Chapter 10

Tyler

I thunder through the clearing, adrenaline surging through me as I see Liam’s expensive new truck parked.

I swing down off Gypsy and tie her to a picnic table, heat rushing through my body as I start to jog through the trees to the waterfall.

I only have a few minutes before the Sherriff arrives blowing any chance at surprising Liam.

I sneak through the trees, heart crashing against my ribs, as I peer out at the stone slab and barricade.

When I see no signs of movement, I creep forward, panic close to overtaking me as I try to think past my raging fear of Zoe being hurt.

I take a breath and look at the two pathways that lead off from the viewing platform.

I take a step and freeze as I hear something over the sound of the waterfall. Unsure if I’m imagining it, I stay where I am, straining to hear again.

When it comes again, and I know it’s a woman screaming, I don’t hesitate. I run up the track, legs burning as I push through the trees.

Gasping for air, I reach an old hunter's shack, and white-hot fury flows through me when I see Liam dragging a bleeding Zoe up the stairs.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I lose all rational thought when she sees me before he does.

Her eyes widen and she stops struggling at precisely at the moment I decide to rush Liam.

I make it to the steps before he sees me. Shock flashes over his face; before I see every ounce of hatred I feel reflected in his eyes.

Zoe elbows him hard and as he staggers, I tackle him around the waist and send him crashing onto the decking.

Wood splinters around us, dust, bones, and fists connecting as I punch him as hard as I can.

We grapple in the remains of the deck, hammering at each other until all I see is blood.

He sounds feral as he tries to grab my throat. “You can’t win this little brother,” he chokes out.

I grab his arm and twist it while I smash my head into his already damaged nose. He yells but surprises me when one of his fists make contact. Pain shoots through my skull as he punches me again.

Zoe screams and in the split-second Liam is distracted, I wrap my thighs around his waist and push my forearm against his neck while I flip him over.

I push hard, cutting all the air supply off as Liam bucks underneath me. “It’s over you piece of shit.”

Blood is pouring from his nose and mouth as Liam issues curses and promises to kill me.

I push against his windpipe, knowing if I apply just the right amount of pressure he’ll blackout or suffocate. “Did you kill my father?” I spit at him.

His face is turning purple, and I can see all the veins in his face. “He deserved it,” he rasps.

I scowl at him, hate surging through me like wildfire, just a few more seconds, is all it’ll take. A few more seconds and he’ll be dead.

Every last thing he made me do this past year, every moment of humiliation, the funeral, the hospital visits that ate away at me, watching dad die, knowing I was losing him along with the ranch.

Tears sting at my eyes and the only thing I can think of is how much I want to crush his windpipe. “Why? Why?”

Spittle flies from his mouth as he tries to speak. But it doesn’t matter why. Only that dad is dead and Liam will finally be gone.

“You took everything from me,” I hiss.

I’m so intent on him; I barely register when Zoe speaks. “I need him to tell me what happened.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to hear anything he has to say.”

“We need to know what happened to Meg. Please, for her family’s sake. Let him speak.”

I look up at her and wince at the damage Liam’s done to her face. She looks grim but sounds strangely calm as she speaks. “He will pay for what he’s done.”

I stare at him, look in his eyes, and shake my head. “It’s not enough.”

There’s a pleading in Zoe’s voice I don’t understand. “Don’t do this. You’ll face charges if you kill him. Right now, you haven’t done anything wrong. Please let him speak.”

I scowl at Liam; my arm muscles are starting to tremble from the pressure. “If you even look at her, I will finish this.”

He blinks and I ease the pressure off enough for him to take a gasping breath.

I climb off, blood dripping on him as he writhes in the dirt rubbing at his throat and sucking in ragged breaths.

I kick his thigh hard enough for him to grunt. “Admit you aren’t my brother.”

He struggles to sit and leans against the wall of the shack. His teeth are covered in blood when he spits the words. “I am your brother. Jack Carlson was my father just as much as he was yours,” he rasps.

I shake my head. “Bullshit. You’re an ex-con. You took advantage of a sick old man and convinced him you were his long-lost son.”

