Page 55 of The Moments You Were Mine
He’d been the sheriff when my dad had been a kid, holding the position for nearly four decades now. He knew everyone and everything about Rivers and its people. He didn’t fit into most small-town, law-enforcement stereotypes in that he wasn’t an asshole who had too big of an ego and territorial issues. His only objective was keeping our community safe, and he used whatever help and resources came along to make it happen.
His face was concerned as he greeted me with a tip of his hat. “Fallon.” He extended his hand toward Parker. “I didn’t realize you had a son, Parker.”
If you hadn’t spent a lifetime scrutinizing Parker the way I had, you wouldn’t have caught the flinch that crossed his face. It was a barely imperceptible flash before it was gone.
“I just recently became Theo’s guardian. He was my teammate’s son. We lost Will last month,” he responded.
Understanding crossed the sheriff’s face. “I’m damn sorry to hear that.”
For a beat, an awkward silence hung in the air that no one knew how to bridge before I purposefully stepped into the void, turning the topic back to this morning’s horrible event. “Beckett said he found a timing device of some kind?”
“We sent it off to the lab for testing,” Wylee answered, looking almost as grateful as Parker that I’d turned the conversation away from the loss of his friend. “Fire marshal found a couple more pieces of shrapnel he thinks were part of the bomb’s casing. We’ll see if we can get any prints or DNA, but I wouldn’t count on it with the heat of the blast. Still, we might get lucky and find a matching bomb signature in the fed’s database.”
“I requested the security team scour our video footage,” Kurt added, throwing a thumb in the direction of the security hut. “I figured the sheriff and Parker would want to see whatever the cameras caught.”
We all turned and headed down the worn path that led to the hut. Computer monitors and servers took up most of the room, but there was a locked gun case in the corner and a tiny kitchenette at the back. Our security team ensured we had twenty-four-hour coverage on the estate, but the hut itself was sometimes left empty while the team made their rounds in the wee hours.
We hadn’t had any significant issues at the ranch since Uncle Adam and Theresa Puzo had rained their terror on us. Sometimes, when we had a very high-profile wedding, we needed extra security to keep the fans and paparazzi at bay, and we’d had a few minor guest issues here and there, but nothing that was atypical for a resort of our size.
Our head of security, Lance, was bent over the shoulder of another team member, eyes glued to the multiple screens as we came in. He straightened and turned to greet us with the same grim look that had been on all the staff’s faces this morning. I hated it.
Dark-haired and olive-skinned, Lance had years of experience at much larger venues. Five years ago, he’d left Dad’s Vegas resort and come here so he could raise his kids in a small town like the one he’d grown up in outside Denver.
Looking at Parker, Lance crossed his arms over his chest and bit out, “Before you even ask, Parker, I’ll tell you the same thing I told your dad. We didn’t miss anything.”
“And yet we have a burned-down cabin, a slashed tractor tire, and two mutilated cows,” Parker snapped back.
Lance didn’t respond, but his eyes flashed with anger—whether it was at the situation or Parker, I couldn’t tell.
“We’ll need all the video sent to us,” Wylee told Lance. “Everything from the time the first cow showed up mutilated.”
“That’s hundreds of hours,” I said to Wylee. “You’re not staffed to crawl through that much footage.”
“We’re all-hands-on-deck, Fallon. No one in my department is sitting on their asses while you’ve got trouble here. When we’re not on shift, each of us will take turns looking through it.”
“Let me see if I can wrangle some off-the-book support to analyze the video as well,” Parker said. Then, he put his hand on the shoulder of the guy running the camera and said, “Stop! Go back.”
I eased up next to him and saw, with a shiver up my spine, the same thing he did—me going into Levi’s cabin.
I frowned. When had I last been in the cabin? Maybe when Dad had stayed there after we’d returned from San Diego? Definitely before Sadie and my siblings had shown up for my birthday and then all flown off to Australia.
“When was this?” I asked.
“Last night. 9:05,” the guy at the camera said.
Everything seemed to slow down as something pulled low in my belly. Fear mixed with confusion. “I wasn’t in the cabin last night.” I turned to Parker, repeating, “I wasn’t anywhere near it.”
“I hardly think you’d plant a device to burn down your own property,” Sheriff Wylee said, joining us. “Don’t need the money, right?” The way his voice crept up, making the statement into a question, sent another shiver over my skin and reminded me of Detective Lake in San Diego throwing the bored-little-rich-girl routine at me.
It spiked my annoyance into full fury mode. “No. I don’t need the damn money. And I wouldn’t burn down part of my legacy.”
The sheriff patted me on the shoulder. “Calm down. No one is accusing you of anything.”
But the doubt was already there. I could see it.
“I wasn’t in the damn cabin last night,” I said. “I was…” My voice trailed off. Where was I? I’d fallen asleep on the couch, hadn’t I? I’d helped bale the alfalfa yesterday, and I’d barely made it home and showered before collapsing on the couch with the television remote in hand. I’d woken up in the middle of the night with static on the screen and crawled into bed before passing out again.
“Fallon?” Parker prompted.
