Knotted (Trails of Sin 1)

“I’ve had a couple of years to come to terms with it.” And it still keeps me up at night.

“How did he think he would get away with murder?”

“Sheriff Fletcher was in his pocket. He and my dad share a history I haven’t been able to work out. What I do know is they were in it together. Fletcher got a cut of the profits in exchange for making the murders go away.”

“Except we weren’t murdered.”

“When my dad hired that hit on you and Lorne…” I grip her hand, lacing our fingers together. “Jarret and I weren’t supposed to be there when it happened. That was the first miscalculation. The second fuck up was their decision to rape you before they killed you and Lorne.”

She flinches, clutching the knot of the towel against her chest.

I shift our intertwined hands to my lap and capture her eyes. “Sheriff Fletcher tampered with the evidence and testimonies from that night to make sure Lorne went to prison. That took your brother out of the picture.”

“Why didn’t Dalton turn in your dad and Sheriff Fletcher?”

“Your dad was scared.” I grind my teeth. “He owed debts to violent criminals, and your lives were at stake. Yours and his. So he forfeited his shares of the business and took you to Chicago to keep you both alive and allow for the drilling on the land.”

“Did the debts get paid back?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Why not?” Her voice bites with suspicion. “Why haven’t you turned them over to the authorities?”

Our eyes lock, and our breaths spool out in the space between us. She’s not going to like this part.

I adjust my position on the bed to face her and touch the curve of her cheek. “Jarret and I killed a lot of men. Bad men.”

“What?” Her throat wobbles with a hard swallow.

“We killed every debt collector and hitman that knew your name and buried the bodies in the ravine.”

“No.” She shakes her head rigorously, and tears topple over the rims of her eyes. “You’ll get caught, Jake. They’ll find the bodies, and you’ll go to prison and—”

“They won’t find the bodies, and Sheriff Fletcher is highly motivated to make all this go away.” I hold her face in my hands and catch an errant tear with my thumb. “I have evidence against the sheriff. Conversations between him and my dad. Confessions of his plans to cover up your murder. The payments he received from the drilling. I have enough to put him away for a long fucking time.”

“You threatened him.”

“Damn straight. If he keeps my sins buried, I’ll keep his buried.”

“That’s dangerous.” She stands from the bed and paces through the room.

“Dangerous for him. I never admitted to a crime. He has nothing on me, and my threats ensure he won’t come around sniffing for evidence.”

“How many bodies?”

“I’m not telling you who, how, or how many. There’s no good reason for you to know the details, and I don’t need to talk about it. I have no regrets.”

“You’ve lost your mind.” She pulls at her damp hair, twisting it around her fingers. “You risked everything, Jake.”

“And I’ll do it again. In two days.”

Her breath holds. She doesn’t release it, as if she’s afraid she’ll say something that proves my point.

I rise from the bed and approach her. “When we made the blood oath that night, none of us hesitated. We didn’t hesitate when we sliced open our hands. We didn’t hesitate when we uttered the words we had every intention of honoring.” I lift her chin with a fingertip. “Jarret and I killed your enemies with that same vehemence. The instant I learned someone was watching you at school, we killed him. We picked them all off, one by one, until we were certain it was safe for you to come home. There is no one left with vested interest in this land.”

“Except John Holsten.”

“We killed my dad’s debt collectors. That means he has no debts. Then we blackmailed him with the evidence I used against the sheriff. I promised not to turn him in if he signed over the ownership of the cattle business and left town.” Regret twists my stomach. “I should’ve killed him.”

“But if he doesn’t have debts or any reason to return…”

“Revenge can be a pretty big motivator. He was looking at making a shit ton of money off this land, and Jarret and I took that away. To say he was livid when he left is an understatement. But he also knows that if he returns, we’ll end him.”

She chews on that for a moment, pacing, contemplating.

“Now that you live here,” I say, narrowing my eyes when she opens her mouth, “we’ll start the process that gives you full power over the land.”

She nods, continues to pace, then jumps into a barrage of follow-up questions.

We spend the next hour rehashing it all again. As I clarify every detail, my eyes never stray from hers. Where does she stand on all this? Her thoughts are inscrutable.