Colton Cowboy Jeopardy (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

“Doubtful. No one knows who shot my dad. Yet. We will find out, one way or another.” He glared out across the landscape. “I’m not sure she’s capable of pulling the trigger, but she might hire it done. I can’t see how taking him out helps her, but then again, I’m not a criminal.”

Jarvis reeled. As far as he’d heard, there were still no leads about the attack on Payne Colton. He figured there were plenty of suspects. The man had money and land, but he hadn’t won any popularity contests in the area.

“The woman got a house and a seat on the Colton Oil board,” Asher said, his voice a low growl. “Whether or not she’s the shooter, she must have been blackmailing him. That’s the only way to explain how he caved to her demands when they divorced. Maybe he threatened to stop cooperating.”

Jarvis didn’t know Payne the way Asher did, hadn’t seen the fallout of what sounded like a rocky marriage on the best of days. “I’ll stay alert.”

“Thanks. Just stick close. Pay attention to who she talks to and listen for anything helpful. Maybe she’ll get tipsy and start bragging.”

He thought he and his siblings had been treated poorly by Payne, but the longer he worked here with his cousin the less he envied the way Payne’s children had been raised and all the advantages they’d enjoyed. Those benefits clearly had come at a price.

“Can’t be easy to be Payne’s son,” Jarvis said.

“Can’t say it is. I know my dad’s a jerk, but whatever his opinion, you’re a cousin to me. I’m asking as family, to protect family.”

How strange to hear those words from one of the Colton Oil Coltons. Jarvis had groomed himself to dislike them nearly all of his life, considering them the snooty side of the family tree, too aloof to bother with him. But as his own family died out, snipping his roots out from under him, a small, childlike piece of his heart had longed for a connection.

Ridiculous. That piece of him needed to sit down and shut up. The last thing any piece of him needed was another emotional beatdown. He could help Asher, but he had his own reasons for wanting Selina to open up. To that end, he’d make sure she had a drink in her hand all night long.

“I’m a good listener,” he said. “Per her orders, I’m driving, so I have even more reason to stay sober. You’ll get a full report.”

“Great.” Asher relaxed, removing his hat and combing a hand through his hair. “I appreciate it more than I can say.”

“Best save that appreciation until I actually have something.” The men started back toward the barns. “Would you have asked me for this if I’d said I was involved with her?”

Asher laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Not a chance,” he admitted. A grin creased his face. “If I thought you were seriously into her I would’ve fired you.”

Jarvis believed him. “I would’ve deserved it,” he said. Asher had made it clear from the start he expected loyalty to run alongside hard work.

A strange morning, complicated by a lack of sleep, but he got through the rest of his assignments with willpower and focus.

Once he was done, everything extra came down on him like a ton of bricks. He’d needed to speak with Mia about the Graves party and he’d been half tempted to give her his real reasons. Now he had the extra excuse of helping Asher. If he was lucky, she would immediately trust him not to reveal her hiding place.

Before he headed out to continue his search for Isaiah’s mystery box, Jarvis took some time and chatted with a few of the other hands. He’d thought he’d made some friends, but it seemed he?

??d held back just enough to be considered gossip fodder. Maybe if he cultivated those relationships, the rumors about him and Selina would slow down.

When he finally got back to the location near the warming hut, his focus was divided between his search and Mia’s continued safety. It troubled him that she’d had to rely on an online chat instead of taking her baby to the doctor. Yesterday hadn’t been anything serious, but it wasn’t fair to make her wait for him if a real problem did crop up.

He needed to figure out a way to get Mia a vehicle, something she could use if there was an emergency. Moving her car to the bunkhouse was one option, but doing that meant Regina might spot her easily if the woman visited the Triple R or if Mia had to drive into town.

He could probably give her access to a ranch truck, but most of those were equipped with a GPS tracker. He didn’t want anyone revealing her hiding place because they were confused about a vehicle left sitting at a remote bunkhouse near currently unused grazing fields.

For the first time, Jarvis regretted the immense size of Rattlesnake Ridge Ranch. It wasn’t as simple as driving a truck out to her and hiking back.

Not in the afternoon heat, anyway. He supposed he could handle the vehicle swap at night. If he picked her up at the bunkhouse and she rode to the ranch with him, she could drive a ranch truck back to her hiding place.

That still didn’t leave him with an explanation for Asher about the location of that truck. He let transportation issues simmer in the back of his mind, returning to the place he’d been digging when he’d first heard Silas’s cries.

He grimaced at the hole he’d left behind. After his previous attempts to find the evidence supposedly buried on this ranch, he’d carefully covered his trail. Here, in a hurry to find the crying baby, he’d made a glaring error. Anyone who happened upon this would wonder who was digging and why. Those were questions he wasn’t ready to answer.

As with all of his previous sites, this one, too, was a big fat no-go. When he’d finished filling in this hole, he leaned on his shovel and stared out across the grazing land. “Maybe Granddad’s brain was playing tricks on him. Could be he was making stuff up or getting old stories confused. Everyone else thinks so.” It felt a whole lot better when he had these one-sided conversations with his horse. Thankfully, no one was out here to witness his lack of common sense as he addressed his truck.

He tossed the shovel into the bed and settled behind the wheel. Turning on the engine, he cranked the air-conditioning as cold as it would go. Making the note on his search app, he put the truck in gear and headed back toward his assigned room.

He showered off the workday, put on clean jeans and a better shirt and opted for tennis shoes rather than boots tonight. He packed up a few things, just in case he didn’t make it back, and then went to join the majority of the crew for supper. With rumors flying, it was better if he met those head-on rather than let them fester. Personal lives were always juicy gossip in a small town and this wasn’t the first time Jarvis had been a prime target. Just the first time here at the Triple R.

Over the meal, he fielded questions about what Selina had needed and what she’d been saying about him. Amid the heartfelt thanks tossed at him from the men who appreciated him “taking care of her,” he realized he’d given her carte blanche to say anything about their status as a couple. She sure was taking him up on that, based on the nonsense flying around about their intense affair and his “new” prospects in Mustang Valley. The woman was a mess in Jarvis’s mind, but he couldn’t call her a liar without losing a valuable opportunity to help Asher and Mia.