Liam wipes the blood from his mouth. “I didn’t need to convince him. I just needed him to remind him of what he did.”

When I move in to kick him again, Zoe appears at my side and stops me. “What did Jack Carlson do?”

Liam’s lip curls as he looks at me. “My mother was a teenager when she met him at a traveling rodeo. He didn’t mention his family until he’d knocked her up.”

My stomach twists into knots. “You’re lying. You are always lying. My parents were happy.”

Even as I say it, I know it’s not exactly true. I was too young to remember my mother in more than blurred images and fractured memories, but I do recall a few raised voices and stilted arguments before she got sick.

Zoe places her hand on my arm. “What happened to your mother?”

Liam’s nostrils flare and his eyes harden. “Her family disowned her. She wound up on the streets. I was born in an emergency room.”

I shake my head at Zoe. “You can’t believe this?”

She looks at Liam and back at me. “Let him finish. We need to hear everything.”

Her eyes shift to Liam, still rubbing at his throat. “When did she tell you who your father was?”

Liam’s face contorts into a scowl. “When the state took me off her when I was three. They said she was an unfit mother. I saw her every other weekend until I was old enough to leave on my own. All through my shitty childhood, she told me she’d try to find him and ask him to help.”

He shakes his head, voice icy cold. “But he never came for me or helped her. He was too happy with his wife and his newborn son.”

He locks eyes with me. “You think I took everything from you? Your father took everything from me. My whole life I had to look after myself. I had to learn how to fight, how to steal, how to ward off the kiddie diddlers in the foster system.”

I open my mouth to say I don’t believe a word of it, that he’s crazy, that my father would never have done that, but I can’t.

I can’t because there’s a part of me that knew the second Liam showed up, dad had done things he was ashamed of.

Zoe’s hand stays on my arm as though holding me back. “When did you meet Meg?”

Liam’s smug smile returns in a flash. “I had to bring mom into the ER. I overheard Meg talking to her friend about Jack and a ranch. I went back the next night, and it didn’t take too much effort to get her talking. She told me everything I needed to know.”

Any pity I had for him disappears as he laughs. “You were so busy running the ranch; you didn’t even notice she was lonely. By the time I told her who I was, that I was Jack’s gutter rat son, we were fucking every chance we got.”

All my muscles prime and the only thing stopping me is Zoe’s fingers gripping me tighter. “And then she took you to Jack? Got you the drugs?”

His lips twist into a satisfied smile. “She administered the sodium thiopental just before I introduced myself, so he was completely relaxed. I sprinkled in a little charm, told him I never blamed him, that all I wanted was a chance and he was so guilt-ridden, he ate it up.”

Zoe nods. “And then you told Meg to give him too much insulin until he slipped into a coma?”

Liam has the audacity to chuckle. “It’s untraceable. And he was so out of it he didn’t know she wasn’t even supposed to be there. She just kept giving him more until his organs started to fail. By the time he was on life support, she was missing.”

Cold trickles down my spine as he sneers at me. “It seemed poetic after he destroyed my mother’s body that I destroy his.”

My hands start to shake with rage I’m not sure I can contain for too long. But Zoe seems remarkably calm and unaffected.

Her voice comes out cool. “How did you convince Meg to go along with all this?”

That’s what I’m currently trying to figure out. Meg cheating on me is one thing. Murdering my father isn’t something I can see her doing.

He smiles. “The same way I convince everyone. I told her what she wanted to hear. That she was special. That I loved her. That I’d marry her when it was over.”

I shake my head. “That can’t be it. Meg wasn’t a murderer.”

He shrugs. “I gave her a little extra incentive. I took a bunch of photos of us having sex. Told her if she didn’t help me, I’d send them to her folks and post them on the internet.”

Cold washes over my body as I think of Meg’s father, the pastor at the Silver Falls Pentecostal Church.

It would have destroyed their relationship. It’s one of the reasons she was so careful about staying at the ranch with me.

Gossip would have ruined her family. I don’t know whether to feel better or worse knowing Meg didn’t want to hurt dad, I just feel so blindly angry I want to punch him into the dust.

