Barrett Cole

by Christa Wick

  “I put up a few trail cams,” Barrett told the chief. “Depending on how the perp went up the ridge, maybe we got lucky.”

  By now, everyone had left the dining room and hovered at the edges of the entry hall.

  “Quinn live here now,” Leah said from the comforting circle of Sage’s arms.

  Quinn dipped her head to hide the tears. Sage whispered something to the little girl, but too much blood pounded through Quinn’s head for her to make out any more words. She turned cold and numb inside, her flesh malleable as Barrett lead her out to Sutton’s truck and lifted her up to the back seat then fastened the safety belt.

  Barrett slid in next to her while Sutton climbed behind the wheel and followed after the chief’s truck.

  Smoke still hung over the ruins of the cabin and car when they reached Jasper’s ridge. Quinn managed to rouse herself enough she could unhook her own seat belt and slide out of the truck as one of the firemen approached the chief holding a thin rectangle in his hand.

  In her shocked state, it took Quinn a few seconds to realize he was holding a canvas backside up.

  With Barrett gone for four days, she’d spent some of the time painting, finally finishing a picture on the third day of his being gone that she liked enough to show him.

  She had placed the canvas on a windowsill. It should have been ashes like the rest of the cabin, but there wasn’t even a hint of soot or any charring on the piece. Just a slash that almost reached from one corner to the other.

  A slash and “FAT LOSER” written in black lipstick on the white backing.

  “Found this propped up against a tree,” the man told the chief.”

  Quinn pulled away from Barrett, evading his attempt to close the distance she had opened up.

  “I don’t need to see the pictures from the trail cam,” she told the men. Hand shaking, she pointed at the black lipstick. “It’s not an old boyfriend. It’s my sister.”

  “Well, I still need to see if the trail cams picked anything up,” Finley said, nodding at the man who had brought the slashed canvas over. “You go on with Mr. Turk, let him show you where the cameras are at, but you need to haul them down and bag the memory cards.”

  Finley turned to Quinn.

  “When we’re done collecting those cards, ma’am, we need to head back to Willow Gap and stop in at the Sheriff’s office.”

  Signaling the young fireman to wait a moment, Barrett put his hand on Quinn’s shoulder. Flinching, she shook her head.

  “Quinn, I know it feels like everything is lost.”

  She shook her head harder, broke away from his touch and the gathering of men. She walked to the edge of the clearing and looked down the ruined hillside.

  Hearing footsteps behind her, Quinn looked over her shoulder. Blinking through tears, she saw Barrett’s concerned face. She wanted to tell him to turn back, but emotion squeezed at her throat. She would have walked away, silently signaling her desire to be alone, but the ground was uneven, not all of the carnage of the original fire removed to allow her to walk and cry at the same time.

  Barrett wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug.

  “Baby, don’t shut down,” he rasped, his lips grazing the edge of her ear. “I promise I’ll make this right for you.”

  Quinn squirmed in his embrace. He had told her the craziness in California wouldn’t follow her out here. She didn’t blame him that it had. It was her family, her problem.

  He had protected her all these weeks—from being homeless, from a mountain lion, from a bear. Now it was her turn to protect him.

  “It’s too much to ask of you,” she bit out when he wouldn’t release her from his iron hold. “Naomi doesn’t worry about getting caught. She’s certified crazy. What if next time she sets fire to a building someone’s in, someone like your mom or—”

  Her voice broke at the prospect of mentioning Leah. But just because she couldn’t say the little girl’s name didn’t mean she could deny the possibility that every person around her was in danger from her crazy half-sister, even the littlest, most precious among them.

  “Finley’s chomping at the bit,” Sutton softly called from a dozen feet away. “I’ll stay with Quinn while you show Minot where the trail cams are.”

  “We’ll talk about this later,” Barrett promised, cupping Quinn’s face and tilting her head even though she refused to meet his gaze. “This is not over.”

