“I started building this dossier on her after Lane got shot,” she admitted. “When I first met her at the wedding, something about her just didn’t sit right with me.”
That admission felt validating. I was glad I wasn’t the only one that got seriously bad vibes from the woman.
“How much do you know about the first case she and Lane worked together?” she asked me. “The one where they met.”
“Nothing. I’ve honestly never even thought about it.”
“I figured. Okay, so here’s the deal. About ten years ago, an FBI agent was killed by a murder suspect when the bureau cornered him to arrest him. The perp got away and holed up in a cabin somewhere here in Owyhee County.”
Lightbulbs illuminated in my brain. “Wait, I do remember that! I hadn’t been on shift the day they located the guy, but I heard about it for weeks after from the paramedics who had been on site.”
“Lane wasn’t sheriff yet,” Aspen continued. “But he was part of the team from Dusk Valley that worked closely with the FBI unit to locate that guy and bring him in.”
“And Addie was part of that unit?” Reagan guessed.
Aspen nodded. “Not only that, but the dead agent? He was her husband.”
Reagan and I both inhaled sharply, and my hand flew to my chest, my heart throbbing with sympathy pain.
“My god,” Reagan breathed. “That’s fucking horrible.”
As someone who had witnessed and worked on gunshot wounds before, and who hadnearlylost the love of her life to one…she had no ideahowhorrible.
Aspen nodded solemnly. “When they finally caught up to the guy, there was a shootout. Addie caught a stray.”
Fucking hell. Her husband dying by a bullet and then taking one herself? I felt a little bad for the woman.
“How do you know all of this?” I asked.
“Newspapers mostly. But also Trey.”
“What?” Reagan and I blurted in unison, and I added, “You and Trey don’t even like each other.”
It wasn’t a secret in the family that Trey had once made a pass at Aspen, when she’d first arrived in town, before she and Crew had finally acted on their feelings for each other. According to Lane, Crew had long since forgiven him—of course; the brothers would kill for each other, and Crew got his girl in the end—but Aspen remained…standoffish with Trey.
Aspen rolled those cinnamon eyes. “I don’t hate him. He annoys me.” I chuckled, and she spared me a glance. “Lane too.”
“What did he ever do to you?”
“You mean besides trying to drive me out of town when I wanted to keep looking for the Prom Night Arsonist?”
Reagan tapped her lips thoughtfully, and I grinned, knowing exactly the direction her mind had taken, because mine had gone there too.
“But didn’t you just end up staying with Crew? From where I’m standing, it sounds like Lane did you a favor.”
“That,” I agreed, pointing at Reagan.
A heavy sigh left Aspen’s nostrils, and she flipped us both off before pressing on.
“Anyway, yes, Trey and I have been working on this together because he also caught a bad vibe off Addie last summer.”
“I think I’m missing the part about where this has anything to do with Lane.”
“If Trey remembers that time correctly, Lane visited and checked on her while she was recovering. They obviously became pretty good friends from the sound of it, and she became someone whose expertise he deferred to on cases fairly often. The brothers have no idea if anything physical happened between them, but Trey and I are in agreement that Addie has been secretly in love with Lane for years.”
“Why hasn’t she acted on it then?” Reagan asked.
“She feared rejection,” I supplied. I’d spent a lot of time in therapy over the years and had developed more than a passing interest in psychology and the inner workings of the human brain. “After losing her husband, she was terrified to put herself out there again.”
