Page 204 of The Billion Heirs Boxed Set
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Okay. You looked a little…freaked for a minute.”
“Nope. Fine. Just a little weird being back.” I switch topics. “The requisite warrants are in the hands of the Bridgers’ attorney, Tom Shankle. I expect we’ll have a shit ton of paperwork to pore through by morning.”
“Morning?” Jarvis chuckles. “Are you kidding? No attorney worth his salt—especially one representing a billionaire—will go easy on us. I imagine we’ll be fighting like mad dogs to get the information we need.”
I don’t reply. He’s no doubt right. Most of the time, the subjects of our investigations are only too happy to comply with our requirements. The Feds scare the pants off most people. But Chance Bridger?
He doesn’t scare easily, and I learned the hard way he’s meaner than a rattler.
Though he didn’t seem mean this morning… In the stable…
He seemed surprised to see me. Stunned.
Of course he would be. Only a masochist would return to that ranch after the caustic letter he sent me. I burned it on the road to Phoenix, but its contents are still branded in my mind.
It was fun, but it’s over. You’re good and all, but I can’t keep you. You have to know that. I’m a Bridger and you’re just another pussy I fucked at the spring.
I shake my head to clear the words out. I can’t go there again. Not now. Not when I have a job to do. Not when he threw in my face what we did at the spring. That I gave myself to him and he left a piece of him behind.
Not that I’d ever tell him.
Chance might be tainted. Cruel.
But Grady isn’t.
He’s a teenager now, with auburn hair so like his father’s.
Grady’s my son. Mine. I’ll either see Chance behind bars or in my rearview mirror. Because he’ll never know about the child we made.
He won’t get a chance to take anything else from me.
4
CHANCE
It’s been three days since Avery came to the ranch. The woman I remember was barely eighteen, but that quick visit pulled her out of adolescence to what she is now. Thirty-two.
She’s filled out, gained womanly curves I don’t remember. She still wears her hair long. The same tilt to her eyes. The curve of her cheekbones. The little scar above her right eyebrow.
I remember every inch of her, but a new version fills my mind. I could go to the police station and ask after her. Track her down to…
To what?
She didn’t want me then and doesn’t want me now.
I sigh, pulling a shirt off a hanger in my walk-in closet. The doorbell rings, soft in the distance, and I do up the buttons as I make my way to answer it. Austin and Carly are out and I haven’t seen Miles.
It’s after nine, but I’ve been up and out by six with the usual chores. This morning, a water pipe came loose in the stable and sprayed water in all directions outside the back doors. I came in to change while one of the ranch hands went to town to pick up new copper piping.
Louisa answers the door and lets Shankle, the family lawyer, in, accompanied by a man I don’t recognize. She nods to me and heads back to the kitchen where the start of some meal smells good.
I shake Shankle’s hand.
“Chance, this is Roy Jarvis, FBI.”
I nod and offer my hand to him as well. He’s in his forties with blond hair trimmed short and the pale complexion of someone who spends too much time indoors. He stands in front of the unlit fireplace, glances around the den. It’s the room closest to the front door.
