The Hidden

Scarlet smiled suddenly, “I just realized—if I’m a descendant of Nathan Kendall, then I’m also a descendant of Marshal Vickers.”


Maybe she didn’t want to believe Tom Vickers had been a murderer because she didn’t want to think badly of a relative, however distant, or consider the possibility that a killer’s blood ran through her own veins.

“Diego said he’s been studying the murders, too, and that he could be proven wrong, but he’s never thought it was Jillian’s father,” Jane said. “That leaves us with one of the outlaws Nathan Kendall ran with right after the war.”

“Or someone else we’ve never thought of, even some stranger passing through,” Scarlet said, shaking her head.

“But why?” Jane asked. “What motive could a stranger have had? All the evidence says Nathan Kendall was killed for a reason.”

“The only other person I can think of,” Scarlet said, “is Rollo Conway. But he sold Nathan the ranch. Nathan did him a favor, really, since Rollo needed the money so he could keep looking for gold. Why would he kill Nathan?”

“Jealousy?” Lara asked. “Resentment?”

“We’ve thought about that,” Scarlet admitted. “But it doesn’t really make sense, and it’s not as if Rollo would have gotten the ranch back if Nathan and even Jillian died. There was still their son, and the killer could easily have gone into the house and killed him, but he didn’t. Rollo just doesn’t fit.”

“Was Nathan Kendall wealthy?” Jane asked. “Maybe someone was trying to torture him into giving up the location of his money.”

“I don’t think so,” Scarlet said. “One reason people back then suspected his fellow outlaws was the theory that they’d made a big score somewhere along the way and Nathan was hiding the money, even that he’d stolen it from them when he left them for a normal life. But if you read Nathan’s journals, it’s hard to believe he was hoarding anything of value.”

“I guess we keep reading,” Lara said.

“There’s a mention here about the death of a friend,” Scarlet said a little while later, looking up at the others. “Nathan doesn’t give a name, but I have a feeling it was the last of the outlaws he ran with. He says, ‘Goodbye, old friend; goodbye to the past. Gunned down in Missouri. I guess it was fitting. You died in what was once the Old South, just as you would no doubt have wanted. And yet you were just here with me, as were the others. How quickly we are going. You died fast, they said. Before you hit the ground. More than any of us deserved, perhaps. Rest in peace.’ It has to be Jeff Bay. So if all the outlaws died before Nathan was murdered, then it’s obvious none of them killed him.”

“I still don’t believe it was the father,” Lara said.

“I don’t, either,” Scarlet said. “But that takes us right back to Rollo Conway,” Scarlet said. “And we’ve already agreed that he doesn’t make sense, either.” She shook her head. “No, the killer wanted something. That has to be it. He wanted something.”

“But what?” Jane asked.

Scarlet looked around. “Something that might still be here?”

She rose, walked over to the window and looked out. She had the sudden sensation that someone was watching the house, and a shiver raced along her spine.

It was different from what she felt when a ghost was near. It was the same feeling she’d had that night when she’d come back after a night in town and found out that two people had been murdered right here on the ranch.

“Don’t think I’m crazy, but I feel like we’re being watched,” she said, looking back at Jane and Lara. “It’s not the way I feel when a ghost is around, it’s...creepy. But maybe ghosts make you guys feel creepy?”