She studied it for a long moment before shaking her head. “No. Not that I recall.”
Austin slid over another photograph. “This is Vernon’s other cousin. Mike Young. The younger brother of Charlie.”
Reed could easily see the family resemblance. Same beady eyes, same greasy hair.
“I’ve never seen this guy either.” Emma leaned over to see the photograph better. “You think this is the other guy from the hospital? The one that got away?”
“It’s impossible to know for sure until we find and question him. But my guess would be yes. Mike did a stint in the military for a while. He specialized in explosives.”
Beside him, Emma inhaled sharply. Reed eyed the photograph with renewed interest. There was little doubt Mike Young was Grenade Man. “That bumps him to the top of our suspect list.”
“We’ve got every officer in the state looking for him.” Cooper rested his arms on the table. The Texas Ranger had shed his sports jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white button-down. “He won’t be free for long.”
“Any idea who hired them?”
Austin shook his head. “We’re still working on that. We do know Charlie was the primary contact. We recovered his cell phone, and we were able to open it. There are text messages between Charlie and Mike talking about a $15,000 payment. Charlie was probably the one who broke into Emma’s house. We conducted a search of his apartment and found both the missing tablet and the gold pen.”
Reed mulled that over for a moment. “Okay, so someone tries to scare Emma off the property, and when that doesn’t work, he hires Charlie to break in. The initial plan was to make it appear as a home robbery that went wrong. Except I showed up.”
“Agreed. When that failed, Charlie pulled in his brother and Vernon to help out.”
Emma was pale, and her fingers trembled. She was keeping it together, but Reed knew inside she was freaking out. Finding out you were the victim of a murder-for-hire wasn’t easy for anyone, but it was far worse for a woman who’d already lost a husband and had a baby depending on her.
Reed placed a hand on her arm. “You okay?”
She took a deep breath. “It’s okay. I want to hear everything.”
Reed gestured for Austin to continue, but it was Cooper who spoke. “We found evidence confirming what Vernon’s girlfriend told us. The burner phone Charlie had on him contained clear instructions. Emma was to be killed. The fee was double if you were taken out, as well.”
“Do we know when that decision was made?”
“After the break-in at Emma’s house failed. Essentially, when you took over the case.”
Reed sat back in his chair. “The only connection I can think of is Bonnie.”
“Hold on.” Cooper held up a hand. “We don’t have a shred of physical evidence indicating these recent attacks are connected to your sister’s disappearance.”
“What else could it be?” Emma asked.
“Well, Reed has a reputation for being thorough and determined. Once he was involved, the perpetrator likely knew he wouldn’t let it go. Especially if you were murdered. Taking him out along with you does two things. It muddies the investigation and removes, at least in the perpetrator’s mind, the one person who would go to the ends of the earth to get justice.”
Reed hated to admit it, but Cooper’s logic made sense. “So you’re suggesting we focus on Emma. We need to uncover why someone would want her out of the way.”
“Precisely. Since this entire thing started with someone trying to run Emma out of town, I’m inclined to believe this has less to do with her and more to do with her land.” Cooper leaned forward. “Emma, you’re building a search-and-rescue canine training facility. Maybe there’s something on your property the perpetrator is trying to prevent you from finding.”
Her eyes widened. “Something we might stumble on by accident while training the dogs or while making improvements to the land.”
“Exactly. It has to be big enough it can’t be moved or it has to be something that couldn’t be moved without people noticing.”
Reed’s stomach sank. There was only one person he could think of who had a vested interest in hiding something on Emma’s property. “We haven’t located Owen yet, have we?”
Owen had been in the hospital because of an adverse reaction to some medication he’d been given for treatment of Sadie’s bite. He’d been under guard, but the ensuing confusion during the attack had enabled him to escape.
“Not yet,” Cooper said. “We need to consider that Owen may be the one who hired the hitmen. While we’re looking for him, I recommend we conduct a search of Emma’s property. Uncovering what’s hidden there may be the best way to keep everyone safe.”
Reed nodded, squeezing Emma’s arm. Her face was pale, worry lines etched in the curve of her brow. She’d never been very good at hiding her emotions. The same concerns running through his mind were written in her expression.
When they conducted a search of Emma’s property, what would they find?
By dinnertime, Emma’s body ached and her head was pounding. The pain was exacerbated by the swirling emotions inside her. Could Owen really have hired hitmen to kill her? Where would he have gotten the money? A small part of her clung to the notion that there was no way her cousin was behind this. It seemed ridiculous, given his actions, but she couldn’t quite let herself believe Owen wanted her dead.
The search of her property would start tomorrow morning. Until they uncovered what was hidden, she was a target. The first order of business was getting her family out of harm’s way.
Reed punched a code into his phone, and the gates to his aunt’s ranch opened. The SUV bounced over the cattle guard.
“Gorgeous sunset,” Vivian remarked from the back seat. Deep purples and streaks of pink played across the wide-open sky. The driveway curved and the house came into view. It was two stories with