  Letting her go, Barrett walked silently past his brother. Sutton stayed where he was, giving Quinn her distance as he kept a watchful eye on her.

  Feeling the air begin to cool as the sun neared the horizon, she wrapped herself in a hug and sank to the ground.

  By the time Barrett returned, the sun had disappeared entirely, her hope sinking with it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Is this man familiar to you?” Sheriff Gamble asked, handing Quinn several magnified images taken from the field cams.

  She had already identified Naomi. Her sister had done nothing to hide her face. The only pictures from the camera where there wasn’t a good shot of the teen’s features were the ones in which she was clearly doing a victory dance, arms swinging, body twirling.

  Madness, pure madness.

  “Quinn?” Barrett prompted, his hand wrapping around the top of her shoulder. “Do you have any idea who he is?”

  “No,” she answered after staring at each picture for several seconds. “My sister acquires boys…sometimes men…who can get things done for her. The last one was a hacker. She went after all of my accounts, drained my savings…”

  She pushed the photos onto Gamble’s desk then stared at the floor.

  “I don’t know who she’s sleeping with now. If you find that out, he’ll probably be the man in the picture.”

  Gamble cleared his throat. “Let me get this straight, I’m looking for a male, possibly an adult, sleeping with your sixteen-year-old sister?”

  “Yes,” she said, then added a small correction. “Half-sister. We don’t have the same dad.”

  Even obliquely mentioning how Naomi used her body to get men to do her dirty work made Quinn feel permanently stained, like she should have been able to save her little sister from what the teenager had become.

  “Well, if they stopped for gas or anything else in Montana,” Gamble assured Quinn, “there will be more pictures of both of them. We’ll find out who he is. And, if he is an adult, I will personally bury him.”

  Barrett picked up the picture of Naomi dancing, stared hard for a few seconds then slammed it down. He nodded at the sheriff and Chief Finley in turn.

  “So this is an active arson investigation, yeah?”

  Both men nodded.

  “Meaning Jester’s property is going to be off limits for a few days.”

  “Well…the burn site—”

  “No, everything,” Barrett said, interrupting Finley. He pulled his phone from his pocket, navigated through his call history and pulled up the estate attorney’s number. “I want Charles Cross and Judge Harrison to know that Miss Whitaker may not legally remain on the property for the next few days because that’s your call. The suspects are at large, so it’s not safe for Quinn, plus you’ve got an investigation going.”

  “Put your phone away,” Gamble said, picking up his landline and punching in a number.

  A few rings later, someone answered, the faint sounds of the person distinctively feminine.

  “Sherri Kay, this is Jude Gamble. Put your daddy on the phone, please.”

  A minute later, the sheriff’s face stiffened. “Evening, your honor, hope I wasn’t interrupting dinner. No? Good. Don’t know if you heard on the scanner, there was a fire up at Jester Carey’s place tonight.”

  Gamble paused, his head bobbing in silent agreement.

  “Definitely arson,” he said when the judge finished speaking. “Now, I need to shut that place down, but I’ve been hearing old Jester put something weird in the will…Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.”

&nb
sp; A few more seconds of silence transpired, a slow smile spreading across Gamble’s face.

  “Great, that’s what I was hoping for. Should I call Cross? Right, better he hears it from you. Thank you.”

  His smile ballooning into a grin, he put the phone down.

  “Miss Whitaker, Judge Harrison says he’s temporarily suspending the conditions of the will while I do my investigation. I’ll need to talk to you tomorrow, but right now, I want you to get some rest.”

  Pulling a card index over from the side of his desk, he began to finger through it. “County has a victim’s services—”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Barrett said, his grip on Quinn’s shoulder gently flexing. “I’ll make sure she has everything she needs. Thank you for squaring things with the judge.”

  “No need to thank me,” Gamble answered. “Just doing what Jester would want me to.”

