She’s right.
We cross Maria out.
“Grace?”
Kara thinks on it. “She’s a possible, they were squabbling earlier in the night about some part coming up, and it got pretty heated. She called him a few names, nothing unusual for Grace, and then she went to bed.”
“So we’ll mark her as possibly.”
Kara nods.
“Emily?” I ask.
Kara shakes her head. “No way, she left early and wasn’t even there.”
“And when I came out of my room, I saw her in bed.”
Besides, she’d have no reason to want to hurt Taj, she created this group and between all of us, she is the most mature and stable.
We cross her out.
“Okay,” Kara says. “So that’s our group done. Let’s move to the guys, though I see no reason why any of them would hurt Taj. They look scary, but they’ve been nothing but nice.”
This is where I’m hesitant.
I give her a look and she pauses. “You’re not telling me something.”
“I don’t know if I should ...”
Her eyes widen. “Tell me right now! This is important, we need all the information.”
I exhale. “Okay, so when I went up to the house last night to see Rhett, I stumbled across a situation I don’t think I was meant to see.”
Kara narrows her eyes. “What kind of situation?”
“Well, they were all in the house and they had this random guy on the sofa and they were asking him all these questions and then they ... they were hitting him with a crowbar. It was pretty messed up. I ran off, fell down the stairs, and Rhett caught me but I just acted like I was in the stables visiting the horses and I could tell he was nervous I had seen something.”
Kara’s eyes get big. “They were hurting someone? Do you have any idea who, or why?”
“I don’t know who, but I did hear them saying they were trying to get some sort of information out of him, it sounded pretty bad. They were saying they needed to find something to use against him to get him to talk.”
“Shit,” Kara mumbles. “What if somehow Taj went up to the house later in the night and stumbled across that?”
“I thought of that, but they then would have had to drag him all the way back to the barn, push him onto a rock and cover him up without anyone knowing. I don’t know much about these guys, but I feel like if they were going to sort out a situation they’d do it a little better than that. As far as I know, they didn’t even know we were at the barn.”
Kara ponders this for a minute, crossing her legs. “Okay, let’s say Taj did see something and ran off. One of them heard him and followed him back to the barn, where they confronted him, it got a bit heated, and they pushed him ...”
It’s possible, but again, nobody heard anything.
“They were camping right outside, you’re saying nobody would have heard anything?”
“We were all really drunk,” Kara says. “When I left, they were barely walking. They all climbed into that tent and passed out, it’s unlikely they would have heard anything.”
I exhale. “Okay, so let’s put them down as something to look into.”
“I think they’re the first thing we look into, we need to find out more about them. Who were those girls we had lunch with that day, they seem to know them well, is there any way we can casually chat to them?”
Maggie and Gabby, they both live in town. I wonder if we could make an excuse to get into town and see them, just to find out a little general information.
“Do you need anything from town?”
Kara grins. “Always.”
To town we go.
“YOU NEED TO GO INTO town?” Rhett asks, unsaddling Diablo in the barn.
It took me a while to find him, I had to go and ask Enzo who said he was out fixing fences again. The guys are all about to head out to work in the paddocks, so I was lucky to catch him at all.
“Only if you’re not busy. You can just drop us in and come back later, we just need to have a bit of time out.”
He nods. “I gotta go in and see some people, was goin’ to wait but I’ll go in now. Go get your things and we’ll go.”
Rhett is withdrawn these last few days, gone is the man who was all over me like a rash. He’s broody and grumpy, barely speaking to me let alone anyone else. I get it, he just had a death on his ranch, during the very first retreat here. He’s managed to keep it quiet, but there is supposed to be some big news reporting on the weekend with some interviews on the first group here, and I guess he’s worried that might not go well. After all, three members are now missing.