to Clay.
“Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for?”
More silence. Then finally, “I don’t want them to have it.”
He didn’t see that she had a choice, unless she moved in with Logan and Annie and lived off them until she got a job and patched her finances together. Raylene was the definition of a hot mess. And yet he couldn’t stop himself from trying to help her.
Chapter 17
By Friday morning, Raylene had a new game plan. Instead of searching the land around the copse of trees on the lower end of the property, she decided to take a stab at the top end. The entire two-hundred-acre parcel was dotted with small, wooded groves. Anyone of them could’ve been Levi’s hiding place, and the ones she’d already searched had all been duds. At thirty bucks a day for the metal detector, she needed to find something soon or give up.
She drove the length of the property, bumping along the rutted fire trail, taking Gabe’s advice to look for the older trees. The day was gloomy and cold and, in her rush to get out of the house, she’d forgotten her hat. Gabe had left a stack of folded bedding on the couch and had been in the kitchen, eating, when she’d ducked out. At least twenty times during the night she’d considered going downstairs and crawling under the covers with him, but he’d made it abundantly clear that their Sunday hookup had been enough for him.
When she crested the top of the hill, her mouth fell open. Someone had trenched a five-foot-deep hole around a cluster of oak trees.What the hell?
She punched Gabe’s number into her phone. “Did you come looking for my gold on your own?”
“What are you talking about, Raylene?”
“Someone was here…on the property, digging.”
He was quiet for a few seconds. “It wasn’t me.” He had an iron-clad alibi. Her. “What do you mean, digging?”
“Hang on, I’ll send you a picture.” She parked, got out of her truck, snapped a few images of the trench, and hit the send button.
“I don’t think gophers did that,” she said.
“Nope. Do me a favor, wait in your truck until I get there. And, Raylene, lock the door.”
For once, she didn’t think he was overreacting. From the looks of it, someone, or several people, had been here all night to have dug a channel that deep and that long. It had to be at least forty feet wide. But who? Everyone in town knew the lore of Levi’s Gold and had had ample opportunity to sneak through the fence and search the property. But like Gabe, most everyone thought the gold didn’t exist. Occasionally, a treasure hunter would trespass, but without the map there wasn’t much point in it. As it turned out, even with the map, the gold had remained as elusive as Bigfoot.
She hopped up on the hood of her truck and waited, not wanting to disturb any potential evidence. The thought did cross her mind that maybe Clay or Lucky were trying to mess with her, but she quickly dismissed the idea. What would they gain from digging a huge hole on her property? Furthermore, vandalism wasn’t their style.
Gabe came over the hill in his SUV, pulled in alongside her, and got out. A pair of wraparound sunglasses covered his eyes, but his body language told her all she needed to know. He was pissed.
“I told you to wait in your truck.”
“No one’s here, Gabe, relax.”
He searched the horizon, then crouched down to have a better look at the hole. “Has anyone seen you out here?”
“Only Lucky. No one comes up here. McCreedy Ranch has its own road, and guests of Lucky’s cowboy camp enter off Highway Seventy. But it’s no secret I’ve been up here looking for the gold. By now, you have to know that nothing in Nugget is a secret.”