Zoe shifts her weight and flinches as she asks another question. “Why did you kill her?”

He shrugs. “She started making mistakes and people noticed. She got suspended. It was only a matter of time before she gave me up or told her folks. I couldn’t risk that. Not before mom got what she needed.”

My eyebrows rise. His mom? “What the hell does she have to do with anything?”

He almost snarls at me. “She started drinking when they took me away from her. Wrecked her liver. She was going to get one. But you won’t let that happen now, will you? You’ll stop the sale, stop the surgery, she’ll die and you’ll just sweep it all under the rug just like your father did.”

I don’t even know what to say to that. “Am I supposed to say I’m sorry? You killed my father and my girlfriend.”

Liam spits on the ground. “No. I killed my father and my girlfriend. Because at the end of the day, they both preferred me over you.”

This time Zoe’s hand doesn’t stop me from grabbing him and smashing him against the wall of the shack. I get in a few good hits until I hear voices coming from behind me.

“Step away from him, Carlson. We heard the confession. Let us do our jobs now.”

I scowl at Liam and find my loathing reflected on his battered face. I’m an inch away from him, shirt curled in my fists when I shove him back. “You didn’t need to involve Meg. You could have left her out of it.”

He grins at me. “If you’d been more focused on her than on the stupid ranch, none of this would have worked. You think about that. Your neglect of your woman is what killed her.”

I shove him hard and he glowers as the deputy approaches him.

Two officers wrench him around so they can cuff him. “Liam Cooper. You’re under arrest for the murder of Jack Carlson, the murder of Meg Adler, Leah Waters and the attempted murder of Zoe Foster.”

As Liam gets his Miranda rights read to him, I stumble towards Zoe in a daze, a raw ache growing in my chest I haven’t felt since dad died.

Zoe steps toward me, concern etched on her bruised face. “I’m so sorry. I was so sure he wasn’t your brother,” she says softly.

I can’t even answer and the Sherriff is heading our way. I step in front of her and lower my voice. “This is not how I wanted to see you again,” I mumble.

Her lips twitch into a half-smile. “No. It’s not ideal.”

I frown at her and wish I could make sure she’s going to be okay. She looks shaken but not as shaken as I’d have expected. “Do you do this sort of thing often?”

She wrinkles her nose and winces as her hand flies to her swollen cheek. “Never. I sit behind a desk and leave the fieldwork to proper agents.”

I glance over her shoulder as a scowling Liam is being dragged away. “Then why did you?”

A faint smile tugs her lips upward. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

Her cheeks flush, and she backpedals hastily. “I mean. The will. Everything. I told you my brain doesn’t have an off switch. I think it was just on standby mode the whole time I was with you.”

I have no time to respond when the Sherriff reaches us. He extends his hand to Zoe and she shakes it. “My deputy has been singing your praises. Aren’t you awfully young to be an agent?”

She answers with a bite that lets me know she gets asked it often. “Maybe. But sometimes an old case needs a new set of eyes to solve it, don’t you think?”

He raises an eyebrow and chuckles. “You two get medical treatment. Then we’ll take some statements and put this to bed for the day.”

I manage a short nod. Thoughts bouncing from where the hell I’m going to live while this is sorted to how everyone is going to react to knowing Liam is a cold-blooded murderer.

I stare at my dusty boots, as Zoe tells the Sherriff she’s due back in Houston tomorrow.

I can’t even begin to think about where we go after this. I flew off the handle because I thought she’d taken Liam’s word over mine. But she hadn’t.

I’m not even sure what that means. I’m not sure what any of this means. Liam wasn’t just sleeping with Meg behind my back, he was blackmailing her.

He may have charmed her into getting him the drugs, maybe told her he just wanted to make sure Jack would listen to him, but when push came to shove, he had to force her to help him.

What the hell would that have done to her? She must have been agonizing over the decision, maybe hoping I’d notice she was in trouble, but I didn’t.

I was so wrapped up in keeping the ranch running, I was completely oblivious to her or anything or anyone else.

From the time I could walk my life has revolved around the ranch. Every day, every week, every month of every year I gave my all.

