Branded

“Should be able to get some cattle soon,” he said now, smiling at her. “Just a big enough herd to make a little profit and keep us fed.” His smile fell. “Rough day?”

“Had to go out to the Chisholm place,” she said.

“Chisholm, huh.”

“Colton Chisholm called the Sheriff’s Department because he found his former girlfriend’s purse buried in a spot the two of them used to meet fourteen years ago. There’s a crime tech team searching for her remains as we speak.”

“Is that right?”

She shot him a warning look.

“Sorry,” he said, holding up his hands. “I know that boy drove you crazy but you held your own and quite frankly, I think—”

“I know what you thought,” she said, cutting him off. Her father had told her she had to learn to fight her own battles. And she had. She knew he believed it had made her stronger, being raised like a son instead of a daughter.

But then he’d also thought that Colton Chisholm was just trying to get her attention all those years ago. Well, he certainly had her attention now.

Chapter Three

Colton felt as if he’d been kicked in the chest by a mule. All these years her parents had believed she was alive because of letters that weren’t from her at all?

“How could you believe the letters were from Jessica?” he demanded.

Millie was crying and wringing her hands in the cloth of her apron. Her husband looked as if he was trying to restrain himself. Colton was glad he hadn’t opted to come here without the deputy because he was having the same problem not going for Sid Granger’s throat.

“A person’s handwriting can change,” Millie was saying through her tears.

“If she was alive, why wouldn’t she call?” Colton demanded. “Why was Jessica so afraid to let her own family know where she was unless she hated you so much—”

“You punk!” Sid Granger sprang to his feet. “It was you she was trying to get away from.”

“Why would Jessica send me a letter asking me to run away with her if I was the problem?” Colton demanded, not backing down as he, too, shot to his feet.

“Colton,” the deputy warned as she stepped between them again. “Mr. Granger, I need to know why you’re so angry at Mr. Chisholm.”

Colton narrowed his gaze at her. Clearly, she was looking for just one more reason to hang him, but he stepped back, raising his hands in surrender.

“What was it you thought Mr. Chisholm did to your daughter?” Halley asked again.

Sid Granger seemed to have trouble speaking. He swallowed several times, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Tears filled his eyes. He hastily brushed them away with his shirtsleeve. Anger reddened his face. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“He got her pregnant,” Millie said from the rocker where she’d been sitting crying.

Colton took the news like a blow. He lowered himself to the couch. Looking up, he saw the deputy’s face. She’d obviously been anticipating something like this. Was this the news Jessica had wanted to tell him that night?

“He knocked her up and refused to marry her,” Sid finally managed to get out.

“No!” Colton bellowed. “That’s a lie. I didn’t know. She never …” His voice broke with emotion as it sank in. “I didn’t know,” he said more to himself than to the people in the room. He could feel Halley’s gaze on him. He doubted she believed him any more than Sid Granger did.

“As Mr. Chisholm said, your daughter wrote him a letter before the night she was to leave,” the deputy was saying. “That letter was lost and only delivered today. In the letter, she said she wanted him to run away with her. Do you know if she met him that night?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Sid snapped. “He’s sitting right there.”

“I’m asking you. When was the last time you saw your daughter?”

Millie spoke up from where the rocker. “I saw her that afternoon. She said she needed to run an errand. I wouldn’t let her take the car so she had her friend Twyla pick her up.”

“Twyla?” Halley asked.

“Twyla Reynolds.” Millie looked to Sid. He had sat back down again and now had one arm over his face. “Sid, when was the last time you saw Jessica?”

“That evening after she came home,” he said, his words muffled. “She said she was going to bed. I just assumed …”

“You have to understand,” Millie said. “The letters … We wanted to believe that she was alive. If I noticed something different about the way she wrote, I just thought it was because she’d changed over the years.”

“Didn’t you ever wonder what she’d done with the baby?” Colton asked, still angry because something had been wrong in this house or Jessica would never have been at their secret spot that night. She would never have needed to run away. She would still be alive today.

He could see that Deputy Halley Robinson was asking questions as if she still thought Jessica might be alive. She was the only person in this room, though, who believed that now.

“I’d hoped that she had the baby and was raising our grandchild …” Millie looked away.

“I’d like to have a handwriting expert look at the letters that were sent to you,” Halley said. “If you get any more, please try not to handle them so we can dust them for prints.”

Millie nodded distractedly. “We weren’t due to get another one for almost a year. I would imagine they will stop coming now.”

Only if the killer finds out that Jessica’s disappearance is being investigated, Colton thought. But the way news spread in this county, if the killer was still around, he would know soon enough.

“Do you have anything Jessica wrote before she left that we could compare it to?” Halley was asking.

Millie pushed herself to her feet. “I’m sure there is something in her room. It’s just as she left it.”

Colton started to rise to follow the deputy and Millie upstairs to Jessica’s room, but Sid Granger stopped him.

“You aren’t going in her room,” Sid said, blocking his way. “If you hadn’t gotten her pregnant …”

“Why don’t you wait outside,” Halley suggested to Colton.

He could have put up a fight, but he didn’t have any fight left in him and there was nothing more to accomplish in this house, even if he could stand another moment in it. All he could think about was Jessica. She had been pregnant with his baby. But they’d been so careful. Not that any of that mattered now.

She must have been planning to tell him about the baby that night. Hadn’t she realized that he would have been excited about the prospect of being a father? He would never have deserted her. Never.

As he left the house, he tried to swallow the lump in his throat at the realization that if he was right and Jessica had never left the spot under the trees that night, then his baby had died with her.

“I think I have everything I need for now,” Halley said a few moments later as she and Millie came out through the screen door to the porch and started down the steps to where Colton was waiting.

As she headed for her patrol SUV parked in the yard, she shot him a look. He could tell that she’d found more of Jessica’s handwriting and it matched the letter he’d received fourteen years too late—not the ones someone had been sending her parents in the interim.

“I’ll let you know what we find out,” the deputy promised Millie who’d followed them as far as the vehicle and stood looking even smaller and even more terrified.