Wyoming Christmas Ransom. Nicole Helm
with the computer calendar based on the dates of the email.
And that was when he found his pattern.
Gracie plastered a smile on her face as the party around her was hitting full swing.
Usually a Delaney wouldn’t be caught dead in Rightful Claim, a Carson bar, but the whole town had made an exception to the normal way of town feud bitterness with the engagement party of Gracie’s cousin Laurel to the bar’s proprietor, Grady Carson.
Gracie was happy for Laurel, probably happier than most of the other Delaneys, who thought the Carsons were a vortex of evil, but the happy couldn’t smother her self-absorbed worry over Will.
She hated that she was worried about him when he clearly saw her as nothing, but she didn’t think he’d come off his little mountain, and he had to be running low on food.
It’s none of your business if he starves to death. That’s his own problem.
She wanted to believe that, but whether he cared back or not, Gracie did care about Will. Even if it was one-sided. Even if it was stupid or pathetic, she cared about him.
Gracie made a beeline for the bar. She usually didn’t drink, didn’t like the way it made her feel a little dizzy, a little out of control, but maybe it would shush some of this endless circling her brain was doing.
It’s not your brain. It’s your heart.
Yeah, she really needed to shut that voice up, but before she made it to the crowded bar, she glanced at the door as it opened.
Will stepped in. Underneath a cheerful swath of Christmas lights that looked out of place in this rough-and-tumble, Wild West–themed bar, but also somehow perfect.
For a second she figured she was seeing things she wanted to see, and berated herself for being an idiot. But Will was striding through the room, ignoring any looks or comments, and heading straight for her.
She could only stare for a moment. Will rarely came into town, and when he did it was only to the general store, the gas station or the post office. And he never went anywhere when there might be a crowd.
“Will, what are you—”
“I found something out,” he said resolutely. “I need your help.”
Gracie glanced around the bar. More than a few pairs of eyes were on them. She knew what they all thought, too. Will Cooper was crazy, and silly Gracie Delaney placated him because she didn’t know any better.
Well, she’d figured out how to know better, but she didn’t need to prove it to the group.
“Let’s talk outside,” she whispered, not wanting to draw more attention. She hesitated a second, then brazened through. She linked her arm with his as if they were friends, or more, and headed for the door.
Will came easily, and if she wasn’t totally imagining things, a tremor went through his arm, maybe his whole body.
She didn’t want to feel sorry for him, or be drawn into whatever help he needed, but surely it was important if Will was facing Bent and Rightful Claim and a party.
He pulled his arm from hers after they pushed through the swinging front doors of Rightful Claim. He took a few steps down the boardwalk, raking his hands through his hair, which needed a trim. Even in the warm glow of the town’s twinkle-light-wrapped streetlights, he somehow looked a little wilder, a little more desperate than the last time she’d seen him.
Or that’s what you want, idiot.
“I didn’t know Rightful Claim got so busy,” he offered, and though the sounds of the party drifted out into the cold night, it was mostly quiet out here.
“It’s a party. Laurel and Grady’s engagement party.”
“Oh. Guess that explains your truck being here.” He blew out a breath, looking away from the bar and out at the night sky, which was a sparkling, vast thing. “It’s December,” he said, as if he hadn’t known.
“Yes. Hence the Christmas decorations.”
He looked around. Tinsel-lined candy canes Gracie suspected had been around since before she was born hung off the streetlight poles just as they had when she’d been a kid.
“I’m sorry I’m interrupting. It’s just I found something.”
“Will—” She couldn’t do this. For herself as much as for him.
“I found a pattern, to how they met. Wednesdays. Always at six. I don’t know where, but there has to be something there. Wednesdays.” His gaze fixed on hers in the cheerful Christmas lights.
She’d told him she was done, but here he was, stepping outside his comfort zone and marching into the bar. She was torn between pleasant surprise that he’d braved some of the things he’d been avoiding more and more and being annoyed he thought he could just waltz into her life and demand help.
“Then what?” she asked softly. Because this was what had brought her to that moment last week when she’d cut him off. When she’d cut herself off. She could keep giving him pictures and files and peeks at evidence and what have you, but then what? It was an endless circle, and she couldn’t be a part of it anymore.
She wanted him to break free of it, too, but she had no say over him. She only had say over herself. But maybe... Maybe if he actually stopped to think about the question like she’d had to...
“What happens if we follow the pattern?” she prodded.
“We follow the clues and—”
“Then what after that? You find the guy your wife was cheating with? You question him and maybe he even had something to do with it despite all evidence to the contrary. The searching is over, you have your answers, your justice. What then?” Because she’d been foolishly hoping to help him to that what then, but she had a terrible feeling she’d spent the past two years only aiding him in becoming more screwed up, more of a hermit and less of the easy-going Will Cooper she’d known peripherally before Paula’s death.
And because she cared about him, but had zero actual responsibility or hold on him, she had to walk away.
“We’ll have the truth,” Will said, as if she was the one living in a fantasy world. “I’ve been searching for the truth for two years. I don’t know why you’re giving up, but I can’t. I can’t ignore two years’ worth of something telling me this is all wrong.”
“What will you do with whatever truth you’re after?”
He looked at her a bit like she’d struck him. “Hopefully put a murderer in jail.” He shook his head. “Why? Why are you doing this? After all this time, you’re just abandoning me. I don’t get it.”
He actually sounded and looked hurt, instead of just irritated he didn’t have help anymore, so she gave him the truth. “I care about you, Will, and I can’t keep watching you get worse.”
* * *
WILL COULDN’T PROCESS those words, or the soft look in Gracie’s brown eyes. Care. Such a weird word. Such a dangerous thing, to care about someone. You couldn’t control what they’d do with that. Couldn’t predict it. You could feel safe and happy one minute, eviscerated and broken the next.
Care. No. It gave him a full-body chill. “Get worse at what?” he asked, working to pretend the first part of that sentence didn’t exist.
She blew out a breath, lights from the tacky Christmas decorations all around creating a sort of warm yellow glow around her. Occasionally, the few nights he managed to sleep well enough to dream, he’d dream of her, much like this. Something like an angel, down to the glowing.
He