Chapter 2

We sat at the kitchen table, the same table where I'd eaten breakfast that morning. Jolene was upstairs, her sobs muffled through the ceiling. Dad was outside, standing by the barn, staring at it like it had betrayed him.

Grace pulled out a notebook. Clicked her pen.

"Did you see Colt go into the barn?"

"Yes."

"What time was that?"

"Around two. Maybe a little after."

"Did you go after him?"

I looked at her. Her eyes were brown, steady, patient. The kind of eyes that could wait all day for an answer.

"No," I said. "We were playing hide-and-seek. I thought he'd come back when he was ready."

Grace wrote something down. Her pen scratched against the paper, loud in the quiet kitchen.

"How long did you wait before you went looking for him?"

"I didn't," I said. "Pete found him three days later."

The pen stopped. Grace looked up.

"You didn't look for him? For three days?"

I felt something tighten in my chest. Not guilt. Not exactly. More like the awareness that I should feel guilty, and the absence of it was its own kind of weight.

"I thought he was hiding," I said. "Or that he'd gone to a friend's house. He did that sometimes."

It was a lie. Colt didn't have friends. He had Dad and Jolene and the ranch, and that was enough for him.

But Grace didn't know that.

She wrote more notes. Asked more questions. Where was I when Colt went missing? What was I doing? Did I notice anything unusual?

I answered each one, my voice steady, my hands folded on the table.

Finally, Grace closed her notebook. Stood.

"If you think of anything else," she said, handing me a card, "call me."

I took the card. Looked at it. Sheriff Grace Harlow, it said, with a phone number printed beneath.

"I will," I said.

She nodded and left, her boots heavy on the porch steps.

I stood at the window and watched her drive away, the dust from her car hanging in the air long after she was gone.

Two weeks later, the main house burned down.

I was in the bunkhouse that night. I'd moved there after Colt died, told Dad and Jolene I couldn't sleep in the house anymore. Too many memories, I said. Too much grief.

They didn't argue. Jolene was too broken, and Dad was too numb.

The bunkhouse was fifty yards from the main house, close enough to see but far enough to be separate. It smelled like old wood and dust, and the bed was narrow and hard, but I slept better there than I had in years.

I woke to the smell of smoke.

At first, I thought I was dreaming. But then I heard the crackle of fire, the groan of wood giving way, and I was on my feet, pulling on boots, running outside.

The house was an inferno.

Flames poured from the windows, licking at the roof, reaching toward the night sky. The heat was intense even from fifty yards away, pressing against my face like a hand.

I ran toward it, my heart pounding, my throat closing with smoke. I pounded on the door, screaming. The door was locked from the inside. The windows were shut, curtains drawn.

I heard nothing from inside. No screams. No movement.

Just fire.

By the time the fire trucks arrived, there was nothing left but ash and the skeletal remains of walls. The firefighters found two bodies in the main bedroom, burned beyond recognition.

The fire marshal ruled it an accident. Faulty gas line, he said. Old house, old pipes. These things happen.

Grace came back.

She stood in the ruins of the house, her boots crunching on charred wood, her eyes scanning the wreckage. She asked more questions. Where was I when the fire started? Did I hear anything? See anything?

I told her the truth. I was asleep in the bunkhouse. I woke to smoke. I tried to get in, but the doors were locked.

"Locked," Grace repeated, her eyes on mine.

"From the inside," I said.

She looked at me for a long time. Long enough that I could feel the weight of her suspicion, heavy and deliberate.

But she had no proof. No evidence. Just instinct.

And instinct isn't enough.

A week later, I sat in the lawyer's office and listened to him read my father's will.

The ranch. The land. The cattle. The money.

All of it. Mine.

Three hundred acres of Wyoming grassland, a hundred head of cattle, and a barn where my brother had died.

I signed the papers. Shook the lawyer's hand. Walked out into the bright afternoon sun.

The ranch stretched out before me, vast and empty and mine.

Three bodies in three weeks. And I'm the only one left standing.