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“You came,” his father rasped, his head bobbing slightly as his thin lips grimaced into a macabre smile. “Thank you, son.”
He reached out and placed a hand over his father’s. It felt like bird wings or dried fall leaves. He feared he might break the brittle bones. His father’s eyes filled as Pickett felt his own vision blur.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DUFFYFELTEVENmore unsettled after the phone call with Oakley. He’d heard something in her voice and now wished he’d asked her about her news. She’d almost sounded...scared. Oakley was always so strong, so fearless, he couldn’t imagine what might have scared her.
Had to be her family. He hoped that what he’d heard in her voice had more to do with that, than her missing Pickett. It couldn’t be easy to be around a brother who had shot her. Charlotte wasn’t a warm, nurturing mother by a long shot, but when it came to CJ and even her other boys, she at least was kind. He told himself not to worry about what he thought he’d heard in Oakley’s voice.
Instead, he concentrated on tonight. After what he’d thought he’d seen between her and Pickett, he couldn’t wait any longer. He would finally move his relationship with Oakley from friend to hopefully lover.
He’d had so few friend relationships with women that he didn’t really know how to approach this, though. The one time he’d called Oakley suggesting they go to Billings to a movie, she’d called Pickett and asked him along as if the three of them were inseparable.
Duffy had figured she just wasn’t ready yet. His way had always been direct, believing that was what women liked. At least it had worked on the women he’d known. But Oakley was different, he reminded himself. Then again, he suspected Pickett had somehow moved from friend to something else with her.
But Pickett wasn’t here tonight.
Duffy would show her exactly how he felt. He wasn’t too worried since few women had ever turned him down. He knew that Oakley liked him. She’d even said that she loved him—and Pickett—a few times. Even though he’d known she meant as friends. He told himself that he wasn’t worried about Pickett and didn’t see him as real competition, even though he was his best friend.
Putting the thought of Oakley aside, he realized he still had time before he met her at their spot. At the back of his mind was concern for Cooper. Leann Hayes’s death and the discovery of Rory Eastwood’s pickup in that reservoir kept niggling at him. Had the sheriff discovered a link between the two? Again, he wondered if he should warn his brother about this latest development.
But he realized as he grabbed his Stetson and headed for the door, that he shouldn’t call his brother until he had more facts.
THESHERIFFHADso much on his mind that he didn’t hear the tap at his door. The one thing he didn’t need was more trouble.
“Got a minute?”
He looked up to see Duffy McKenna standing there, his hat in his hand. Without waiting for an answer, the cowboy came on in, closing the door behind him.
From the look on Duffy’s face, Stuart could tell he probably didn’t want to hear this. He wasn’t sure he was up to more problems at the moment, but he waved him into a chair and waited. As Cooper’s kid brother, Duffy had been a pain in the butt growing up. Stuart and Cooper used to ditch him when they were all younger. Two years younger than Coop, Duffy had been a snot-nosed kid they hadn’t wanted tagging along.
Stuart studied him now, realizing it had been a long while since Duffy had followed them around, no longer interested in what his older brother and best friend were up to. Duffy had grown into a good-looking son of a wealthy rancher. If the rumors were true, he had a way with women. He was actually better looking than his brother Cooper, which was saying a lot.
The sheriff felt envy raise its ugly head. Not only did the McKenna boys have everything their hearts desired, but they also had the looks. Growing up as the son of the local sheriff, Stu had often wondered why he couldn’t have been born into a ranch family like his best friend.Just bad luck,he thought.
“What can I do for you, Duffy?”
“That private investigator who’s in town?”
“Jason Murdock?”
Duffy nodded. “He thinks there was a man Leann Hayes was planning to run away with and it was Rory Eastwood.”
Stu leaned back in his chair. “And you care about what some PI thinks because...”
“If it’s true, then it could put Cooper in jeopardy again.”
He studied the cowboy, a little surprised that he was concerning himself with this. Talk around the area was that this McKenna wanted nothing to do with ranching, that there wasn’t a serious bone in his body, that all he cared about was dating his way through the female population of the county.
But apparently, he cared about Cooper.
What surprised Stu even more was that Duffy had connected all the dots and come up with the same conclusion the PI had. “We don’t even know there was a man.”
“Did you find anything in his pickup to connect him with Leann?”
Duffy had apparently given this some thought. “The state forensic team will be going over the pickup looking for any evidence once they get here. All I can tell you is that Rory Eastwood appeared to be leaving town since his belongings were in the truck.” He only told him that because he was sure that news had already circulated through the entire river basin.
“Where’s his body?”
