“Here.” He pointed to the left of the hole.
“You’re sure?”
“That’s not something that would be easy to mistake.”
“How’d you see it in the dark?”
“I had a flashlight. But I could’ve seen it anyway. There was a full moon.”
“It was raining in town last night.”
Her apparent doubt made him grind his teeth. “We got a light drizzle, too, but the moon was out.”
“You think he came back for his shovel?”
“Someone took it.” Cain wished he’d been there when the man returned. It had to be someone he and Sheridan knew. It was too much to believe a stranger had tried to kill her on his land a few weeks after that rifle had shown up in his cabin.
“Let’s talk about motive,” she said.
Cain whistled to round up his dogs, who were sniffing the trees, marking their territory. “What about motive?”
“Who’d want to do this to Sheridan Kohl?”
“I have no idea. As far as I know, no one’s seen or heard from her since she left.”
“Could be an old grudge.”
“She was popular in high school, well-liked.”
“So was Jason,” she mused.
“It’s probably the same person.”
“You don’t think there could be two men in Whiterock capable of this kind of violence?”
“It’s possible, but unlikely,” he said. “Don’t you find it odd that Sheridan was involved in both incidents?”
“I guess. But we have to look at all the possibilities. Coincidence is one of those possibilities.” She tried to tame the wisps of curly auburn hair that’d escaped the thick braid hanging down her back. With little effect. The wayward strands continued to frame her broad, heavily freckled face.
There’d been a time when Cain had found Amy slightly attractive, but that was years and years ago. Before the wedding. When she was younger and thinner and didn’t have those harsh frown lines around her eyes and mouth or that look of desperation in her eyes.
“It was no coincidence,” he insisted. “She either knows something someone doesn’t want her to tell, or she has an enemy who’s been out to get her since the night she and Jason were shot.” With his foot he poked through the damp needles and leaves near a cluster of pine trees. “And I’m leaning toward the ‘keeping her quiet’ motive. There wasn’t a single person who didn’t like her.”
Amy hesitated long enough to tell him that she’d recognized the respect in his voice. “I didn’t like her.”
“Why? The two of you didn’t even socialize. You came from completely different worlds.” Amy had belonged to his band of rebels; Sheridan had headed their school’s chapter of the National Honor Society.
“We had one thing in common,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“You.”
Uncomfortable with where this conversation was going, Cain cleared his throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Her hair was all mussed one night at a party when she was last seen with you. Are you telling me you weren’t the reason?”
Now he understood who was fueling the suspicion that he might’ve had a jealousy motive for shooting Jason. He should’ve guessed it was Amy. If she couldn’t have him, she wanted to make his life as miserable as possible. “Sheridan wasn’t the type for that,” he said.
“Maybe not with other boys.”
“Why would she be any different with me?” That was the big question, wasn’t it? One he’d never really been able to answer. He knew she’d had a crush on him, but that was the part he couldn’t understand. He shouldn’t have been appealing to a straight arrow like her.
“Maybe she wanted you. Maybe she was willing to lift her skirts, hoping you’d fall in love with her, become her boyfriend.”
“Stop it.” That was a little too autobiographical, coming from Amy. And his experience with Sheridan had been nothing like Amy was insinuating. Sheridan hadn’t been trying to manipulate him, certainly not that night. Something honest and pure had passed between them. Which was probably why he’d never called her afterward. She’d been the only girl to pose a threat to the part of himself he’d been trying so hard to protect after his mother’s death. “I barely knew Sheridan.”
“So you didn’t sleep with her.”
“That’s none of your business.”
She arched an eyebrow. “An evasive answer makes you seem guilty, you know.”
Amy had pushed him into a corner. If he lied and Sheridan came out with the truth, it would look as if he was being dishonest about everything—the shooting, last night’s beating. But he couldn’t help defending Sheridan’s reputation. He refused to throw what’d happened between them into the dirt for the whole town to gossip about. Especially now that Sheridan was back and would have to deal with that gossip and the judgment and disapproval guaranteed to go along with it. “I didn’t sleep with her, okay?”
Thick mascara far too dark for her fair coloring coated Amy’s eyelashes, in sharp contrast to the light blue of her eyes. “I have a hard time believing that.”
“Why?” he challenged, throwing up the shield of insolence that came to his rescue at such times.
“Because some women would do anything for you.”
The passion behind those words gave Cain the impression that she was making him an offer. If he’d take her back, she’d become his most ardent defender and the suspicion surrounding him would disappear. But that wasn’t a trade he was willing to make. His feelings for Amy hadn’t changed. They never would.
“Sheridan would’ve known better than that,” he said.
Amy’s eyes held his, so full of abject longing he finally had to yank his gaze away. And that was when he saw it—a piece of wood lying in the trees behind her. It had a dark, almost blackish substance on one end, a substance that looked like dried blood.
“I just found his weapon,” Cain said, astonished by the ease with which the object had suddenly stood out when active searching had yielded nothing.
Disappointment crept over Amy’s features, and immediately turned into a highly focused, razor-sharp hate. But Cain was used to the way her emotions vacillated and cared more about what he’d found.