Amelia comes out of her room wearing shorts and a shirt. . Her face is still white, though, and I can tell she is scared. "What’s going on?" she asks, looking at me and then her father.
"Truck has been vandalized, and I think yours has been messed with also," I say, and she raises her hand to her chest.
"Let’s go check it out," Jacob says, and he turns to walk out of the house. She follows her father, but I grab her hand, and she turns to look at me.
"Are you okay?" I ask, and she nods her head, but I know that she isn’t. "It’s okay to say you aren’t."
"Fine," she says. "I’m pissed." I just watch her as she steps closer to me, and her voice goes lower. "I’m pissed that instead of spending the day thinking about us kissing, you’re going to be all in detective mode." I stare at her in shock. "Now, before my father comes back in, let’s get out there."
I follow her outside and find Jacob and Ethan there. "Amelia’s car looks like they only checked the glove compartment and the trunk," Ethan says. "But yours." He looks at me. "They were looking for something."
I walk to the truck and take another look. "Do you think anything is missing?" Jacob asks as I look at all the papers on the floor.
"I have never even looked in the glove compartment," I tell them. "It’s Billy’s old truck. I wasn’t going to snoop in his things." I look in the back seat and see the papers that I keep there for the farm are scattered all over the place, but the big cut down the middle shows that they were looking for something.
"Casey is going through the feed," Jacob says. He props the phone to his ear as he relays what Casey is saying. "Happened at three a.m." I look over at Amelia, who stands there watching her father. "Two guys. One for each car. Faces are covered. Okay, perfect," he says, hanging up.
"From now on, you don’t come here alone." I look at Amelia. "Not to the barn, not to the bar. Not anywhere."
She rolls her eyes at me, and if her father and brother weren’t here, I would kiss the ever-loving shit out of her. "He’s right," Jacob says. "From now on, I want us all to be on alert. Everyone." He looks over at Ethan. "It’s time to get everyone involved."
"But we don’t even know anything," Amelia says, and her father looks at her.
"We know enough that two people were outside of your house when you were in your bed sleeping," he tells her, and I swallow down my guilt. "I’m not taking any chances with you."
"I’ll get her at the bar." I speak up. "And I’ll come back in the morning and get her to bring her to the barn."
"We can take turns in the morning," Ethan says. "You have the nights since you live with her."
It takes us an hour to get everything cleaned up, and Kallie comes over and makes sure that Amelia is taken to the barn.
I get into the truck and make my way over to the barn that holds all the tools. Billy is there waiting for me. "Sorry," I say as I get out. "For being late." He walks over to the truck with his hat on his head. If I ever wanted to be someone in my life, it would be Billy.
He shakes his head and laughs. "Only you would be apologizing for being late because someone broke into your truck."
"I’ll start everything in a second," I say. "I just need some duct tape," I say, walking into the barn, going straight to the shed that holds all the things I need.
"What are you going to do with that?" he asks, and I look back over at him.
"They sliced the back seat," I say, walking back to the truck and opening the back door to the back seat. "I’m going to tape the seats shut."
Billy looks at me as I start to peel some of the silver tape. "Can you hold this?"
He shakes his head at me. "Are you out of your mind, son?" The way he calls me son gets me every single time. Nobody has ever called me that, and the first time he called me that, I had to blink away tears.
"What?" I ask, looking back at him. "It’ll work."
"That truck is twenty years old," he reminds me. "I taught my grandkids to drive in this truck."
I huff out. "I’m so sorry, Billy."
He slaps me on the shoulder. "Do you know how many times Charlotte has asked me to get rid of this truck?"
"It still works fine," I say, and he throws his head back and laughs. I hear the sound of rocks crunching, and when I look up, Casey’s driving a strange truck.