Page 42 of For Always
“Of what?” Tyler asked. “I couldn’t kill my parents when I was thousands of miles away.”
“But you could have hired someone to do it for you,” Alvarez countered. “You’re rich enough to do so and inheriting this ranch is a damn good motive.”
“Why would I vandalize the property? How would that fit into my grand plan?” Tyler asked through clenched teeth.
Alvarez leaned back on his heels and folded his arms over his chest. “Well, let’s just see, when that happened you and your brother hadn’t decided on whether or not you would sell or keep this ranch. So maybe your plan all along was to own this place by yourself. So you hire those same folk that did the killing of your parents for you, to come back and tear some things up. This way, your city slicker brother won’t want to be bothered with the prospect of having to fend off violence on the property and he’ll sell his half of the ranch to you. Which, as a matter of fact, is exactly what ended up happening.”
“Then, you take Ms. Bennett out for a ride that you say nobody else knew about but the two of you. How hard would it have been to pay those same criminal folk you’re in cahoots with, to stand out there and take a shot at her? Now, on the face of that I’m not sure what you have against Ms. Bennett. But then, somebody goes into the resort and tears up Ms. Bennett’s room. Somebody that probably knew she wasn’t there. If I ask you who knew Ms. Bennett was staying at the ranch last night, are you going to tell me nobody but you?”
Tyler’s fingers clenched by his side. He wanted to punch somebody or something because everything Alvarez said made sense. It wasn’t true, but it made sense.
“You don’t have to respond, Tyler,” Clyde told him.
“But I will,” Tyler said. “You can write this down, Sheriff. I loved my parents and before they died I could care less about this ranch. I didn’t know what it was worth or half the things that went on here. I hadn’t seen my brother in years and hadn’t spoken to him since last year on his birthday in September. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, I would ever do to hurt Gabriella Bennett.”
Sheriff Alvarez continued to glare at Tyler.
“You want to check my alibis, fine. I’ll have them typed up and sent to your office. You want access to my cell phone records so you can trace who I have dealings with. I’ll give you that too. Because I didn’t do any of this and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can get on to finding out who did.”
“I think this meeting is over,” Clyde stated. “I’ll walk you out, Sheriff.”
Tyler sat heavily in the chair behind the desk and turned so that he was now facing the window.
“That’s fine,” he heard the sheriff say. “And just to be clear, I don’t think Ms. Bennett was involved in what happened at the resort. I do, however, think she may know who was. I get that you’re fond of your little interior designer, Tyler. But she’s hiding something. Don’t you want to find out what that is before someone else is killed?”
Seconds later, Tyler heard the door closing. He swore at that moment and rubbed his hands down his face. He hated that all of this was happening and he hated that a small part of him thought Sheriff Alvarez was right. Gabriella was hiding something.
While Tyler in no way believed that had anything to do with what was going on here, the way she’d run back into the house and locked herself in the room upstairs, said she was upset. Now, Tyler wasn’t a trained law enforcement expert but he had enough sense to know that’s not how a normal person reacted to hearing that a room they’d been renting had been vandalized. That part he did know because it wasn’t how he’d reacted when he found out his ranch had also been hit. He’d been angry and more than eager to find out who had come onto his land and destroyed his property. The look on Gabriella’s face had been full of fear. And that wasn’t the first time he’d seen her look that way. So Tyler was certain there was something in her past that still frightened her. Something, that maybe she thought could follow her here.
This wasn’t what he planned for when he came back to Hobbs Creek. None of this was. Not becoming a ranch owner, staying in this town longer than it took to bury his parents and certainly not becoming romantically involved with a woman. A woman who he would be damned if he let anybody harm. Especially not her ex, because that’s exactly who Tyler thought Gabriella was afraid of. It was who she was having nightmares about and who she now thought was here in Hobbs Creek.
But Tyler was certain Gabriella was wrong about that. There’s no way her ex could have gotten onto this property yesterday morning to shoot at them. And if he had, then he certainly would have known she hadn’t returned to the resort. So if he wanted her, why wouldn’t he have simply come back to the ranch? Not to mention the fact that he’d had so many other chances to get to her. When she was in town shopping with Naomi. Or when she was at the resort working on the new designs there. Plenty of opportunity, he thought with a sigh.
No, this was about the ranch. It was about his parents’ murder. Tyler was sure of that and was now ready to take matters into his own hands. He pulled out his cell phone and made a call. Sheriff Alvarez wasn’t going to like this, but Tyler didn’t give a damn. Sheriff Alvarez hadn’t lost anyone he loved, and Tyler wasn’t about to lose anyone else. He was scrolling through his contacts for the number when his phone rang. The number that popped up was a surprise, but he answered anyway.
“Hello?”
“Tyler? I need your help.”
Thirty minutes later, Tyler pulled up in front of the hotel. He replied to a text message from Clyde and got out of his truck. He bypassed the front desk and went straight to the elevators. Getting off at the eighth floor, he walked down the hall until he saw the room number Jagger had given him over the phone. He knocked and waited.
Jagger came to the door, eyes bloodshot, shirt hanging outside of his pants.
“What the hell is going on?”
“You were right,” he said, his words slurred. “You’re always right.”
Tyler stepped inside, pushing Jagger back out of his way and closed the door behind him. Jagger had landed against the wall, which he needed to keep from falling to the floor.
“Have you been here for the last three weeks? Sitting in a hotel room drinking?” Tyler asked after he helped his brother into the room and let him fall as gently as possible onto the couch.
“We were gonna leave when you kicked us off the ranch, but then Brooke said she wanted to look around town some more. Maybe see if we could find a place to have the wedding here. She thought with Mom and Dad being gone now, we might want to have something that family and their friends could come to,” Jagger said.
His brother looked like crap. He’d leaned back on the couch, his head falling back to rap against the wall. He lifted an arm and dropped it over his eyes as he continued to speak.
“Does Brooke look like a woman who wants to get married in a town like Hobbs Creek?”
“Brooke doesn’t look like the type of woman you should be marrying,” Tyler answered honestly.
