by Nicole Snow
I angle my head, looking up at the gorgeous man sitting so tall and proud on Plath’s back. “So you missed me, huh?”
“A hell of a lot, honey. More than that, too. Think we need to do some talkin’, but for now...” He offers me his hand. “C’mon. Let’s help the boys finish rounding up the trash before Langley gets here.”
I grin and slip my hand into his, savoring the sweet thrill of his voice, his touch, his strength as he lifts me up into the saddle effortlessly, settling me in front of him with his thighs flanking mine and his body wrapped hot around me.
One thing’s for sure.
Holt sure knows the way to my heart.
Maybe it’s a path laid in the blood of my enemies instead of rose petals.
But who wouldn’t love a man who gives her first dibs at vengeance?
24
Time to Pony Up (Holt)
It’s a few more days before Libby and I get to have that talk.
I haven’t even figured out what I want to say to her that won’t have me sounding like an addled, lovestruck idiot.
Falling all over myself to tell her how much I love her, need her, want her to stay in my life.
How bad I want to help her turn that ranch into a home full of light, laughter, and family.
We’ve been a little busy for heart-to-hearts, handling the fallout of that mess in Ursa, and then passing out stone-cold tired next to each other at night.
Libby snores a tiny bit in her sleep when she’s that exhausted.
No plans to tell her—I like living.
Frankly, I’m amazed we even survived.
Sure, Declan’s men were chickens who turned tail and ran.
Libby almost outdid a whole crew of heroes and put the fear of pint-sized firecrackers into those boys that night.
After that dustup, it’s mostly been dealing with the police.
A very put-out Langley, who’s sick of this town’s bad habit of leaving him out of the loop until it boils over and someone needs to clean it up and put a nice, neat legal stamp on things after asses have been kicked.
It couldn’t be helped.
We also couldn’t hold back the truth anymore with Declan and his guys tied up, then turned over to the police.
Gerald Bostrom’s bones finally came to light.
Nothing we could do except turn everything over to law enforcement and tell Langley the truth about Ursa.
That Libby knew about the dead body, and so did her dad.
We just left out the part about Mark Potter killing the guy.
That’s a detail he can figure out on his own. Hell, maybe it’s his shot at sussing out loose ends we couldn’t.
I can’t blame Libby for being nervous as hell—especially when Langley calls and says he wants to talk to us in Ursa.
It could mean nothing.
It could mean everything.
It could rip apart her life and her world.
So I’ve gotta be the strong one today.
While she’s a jittery mess, bouncing off the walls, I try to keep it together quiet and steady.
I hold her hand tight, until I’ve got to let her go to hand her up into Frost’s saddle and mount up on Plath.
The road through the pass has actually been cleared out pretty well in the last few days.
It’s the shortest path to the ghost town, and the police have been driving in and out a lot. I don’t even know what the boys did to the tires to get that big honking fire truck through the brush.
Still, horseback’s the easiest way for us. We make good time trotting down the packed earth under the bright morning sun.
We hear the noise of investigators still working over the town and trying to figure out what happened long before we break around the last bend.
I slow Plath, nudging her over until my knee bumps Libby’s thigh and Frost’s flank. I reach over to capture her hand.
“You sure you’re ready for this talk?” I ask as our horses jounce to a halt. “If it turns out to be...you know.”
Her eyes are a little too wide, but there’s no doubt or hesitation in them as she squeezes my hand and nods.
“I’ve put this off too long. Whatever it is, I’ll face it. I know I can face it with you, Holt.”
Hearing her say that fills me with a joy I can’t describe.
I hope I’ll always be worthy of this wild woman’s faith.
I know I’ll always aim to keep it.
We hold hands as long as we can manage while mounted, heading forward to take those last few yards into town at a slow, steady walk.
There’s crime scene tape everywhere.
Mostly around the half-demolished church, the graveyard, and the saloon.
A couple of cop cars, a forensics van from the FBI, people in uniforms and jackets with alphabet agency patches slowly picking things over with gloved hands, taking photos and tagging evidence.
Sheriff Langley sticks out like a sore thumb in his old-school sheriff’s browns.
He’s standing around uselessly, just watching people with his gloved thumbs stuck in his belt loops.
When he catches sight of us, though, he waves like we’re showing up for a picnic instead of stopping by a crime scene as witnesses.
Libby and I exchange dry looks, then dismount and get the horses hitched up.
At least if Langley’s his usual cheeky self, it’s probably not bad news.
Probably.
By the time we’re on the ground, he’s come stomping over to us on his pointy-toed cowboy boots.
“Morning, Libby, Holt,” he says. “Good of you to come out.”
“No problem, Sheriff,” I say.
Libby takes a deep breath, scrubbing her hands on her thighs, trying to force a smile.
“Morning, Sheriff,” she says sweetly. “You have something to show us?”
“Right this way.” He walks across the dusty road to where his cruiser’s parked.
Several evidence boxes are stacked on the trunk, a bunch of old ledgers and books piled inside. While we’re walking, Langley talks over his shoulder.
