Page 70 of All in with the Maverick Montana

Stanley tapped along another batch of rocks and froze when one echoed back strangely.

Josh slipped his phone back into his pocket and joined him. Nina hurried over. The rock was about as high as Josh’s knee. “False bottom?” he said.

“Sounds like it.” Stanley gripped one side of the rock. “Give me a hand here.”

Together, Josh and Nina helped Stanley shove the rock over, exposing what was very clearly a false addition to the stone based on the color difference. Stanley whipped out a small pocketknife that dangled from his key ring and pried the bottom open.

The metal creaked and groaned, rusty after all that time of sitting in the wet earth.

When the bottom flew off, Nina gasped. Inside was a wadded-up roll of money and a folded-up note. She reached in and carefully unfolded the paper. She cleared her throat, reading it out loud. “‘You got the wrong man.’”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Stanley said.

“Do you think this means Barrett didn’t do it?” Nina said. She sounded on the verge of tears.

“I think the only thing we can be sure of is that someone believed they’d accused the wrong man,” Stanley said. “And that’s enough to question everything.”

“What d’you got there?” Mr. Stooler called, walking over. He spied the roll of money in Stan’s hand. “My God.” His eyes widened. “That should be ours, now. You hear? It was found on our property.”

“We’ll have to turn the funds over to the authorities,” Stanley said. “It’s evidence. Once that’s cleared, they can decide who to allocate it to.”

Mr. Stooler huffed a bit, but he couldn’t argue that logic.

Stanley rose to his feet. “You want me to call them out to take a look or will you?”

“Suppose I’ll do it,” Mr. Stooler said. “It’s my land anyhow.” He inclined his head and he and Stanley set off for the house.

Josh smiled as Nina smothered a grin behind her hand. She was still defending Barrett after all these years. “You do know that it’s still possible that Barrett could have put the money—and that note—there himself.”

Nina solemnly shook her head. “I’ve always thought that the Deroys’ sudden departure from Tenacity made no sense. And I’m choosing to believe that this note proves Barrett never would have done something so horrible to the town. I know there’s still so much more to the investigation but—”

“All these years later, you still have that much faith in him?” Josh asked.

She tilted her head, a funny little smile coming over her face. “Yes. Do you still have faith in you and Amy?”

Josh flinched. He knew Tenacity was a small town, he just didn’t realize how fast word about him and Amy had spread. He supposed they’d been seen out together…a lot. And he’d been hanging around the feed store more than necessary. Still, he was a little surprised that Nina knew about their relationship.

“I obviously don’t know exactly what’s going on with you two, but you really do look miserable.”

Josh sighed. “Can’t deny that.”

“Why don’t you go do something about it?”

Josh laughed despite himself. “It’s that easy, huh?”

“It is that easy. Well,” she smirked, “it’s a hell of a lot easier than unearthing false-bottomed boulders on the Stoolers’ property.”

She was right about that. And about Amy. Heck, it was the same thing Shane, Ryder and Noah had tried to tell him earlier, he’d just been too stubborn and miserable to listen. But maybe he’d just needed these little nudges in the right direction to get his act together. Because if the guys were telling him to go for it and Nina was still fighting for Barrett after all this time, then he could sure as hell fight for Amy.

He excused himself from Nina, took out his phone and dialed. But it wasn’t Amy he called. Not at first. It was his mother.

“About time, Joshua!” she said when she answered the phone. “Your father’s just about eaten his weight in pickled herring and every time we stop in a port, I get an update from Iris Strom. First you and Amy are seeing each other. Then you’re not.”

“I’m hopefully about to change that,” Josh said.

“What’s going on?”

“I’ve been a fool and it’s taken me this long to screw my head on straight, but I felt like I needed to talk to you and Dad first, so you don’t think I’m jumping into something without thinking it through first.”