Three seconds. Three more than yesterday.
Stepping back, I smiled. This was the version of me nobody saw. Not Mitch, not Declan, not even Cass. Out here, before the sun came up and the day turned into whatever shitstorm was waiting, I was someone I almost liked.
I leaned against the rail and watched the mare settle into the corner of the yard again, her tail swishing at nothing. Over the eastern ridge, the first smear of gold bled into the night sky. Another forty minutes, and the heat would start. Another hour after that, and Koolaroo would be awake and loud and full of the kind of problems that made me want to saddle up and ride until I hit the coast.
Not that it was all bad lately.
Cassidy had been spending her mornings in the round yard trying to teach Xavier how to ride, which was easily the best entertainment on the property. The guy from New York was over six feet and rolling in money, but all that money didn’t provide him with any ranching skills.
He sat on a horse like he’d learned balance from YouTube videos. Arms too stiff. Legs all wrong. He kept trying to negotiate with the horse as if it were a boardroom deal he could talk his way out of. He’d fallen off enough times to make most newcomers quit.
Not him, though. He kept getting back on. Every morning. Covered in sweat, swearing under his breath, grinning at Cassidy like she was the only thing in the world worth looking at.
I’d watched them from the machinery shed one morning and caught myself smiling, which had pissed me off, because smiling before I had a beer in my hand wasn’t something I did.
Cassidy deserved someone like that. Someone who made her feel special. Someone who didn’t quit.
Since everything had come out about Cass not being our biological sister, I’d been turning it over in my head.
She wasn’t Frank’s by blood or Mom’s. It had been a bloody shock when she’d told us all. The damn air had been knocked out of us, and the three of us brothers had been scrambling to make sense of the secret she’d concealed for over twenty years. The shock had landed differently for each of us. Mitch had gone practical. Declan went quiet. I’d gone to the back paddock and kicked the shit out of a feed drum, which had solved nothing but had felt good at the time.
But it wasn’t Cass I was pissed off at. I didn’t give a damn that she wasn’t my blood. Cassidy was my sister. She’d been my sister the day I was born, and she’d be my sister the day I died, and anyone who tried to use that against her would have to come through me first.
Bring it on.
I was pissed off at my fucking father. He’d screwed around on Mom, and I couldn’t help thinking that was the reason she’d pissed off and left us. And that made me pissed off at her. Since the day she’d left, I’d been worried about her. I’d even wondered if she was alive.
Now, I felt nothing but anger. Mom didn’t deserve my pity. And Dad didn’t deserve shit from me either. In fact, if he turned up alive, I’d wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze until the light bled out of his eyes.
Though I’d have to get in line, because all my siblings wanted to kill Frank.
I was filling the mare’s water trough from the tank when footsteps padded along the track, too quiet to be any of my brothers.
Rose appeared around the side of the shed in her housedress and sandals, gray hair pinned back like always, and a tea towel twisted in her hands. Rose had been running the Koolaroo homestead since before any of us could walk. She cooked sometimes, cleaned, did the laundry, and held the place together in ways that made her more essential to the ranch than half the equipment sitting in the machinery shed.
“There you are,” she said, like she’d known exactly where I’d be.
“Morning, Rose.”
“There’s a police officer at the house. I can’t find Mitch or Declan, and Cassidy’s taken Xavier out for a morning ride.” She looked at me the way she always did when delivering news she knew I wouldn’t like—calm, firm, and completely unmoved by whatever my face was about to do.
My jaw tightened. “What do they want?”
“Didn’t say. Just asked to speak with someone from the family.”
A cop. At Koolaroo. At this hour.
Couldn’t be good.
Frank had drilled into us since we were kids that you couldn’t trust the cops.
Don’t talk to ‘em, and don’t give ‘em a damn thing.
It had always struck me as strange advice coming from a man whose only real friend was Senior Sergeant Bob Ackerman. The two of them went back decades, thick as thieves, which, given the amount of bullshit we’d uncovered about Frank since he’d vanished, probably wasn’t far off the truth.
“Tell them to wait,” I said. “I’ll be up when I’m done.”
Rose gave me a look that said, Don’t be difficult. “I’ll make coffee. You want one?”
