The bulb had probably burned out. No telling if anyone had thought to tuck a spare away somewhere. I checked the cabinets in the small kitchenette and under the sink in the bathroom with no success. Thinking there might be one in the closet on Aiden’s side of the bunkhouse, I slipped past the curtain marking off his space.
My fingers fumbled along the wall in search of the light switch. The ancient overhead fixture didn’t provide much light, so I headed to the lamp on the table by the bed and turned that on as well. I hadn’t ventured beyond the curtain since Aiden had moved in, but it didn’t look much different than it had before he arrived.
The thick quilt was tucked under the pillows at the head of the bed. There wasn’t a single thing out of place. He didn’t have any personal belongings sitting out except for a notepad on the nightstand. I shouldn’t have looked, but it was sitting there wide open. He’d sketched something in dark ink, but I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. Leaning closer, I tried to get a better look.
Seemed to be some sort of logo for the ranch made out of metal. Maybe the grump had a hidden talent he hadn’t shared yet.
Feeling a little guilty for snooping, I was about to turn away when a glob of my mud mask slid down my chin and ploppedonto the page. My heart vaulted into my throat while my hands flew to my cheeks. “No, no, no!”
I stepped back and lifted the hem of my sweatshirt to dab at the edges of my chin and prevent anything else from falling off my face. Red mud smeared across the bottom of my shirt. It should have been dry by now, or at least dry enough to not drip from my chin. I tugged the sweatshirt over my head and dabbed at the red splotch on Aiden’s notebook.
Instead of wiping it clean, I ended up just smearing it around. It looked like someone had bled onto the page based on the dark red smudge. If I tried dabbing water on it, I’d only make it worse. I stood there, racking my brain, trying to come up with a way to clean off the page without leaving any evidence.
Maybe I could dribble a little bit of coffee over the red to make it look like he’d accidentally spilled. Or hide the notebook altogether and make him think he’d misplaced it himself.
I paced, my feet pounding against the floorboards as I tried to think of a way out of the situation. Telling him the truth could be an option, but would he believe me that I’d only been looking for a lightbulb? Before I settled on a solution, heavy footsteps pounded across the front porch. I didn’t make it out from behind the curtain on his side of the room before he stepped through the front door.
He’d caught me.
“Paisley?” His deep voice thundered through the bunkhouse.
I swallowed hard and steeled myself for how he’d react. Then I swept through the curtain into the main room. He’d turned on the overhead light, and I blinked against the bright assault.
“What the hell are you doing?” He scowled and squinted at me from his position in the doorway. “And what happened to your face?”
“It’s a mask. I was looking for a lightbulb for the lamp, and I thought there might be one in the closet over on your side.” Ihooked my thumb over my shoulder in the general direction of his side of the room and rambled on. “But it was too dark to see anything, so I turned on the lamp, and?—”
“The horses got out. I need your help.”
The anxiety in my chest immediately switched to concern. “How?”
“I don’t know. Come on. Shane’s hooking up the trailer now.”
A million thoughts raced through my brain as I pulled the sweatshirt back over my head and shoved my feet into my boots. The horses had all been safe and warm in the barn when I fed them dinner over an hour ago. I’d secured the door behind me, I was sure of it.
Aiden handed me my coat and gloves, then I followed him outside, where Shane waited with the truck.
“You two take the trailer and go on ahead. I’ll be right behind you in my truck,” Shane said. He barely even looked at me, and if he noticed my globby face mask, he didn’t acknowledge it.
I climbed into the cab, wishing I’d thought to rinse my face off before I left the bunkhouse. Since my sweatshirt was already ruined, I lifted the hem up and tried to wipe the rest of the mask away.
Aiden drove away from the ranch, and I wondered how he could see anything through the snow. It fell from the sky in a thick blanket of white. No one should be out on a night like tonight, especially not a trio of horses that had been left to fend for themselves.
“How did you find out they got loose?” I asked.
“Shane got a call from a blocked number. I think someone did it on purpose.” Aiden sped up as we cleared the gate and turned onto the two-lane road.
“Who would do that? It doesn’t make sense.” He’d already said more to me in the past five minutes than he had since we met. I didn’t want to push it, but I needed answers.
He shrugged. “You’d be surprised at what kind of things people will do just for the hell of it.”
Wondering if he was still talking about the horses, I pressed on. “You think someone’s out to hurt Shane and Caitlin?”
His answer didn’t come right away. Just when I thought he wasn’t going to respond, he lowered his voice. “Not everyone around here seems excited about Shane’s plans.”
I’d wondered how he felt about the stupid comment that man at the Merc made the other day. When I’d stepped in to defend Shane, Aiden had disappeared. I didn’t know anything about his past except that he and Shane had been friends for several years. Made me think there might be something in his past he wasn’t particularly proud of.
But I couldn’t even get him to talk to me about the ranch. There was no way in hell he’d ever open up about something personal.
