McCall watched him finish dressing, already missing him and fearing he wouldn’t be back. They’d always loved each other, but ten years ago it hadn’t been enough. Was it now?
“You had to have seen this coming,” she said, a plea in her voice. “The pickup was in the Crawford stock pond. Buzz had access and he knew no one would be around that place. Grant wouldn’t have arrested Buzz without sufficient evidence.”
“Your father’s rifle was found in Buzz’s lake house,” Luke said. “What fool would keep the weapon on his premises?”
An arrogant fool. A man who thought he was above the law. A man like Buzz Crawford. Or from what she’d learned about him, a man like Trace Winchester. Is that why Buzz had hated her father so much? Because he reminded him of himself?
“You can’t even be sure your father had that rifle with him when he died,” Luke said. “You told me that Buzz couldn’t remember if he’d taken it.”
Her mother had lied about seeing Trace the opening morning of antelope season. Had she lied about seeing the rifle the last time she saw Trace?
Buzz had caught Trace poaching the day before. Maybe he had taken the rifle after all—and just not turned it in to evidence. Maybe her father had already been in the ground by the opening of antelope season.
“It all comes down to my father’s rifle,” she said quickly. “If Buzz confiscated it, then he probably wrote it down in his logbook the day before the opening of antelope season.”
“Do you really believe that if he’d killed your father and kept the rifle, he would have written it down?” Luke demanded.
“Buzz is arrogant enough he might have. But at least you will know if he was in the area of the ridge that day.”
“Anyone could have put that rifle in Buzz’s lake house. Everyone knew he never locked his front door.”
Another example of Buzz’s arrogance. He was daring someone to steal from him.
“Not anyone could have put the rifle in his house,” she argued. “Only the person who took it from my father. Come on, Luke,” she said, needing him on her side. “You’re afraid your uncle is guilty and worried what he’ll do now that it’s all coming out.”
His gaze softened. “I’m just trying to make sense out of all this.” He stepped over to the bed. She felt her heart break at the thought that even now their families could come between them.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he drew her to him, holding her tight. “I’m sorry. I have to go. I’ll call you later?” He brushed a kiss over her lips, then his gaze met hers and held it and she saw the longing, the regret, the same fears she was feeling, before he turned and left.
Chapter Thirteen
Luke was allowed to go back to Buzz’s cell rather than speak to him via the phones through the thick plastic partition.
He knew that it was because he was a game warden with the same training as any other law enforcement officer, but also because a lot of people still looked up to Buzz and his legacy.
Whitehorse was a small town where some loyalties never died. Just as grudges and slights never did.
“It’s about damned time,” Buzz said through the bars as Luke walked down the short hall to his cell. “I’ve been here all night. The sheriff was waiting for me the moment Eugene and I got back from Billings. I’ve been trying to call you for hours.”
Luke had turned off his phone when he was with McCall and had forgotten to turn it back on until this morning. “You could have called Eugene.”
“Don’t get smart with me,” his uncle snapped.
Right, this was about bailing him out, and Eugene wouldn’t be able to raise the money.
“Why would the sheriff arrest you?” he asked, remembering what McCall had said about sufficient evidence.
“That bastard sheriff thinks I killed Trace Winchester.”
“Why would he think that?”
Buzz slashed a hand through the air in frustration. “McCall Winchester framed me. Why the hell do you think?”
Luke stared at his uncle, remembering back in high school when Buzz had found out that Luke was dating McCall Winchester. Eugene, no doubt, had told him. Eugene had probably been spying on him the whole time.
Buzz had gone ballistic. “I won’t have you dating Ruby Winchester’s daughter.” It still made no sense, this hatred of the Winchesters over some land decades ago. Even back then, Luke had felt as if this animosity was more personal.
“How could she frame you?” Luke asked with a sigh.
“It was her father’s rifle. One day she asks me what happened to the rifle, as if I can remember that long ago, and the next the sheriff shows up at my door with a search warrant and, big surprise, finds Trace Winchester’s rifle hidden in my house. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.”
The only way Buzz could have had the rifle was if he took it from Trace Winchester. Either confiscated it when he wrote him up for poaching. Or took it when he killed him on that ridge.
Buzz was a lot of things, but Luke refused to believe his uncle was a killer.
“How would McCall have gotten the rifle?” Luke asked.
“From her mother—the person who killed Trace Winchester,” Buzz said with such venom that Luke was taken aback. “She’s behind all this, just getting her daughter to do her dirty work.”
Luke could see that his uncle needed him to believe this. There was only one thing Luke was certain of: McCall hadn’t put the rifle in Buzz’s house.
“I know that look,” Buzz said with a curse. “That woman’s turned your head around. You’ve always had a weakness for the little chippie.”
“Don’t call her that.”
“I just told you that she and her mother framed me and you’re defending her?”
“And I’m telling you I don’t believe it. If you locked your house—”
His
