Chapter 5 - My Brother Finally Talks
Cole asked to meet at a truck stop forty miles away.
Leah told me not to go alone.
Sheriff Talley said the same thing.
So naturally I went alone.
Not because I thought I was invincible.
Because I was angry.
There is a difference, though not always a useful one.
The truck stop smelled like burnt coffee, fryer oil, and wet wool. Cole sat in the back booth wearing the same sweater from the ranch, elbows on the table.
He looked terrible.
I sat across from him.
“You have ten minutes.”
“That’s very Army of you.”
“Nine forty-eight.”
He rubbed his face.
Then laughed once.
It sounded broken.
“Dad said you’d do that.”
“What?”
“Turn this into a mission.”
I almost walked out.
Instead I waited.
Cole pulled a folded bank statement from his pocket.
“Mom had an account Dad didn’t know about.”
I stared at him.
“She funded it from her design business. Little deposits, then bigger ones. By the time she died, it had just over four hundred grand.”
I felt heat climb my neck.
Our mother had been an interior designer.
Dad always called it her “hobby.”
“What happened to it?”
Cole slid the statement toward me.
A wire transfer.
$389,000.
Two months before her death.
Recipient: Big Sky Agricultural Holdings.
My hands went still.
“Where did you get this?”
“Her old storage unit.”
“You went through Mom’s storage?”
“Dad stopped paying it. They called me because my number was on the backup contact.”
I looked at the date.
“What did she buy?”
“I don’t know. Dad found the statement before I did. He went nuts.”
“When?”
“Last spring.”
That was before Christmas.
Before I bought Juniper Ridge.
Cole looked at me carefully.
“Then you bought a ranch in the exact same county.”
A cold little thread ran down my spine.
“That was coincidence.”
“Maybe.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying Dad thinks Mom bought land here under a holding company. He thinks your ranch might be part of it.”
“It isn’t. I bought Juniper Ridge from a bank foreclosure.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I looked it up.”
I leaned back.
There it was again.
Another person checking my land before bothering to call me.
Cole picked at a crack in the table.
“Dad thinks the foreclosure chain is fake.”
“Based on?”
“He found an old letter.”
He reached into his coat.
Empty.
I waited.
He looked ashamed.
“I don’t have it.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“Dad does.”
“What did it say?”
Cole’s voice dropped.
“Mom wrote to somebody named ‘E.’ She said if anything happened to her, Parcel A should go to you.”
I stopped.
The waitress walked by and asked if we needed more coffee.
Neither of us answered.
She filled the cups anyway.
I watched steam rise.
“Why would Mom leave me land and never tell me?”
Cole swallowed.
“I think she was planning to leave Dad.”
That hurt in a place I did not expect.
Not because she wanted to go.
Because she never made it.
Cole kept talking.
“And Dad thinks if he can prove she used marital money to buy it, he can unwind the whole thing.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I know.”
“Does he?”
Cole didn’t answer.
I looked at the bank statement again.
“What do you owe?”
His face tightened.
“Nora.”
“One point eight million doesn’t happen by accident.”
He stared into his coffee.
“I guaranteed a construction project.”
“What project?”
“A rehab complex outside Boise.”
I blinked.
That was not what I expected.
Cole gave a tired half-smile.
“Yeah. Sorry. I know I’m supposed to be the useless son in your version.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He looked away.
“The contractor vanished with deposits. Lawsuits hit. Dad offered to ‘fix it.’”
“By stealing my ranch.”
“He told me it was Mom’s land. He said you only thought you owned it.”
“And you believed him?”
Cole’s silence was answer enough.
Then his phone buzzed.
He looked down.
His face drained.
“What?”
He turned the screen toward me.
A message from Dad.
YOU TALK TO HER, YOU LOSE EVERYTHING.
Under it was a photo.
Not of Cole.
Of Cole’s eight-year-old daughter standing outside school.
I stared at my brother.
“That’s your daughter.”
He nodded.
His hands started shaking.
“Dad took that ten minutes ago.”
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