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The sun had barely risen the next morning when Lainey woke up, twined around Brody like a vine. She took a deep breath, smelling his now-familiar scent and nestling closer to his warmth. She didn’t want to move. She could lay beside him all day like this, watching the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest, listening to him breathe, and memorizing everything about his body.
But she had no idea what time Phoebe would call to be picked up, so she eased out of bed, hoping not to wake Brody. Once free of the bed, she hurried into the bathroom for a shower. She was half-way through her shampoo when the door opened and Brody stepped into the shower stall with her.
“I woke up and you were gone,” he said, pulling her body against his. “I missed you.”
“I didn’t want to get up, but I don’t know what time I’ll have to get Phoebe. I wanted to be ready.”
Brody sighed as he let her go. “Yeah. And we’ve got work to do before we go get her. I want to see what’s in those files of Ron’s as soon as possible.”
“Do you think that’s what the guy was after?” she asked, rinsing her hair.
“I wondered after the last time he was here that he was after you. Thought it might be your intruder. But maybe it wasn’t you personally. Maybe he wanted Ron’s belongings.” He combed his fingers through her hair absently, as if trying to untangle it. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach at his touch.
“If it’s the person who was at the compound when Phoebe was there, maybe he’s after her. Maybe she saw something she didn’t recognize as a threat. Or important.” Brody continued to smooth his hand over her hair. “If it was Art, and he wanted Phoebe, why didn’t he just come out here and demand his daughter? We don’t have any legal right to keep her.”
The butterflies vanished, leaving Lainey’s stomach full of rocks. “I know. We need to talk about that.”
“We will. But let’s look through those files first. See what’s in them. So we can figure out if that’s what the guy was after.”
After they dressed, they grabbed a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, then headed into Brody’s office. Lainey looked around, noticing several trophies on the top of the bookcase. She wandered over and saw they were from the Helena rodeo, for calf-roping. “Wow, Brody,” she teased. “You’re a real cowboy.”
He glanced at her and wandered over to look at the trophies with her, his mouth curling up as if recalling good memories. “I was a teen. Like most ranch boys, I wanted to be a rodeo star.” He grinned. “I got pretty damn good at calf roping. Thought I was hot shit, so I tried bull riding.” He shook his head. “Did it exactly once and decided I’d stick with ranching.”
She leaned into him, nudging his shoulder. “I bet you were hot on that bull, though,” she said.
“I sure thought I was.” He curled his arm around her shoulder. “But, sadly, girls didn’t pick guys who got tossed from the bull the first time out of the chute.”
“I’m glad,” she murmured. “They saved you for me.”
He looked down at her, his eyes soft. “That they did.”
Brushing his mouth over hers, he led her back to his desk. There were chairs on both sides of the desk, and the four boxes holding Ron’s files were stacked neatly in the corner.
“Should we each take a box and look through it?” he said, swinging one of them onto his desk, then grabbing another.
“That works,” Lainey said, staring at the white banker’s boxes, wondering what secrets they held.
“Any idea of what we’re looking for?” Brody asked, setting the second box beside the first one.
“No idea. After I kicked him out, I cleaned out his file cabinet and stuck everything in these boxes. Didn’t look at anything. I was too pissed off.”
“Any idea of what we might be looking for?”
She shrugged. “No. I’m not even sure what he kept in his file cabinet.”
“Okay,” he said, lifting the lid of the box closest to him. “I’ll take this one.”
Lainey lifted the lid off her box and stared at the manila file folders. The contents of the box smelled like the aftershave Ron used, and her stomach roiled as the scent washed over her. It brought back too many memories, very few of them pleasant.
Taking a deep breath, she lifted out a stack of folders and began looking through them. After thirty minutes, she’d flipped through his receipts, realizing that he’d spent way more money than she’d realized. He must have been in debt, but she never saw the bills. He opened his own mail.
She saw nothing in the receipts that would inspire a prowler.
Sighing, she set the receipts aside and reached for the next group of folders. She flipped open the first one and stared at the magazine for a long moment. Her stomach churning, she flipped it closed and looked at the next one. “Oh, God,” she muttered, thumbing through the rest of them. “His porn stash.”
Brody looked up. “He didn’t use the internet like most people?”
“Who knows? These magazines look old. Maybe they’re from a long time ago.”
“No one’s looking for old skin magazines,” he said, reaching for another file. He opened it and stilled. Stared at whatever was in the file, then flipped past it to the next one. And the one after that. Swallowing, Brody lifted his head and stared at her, his eyes desolate. “I think I’ve found what your prowler was looking for.”