“There was this lectern that got shot open and busted up during your mess with that Eckhard guy. Found a bunch of old church records in it...but found some stuff I think belonged to Mark Potter, too, and might have something to do with the case. Figured you could confirm.”
Libby darts me a nervous look. I give back a warm smile.
It’ll be okay.
I know it will.
“Okay,” she says a bit breathlessly. “Let me take a look.”
Langley rummages inside the box, then comes up with a slim journal, leather-bound like the others, and passes it to Libby.
When she edges closer, holding the thing like it’s burning her, I don’t hesitate to wrap my arm around her shoulders, gathering her up.
Anything to support her.
I watch with my heart beating to kill as she flips the pages open.
It’s not as big a scribbled mess as the others.
It’s mostly a lot of other pages, all taped in. It takes me a minute to realize what I’m looking at.
More lab test results on the rock, I think, from various places all over the country.
Multiple independent assessments confirming it’s exactly what Mark Potter thought.
A visitor from another world. Worth far more than Bostrom would’ve paid him, if he’d pulled off his double-cross.
There’s stuff on Bostrom, too.
Damning stuff, illicit deals on antique goods with falsified receipts worse than the government’s infamous golden toilets. Stuff that’s clearly a lie to cover for other purchases.
I also see what looks like someone’s fudged accounting records, plus several newspaper clippings about valuables going missing from museums all across the Pacific Northwest.
He’s even got Polaroids.
Guess Mark did his homework on Bostrom.
If I’m being honest...it doesn’t look good.
Almost looks lik
e Mark was fixated on Gerald Bostrom.
And if Bostrom has any surviving kin, I can easily see them using it to spin a story of Mark being paranoid and obsessed, building up a narrative in his head until he shot without cause.
I start to say something to Libby, anything to offer comfort, but her expression looks weird.
She’s numb, flipping through more pages, and when I make a single sound, she holds a hand up sharply, shaking her head.
I shut up quick and give her silence.
Finally, she stops, like she knows what she’s looking for, and here it is.
It’s just a few lines on a page.
One of Mark’s silly poems, I guess.
But I feel my world shift when I read the title.
He Shot First.
No fucking way.
It’s like the sky opens up with a message from the great beyond. What Mark’s been trying to tell us all this time.
Crowding Libby, both of us barely breathing, we read it together.
Mark Potter will never go down as a good poet.
It reads almost like an elegy, a lament for the dead, or even a song.
It’s a story about a man finding a cursed blood stone here in this dead little town and shooting a man who tried to double-cross him and kill him.
The hero of the poem realizes all the rock can ever bring is greed and death.
He vows he’ll throw it off a cliff...but there’s something almost ominous in the way it casts its spell over him, and he keeps it instead.
He cuts away a fragment to try to break the curse, turning it into something good by grinding a piece of it down into polished gemstones, setting them into a necklace for his daughter.
Giving the stone to the stars, and the stars to her eyes, he writes.
Libby catches a breath, one hand drifting up to her little necklace and the polished red bits inside.
“Holy Toledo. So I’ve been...wearing a piece of the stars around my neck my whole life, and I never realized it?” she whispers, her voice breaking. “A piece of this?”
“Seems like it.” I squeeze her tighter. “But look what he keeps coming back to, sweetheart. What he says over and over again. Bostrom shot first.”
She lifts her head, looking up at me with eyes that glimmer with something that might almost be hope. “If...if Bostrom shot at Dad first...”
“It was self-defense, Libby,” I finish, while her eyes widen. “He wasn’t a bad man. Mark shot that shady fuck defending himself, and maybe his family too. Who knows what he’d have done if he’d killed your old man out there with no witnesses. Mark had to save his own life, maybe even others.”
Libby goes quiet. “Better than nothing, I guess, but it’s still just a poem. One-sided, even if I believe it. Not proof.”
Langley clears his throat, sounding almost embarrassed.
“Yeah, about that...I need to show y’all something.” He ducks his head. “Come out here, please.”
He turns to lead us toward the saloon with a murmur to mind your step as we move around the evidence markers and crime scene tape.
Inside, the whole saloon’s been covered over with tape and forensics markers—including something on the wall I hadn’t noticed before, marked by a bit of orange tape and a scrap of paper.
“There,” Langley says, nodding toward the wall.
It’s a bullet hole.
I don’t even need to get closer to tell.
Someone shot there, all right, and it looks like it came from a gun fired not too far from the remains of Gerald Bostrom.
Libby goes pale. “He...he said find the gun.”
“And we did, Miss Liberty,” Langley drawls. “The boys pulled an old Smith & Wesson out of the debris behind the bar, crushed under the spot where a shelf collapsed. Probably went flying when he got shot. Near as the forensics folks can piece together, someone was standing right where that bullet hole was. Dead guy shot at ’em, missed, and hit the wall right where we pulled out a slug matching that Smith & Wesson. And then the guy standing here shot back, leaving the fella in the suit to rot with a shotgun slug in his chest.” He squints at Libby.
My hands go to her shoulders, holding her up, because I can tell she’s about to faint.
