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“No,” I said regretfully and rubbed my face. “Now, I wished I had. We’ve had vandals here a time or two and harmless kids who do silly dares, and we believed it was one of those.”
“I see,” she replied. “Mr. Maxwell, who are your enemies?”
My head titled. “Isn’t the question, do I have enemies?”
“By nature of your status and wealth, you have enemies,” Juliann replied frankly. “Some are just envious, some are outright hateful, but those are a few who hate you from afar. The dangerous ones are the ones who are closer and pretend to smile with you.”
“Oh, the one I can tell you about has never smiled at me,” I replied. “Brandon West, who owns the ranch next to mine, has outrightly stated he hates me. Even worse, I just won a contract he was frothing at the mouth for.”
As we returned to the calf shed, I told her about the contract and Brandon’s and mine’s interaction. When we stepped into the shed, the techs shook their heads, and one stood up with a vial in her hand.
“Detective, a screen test shows enough pesticide to kill a two-thousand-pound bull in an hour,” one of them, a man, said. “Imagine what happened in minutes with the calves.”
“And prints?” she asked. “Whole, partials, anything?”
“No,” he said. “Whoever did this was smart and took countermeasures. There were no prints, fibers, hairs, spit, or nothing to identify who they are.”
“Can you identify the chemicals?” Juliann asked. “Perhaps we can work with that?”
“We can run deeper searches in the lab,” he replied. “Most likely, we will be able to identify the specific makeup.”
“I’ll take it from there.” She nodded. “Can one of you show me where you think the break-in may have come from?”
Ben tipped his hat. “Right this way, miss.”
When they went off, I found Rayna and went to her side. With my back to my guys, I let my boss's mask fall momentarily. She saw the flashes of worry and fear I would not dare show anyone else. In the next moment, my expression firmed.
“I should have reported the first incident,” I said. “It was stupid of me not to have done so.”
She rested a hand on my arm. “You’re doing it now, and if these attacks continue, you’ll have a trail of evidence. Eventually, something would be traced back to West if he is behind these things.”
“My gut tells me he is, and I am never wrong,” I replied, returning to the group. “He’s pulled some petty stuff in the past, but this is twice those. For him to devolve into killing my stock is a leap and bound over what he’s previously done, and I suspect he is just starting.”
“What—” she looked around, disbelief painted on her face. “—could be worse than this?”
“Believe me, Rayna, things will get worse,” I said grimly. “I just don’t want to know what he’ll do next.”
ChapterTwenty
Rayna
“We found how they got in,” the detective strode back to us. “Come with me.”
John did not hesitate to follow, nor did I. We went to the back part of the shed, where there were mostly pallets for feed and spare buckets. Above was a lattice-grilled section that now swung free with the wind outside.
The space was at least a foot and a half wide and two feet long. Someone had to be very slender and flexible to have used that as the backdoor. Another forensic person came up with us, and when the detective asked for a ladder, John got one for her.
“Fingerprint kit,” she asked the guy and took a small box from the man. Detective Juliann climbed up to the window and began dusting.
I turned to look around, trying to see if there were any more points of entry, and then my eyes landed on a blinking camera. What? Had John not remembered that?
“John,” I grabbed his shoulder. “You’ve got cameras.”
He looked shell-shocked, and his head snapped up. “Jesus. I—” he spun. “Ben, the relays for the cameras are backed up for how long?”
“Forty-eight hours, boss.” Ben’s lips pressed tight, and he looked a bit taken aback as well as he plopped his hat on. “I’ll go check these servers. Scotty, you’re the whiz. Come with me.”
“I’ll be seeing those tapes, too,” Detective Juliann replied. “It might help.”
