Atonement. B.J. Daniels
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put in a call to the ranch just in case the owner might have known where Ethan was headed next. Possibly Wisdom, Montana?
When the ranch owner answered, he introduced himself as Undersheriff Dillon Lawson of Big Timber.
“Ethan Lawson, oh, you bet I remember him,” the female ranch owner said, giving Dillon a bad feeling he knew what was coming next. “He left here owing me money. Any chance you’re a relative?”
“Brother. How much does he owe you?”
“Two hundred.”
“I’ll put a check in the mail today,” Dillon said, wondering how much it was going to cost him by the time he was through looking for his twin. “Do you happen to know where he went after he left your ranch?”
“Not likely, since he left in the middle of the night. The two of them absconding in the night like the thieves they were. The other one got me for five hundred. I don’t suppose you want to pick up his tab, as well?”
“The other one?”
“Luke Blackwell. Running with him, your brother was headed for trouble. I hired Luke against my better judgment, since when I checked the ranch he’d worked for I was warned that he’d gotten involved with the rancher’s granddaughter. Luke gave me some song and dance about the girl chasing him. I weakened. Big mistake. Last I heard, Luke did some hard time in Deer Lodge. Not surprised.”
“Do you know what he went to prison for?” Dillon asked.
“Felony theft. He was caught stealing a backhoe. The bum actually tried to get me to give him a recommendation before the parole board hearing, promising to offer him a job when he got out. Like I would ever let him back on my ranch. If you’re looking for your brother, he’ll be wherever Luke went after he got out. The two were thicker than thieves.” She chuckled bitterly.
Dillon asked for her address, thanked her for the information and hung up. He quickly checked to see how Luke Blackwell had fared with the judicial system.
Luke had done only eighteen months in prison before his release. He had gotten a rancher by the name of Halbrook Truman of the Double T-Bar-Diamond to promise him a job when he got out.
The Double T-Bar-Diamond was in Big Hole country over by Wisdom, Montana. Dillon felt his heart beat a little faster. He’d never trusted coincidences. As he started to place a call to the ranch, he changed his mind. He hadn’t been to that part of southwestern Montana in years. It was only a half day’s drive, one he wouldn’t mind taking.
Also, he was curious why Halbrook Truman had hired Luke Blackwell. Felons had a hard time getting jobs. If the rancher had checked into Luke’s past at all, he would have found out just how unreliable the man was—not to mention that he’d gone to prison for theft. But maybe Luke had proved he could change and now still worked at the ranch.
With Sheriff Frank Curry back at work, there was no reason Dillon couldn’t follow up on this. He called the cell phone number Tessa Winters had given him before he’d left her at the ranch. She answered on the second ring, sounding breathless.
“Are you all right?” he asked alarmed.
“Fine, I left my cell phone on the porch. I was down at the corral admiring your horses.”
With relief, he asked, “Did Ethan ever mention working on a ranch called the Double T-Bar-Diamond?” He heard her start to say no just before he quickly added, “For a man named Halbrook Truman?”
“Halbrook,” she said. “I have heard that name. Who is he?”
“A rancher over in western Montana. I think Ethan might have worked for him before he left for Arizona. I’m going over there to talk to him.”
“Not without me.”
He smiled and shook his head, telling himself he should have known she wouldn’t sit tight for long. The woman was resolute. Look how she’d found him. He wondered if he would have ever known there was even a chance Ethan was alive if she hadn’t shown up at his door.
“In that case, how do you feel about a road trip? It will also give us a chance to talk.” There was so much he wanted to know. About Ethan—and whatever trouble his twin had gotten himself into.
But he was also very curious about Tessa Winters.
CHAPTER SIX
DILLON GLANCED AT the young pregnant woman in his passenger seat. Not for the first time, he saw her turn to look behind them.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
She seemed startled by the question and reticent to answer. “You’ll think I’m silly, but I’ve had the strangest feeling I was being followed.”
“All the way from California?”
“Crazy, huh?”
Maybe. Maybe not. Who knew what kind of people his brother had gotten involved with? It scared him, though, to think that the trouble might have followed her.
“You said on the phone earlier that you recognized the name Halbrook,” he said.
She nodded. “A man stopped by a day or two before Ethan left. Ethan went outside to talk to him, but I overheard them arguing. Ethan mentioned the name Halbrook. It’s unusual enough, I remembered it.”
“Did you ask Ethan what the argument was about?”
“He told me he owed the man money. I asked how much and suggested he use the money I had in savings to pay the man. I hadn’t liked the look of the man and didn’t want him coming back around.”
“Ethan didn’t jump at that?”
“He said he didn’t want my money, that it was for our house.” She scoffed at that now. “He knew I’d put the money in both our names. Talk about trusting.”
“Tell me about you,” Dillon said, and glanced over at her. “If you don’t mind.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you’d like to share with me.”
* * *
TESSA THOUGHT ABOUT that for a moment. More to the point, what did she really know about Dillon? He wasn’t his brother—that much was clear. He was a man who worked both as an undersheriff and at his own ranch. He was kind and generous and compassionate, and he’d taken an entirely different route in life than his brother had.
What scared her was that in Dillon she glimpsed what she had wanted to see in his twin. She knew it was crazy, but Ethan had been just enough like his brother that she felt she already knew Dillon. She trusted him, and trust didn’t come easily to her. Ethan’s betrayal had only made her less trusting.
“I was born and raised in California. My parents were killed in a car wreck when I was two. I was in the car, but I miraculously survived. A neighbor lady took me in and raised me until her death, when I was sixteen. After that, I was on my own.” She’d purposely left out the part about the foster homes the county had put her in. She’d barely survived those with her life. That had been the real miracle.
Dillon studied her for a moment before turning back to his driving. He seemed to sense the parts she’d left out and was kind enough not to ask.
“You want more for your daughter,” he said after a moment.
“Of course I do,” she said. “I suppose that is the real reason I came all this way looking for Ethan. I wanted to give him another chance to be a father to our daughter.”
“What about another chance with you?”
She shook her head. “He used up his last chance when he left the way he did.”
* * *
DILLON COULD SEE what his brother had seen in Tessa. Ethan would have liked her independence,