Atonement

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After lunch, Dillon talked for a few moments with the elderly woman who had waited on them. Tessa stepped outside, needing to feel the sunshine on her face. The air smelled of pine and water. She breathed it in.

She’d lied to Dillon—and to herself. Hearing even more bad news about Ethan had upset her. She wondered which of the cowboys had “stolen” Halbrook Truman’s no-doubt-young fiancée.

“What did you find out?” she asked as they walked to the patrol pickup.

“Halbrook was engaged to, and I quote, ‘a woman young enough to be his granddaughter.’ The waitress estimated Ashley Rene Clarkson’s age as mid-twenties. ‘A pretty little gold digger’ was how she described her. Not that she had much good to say about Halbrook. Seems he isn’t the most popular man around the county, so when Ashley took off with some of the hired hands... Well, no one was very sympathetic.”

A pretty young woman in her mid-twenties. Tessa, who was now over thirty, didn’t want to think about it. But she had to ask, “So you’re thinking that if we find Ashley, we might find Ethan?”

He glanced at her as they climbed into his patrol pickup. “It’s a lead.” She nodded and he busied himself by starting the pickup.

“So how do we find her?” Tessa asked.

“I’ll run all their names when I get back to the office and we’ll see what comes up.”

“You don’t sound as if you hold much hope in finding them.”

He sighed. “The best place to hide when you’re like my brother and his cohorts is on a ranch outside town, where you get room and board and wages that are often off the books.”

“No paper trail,” she said. “But isn’t that the first place Halbrook Truman would look for him?”

* * *

AFTER MEETING THE rancher, Dillon could tell Tessa was as worried as he was about his brother. They drove toward Big Timber, the beautiful spring day now lost on them. He could see her stewing over on her side of the pickup—the same thing he’d been doing for miles.