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They would have be careful.
She studied her sisters for a moment. Dahlia, so sweet and shy and vulnerable; Devaney, who thought she could handle everything if she just pretended nothing was wrong until she could break down alone.
Dylan wasn’t stupid; Devaney was just as scared inside as Dylan was. Dorie, just a kid at nineteen. How could Dorie understandanyof this? “We’ll find them. And then we will know exactly whoweare.”
Because DylanBrownwasn’t even her real name.
She didn’t have any idea where to start. Except…an inn. In Wyoming.
Well, no time like the present.
Dylan wanted answers—and she wanted them now.
Her father couldn’t stop her this time.
31
Dusty neededto get out of her room. She couldn’t put her finger on it at all. But something just didn’t feel right. It hadn’t since she had driven the van into the back parking lot of the inn after the Tyler party had finally ended two nights ago.
Feel.
Maybe she was a bit more like Marin than she’d thought.
She’d check on things throughout the inn, grab a snack from the muffins Meyra had made as an experiment—her cousin was seriously on an egg-free/allergen-free baking kick, for some reason, lately—and then maybe go outside for a moment.
She had an idyllic life, she thought. She would always have a roof over her head, and food in her stomach. She had everything she needed. Had far, far more than others. But why did she hurt so much?
It probably had something to do with what had happened with Brad. Maybe she hadn’t fully dealt with it yet? It hadn’t quite been eight months yet. She had just sort of pushed it aside, focused on moving forward with her family. With her friends. Helping Nikki with the wedding, then helping her cousins and sisters with the diner and the inn, like always. Everything had just meant changes.
Maybe the snow had brought it all up to the surface in a way she wasn’t ready to think about yet. She and Nikki had been on their way to Gil’s that night. There had been snow on the roads. Dusty had been driving. Brad had followed them.
To kill Nikki.
Brad. Nikki’s husband Hunter was one of the most successful actors in Hollywood now. Brad had been his manager. Brad hadn’t wanted Hunter to fall for a small-town girl like Nikki, and ruin the good thing Brad had going on. So he’d casually decided to kill Nikki. Dusty had been with her at the time. So he’d decided to kill them both and make it look like an accident. Just like the two of them hadn’t mattered at all. Just inBrad’sway.
It had been sheer luck that had had Hunter coming up behind their wrecked truck and realizing what was happening. He hadn’t come alone. He’d had Slater Davis, big time Hollywood star, with him. Slater Davis—of all men to be out there, it had been Slater Davis.
She had been very lucky it had been—Slater was a former army cop like Ben, a three-time world-champion martial artist, six foot five and strong. Determined. Action hero in more than a dozen movies now.
He’d definitely been Dusty’s hero that night.
One of the biggest actors in Hollywood had carried Dusty through the snow, unconscious, before she’d frozen to death. Winter would always bring the memories. Make herhurtagain.
Maybe that was it—part of why she felt so unsettled since the snow had first started? That, and with what had happened to Gil and Sage, people she had known and cared about her whole life? What had happened to Junie right there in the diner? Ben’s cousin had just been taken out of the alley right behind the diner. They’d gotten lucky to get her back. Lucky Junie, Gil and Sage, Auggie and Claudia, and two helpless little girls had survived.
The knowledge of that might have just brought everything that had happened to Dusty boiling back to the surface.
She had just gotten lucky to survive. Survival hadn’t been her doing at all. Dusty barely remembered anything past the moment Brad had grabbed her, and slammed her head into the steering wheel of the truck Matt had let her drive around when she was off the clock. Her very life had been in the hands of others that night. First Brad, then…Hunter and his friend.
Slater—a man she had only met long enough to set his drink on the table in front of him at the diner once or twice.
A very terrifying man—sexy as hell, almost as hot as Ben—but one she wouldn’t have interacted with by choice. Not back then. Now he always made a point to check on her when he was in Masterson.
That complete stranger had carried her through the falling snow. They both could have frozen to death out there that night. Slater Davis had risked his life for her that night. A total stranger.
A total stranger had saved her. An acquaintance had nearly killed her.
Noneof it had been within Dusty’scontrolat all.
