with what Logan was doing. There’d been a comradery with the two ever since Logan took Josh to school, but something was different now. Almost as if Logan saw something in Josh that I couldn’t. And respected it.
Neither of my brothers were overly affected by the sight of the dead ranch hand. They came back intense, but not upset. After losing our father two years ago, I suspected death didn’t hold as much mystery for them as it did for most kids their age. They’d learned early that life was fleeting.
Logan raised his eyes to the room and looked at Josh again as if sensing my brother was watching him. He studied Josh for a long moment then jerked his head to the chair next to him. Josh got up without question and headed to the table, sitting next to Logan. They immediately lowered their heads as Logan spoke in soft tones for almost five minutes. Josh sat patiently and listened, but I caught him jerk slightly at something Logan said, then he grabbed the sheet of paper Logan had been using and started writing. It looked like he drew something and showed it to Logan. Logan nodded several times then made some notes and pushed it toward Josh, who sat back and took a deep breath. When Josh looked over his shoulder at me with concern, my stomach dropped. What was happening that Logan would tell a fifteen-year-old instead of me?
Josh turned his eyes from me to Jake and mumbled low for Jake to come to the table. I stood then, not about to be left out of the conversation, but Josh shook his head at me. I blinked at the wordless order to stay back. Josh, who had been aloof and withdrawn for years, driving me crazy with worry, was suddenly taking charge? I looked over at Logan and he shook his head as well. I was being ganged up on by them both. Jake took a chair next to Josh and glanced between them. He must have read the mood at the table because he turned and jerked his head toward our bedrooms in another silent order to give them privacy.
“Do you honestly think I’m gonna leave the room so you three can have a meeting without me?” I said this in my best mom voice that usually garnered at least a guilty look, if not cooperation from one of my brothers, but they both stared blankly at me without a hint of guilt. It hit me then they were protecting me from something. They may have been my younger brothers, but both had always protected me in their own way. They were just like our father. He protected and took care of what was his, and anyone else who needed help. Just like Logan was doing. But I wasn’t some helpless female. I’d managed to keep my head above water for two years. And now with Logan in my life I felt even stronger than before, so I doubled down and walked to the table and sat. “I’m not some damaged female who needs to be handled with care. If I can keep you two on the straight and narrow, I can handle anything.”
Logan studied me for a moment, gauging my mental health no doubt, since he’d been there when I had my panic attacks. He nodded finally and looked between Jake and me, announcing without prelude, “I have a suspect in Duke’s death, but no proof. Only conjecture at this point. But if I’m right, this person may have also killed Rip, Frank . . . and Justice Bear.”
Who he meant hit Jake and me like a lightning bolt at the same time. We both blurted out, “You think it’s Chance?”
Josh pushed the sheet of paper he’d been drawing on to the middle of the table. He’d made a timeline of the deaths, along with a list of names with arrows and lines intersecting back to one person. Everyone who had died recently could be traced back to Chance.
I pulled the paper toward me with a shaking hand. “You have to be wrong.”
They couldn’t be right. Chance, for better or worse, was still our brother. We had the same blood running through our veins. Our mother had been kind. Gentle. I still remembered her crying on the front porch, looking up at the Bear Claw, missing her son. She wouldn’t harm a hair on anyone’s head, so how could her son be a killer?