Cole backed away from the couch. “I think you’ll be fine. Jase, get the doc an aspirin and stay with her while I get the chores done.”
“And you’re really fine with decorating the house, or maybe even getting a Christmas tree?” There was a note of fear in Jase’s voice.
Cole felt the echo of fear in his gut. “Sure. Sounds like a plan.” He turned away from them. A woman who appeared soft and gentle but had a core of steel. A boy, lost in his past and trying desperately to find security and a home. Cole shook his head. How the hell had he gotten into such a mess? He needed familiar ground. He was never afraid. He had nothing to lose, and when a man had nothing to lose, he didn’t experience fear. He was letting some little slip of a woman scare the holy hell out of him.
Outside, he examined the ice-coated walkway. Someone had poured water over the snow to form the icy surface. The hose was buried in the large snowbank on the outside of the walkway, but he could see the hose had been stuck in one of the latticework holes and sprayed onto the surface. Small droplets of water had frozen on the lattice.
Was it Jase? It didn’t feel right to him. Jase seemed to be genuine. A nice kid who needed a family. Could he be as sick and disturbed as their father? They were in the middle of particularly harsh blizzard. No one else was in the house or around the ranch that Cole was aware of. He studied the ground near the hose. The boot impressions in the snow were large—too large to be Jase’s—and led back toward a door that opened into the barn. Someone had opened that door and spied on Maia while she worked on the horse. Jase hadn’t been wet or covered in snow when he’d come running in.
If Maia had gone out early to tend the horse and the walkway had been fine, then only Jase had gone after her. It was possible Jase had shot the old man. He’d never been ruled out as a suspect. He didn’t want Jase to be guilty, but the evidence wasn’t stacking up in the boy’s favor.
Brett Steele had been found in his office, dead from a single bullet smack in the middle of his forehead. Cole shook his head. Jase had found the injured horse. He could have easily driven the horse into the fence and then gone to get Al, making a show of being upset and blaming Cole. Jase claimed he found Cole’s glove in the fence.
Cole straightened and took a cautious look around. His alarms were shrieking at him. Something was terribly wrong, and he knew he was in danger. Maia Armstrong could very well be too. And Jase.
He shook his head, vowing to find out who was sneaking around the ranch and why as he trudged through the snow to the stables to feed the horses.
He patted an outstretched neck as one of the horses greeted him, then tossed a flake of hay into the last feeding bin.
He ran his hand along one of the horses’ backs, bent closer, and noticed a girth mark near the horse’s belly. It could only mean the horse had been ridden recently, within the last couple of days. Cole leaned down to pick up a foot, examining the hoof. Dirt and debris were caked in the shoe. Very slowly he lowered the hoof to the stable floor, a slight frown on his face. Al hadn’t said anything about taking the horses out.
Cole closed the door to the stall and went to examine the saddles and bridles. A large saddle was set to one side, slightly off kilter, but it didn’t mean anything. A rifle scabbard was hooked to the saddle, and it had a mud pattern splattered across it.
A muffled footfall alerted him. Cole eased back into the shadows of the tack room and drew the gun from the holster strapped to his calf. Only the munching of the horses as they chewed hay and the sound of their continual restless movements in the stalls broke the silence. Cole didn’t make the mistake of moving. He had endless patience when needed. A shadow stretched across the wall, a man holding a pitchfork out in front of him. Cole stepped out into the open, his gun rock steady, an extension of his arm.
Every vestige of color drained from Jase’s face. He dropped the pitchfork and backed against the stall. “Don’t shoot me.”
Cole swore savagely. “What the hell is the matter with you? I could have shot you. What were you thinking?” He shoved the gun out of sight.
“I came out to help you,” Jase defended, his face tight with fear and growing anger. “What are you doing with a gun?”
“None of your damned business,” Cole snapped. Jase turned and ran out of the stable, disappearing from Cole’s line of vision.
Cole crushed down the need to throw something. He should have identified the intruder before coming out of hiding with his gun. He knew better than to let his highly tuned instincts take over completely. Dammit. He was going to have to explain the gun. How did you tell a teenager your entire world was made up of conspiracies, and you siphoned through them one at a time to get to the truth?
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