Page 96 of Running to You

She barked a humorless laugh. “True, but I wasn’t in the program. I was an employee.”

“And your job was…?”

“To manage the finances. And let me tell you, they were raking money in. The women came thinking they’d be there a month or two. But most stayed longer, some much longer. I’m talking years.”

“Years? Who was paying for that?”

“Their families. The first three months were very expensive—tens of thousands of dollars. But then the price went down. After a year, it went down even more.”

“So it was a good deal.”

“I thought so at first, but the women were supposed to be learning how to live in the real world. Instead, a lot of them were hiding at The Ranch.”

“Was that the name of it?”

“Keller Ranch, but we just called it The Ranch. Jed and Lola wanted me to keep my distance from the residents. Jed told me they were rough, not like me. So I spent most of my time with Jed and Lola and Miss Sharon—Lola’s mother—who ran the office. Money was pouring in, much more than we needed to keep the place running. The Kellers were sort of…not as drastic as preppers, necessarily, but concerned about the economy failing. Which got us to talking about bullion.”

“Ah. Which brings us to the conversation you had with Colton.”

“Exactly. I remembered what Colton had told me about his job and suggested we start trading. They liked the idea and had a website designed, and suddenly, I was trading gold and silver online. I started small. I worked with suppliers and built relationships until I could sell a product, then buy it and have it drop-shipped to fill the order, taking the profit in the middle. That way there was little to no inventory to deal with.”

Sam sent her a smile. “You’re an impressive woman.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

It was true, but Eliza had never seen herself the way he saw her.

“Money, financial matters,” she said, “that I understand. I built a little empire, and I loved it. I felt competent and comfortable. And like a part of their family.”

“You had a family, though. A mom, anyway.”

“Yeah. A real family, as opposed to the Kellers. Their brand of family…”

The way her voice faded… They were finally getting to the meat of the story.

“It was all a lie,” she said. “My mom was manipulative.”

“Gosh, I never noticed.”

She chuckled, but it died fast. “Compared to them, Mom was on the peewee team.”

“Wow.”

“And of course I fell for it.”

“Don’t do that, Eliza. You trusted them. It’s not your fault they didn’t deserve your trust.”

“Hmm. Tell me how you feel in five minutes.” She took a breath, blew it out. Plowed on. “About six months after I relocated, I decided to contact you. I needed to contact you.”

He risked a glance, but Eliza’s face was hard to make out in the dark car. “You didn’t, though. Did you? Did I miss something?” The thought that she’d called and he’d missed it…

“They talked me out of it.”

“Why?” Whoops. There was the demanding tone he’d been trying to hold at bay.

But Eliza continued as if she hadn’t noticed. “They’re the ones who printed those photos off social media. Jed told me you’d gotten married. That you’d moved on. That obviously, you never felt for me what I felt for you.”

When Sam caught up with Jed, he was going to have to kill him.