And for what? Mom died. I missed that my dad was being poisoned? And my girlfriend was so attention-starved she turned to my murderous half-brother?

“I need to let everyone know what’s happening,” I interject.

Zoe’s smile is shallow as the Sherriff nods. “Go ahead. I’ll give you another five-minute head start. But I want you at the hospital within the hour.”

I can’t muster a smile at his lame joke, so I just amble away, not sure about anything right now.

As I reach an agitated Gypsy, and I haul my aching body onto the saddle, a flood of unwelcome memories wash over me.

Meg’s haunted expression during that last month. How exhausted, and thin she looked. The way she couldn’t meet my eye, the tremble to her hands whenever Liam was in the room.

And I didn’t notice. I was so wrapped up in my own pain, I failed to notice hers.

A weight settles on my chest as I walk Gypsy back on to the track, glad I don’t have to see Liam being taken away.

What he did was unthinkable. But on some level, I know what Liam said was true.

I did play a part in Meg’s death and by being so busy, maybe even in dad’s.

The ranch was everything to me. And Burt was right.

I knew I could live without Meg in my life, and maybe I knew I could live without dad there too.

The ranch is more than a home and a job, it’s a part of my identity.

I put up with all the shit Liam heaped on, not because I was keeping my word to dad, but because I don’t know who I am without it.

And that’s more disturbing than anything I learned about my brother today.

***

Zoe

The deputy I spoke to on the phone, hands me my bag and my badge and frowns. “You think he killed both nurses here?”

I nod, my eyes straying to Tyler as he limps away. “It makes sense. He said he brought Meg up here to have sex with her.”

His face twists in disgust. “Poor girl. I know her father. He’s a good man. Liam figured out exactly how to manipulate her.”

I sigh and look at the cabin. “That’s what he does best. If charm doesn’t work. Manipulation will. And if that fails, violence. I can only imagine how terrified she was if he brought her up here.”

We both stare at the cabin, and the decking now destroyed by Liam and Tyler. “I keep thinking about the drugs. When I spoke to the hospital, the administrator said there were large drug losses. There wouldn’t have been a need for a large amount to kill him,” I say.

He scratches his chin. “You think she was trying to get fired? Making errors on purpose? Maybe in the hopes Liam would let her walk away from it?”

I nod. “He needed someone Jack trusted in the room. Someone Tyler trusted. Someone who could come and go and not arouse suspicion. And if they took fingerprints, they’d all point to Meg, not to him. I think he planned to kill her right from the start and frame her if he needed to.”

The deputy looks about as dismayed as I feel. “Guess we’ll never know.”

There’s nothing really to be gained by conjecture, so I start to walk back towards the stone slab. “At least we can tell her parents she wanted to do the right thing. It’s not much, but it’s something.”

He nods, his brow knotted in concern as he looks at my face. “You should get that looked at. Might need stitches.”

From the look on his face, I can see how bad my injuries must appear. “I will. As soon as I file my report and check in with my boss.”

He shakes his head at me, looking just like Meg does when she’s washed her hands of my obsessive nature.

At some point, I’ll need to contact her. This will be news. Maybe not national, but there’s a chance she’ll hear about it before I get back to Houston.

I can only imagine what she’s going to say when I show up sporting bruises and a closed case.

I groan as we walk back to the clearing and the deputy misinterprets it for pain. “The statement can wait. We’ll go to the hospital first.”

I protest I’m fine when I realize I’m fighting a losing battle with him. “Okay. But I’d like to say goodbye to Tyler. I have a flight in three hours. And I don’t want to miss it. I have a meeting in the morning.”

He stops walking midway across the clearing, activity buzzing all around us as crime scene techs arrive. “So, let me get this straight. You came here on vacation. You met Liam and Tyler, went home the next day. But somewhere between leaving the ranch and getting on a plane, you decided to start an investigation into Meg’s disappearance…”

I move to speak but he carries on. “You went back home to Houston, made a few calls to me and immediately got back on a plane. Not only that but you somehow wound up being abducted by Liam Cooper. All because you needed it wrapped up today?”