  Barrett’s hand slid down to wrap around Quinn’s. “Come on, baby. Let me get you home.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The ride to his house was so quiet, Barrett would have thought he was alone in the truck if he hadn’t constantly glanced at Quinn. Without a doubt, she was in shock or something very close to that state. His brain knew it was normal. Anyone would feel violated and betrayed. And Quinn had been so overwhelmed by gratitude to all the people who had helped build the cabin that she probably felt she had let them all down.

  That part was more than a little irrational, but Barrett had a feeling she’d grown up the scapegoat in her family. The concept was absolutely foreign to him. Someone in his family did wrong, they got called on it, were helped to figure out how to fix it and then they were forgiven. No one bore the blame for something that wasn’t their fault, no one was held to a higher or lower standard than anyone else.

  Pulling up to his house, he parked the truck and turned the engine off. Sitting in the dark, he reached across the cab and covered her hand with his. This time, she didn’t try to evade his touch.

  “Your hands are cold, baby. Let’s get you inside.”

  She nodded but didn’t move.

  “I’ll go unlock the door.”

  Barrett wasn’t sure whether he might have to carry her in—or take her to a doctor. His mother had been sedated after she found out that she’d lost her husband and only daughter in the same accident. Even if she’d been an hour’s drive away from Jester’s at the time the fire was started, it had been a vicious attack against Quinn by someone she had once loved.

  Knowing Quinn, she probably still loved the sister that had done this to her.

  Unlocking the door, he turned on the light, went into his bedroom and turned on the bedside lamp.

  Returning to the front of the house, he pulled up short, surprised that Quinn had followed him in.

  A good sign, or so he told himself despite the blank face and hollow gaze staring at him.

  He walked her into the bedroom and sat her down on the mattress. Getting on his hands and knees, he took her boots and socks off. He started on her shirt next, unthreading the buttons, stripping her down to her tank top.

  Barrett stripped the jeans away, leaving her in her underwear.

  Life moved too fast when it wasn’t moving too slow, he mused. Just that afternoon, returning to his mother’s home, he thought he’d lost Quinn as anything more than a friend when she wouldn’t move off the couch. She’d been shaky, her mind and body overstimulated from the news report that had her thinking he might have been badly hurt.

  But then they had kissed in the bathroom and exchanged a few deep, meaningful gazes during dinner. It had made him think it was time to talk with her about the next step in their relationship, to stop worrying about whether she felt obligated to him.

  Then Finley showed up and ripped the rug out from under him and Quinn.

  Now he wasn’t just afraid of losing her as a lover or friend. He was afraid she would leave Willow Gap forever.

  Not happening, he vowed.

  “Baby,” Barrett said, his fingers tapping once against the back closure of Quinn’s bra. “You need to get out of this or let me take it off.”

  She reached behind her, unsnapped then drew the straps down her arms, all without revealing anything under her tank top. It was a mesmerizing female magic trick, but he was too sick with worry to appreciate the moment.

  Barrett coaxed Quinn onto her back then drew the covers up to her chin. Still dressed in the clothes he’d put on after his shower, he stretched out next to her, his body on top of the covers. He draped his arm across her chest, his hand cupping her opposite shoulder.

  “Baby, you’re in shock right now,” he whispered, hoping the softly voiced words would reach her. “Anybody would be. But, whatever you’re thinking, just give me a chance to fix things.”

  His hand moved up to her head, his fingers stroking at the side of her face and her hair. By the dim light of the lamp, he watched her eyes grow heavy and close. Her breathing fell into the deep rhythm of sleep a few minutes after that.

  Easing out of the bed, Barrett shut the door, went into his office and grabbed a spare blanket and pillow from the closet. Putting a pot of coffee on to brew, he went out to the truck and grabbed Quinn’s bag.

  Beyond a few clean clothes in the dryer, Quinn’s habit of taking her laptop with her was the only lucky break of the day—well, that and the fact she hadn’t been at the cabin when her sister decided to play firebug. From what he had seen on the camera’s memory card, he agreed with Quinn that the girl was capable of almost anything.

