Page 77 of Love Me Back
“She set up a trust for him. It should have lasted him a lifetime. But with the way he spends money, it recently ran out,” Uncle Mando said.
“That’s why he came back,” Addie confirmed.
“That low-down, sneaky bastard,” Pops growled. My eyes widened at his tirade. I had seen Pops get after the boys for their manners, and in town everyone called him old man Johnson, who was famous for his crotchetiness. But I had never seen him angry like this.
He stood from the table, and as he walked to the back door, Carson rushed over in front of him. “Where do you think you’re going, old man?”
“To the tunnels. I’m gonna find that son of a bitch and put a bullet in his head.”
“Pops, that’s not the answer,” Grayson said from the doorway. “We need to call the sheriff and let him handle it.”
“I could call King, and the Silver Shadows will handle it,” Tyson announced.
“No!” Grayson shouted. “This is our shit. We’ll clean it up.” He rolled into the dining room over to Pops. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. This isn’t your fault.”
“It is. I should have locked him up when he burned the barn down.”
“Pops, Uncle Mando has enough evidence to put him away now. He will be in prison for a long time,” I told him, trying to placate him before he did something stupid, like kill his own son. Regardless of the reason, that wasn’t something you could come back from.
Pops looked at Grayson. “My tears weren’t for him. They were for the boy I thought I’d lost. Truth is, he was never really my boy. I knew when he was a baby, something was off. But we did the best we could.”
“Hudson, call the sheriff.”
Before Hudson moved, the door opened and Carl walked in. “Need you at the barn, boss.”
“What happened?” Grayson asked, rolling closer.
“You best come. And call the sheriff,” Carl said.
Hudson pulled his phone out, and I heard him talking to Martha at the station. She would get ahold of Sheriff O’Rourke and send him out. The rest of us followed Carl to the barn.
Thunder was snorting and stomping his foot. He was clearly aggravated, and once we got to his stall, we discovered why.
The man I saw in the barn. The one that yelled at me to get out and stay out, lay in the corner of the stall. His crumpled body was in a heap, his head twisted at an unnatural angle.
“That’s him,” I whispered.
Carson tried to get close to the stall door, but Thunder kicked it, making Carson jump back. Grayson rolled forward, and Thunder snorted, shaking his head.
“Let me get him out,” I said, moving in front of Grayson.
“Jessie, no. Not while he’s riled up.”
“It’s okay.” I unlatched the door and slipped into the stall. My hands rubbed against Thunder’s side, and I whispered to him. “It’s okay, boy. It’s okay.” I ran my hand along his neck, and he nuzzled against my face. I slipped under his head, to the stall opposite where David lay, and opened the door to the paddock. Thunder followed me out, and I closed the door behind us.
Climbing over the fence, I made my way back to the barn. The distant sound of a siren called out as I stepped back up to thestall.
“Sheriff’s here,” I said, watching Carson stand up from where he kneeled to check for a pulse we all knew he wouldn’t find.
Pops stood there, his hunched shoulders, from years of hard work and age, shaking as he cried. Addie wrapped her arms around her grandfather, and I went to Grayson and sat in his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck.
He sat in his chair without a word. His eyes stared at the dead man in the stall. A man he had never met, who’d tried to kill him, all for a horse that had in turn killed him.
We stood in Grayson’s office, giving the sheriff every detail we knew. My uncle supplied him with the evidence of what David Johnson had done to his sister and his nephew.
Pops had given a statement about the barn burning fifteen years earlier. With everything the sheriff had been given, he gave the okay for Grayson to keep Thunder.
Given that David’s only family were all in the house when David illegally entered the horse’s dwelling, there was a clear case of self-defense.
