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“But Rhett knew about it,” I add, confused.
“Maybe he knew what Vic was doing.”
“We need to find out what happened,” I murmur, staring at the phone. “If Aaron is going around killing people, then he needs to be stopped. That isn’t cool.”
Fallon chuckles, but it’s more a nervous chuckle. “That’s for damned sure.”
“Come on, we better leave before ...”
“Before you get busted?”
We both spin around and see Aaron standing at the door, face tight.
Oh no.
Oh shit.
This is bad.
This is really, really bad.
“SO, YOU TWO THINK YOU’RE little detectives now, do you?” Aaron says, blocking the doorway so we can’t get out.
My heart is racing, because really, I have no idea who this man is. He could be anyone, he could do anything. He’s a guard, he’s meant to be here to protect us, but that doesn’t mean a damned thing if he’s corrupt, and corruption happens no matter where you go. He could hurt us to protect this secret.
We were fools for coming here.
“We were just wondering what happened to Vic, we didn’t find anything,” Fallon says, her voice casual, but I can see she’s nervous purely by her tense expression.
“Except I stood here and listened to your whole conversation.”
Shit.
I swallow but keep it together. “We just wanted to find out what happened. We’re not interested in doing anything with that information, we don’t want to end up back in prison.”
Aaron smiles, but it’s not a nice smile, it’s a terrifyingly cold one. “You forget I just heard every word you said. You can’t think I’m going to just forget about it and let you go. The problem now is, you know that I killed Vic and I can’t have that getting out.”
“We didn’t even know Vic,” Fallon tries, her voice less confident now. “We have no interest in spilling your little secret. We honestly just wanted to know what happened.”
“Vic was working for me,” Aaron begins, as if casually telling a story, as if we’re not standing here terrified out of our minds. “I sell ... things. I have men everywhere working for me. Vic was one of them. Rhett knew about what he was doing, but he was already working for him so he overlooked it so long as it didn’t come into the ranch, but Vic decided he was going to try and double cross me so I organized to come in here and sort things out. Rhett knew about it, what he didn’t know is that when I take care of things, I take care of them.”
So Rhett didn’t know Aaron had plans to kill Vic. He figured he was going to come and sort the situation out and that would be the end of it.
Now Rhett has to deal with the backlash, too.
“I dealt with it, and Rhett made it go away to cover his own ass. The problem now is, if it gets out it comes back and affects everything he has going here. We can’t have that, now can we? So, the problem I’ve got is, what do I do with the two of you?”
This is bad.
Why did we have to come in here and act like we’re some sort of detectives?
Why didn’t we just leave it the hell alone?
“We’re not going to say anything,” I say, calmly. “We want to get on with our lives. You have our word.”
“Your word means nothing to me. You could destroy everything I’ve worked for, covered up, dealt with. I can’t have that.”
“So what are you going to do, just discard us as easily as you did Vic?” Fallon snaps, taking a step closer to me.
Aaron looks at the two of us, but before he can answer, footsteps can be heard entering the cabin. I almost cry with relief when Lake and Elias step into view. If I could cry and run to them, I probably would, but we need to keep our cool right now. More than anything, we need to stay calm.
“What’s going on here? We were looking everywhere for you two,” Lake asks, staring at us both, and then glancing at Aaron.
“We just came up here to get more alcohol, we thought Aaron might have had some good stuff in his room. You’re cutting us short down there.” Fallon grins, but as she takes my hand casually, I can feel the tremble in her fingers.
“We can’t have you gettin’ right off drunk,” Elias says. “You need to come back to the fire.”
“Okay, sure,” I say, stepping past Aaron with Fallon’s hand in mine.
He grips my arm, leaning in close and murmuring, “We’re not done.” Then in a louder tone, to cover it up, he says, “Don’t sneak off again.”
It just looks like he’s scalding us.
Nobody knows any better.
We leave that cabin and go back to the fire, but the entire time I can feel Aaron’s eyes on us. I don’t know what this means for us now, and if we should tell Rhett about it, or tell someone at least, but I do know I’m scared of Aaron and what he is capable of doing to us. Maybe if we say nothing, he’ll see we’re not going to talk and he’ll let it be? I don’t know what the right choice here is, all I know is there is a lump in my throat that is making it hard to breathe.