He looks down his nose at me as I scramble to reply. “Um, yes. The meeting is extremely time sensitive.”

He shakes his head and blows out a sigh. “And this is usual for you?”

I sigh and feel a twinge warn me my ribs may need X-raying. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

He starts to laugh but it’s decidedly good-natured. “Maybe because you’re an accountant?”

Despite myself, I smile. “A Forensic Accountant,” I remind him.

He nods and opens the door for me. “I, for one will never look at bean counters the same way ever again.”

When he slides in the front seat and I buckle my seatbelt and frown out the window. “You’re forgetting that a bean counter got you a confession.”

His mirth fades away as he turns the vehicle around. “I’m not forgetting anything. I’m just not entirely sure what you thought you were doing. Liam Cooper has killed three people that we know of. You put yourself at risk.”

I chew my lip and exhale as much as my ribs allow for. “I was doing my job, deputy. It was a little unorthodox, but I’m not sorry I did it. Tyler needed…”

I slam my mouth shut before I lose all my credibility. But the deputy only nods as we drive down the track. “No one understood why he never contested the will. Jack Carlson was a wealthy man; anyone else would have.”

I keep my eyes ahead on the Sheriff’s vehicle slowly following Tyler’s horse. I lean my head against the cool glass pane and watch his back as we let him lead us out.

I think I understand why he never contested it. “He was grieving and just trying to carry out his father’s wishes despite how he felt. Tyler is just as much of a victim as Jack and Meg.”

He shakes his head. “This must mean the will is invalid?”

I stare out the window. “No judge would consider Liam’s claim valid now.”

He glances at me as rain starts to splatter on the dirty windshield. “At least Tyler gets what is his.”

I nod wearily and am surprised to find myself yawning. My voice comes out thick as I agree. “I guess. But I’m sure he’d rather his father was still alive.”

He looks thoughtful as we drive into Silver Falls. “And that Meg and Leah hadn’t been mixed up in it.”

I sigh wearily. “At least everyone has closure. If he used the falls to depose of Meg’s body the way he did Leah’s, he'd have left evidence.”

He shakes his head. “And it was all for nothing.”

“I’m still trying to figure out why he made his record so clean. All anyone had to do was check his fingerprints and his convictions would have come up,” I say.

I’m greeted by more Sherriff’s department vehicles as we pull into the hospital lot right beside my rental. The deputy shakes his head. “But if he kept his head down and looked like he was making a go of it, no one would have.”

I nod as he switches the engine off. “Or maybe he just wanted to pretend he was someone else before he sold everything?” he says.

I flinch. Isn’t that what I wanted too? To pretend while I was at the ranch?

I release a shaky breath and smile sidelong at the deputy. “Maybe it was all of those things.”

I climb out of the vehicle, feeling like someone took a hammer to my body and sigh as I see Tyler arrive with one of the ranch hands.

Given the fact that the Sheriff has pulled up behind him, and Celia is bustling out the elevator doors, with what looks like a lawyer beside her, I’m not going to get an opportunity to speak with him for some time.

I steal my chance and ask the deputy to wait for me. When a battered-looking Tyler sees me approaching, he nods at the ranch hand. “Give me a second, Gary.”

Gary glances at me and strolls away towards the deputy. I swallow hard and try for a smile. “I wanted to say goodbye. I have a flight in a few hours and I can’t miss it.”

He jams his hands in his pockets and looks as awkward as I feel. “Right. Well. I’m not sure if thank you really covers what you did.”

I try for a smile. “It’s kind of, um, a little weird.”

He rubs his hand over his damaged face. “It’s not that I don’t want...I just…”

I shift my weight. “Need a little time?”

He nods. “To wrap my head around all this. And what it means.”

It seems wrong to offer my hand for him to shake. And I don’t have time for a lengthy goodbye, so I put my professional voice on. “I need to go. The Sherriff or the Deputy will have my details if you need me for anything.”

His swollen lip curls in a smile. “Anything?”

My heart starts to beat a little faster as I turn on my heel. “Anything,” I call over my shoulder.