“Easy, honey,” I whisper.
“Mark was real fond of shotguns for defending the homestead, wasn’t he?” Langley asks.
“Y-yeah!” Libby says, pressing her fingers over her mouth sharply, breathing in a hard rattle. “He s-sure was.”
There’s only a half-second warning in her eyes spilling over before she breaks.
The woman just busts out sobbing, turning and flinging herself into me, and no matter how tiny she is, she nearly knocks me clean over.
I catch her with an oof, then wrap my arms around her tight, my chest seizing. “Libby, what’s wrong—”
“I’m happy!” she belts out, even as she shows her joy by beating her fists against my chest, overwhelmed with emotion. Not gonna lie, she’s smacking me like a little twister, but I’m not letting her go. “Oh my God. I knew it. Knew he was a good man, I knew it, I knew it...Gerald freaking Bostrom shot first.”
That’s when Libby starts jumping up and down, using my shoulders for balance.
I can’t help but smile, seeing her this happy.
“Yeah, he did,” I say and kiss her hair, letting her release all the pent-up emotion. “Now we know it for a fact, and everything’s gonna be a-okay.”
Even if I don’t know how.
There’s still her issue with the bank, the taxes, not to mention having to start from square one with Silverton Construction.
Still, I wonder...could that damn Mars rock help?
If it was really worth killing and dying over, maybe it’s as cursed as Mark Potter thought.
Maybe we should find our own way.
Then again, maybe that thing could finally do some good.
It’s like a whole new world by the time we leave Ursa.
Instead of going back to the ranch house, we go for a ride.
I think we both need it, and so do the horses.
We chatter back and forth about how we can’t wait to hear Declan’s put away for life. Probably won’t take long.
Sheriff Langley told us feelers started coming from other states for Declan Ekhard almost as soon as his ass was booked and we gave our statements. The trail of warrants he’s left all over the continent swindling millions of dollars out of hardworking folks should do a fine job of keeping him locked up.
And if they don’t, the human trafficking cases he’s been involved with will. Found out he hauled illicit cargo a few times for Jupiter Oil, a shady and now defunct entity dealing kidnapped girls on the black market. They went down last year in North Dakota and made national news for the hell they raised.
Thankfully, there’s only so much Declan talk worth blabbing about when his thieving ass isn’t our worry anymore.
We’re laughing as we race each other along the plains below the cliffs, then slow as we take the trails that start to wind up to the upper bluffs.
Libby looks brighter than I’ve ever seen her.
There hasn’t been a dull moment since I met her, not since I came back to Heart’s Edge, when she hasn’t been under pressure.
Even so, she’s been full of fire that never went out.
And now she’s free to burn all the brighter, her face open and fresh and full of joy, her eyes glittering. She’s let her hair down, this tumbling mess around her shoulders the soft summer breeze picks up and threads out behind her like spun gold, tumbling and waving everywhere.
She sits easy in the saddle, the tension gone from her body, leaving her moving fluidly with Frost’s gait, her hands light and sure on the reins.
Libby’s this woman of wild extremes.
And I don’t think anyone could blame me for falling head over heels in love with her stubborn, crazy ass.
We’re almost to the cliffs behind the Charming Inn, following well-worn paths
where the trail widens in front of us. We can ride side by side without crowding.
She reaches over and catches my hand, squeezing it with a look full of so much warmth it stops my heart, before slowly drawing away to take her reins in both hands again.
“So,” she says lightly. “What the hell do I do with that rock?”
“Toss it over a cliff? That’s what your old man wanted. Doesn’t seem to do much but bring ruin and misery. Then again...”
“Yeah, it kinda saved our asses, too,” she chuckles. “God, I almost want to sell it. I mean, Sierra’s let up, but there’s still the bank, and I don’t know how I’m going to fight them off forever, Holt.”
“Your choice, woman. Whatever you decide to do with it, I’ll be standing by your side.”
We’re breaking out into the sunlight now, stepping out of the trees and into the field of flowers behind the inn, leading up to the cliffs where every lover in the history of the town wished for their forever.
I hadn’t meant to bring her here today.
It’s almost fitting that we’ve found our way.
I dismount from Plath, swinging myself down and holding a hand lightly on the mare’s neck to keep her steady, but my eyes are just for Libby as I look at her glowing on Frost’s back.
“Look,” I say. “You don’t need to sell the damn rock tomorrow. Or worry about money at all. Pulling together, we can manage. We can figure out the debt. You’ve got me now, and I’ll put in everything if it’ll help you.”
Libby gives me a wry, affectionate look. “Um, I hate to break the news but...you’re about to be broke after giving up that mega-mall contract.”
“Alaska’s working on more contracts in Heart’s Edge and five towns over. Maybe things will get a bit tight while I build out our work, but I can still help, Libby.” I offer her my hand.
I start off into the sunset then, knowing something deep down in all this chaos.
This is the perfect place.
Next time we’re out here, I’ll have a better reason for her to smile.
Months Later
It’s amazing how fast time blurs by with a weight bigger than King Kong off our backs.