Delivering His Gifts (Mountain Men of Liberty #10)- K.C. Crowne Page 0,76

password on Jim’s computer.

“He makes our job way too easy,” Eli said, almost sounding disappointed.

He returned the phone to me, and I went straight for the text messages. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I opened one from a number not saved into Jim’s phone.

It simply said, It’s done. The text included a photo of Danielle’s house up in flames.

Jim texted back, Was she there?

My blood ran cold as I wondered if she was supposed to be there.

The other person responded, I don’t know.

“Call Teddy,” I muttered. “I think we’ve got all the proof we need.”

Ooo000ooo

Teddy frowned as he looked over the messages. “And how did you get this?”

“We found it,” Graham answered, shooting me a look. He’d told me it would be difficult to explain this and that Teddy might not be able to do much with it since it was stolen.

Teddy shook his head, and my heart dropped. I feared the worst.

“I don’t know how I’m going to explain this in court. We need more,” he said. “But it’s a start. I’ll do what I can to find something we can use.”

“Thanks, Teddy,” I said.

Teddy sighed and slipped the phone into his pocket. Because the evidence was obtained illegally, regardless of the lie I’d told, the evidence wouldn’t hold up. But I also knew that Teddy was a man who believed in what he did - he wanted the guilty to pay, and while he would always follow the law himself, he wouldn’t overlook clear proof of arson just because the evidence came about in a questionable manner.

I trusted Teddy would find some way to spin this, to get more evidence now that he had the proof staring at him.

I had to believe he’d take that bastard down.

Danielle

I watched as Greg’s car pulled away with my daughter. A whole week. She was going with him for an entire week. It wasn’t the first time she’d spent a week with him, sometimes even longer in the summer, but since he’d taken her and lied about it months before, I didn’t feel comfortable with him keeping her for long.

It probably didn’t help that I was hugely pregnant, and my hormones were getting the best of me. I was in my third trimester, finally, and the doctors had told me to do my best to be stress free. Easier said than done when you were dealing with everything I had going on.

Thanks to the evidence Mason handed over to Teddy, they were able to link Jim to the fire. Mason didn’t tell me exactly how he came about getting it, and even Teddy didn’t really know. But there was a text message, and once Teddy was able to trace the other number, he found the person Jim had hired to take care of the fire. The man came clean in exchange for a lighter sentence, and just like that - the debt with Jim was cancelled because Jim was arrested for conspiracy and would most likely go to prison.

Everything had happened so fast, but it was nice knowing that my debt couldn’t come back to haunt me now. And at least I could feel better thinking Greg had nothing to do with it. He had talked to Jim, according to Mason, but there was absolutely nothing linking him to the fire. The fire was all Jim’s idea, from the sound of it, but even knowing this, there was a gnawing suspicion in my mind that Greg might still be involved.

Without proof, however, there was little I could do.

I sighed and wiped the tears from my eyes. My cheeks were burning from the frigid wind. I placed a hand on my belly, comforting myself with the thought that sometime after Christmas, my babies would be here.

Mason took my other hand and led me back to his truck.

“Come on, I have a surprise for you,” he said.

“A surprise? What kind of surprise?”

“It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if I told you, now would it?” He gave me an adorably cheeky grin as he helped me into his truck. He hurried around to the driver’s side and started the engine. The warmth from the heater felt nice on my cold face.

“I knew this week would be hard for you, and I wanted to do something special.”

“What did you do, Mason?”

“You’ll see,” he said.

He wouldn’t even give me a hint as we drove to the rental. He simply told me to pack a few things, just items I