Page 37 of Bridles and Bribery

Dave waved her over and tried to get her to sit down beside him. “Where exactly do you keep his medicine, Jan?” Maybe if he could get her talking, it would help calm her down.

She rounded on him and snapped, “In the house, which he almost never steps inside anymore! There’s not a crowbar big enough to pry him out of that barn and away from his horse most days.”

Dave patted the seat beside him again. He’d been doing some research on his phone about muscle relaxers and tranquilizers. Considering his medical condition, the tranquilizers made sense. But muscle relaxers? Why muscle relaxers?

Jan Jacobson finally plopped into the seat next to Dave. “I don’t get it. The threats Jason and I received from the Prophet were for us, not our son!”

Dave had been thinking the same thing. He’d ask moreabout the muscle relaxer prescription later. Reaching for the backpack at his feet, he rummaged through it for the two notes in question. Smoothing them open against his knee, he examined them side by side.

Both were printed on eight-and-a-half by eleven-inch sheets of paper. Though Dave was no expert on computer paper, a few things were immediately apparent. Number one, the paper was a heavier weight than standard computer paper. Number two, it was coated with a glossy finish that made the printed letters practically gleam. Number three, it was the same kind of paper Gil had described over the phone while telling Dave about the death threat intended for him before he’d departed for Dallas.

There was one logical conclusion. All three death threats had come from the same person. The fact that there was nothing humorous about the messages triggered a new theory.

Dave found himself askingwhat if?What if there was both a real Prophet and a fake one? What if the real Prophet was sending one set of messages to pre-determined targets, while the fake Prophet or Prophets were making up all the hilarious memes online intended for a less specific audience?

Dave pulled out another random piece of paper from the backpack and flipped it over so he could write on it. “When did you say Jason received this threat?”

Jan watched him write. “About a month ago. Why?”

“And you received yours three days ago, right?”

She nodded.

He used her answer to continue creating a timeline. He added the date of Jason Jacobson’s death, the time period afterward in which the prophet memes had gone viral, aswell as the threats that had been sent to Heart Lake for Jillian and himself. Then he studied the timeline. After a moment of deliberation, he added the date that Jordan had attended the training camp at Horseshoe Valley Ranch. He also added Jordan’s trip to the hospital.

“What are you doing?” Jan practically radiated curiosity.

“Building a case.”What does it look like I’m doing?

A disturbing picture was emerging. Though he couldn’t prove anything without additional evidence, the timeline presented a whole new set of possibilities he hadn’t previously considered.

What if the online trend of issuing hilarious threats had been deliberately started to discredit the real Prophet? To essentially turn him into a joke that the police themselves would refuse to take seriously?

If Dave ignored the events attributed to the online trend, what was left was a real person sending real threats to real people. He read them one by one, trying to determine what each threat had accomplished.

According to his timeline, Jason Jacobson had received the first threat in the mail and died a week later. What sort of criminal would tip off the target before the crime was committed? What had the criminal hoped to accomplish? One theory rose to the top as the most likely theory. It was possible someone had been trying to intimidate Triple J Ranch into dropping out of this year’s upcoming races ahead of the commission meeting. And when that had failed, it was lights out for Jason.

Moving on to the threat against Jillian’s unborn child…what had it accomplished? She’d received it right before she and Dave had been about to depart on their honeymoon, the same night Jan had called, begging him to fly to Dallas. It was also the same night Dave had received a threat on the front doorstep back at home, one he’d failed to see before departing for the airport. Any normal person would’ve probably hunkered down and gone into defensive mode after receiving all the threats he and Jillian had. Cancelled their flight. Stayed home. Not taken the case in Dallas. And when the threats hadn’t worked, it had been lights out for Dave. Almost.

That’s it!He blinked as the proverbial lightbulb flashed on inside his head. Maybe the Prophet hadn’t been sending threats, per se, so much as warnings. But why?

One detail that didn’t fit the timeline was the fact that Jordan Jacobson hadn’t received a threat from the Prophet.

Or had he?

Dave turned to meet Jan’s gaze. “I need to pay another visit to the barn where Jordan has been staying.” He paused. “If that’s okay with you.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” She scowled at him.

“You sure you’re okay with me leaving you alone at the hospital?”

She nodded wearily. “Doc said Jordan is going to pull through. Since he’s okay, I’m okay.”

He was already pulling out the business card that the cabbie from earlier had left with him. Dialing the number, he reserved a ride back to Triple J Ranch.

Less than an hour later,Dave stepped back inside Jordan’s living quarters inside the small horse barn. Since Jordan was a neat freak, it didn’t take long to search the room. He quickly found what he was looking for — a ream of high-gloss printing paper. Only a few sheets were missing from it.

He also found something he wasn’t expecting. When he opened Jordan’s laptop, it wasn’t password protected. It flashed straight to the home page, which contained a carefully arranged collage of #prophet memes. The files dotting the bottom of the page, however, weren’t the least bit humorous. They were named after people Dave knew — Jason Jacobson, Jan Jacobson, Jillian Phillips, and Dave Phillips. Inside each folder was the respective letter that had been sent in warning to each recipient.

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