“I don’t know.” Phoenix shook his head. “Who?”
Jackson stood. “Who has the most to gain with her out of the way?”
Denver shrugged. “I’m not following.”
Dallas added, “Me either.”
“Jackson, just tell us.” Phoenix’s own frustration was wearing thin.
“Use your heads. I’m thinking of Austin.”
Phoenix’s heart pounded loud. His brother’s logic made sense. Austin was intense and capable of a lot of things, but murder? “I think you’re wrong.”
“And if I’m not?”
Denver shook his head. “Lil’ bro, I hope you’re wrong, but if Austin was only trying to scare her and things got out of hand—”
“That’s enough. He’s our brother.” Phoenix tried to find a flaw in his brother’s reasoning but couldn’t. “We need proof.”
Denver started pacing. “Asking him point-blank won’t work.”
“Austin doesn’t need to know what happened today.” Dallas wrung his hands. “If he did have something to do with it, he’d be expecting to hear something.”
“Good idea.” Denver nodded. “I’ll get her car in the shop, and play it off as routine.”
“Are we really thinking our brother could’ve done this?” Dallas asked.
Phoenix prayed they were all wrong, but Austin was dangerous and secretive. Who knew what was possible with him? “I’ll tell you one thing, whoever did this to the woman I plan on marrying will get a whole pile of ass-kicking shit that I’ll be delivering in person.”
Jackson turned to him. “Not without me, you don’t. Wait...you’re on board to marry her?”
Phoenix confessed, “I’m totally gone for Jessie.”
Jackson smiled. “Welcome to the club.”
“She’s the woman of my dreams, lil’ bro. If she’ll have me, I will marry her.”
“I hope she has all of us.”
“That may take some doing. She’s still in the dark about our family.” Dallas’s lips curled up. “I have to admit, there’s something about Jessie that gets to me, too. They way she handled herself at Austin’s tree blew me away.”
Suddenly, Denver stopped pacing. “So we keep working the plan we came up with at Pete’s? Each
of us getting to know her better? Pushing her boundaries? Getting her ready for Austin.”
Phoenix believed Dallas and Denver were falling for Jessie, too.
“Only if he’s innocent of cutting her brakes,” Jackson said.
“Yes,” Phoenix agreed.
“Shouldn’t we come clean to her about how our family works?” Dallas asked. “I don’t like lying.”
He was the most open and honest of Phoenix’s brothers, a polar opposite in that respect to Austin. “Not yet. It’s a lot to take in for one so innocent as her. Also, we shouldn’t tell her until we find out who is behind cutting her brake line.”
Chapter Twelve
Jessie woke up in a warm bed. She recognized the male voices in the other room. Phoenix, Jackson, Dallas, and Denver. Her heart had finally settled back into a normal rhythm after her runaway car incident. She’d never made it to the mine, but so be it. This was the second time she’d almost gotten injured or killed in Wilde, Nevada. Both times, a Wilde brother had saved her life.