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Worry tightened my heart into a fist.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked for the tenth time.
“Yes, I’m sure. I only heard a little bang, and only felt a little bump, but I didn’t get broken.” Her voice was soft yet tinkling, barely touching the air, timidness oozing out of every pore of her tiny body.
Pain stabbed me so deep I nearly buckled.
I hated that I didn’t know how to break through, how to reach her, how to bring her out of this.
Hated that I couldn’t fucking fix it, especially when I was the cause of it.
I swallowed it back and forced myself to keep it together, doing my best to keep the rigidness out of my voice. “Good. That’s good. But I need you to tell me if you are ever hurt or feel bad. No matter what the situation is. Do you understand?”
I didn’t so much ask her as tell her as I pulled out onto the street.
“Okay,” she mumbled with the doll pressed to her face.
God, I was fucking this up. My teeth ground as an uncomfortable silence moved through the cab, then I nearly jolted when her tiny voice whispered, “Are you hurt?”
Regret pilfered through my nose. It probably hadn’t helped that I’d snarled and snapped a slew of curses when the truck had rammed into us.
“I’m fine, Evelyn. I promise that I’m fine. You don’t ever have to worry about me, okay?”
She was back to gnawing her bottom lip in uncertainty.
She clearly didn’t believe me.
I wondered if she’d ever believe it of anyone.
“Let’s just get back to the house, and you can get ready, okay?” As if that would fix everything.
“Okay.” Her voice perked up a little at that.
My phone rang through the speakers, and my teeth gnashed again at the name that showed on the screen.
I was supposed to have heard from him two days ago.
Diverting the Bluetooth, I snapped up my cell and pressed it to my ear, my voice low and harsh because this wasn’t a conversation Evelyn needed to hear. “Allen, what did you find?”
From the other end of the line, my private investigator cleared his throat. “I dug around on Tarek Paltrow, pushed some buttons. Gut tells me he was not responsible.”
Goddamn it.
My hand tightened on the phone, rage clouding my sight.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
My teeth ground harder. I’d been through every one of our family’s enemies. Sifted through every connection. Every deal gone bad, and we’d come up empty.
But someone had to be responsible, and it was my gut telling me it was Paltrow or someone associated to that family. No one hated me as much as them.
“This wasn’t random,” I gritted out.
“We are regrouping, going back to the beginning to see what we can find. And we will find something,” he promised.
“I want the one responsible found, and I want him now.”
“It’s not that simple, Caleb. You know that.”
“It is. Someone sought revenge on my family, and I want to know who it is,” I grated, my voice low and barely controlled.
“I’m doing everything I can.”
Frustration carved a canyon through my spirit. “I’ll be in Seattle next week. I want every detail you have, a list of every fucking person my father was involved with. From the beginning.”
Because apparently, if I wanted something done, I had to do it myself.
THREE
PAISLEY
Maybe blew a rumbly path up the two-lane road. I’d traveled about thirty miles out of town in the direction of Hutchins Ranch, and I was finally coming up on the turnoff. I glanced at the dial clock on the dash.
My stomach twisted.
Crap.
I was fifteen minutes late.
Not that I didn’t already know I was going to be, but I guessed I’d been praying for some kind of osmosis or teleportation or maybe just a dose of good luck to get me here on time.
It wasn’t like I was going to cut out going back by my grandpa’s house before coming here. He was my priority, and he’d needed that prescription this morning and something to eat for lunch while I was away.
When I’d returned to Time River two months ago, I’d moved back in with him, needing a place to stay until I got back on my feet. He’d welcomed me, the way I knew he would, and I was grateful it gave me the chance to look out for him now that he was alone.
I wasn’t about to neglect that responsibility this morning when the doctor’s office had called and said he needed to up his heart medication.
Still, I was all sweaty and anxious.
This wasn’t exactly the best first impression I could give.
Slowing, I eased Maybe onto the wide dirt drive that was marked with a big wooden sign overhead that read Hutchins Ranch.
I’d passed by the turnoff a thousand times, but I’d never actually been out onto the property. For at least a century, it had belonged to the Hutchins family. It had been passed down from generation to generation, but the last owner had had no children, and when she’d passed, it’d been put on the market.
