by and the bastard attacked me. The two of you saw it. I didn’t know he was some deputy marshal until I pulled his ID and by then, I had arrested him.”
“That’s your story?” one of Shane’s friends demanded.
“That’s our story,” Shane snapped.
“You are going to get us into so much trouble,” his friend complained.
“I already called in the attack,” Shane said with a laugh. “A disturbance in an alley near Henry’s Bar. Might need medical attention. Cops attacked.”
As the cop car came roaring up, siren blaring and lights flashing, Shane said, “Just stick to the story.” Walking past Brick, the cop got in one more kick.
Just before he passed out, Brick heard Mo’s angry voice and then she was taking his truck keys as he was being carried to the cop car. The last thing he heard was her saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you out.”
* * *
MO HAD WANTED TO attack Shane herself. Instead, she demanded that Brick be given medical attention, promising to bail him out as quickly as she could.
“Shane, you best watch your back,” she warned him quietly as Brick was loaded into the back of the ambulance behind the police cruiser.
“You aren’t threatening an officer of the law, are you, Mo?” He smirked at her. “Careful, or you’ll end up behind bars, as well.”
She’d already been behind bars, so she kept her mouth shut. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t involved Brick in this... If he hadn’t come to her rescue at the bar... Through her anger, she told herself that there was nothing else she could do for Brick. He wouldn’t be arraigned until tomorrow at the earliest. All she could do was wait and then get him out on bail—just as he’d done for her.
In the meantime, she had the autopsy report and the photos, and she knew the initials of Tricia’s lover. It wasn’t much, but there had be something in them to prove that Tricia hadn’t taken her own life. Once she did that, she wouldn’t let it go until her sister’s murderer was caught.
Storming over to Brick’s pickup, she climbed in and tossed the paper sack Lou had given her onto the seat. It toppled over, spilling some of the contents onto the floor.
Mo saw one photo of her sister, the noose around her neck, and burst into tears. She leaned over the steering wheel, letting it all out. For weeks, she’d used her anger keep her from releasing the pain inside her. Now it overflowed with chest-aching sobs, the dam breaking.
After a few minutes, she gulped and wiped furiously at her face. Finally under control, she leaned down to pick up everything that had fallen. She was shoving it all back into the paper sack when she realized the paper in her hand hadn’t come out of the bag Lou had given her.
She stared down at the sheet of paper. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at—the flyer Thomas’s associate Quinn had handed her outside the jail. Something caught her eye. She smoothed out the sheet of paper.
Jeffrey Palmer, the self-made man and seminar speaker. JP. She remembered Thomas talking about the wonderful speakers his company always managed to book. Hadn’t Tricia gone to one of these with her husband?
The multimillionaire’s list of accomplishments was a mile long. She stared at his photograph. He had to be pushing seventy with thick gray hair and bushy gray eyebrows. This man couldn’t have been Tricia’s lover, could he?
Jeffrey Palmer was hosting a cocktail party the last night of the conference at his home in Big Sky. She was telling herself that it was just a coincidence that the man had the same initials as Tricia’s lover when she turned the flyer over and froze.
In this photograph, Jeffrey Palmer Sr. stood next to his son, Jeffrey “JP” Palmer Jr. Her gaze dropped to the cutline under the photograph. Palmer and his son had received the governor’s award for a nonprofit corporation they’d started called My Son’s Dream, an animal sanctuary.
Her heart began to pound harder. My Son’s Dream. MSD, Inc. The animal shelter where Tricia had volunteered. Mo remembered a baseball cap with MSD, Inc., on it that her sister had worn to a picnic last summer.
She looked closer at the photo of JP. According to his bio, he was just a year older than Mo. The closer she looked at him, she realized she recognized him. He’d changed considerably since college. He’d filled