Page 114 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“It looks worse than—”
“Shut up.”
Grace pressed the heel of her hand against the gash. Jonah flinched and grabbed her wrist. Between them, Miriam started fussing.
“Jonah,” Logan frowned. “Who’s Ace?”
Grace’s hand stopped moving on Jonah’s forehead.
Shelooked away.
Jonah wiped blood off his chin with the back of his hand. “I gotta tell you somethin’, Logan.”
“Then tell me.”
“You ain’t gonna like any of it, and I need you to let me finish before you—”
“Talk.”
Jonah talked.
Ace Pike. Gang boss out of New York’s Fourth Ward, ran thirty pickpockets with the kind of precision most bank presidents envied. Jonah had worked for him since he’d beenfourteen, right after his and Grace’s parents died from the pox, and the money had run out.
Logan’s jaw tightened. “Fine. Sad story. Keep going.”
Ace had done time. Met a man named Dawson in prison—the same Dawson who’d done six jobs across three territories and buried the take somewhere on a ranch in Pitkin, Colorado, and murdered the woman who caught him doing it. Shot her on the porch of her own home.
The yard went quiet.
Dawson. The man who killed Logan’s mother had a name, and it had been sitting in a prison cell trading stories with a five-foot-five pickpocket boss wearing a greasy bowler hat.
“Ace ratted Dawson out for the murder. Got his sentence cut.” Jonah panted. “And the first thing he did, thefirstthing—”
“He came after the loot.”
“He needed somebody inside. Somebody on the property. And he had me.” Jonah’s good eye dropped to the dirt. “The mail-order bride ad came through the papers, and Ace... Ace handed it to me and said, ‘Get your sister there/’”
Logan’s chest locked up.
“I stole the silver,” Jonah said. “The nugget Grace found on the cattle drive. Ace told me to bring proof there was somethin’ worth findin’, or he’d… He said he’d hurt her.”
“This was them, then?” Logan glared at him. “The ranch?”
“Today was my idea.” Jonah’s voice cracked. “I told Ace I’d stay behind, let him in, let him dig. I figured if he found the loot, he’d leave and nobody’d—”
“Get hurt?” Logan sneered. “Are you reallythatstupid?”
Jonah gestured at his own broken face. “Apparently.”
Grace had gone still. Her hand rested on Jonah’s shoulder, and she stared at the dirt between her knees, not at Logan, not anywhere near Logan, and that told him everything the confession hadn’t.
“Grace.” His voice came out flat. “Tell me you didn’t know.”
Her chin came up.
“Tell me you didn’t know!”
“I found outhere, Logan. At the ranch. I found a letter in his trouser pocket when I did laundry, weeks ago, and I confronted him, and he swore he—”