  That didn’t mean he was going to let Quinn run away in an effort to protect those around her. That part of her life was over.

  He put the bag down on the table by the front door, locked the front door, then poured a cup of coffee. Opening his laptop, he found the email Quinn had forwarded with the terms of Jester’s will.

  Two cups of coffee later, he was finished reading and re-reading the document. Next to him was a pad of yellow paper, dozens of notes written in bold, black handwriting.

  Clicking over to his web browser, he opened up FINDLAW and JUSTIA and plugged in search terms.

  He finished the pot of coffee, made another one. He wrote down new questions on his notepad, added answers to the original queries, and kept searching.

  A little after midnight, he went into the Montana section of a wills and probate forum and searched through the threads. Another hour later, he sent Adler an email asking him to set up a meeting with the head of the Real Estate Management division of the state’s Trust Lands division.

  With the email sent and the last of his coffee consumed, Barrett drifted off to sleep, the laptop balanced on his chest and the notepad full of questions and answers across his thighs.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Early morning light streaming through lace curtains, Quinn pulled on clothes from the prior day. Dressed but for her boots, she sat and listened. If Barrett was awake, he was tiptoeing around.

  Grabbing the pillow she’d slept on, she wrapped her arms around it and pressed her face to the material. It smelled like Barrett, his comforting scent bringing her close to tears.

  A night of deep, dreamless sleep had done nothing to change her opinion. If Quinn stayed in Willow Gap, her sister Naomi would be a threat to everyone Quinn had come to care for.

  She wondered how far the last of her credit cards would get her in Mexico. Growing up in L.A., she knew enough Spanish to get by. She could maybe pick up a job waitressing at one of the resorts, the income from her tips and book cover business enough to keep her head above water.

  She pushed her face deeper into the pillow, tears wetting the fabric.

  The people in Willow Gap were amazing, had treated her better than anyone in L.A. despite Quinn being a complete stranger. There were all those people who had swung a hammer, poured concrete, and hauled off the burnt remains of the original cabin. And there was Dotty, so generous in covering the materials, and Barrett’s family giving her flexible part-time work wi
th the promise of all the hours she needed once the curfew out at Jester’s was over.

  Leaving would disappoint everyone. More than anything, leaving Barrett and what might have been between them would crush her.

  Damn Naomi!

  Quinn replaced the pillow then swiped angrily at her tears. Leaving her boots behind, she padded into the living room to find Barrett on the couch.

  Slow and gentle, she lifted the laptop perfectly balanced on his broad chest and placed it on the coffee table. Next she picked up a pad of paper that had slid onto the floor.

  Seeing her name on it, Quinn began to read.

  He’d spent all night trying to solve one her problems. But having the land meant nothing if staying in the area put everyone at risk.

  She put the notepad down on the laptop then claimed the last few free inches of the coffee table by perching on it. She watched Barrett sleeping. He still seemed strong and capable, but the relaxed features added a touch of vulnerability to his face.

  Quinn had heard that vulnerability yesterday, especially as he tucked her into his bed and said he would fix things if she just gave him enough time.

  Giving him time meant giving Naomi time, too. Time to set another fire, time to point her next boyfriend’s car at Quinn and whomever she was with, the gas pedal buried against the floorboard.

  An old pain ghosted through Quinn’s hip as she remembered the last time she’d stared through the windshield of a car to see Naomi behind the wheel.

  She blinked the image away and focused on Barrett’s face. It was more than masculine beauty that drew her to him. Integrity, generosity…

  She stood up and went to the side table where Barrett had left her bag. She pulled out a cheap sketchpad and artist pencils purchased that Monday when Sutton tried to keep her mind off Barrett’s absence with a trip to Billings.

  She returned to her perch on the coffee table. Just looking at Barrett’s face brought all the pain of her impending loss rushing at Quinn. But sketching him let her capture everything she felt about him without the pain of actually feeling it.