She wasn’t ready for that.Not yet.But she was closer than she’d been yesterday.
The part of her that had been afraid of closeness for four years noticed, with some surprise, that standing this near to Grayson Lawton didn’t feel dangerous anymore.In fact, it felt like the safest place she’d been in a very long time.
Cooper called Gray that evening.Gray put him on speaker so Bonnie could hear.
“I’ve been through the entire insurance report,” Cooper said.His voice had the flat, controlled quality it took on when he was angry and trying not to show it.“The insurance company’s investigator documented two origin points.Flagged the fire as suspicious.Noted the absence of the fire suppression system depicted in the blueprints submitted with Shoemacher Racing, LLC’s insurance application.He recommended the claim be denied pending further investigation of possible arson.”
Bonnie closed her eyes.
Cooper continued, “The claim was paid out six weeks later.The investigator’s recommendation was overridden by a senior adjuster in the company’s regional office.No explanation for the override is in the document.”
“So someone at the insurance company pushed the payout through despite their own investigator saying the fire was suspicious?”Gray asked.
“Correct.And the state fire investigator’s report—Jansick’s report—directly contradicts the insurance company’s findings.”
Bonnie opened her eyes.“How much was the payout?”
Cooper told her.
The number sat in the room with a weight and mass all its own.Lucas had receivedmillionsof dollars.She thought about forty horses screaming in terror and pain.She thought about eight men fighting desperately for their lives and dying together.She thought about the locked box in Lucas’s safe where he’d kept the evidence of how he’d profited from his own barn burning down with people and horses inside it.
“This report will go into the evidence package,” Cooper said.“With everything else you two have found, the case for arson and a coordinated cover-up is as airtight as I’ve ever seen.”
After Cooper hung up, Bonnie sat and stared at the wall of photographs and blueprints Gray had painstakingly assembled.
Gray watched her from the doorway, giving her space the way he always did.
“Are you okay?”he asked eventually.
“No,” she said frankly.“But I’m less not-okay than I was last week.Is that progress?”
“I’d say so.”
She picked up her bag.“I need to get home to the kids.”
He walked her to her car.The evening was chilly and clear, the mountains black against a sky turning from indigo to charcoal.Stars were appearing in the east, indifferent pinpricks of light in the sky.
She opened her car door and turned to look at him.“Gray?”
“Hmm?”
“We make a good team.”
He smiled slowly, the sexy smile that never failed to make her blush.“Yes.We do.”
She got in her car and headed out.In the rearview mirror, she could see him standing in the parking lot, watching her taillights until she turned the corner.How had she known he would stand there until she was out of sight?
The answer came to her as quickly as the question itself.
Because leaving before someone was safely gone wasn’t something Grayson Lawton did.
14
Gray didn’t recognize the truck.
It was parked beside the bunkhouse when he drove in from the fire station Saturday afternoon, an old Ford F-150, dark green, with Virginia plates and enough road dust on the windshield to suggest a long drive.The tailgate was down, and a duffel bag sat on it as if the driver hadn’t decided yet whether he was staying or going.
A man was sitting on the steps of the bunkhouse’s covered porch.At a glance, Gray placed the man in his late sixties.He was lean in the way of someone who’d been spare his whole life.His jacket was worn soft at the elbows.His hands rested on his knees, big hands that looked as if they’d done a lot of work and weren’t finished.
