that man had shaken Brick, as well. When Natalie told her that she grew up on a ranch, Mo had pictured rail fencing, horses running around a green pasture, a large house with a mother baking in the kitchen. She realized that Natalie had let her picture that, wanting Mo to believe that she was a born and bred Montana girl as open and honest as the big sky.
Victim or monster? Mo still couldn’t say. Brick wanted to believe the best. But even if Natalie was the murderer Mo believed she was, it didn’t mean that she’d killed Joey. Who was this woman and how much of what she’d told her was true?
“I believe that Natalie knows more than she told the police,” she said. “More than she’s told me. She was trying to warn me that day. She seemed worried about Joey. Worried...” She looked over at him and felt tears fill her eyes. She was fighting to make sense of all of this.
She looked away as he voiced her worst fear.
“Worried that Tricia might have harmed her own baby?”
Mo quickly wanted to argue that Tricia wouldn’t, couldn’t. But in truth, given the condition her sister had been in the last time she’d seen her, she didn’t have an argument in response. Fortunately, Brick didn’t give her a chance.
“Natalie was living in that house, right? Of course she would have seen things, overheard things... If she didn’t kill Joey, then someone else with access to that house did. If there was another man...”
Mo felt the weight of his words and hated that he was right. “It’s time to find out if anything the woman has told me is the truth.” Whether she wanted to hear it or not.
Chapter Eleven
Brick couldn’t help but question how far he would go to see this finished as he drove toward Billings. He’d been hell-bent on saving Natalie Berkshire, convinced that she was a victim. He still was determined to see that she got a trial. With all the evidence he feared was coming out against her, a trial, it seemed, would only land her in prison for the rest of her life.
And yet not even Mo was now convinced that she’d hurt Joey. Unless Natalie was lying. Was she lying about everything else, as well?
As he glanced over at Mo, he knew that no matter what, he would see this through. Mo needed him, even if she didn’t think so. He smiled to himself at the thought as he listened to the sound of the tires on the highway as the miles swept past. And he had needed her. He felt himself getting stronger. Not just physically but emotionally, as well.
Whatever happened now, he and Mo were in this together. As they crossed high prairie, the sun setting behind the Little Rockies, he kept thinking about Natalie’s ex and her father. Was the young woman a bad seed?
He thought of that old couple that had rammed her pickup and injured her. Guilty or not, she deserved better. He hoped that old couple got the book thrown at them, then remembered what his father had told him. The couple had lost their grandchild and believed Natalie was responsible. Not that it gave them the right to take the law into their own hands.
“So if Natalie is the person you suspect she is, how long do you think she’s been doing this?” he asked, realizing that his greatest fear was that Mo was right and Natalie would kill again.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that this started a lot longer ago than we know. I’m sure there has always been a lack of evidence. Maybe she wasn’t even a suspect in most of the cases. Natalie seems to have the ability to be whatever she thinks other people need. Her father aside, I do believe there is something very wrong with her and that her childhood played a part in making her the woman she is now.” Mo looked over at him. “Or maybe she is completely innocent of not just Joey’s death but the others that are now being reinvestigated.”
“Maybe,” he said, though no longer sure of that. He realized that he was tired of thinking about it. Right now he was more interested in the woman sitting in the pickup cab next to him. “What about you?”
“What about me?” she asked, sounding surprised by the question.
“I’ve told you my life story—”
“Hardly.”
“And you haven’t told me anything about you.”
She shook her head. “You