I had no plans to go anywhere else. I need to help the man I love.
twenty-seven
Killian
“What can you tell me about this man?” Special Agent Drake Halsey asks as he puts another photo down.
That was a fun little reveal. The man who came to buy horses, who I’ve met before, isn’t a horse breeder like myself—he’s an FBI agent who has been undercover to investigate my ranch.
For what?
I still don’t know.
They aren’t forthcoming with anything, insisting over and over that if I just cooperate, tell them what they want to know, the law will look favorably on me.
No matter how many times I explain that I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, they keep going.
Hours I’ve been sitting here, looking at photos, answering when I do recognize someone and then explaining I’ve never before seen the next person they show me.
“I don’t know who that is,” I say with my hands clasped in front of me.
“No? He bought three horses from you six months ago. He paid almost $675,000 for one.”
“I’ve never sold a horse for that much,” I say quickly.
“Really?”
“Really.”
He opens one of his many folders and pulls out a bill of sale. “Is that not your name there?”
I read it, but…that doesn’t make any sense. “It is, but I didn’t sell that horse.”
He points to the signature. “Is that your name there?”
Not really. It looks close enough, but it’s not mine. “I didn’t sign that.”
“You’re telling me that it’s forged? Is that what I’m understanding?”
“Yes. I’m telling you I didn’t sign that paper. Someone else did or it’s fake.”
Special Agent Halsey nods, placing it back in the folder. “Funny how someone would just forge your name on a document that implicates you in a money-laundering scheme, isn’t it? All of these, Mr. Thorn, were found in your office. Do you recognize them?”
Sure enough it’s the pile that Tessa and I made that had the suspect signatures.
I’m so fucked.
“I do,” I answer. “When my trainer went missing, I went through all the documents on the sales, trying to make sense of what the hell was going on. These were the ones where the numbers or the names didn’t match.”
“And what is Tessa’s involvement in this?”
My head snaps up and anger fills me. No matter what the hell this is, I won’t let them drag her into it. “She has nothing to do with anything.”
“She was at your house,” he says.
“Yes, she’s my publicist and has been trying to help me fix the mess that Travis made.”
“We’re going to dig, Killian. You understand that. Surely, you’ve started to deduce the trouble you’re in, and the sooner you stop trying to lead us in circles, the better this will go.”
