“What about Lee?” Darcy asked.
She shrugged. “Yeah, he was here too. He’s obsessed with his photography, so I don’t see him much.” But he was always polite and she couldn’t imagine him doing anything illegal. He’d asked permission for anything he did on the station.
“Where does he take photos?” Brandon asked.
“All over the place. He headed to Charles Knife Canyon today, but he’s also been taking photos around the station. Matt drew a mud map for him so he could find the more interesting spots like down by the ocean and the caves in the gully.”
“Did you know about him having free reign?” Brandon asked Darcy.
Darcy shook his head. “I guess Matt didn’t consider it an issue. His family can go where they want and he would have kept Lee away from where we were working.”
Amy didn’t want to get Matt into trouble. “It’s my fault. I called Matt over when Lee asked me if he could take photos on the property. I didn’t consider you might not like it.”
“Why not?” Brandon asked.
She narrowed her eyes as her gut clenched. She hadn’t thought it a big deal. Sure, Bill had asked her to keep the guests in their area, but Darcy had wanted good reviews. “Darcy put me in charge of ensuring the guests were happy,” she said. “Retribution Ridge has a quarter of a million acres of land, and I figured not all of it was being used at once. I didn’t see what danger he could cause aside from getting lost, and we arranged for him to check in with me before he left and when he returned. He knew to leave any gates as he found them.”
“It’s fine,” Darcy said. “Dad might have been a little cross if he’d known, but we would have sorted it out.”
Which meant Bill wouldn’t have been happy about it. She should have considered that. Rather than defend herself further, she said, “We had another two guests that night and they left after they heard about your parents.”
“Can you get us their contact details?” Darcy asked.
“Sure.” She turned to leave.
“What about you?” Brandon asked.
Amy frowned. “What do you mean?”
“What were you up to Saturday night?”
The implication took her breath away and she stumbled back, pain clamping around her chest. “Your parents were like family to me.” She willed away the tears. “They treated me a damned sight better than my own family and I loved them. Beth was teaching me to cook, and Bill was teaching me to ride.”
Darcy held up a hand. “What my brother is trying to say in a totally ham-fisted way is, we don’t know a lot about your past. We need to rule out everyone we can even though we don’t believe you’re involved.”
The very idea of it made her nauseous. She wrapped her arms around her to stop the shaking. “I don’t have a permanent address so I must be dodgy, is that it?” She directed the question at Brandon.
He stared back at her with an edge of defiance—and maybe guilt.
She didn’t want to get into her past. They couldn’t comprehend what it was like when they’d grown up in such a supportive household. But if it stopped them suspecting her and made them look elsewhere towards the real culprit, she would answer their questions. She’d revisit her messy past for Beth and Bill. She focused on Darcy. “What do you want to know?”
Brandon answered. “Where are you from?”
Nowhere. That was part of the problem. “We moved a lot when I was a child, but I did high school in Perth.”
“Why’d you move?”
“Father is a major in the army.”
Brandon glanced down at her resume and his eyes widened. “Your father is Major Hammond?”
Shit. She should have known he would have heard of her father. She nodded.
Brandon swore. “You’re Arthur’s sister.”
“You know him?”
“He’s in my team.”
