Izzy looked toward the dark window, where the low murmur of the brothers’ voices drifted in from the porch.
“Well,” Izzy said, her voice regaining its edge. “If he’s so scared of losing me, he’s got a funny way of showing it.”
* * *
Grant and Burke stepped out onto the porch, the heavy humidity of the mountain night settling over them like a damp shroud. Burke leaned his lower back against the railing, his thumbs hooked into his belt, right next to the silver star that felt heavier tonight than it ever had.
Grant paced the small space, his boots thumping a restless, angry rhythm. For a long minute, the only sound was the choir of crickets in the grass and the low, muffled murmur of Izzy and Caitlin’s voices inside.
Grant stopped at the edge of the steps, staring toward the dark, jagged spine of the ridge. “You don’t think Dad knew about this, do you?”
Burke didn’t answer right away. He looked at the farmhouse across the valley—the house where he’d grown up, believing his father was the closest thing to God Jackson County had.
“He was the Sheriff for thirty years, Grant,” Burke said, his voice sounding hollowed out. “He knew every deer trail and every hollow. I won this seat by a landslide because people believed a Scott in the office meant the law was absolute. I’m sitting at his desk. I’m using his files.”
Burke looked down at his hands, then back at the ridge. “How does a man like Burton Scott miss a logistics hub for a cartel? He didn’t miss it. He couldn’t have.”
“He shut us down,” Grant said, turning to face him. The moonlight caught the hard, pained line of his jaw. “You saw him the other night. He didn’t dismiss the Clara Vale case; he tried to bury it. He stood there in his yard and talked about honor while he was practically standing on a secret. You think Wade has something on him? Something he’s been holding over him all this time?”
The thought made Burke’s stomach turn. The idea of his father being under someone’s thumb—especially Wade Hollis’s—was more than he could take.
“I don’t know,” Burke said, his voice regaining a jagged, professional edge. “But if he did know, and he let this happen... then every arrest I’ve made, every oath I took in that courtroom, feels like a lie. If he was protecting Wade, he wasn’t just keeping a secret. He was selling out the whole county.”
Burke straightened, his face a mask of weary determination. “And if he is involved, we aren’t getting it out of him. He’s a Scott. Once he locks a door, he throws away the key. We saw how he acted the other night; he’s not going to give us the truth just because I’m wearing his old badge.”
Grant stepped closer, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low vibration. “Then we do this on our own. We don’t wait for a lead from him. We don’t wait for permission. If the Scott name is going to mean anything when this is over, it’s going to be because of what we do now, not what he did thirty years ago.”
Burke looked at the star on his shirt, then back at his brother. “Yeah. We do it on our own. But if we go after Wade, we’re going after the man our father has covered for since nineteen ninety-nine. There’s no coming back from that, Grant. It’ll tear this family apart.”
“It’s already torn, Burke.” Grant looked toward the ridge. “We’re just the only ones finally looking at the seams.”
37
The Sheriff’s Department
Sam Talley didn’t move when Burke reached into the folder. He looked like a man braced for a blow, his shoulders high and rigid.
“Wade’s version of the story is that she was unhappy, Sam,” Burke said quietly. “He wants me to believe she was using him to get out of the valley. That she didn’t care about the life you were building.”
“He’s a liar,” Sam rasped. “He’s always been a liar.”
“I know,” Burke said. He took the small, yellowed sheet of paper—the one Izzy had found under the pillow—and slid it across the desk toward Sam. “Isabella Moreno found this in the cabin. It was tucked under the pillow of the bed. It’s been sitting there for twenty-seven years.”
Sam’s hand trembled as he reached for it. He handled the paper like it was made of glass. As his eyes moved over the familiar, elegant script, the room went very still.
“Like I wasn’t just passing through… I felt like I might belong somewhere.”
A broken sound escaped Sam’s throat. It wasn’t a sob; it was the sound of a man having the last twenty-seven years of his life redefined in a single paragraph. He closed his eyes, his head bowing over the letter.
“She never gave it to me,” he whispered. “She was going to… but I never got to read it.”
“Sam,” Burke said, his voice steady but compassionate. “That letter doesn’t sound like a woman who was having an affair with Wade Hollis. It sounds like a woman who had finally found home. And if she felt that way, she wouldn’t have walked away from you. Not by choice.”
Sam looked up, and for the first time, the “Old Sam”—the man who had waited seventeen years before he could even bear to sell that land—was visible behind the wall of grief.
“He took her,” Sam said, his voice dropping. “Wade didn’t catch us in no cabin. He didn’t have no affair. He saw her looking at me like that, and he realized he couldn’t buy her. So he took her instead.”
He stood up, clutching the letter to his shirt.
