The Gamble (Colorado Mountain #1)(167)



“I’m guessin’ this is somethin’ I should know that I won’t like,” Max remarked and I stopped and looked up at him.

Deciding to get it out, I did. “It was Shauna who talked Kami into buying that gun and it was Shauna who needed the money Kami borrowed on the house.”

He stared at me a minute, his jaw tense, his eyes hard then he looked away and muttered, “Fuck.”

I tugged at his hand until he looked back at me then I said, “Okay, now I’m getting into possible slander here but… what if Shauna knew that Curt had made changes to his will around the time she told him she was pregnant?”

“What?”

“She didn’t know that Curt knew he didn’t father her child. What she knew was that there was a possibility he didn’t since she wasn’t exactly faithful to him. Kami said that they’ve turned off her cable and she was close to having the utilities stopped at her house. She needed money, Max, badly, especially having no insurance and a baby on the way. If she knew that he changed the will, she could speculate he changed it in her favor. She was smug before the reading, she thought she’d come out on top. But also she knew if she had the baby and he demanded a DNA test, she would lose everything she worked for. Which would mean she’d need him dead to collect before the truth came out.”

“She doesn’t have any money, Duchess, how’s she gonna pay a contract killer?”

“She had twenty-five thousand dollars of Kami’s money, Max,” I reminded him. “And anyway, men do stupid stuff for women who are good with their mouths. We have no idea who she’s been associating with.”

Max, being a man, nodded curtly to the veracity of this statement then he pointed out, “She was in the house when Curt was killed.”

“She made the call after Curt was killed saying she was in the house when he was killed and time had elapsed between the killing and the call, she even admitted that.” Max just stared at me so I went on, “There’s a break in, you hear something, even if you’re with a man and he goes to check on it, wouldn’t you call the police?”

“Not if you don’t want anyone knowin’ you’re there,” Max pointed out.

I nodded for this was true but suggested, “She could have done what she needed to do with this PI guy then gone back to Curt’s knowing what was going to happen there, made the call and said she was there when she wasn’t. Or she could have set the whole thing up to happen when she was in the house, knowing what was happening with the PI. Either way, she was giving herself an alibi.”

“So who killed the PI?” Max asked.

“Someone else she scammed?” I proposed. “Or someone in on it, a partner.”

“So, you’re sayin’ she set Kami up?”

“How close are they?”

“For Kami, close. For Shauna, who knows? She’s never demonstrated she’s felt a genuine emotion since I’ve known her.”

“Then yes, I think it isn’t coincidence that on a girl’s weekend to Denver, Shauna talked Kami into buying a gun and then borrowed an extraordinary amount of money from her. To come current on utilities and credit cards, who needs twenty-five thousand dollars?”

“Shauna, like Kami, lives large.”

“From what Harry intimated at The Rooster, she’s also had help living large, fleecing Harry and maybe even Curtis and, who knows, maybe even that Robert guy she was with at the restaurant.”

Max stared at me again then he muttered, “Jesus Christ.”

“Max –”

Max cut me off. “What d’you think we should do with this shit?”

“I think you need to look out for your sister and let Mick find the trail of breadcrumbs.”

“That trail is leadin’ him to my sister.”

I got closer to him and advised, “You have to trust the truth will out. If not, you have to trust that I’ll do what I can to help your sister.”

“Babe –”

“Watch out for Kami, that’s it. Just look out for her, I’ll do the rest.”

I knew this was asking a lot of an action man to stand by and do nothing, I could tell by the internal struggle I saw him waging behind his eyes.

Finally, he said, “Let’s get my sister a coffee.”

I leaned up and kissed his jaw before I agreed, “All right.”

* * * * *

Coffees consumed, Kami was texting Shauna for the fiftieth time on her phone.

Shauna who, by her own report, was going to have a rough day due to her beloved Curtis being put in the earth and thus needed her friend at her side, had somehow disappeared in Kami’s hour of need if Kami’s unsuccessful attempts to contact her through fifty texts (maybe a slight exaggeration) and five phone calls (not an exaggeration) over the last hour.

I knew she hit send when I heard the beep, she flipped her phone shut and Max started, “Kami –”

“Don’t, Max, just… don’t,” Kami muttered, staring at the wall.

The door opened, Mick walked in, shutting it behind him and we all looked to him.

“Found your gun, Kami, right where you said it would be, never fired, not loaded,” Mick stated.

“Is that surprising?” Linda snapped, her eyes fierce on Mick’s face, her bearing proving true what she said that morning, a mother loves her children, maybe not the same way but the same amount. She was deep in Lioness Mode.

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