Page 80 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“I’m fine. Got the wash to do. Gonna collect the rest from the bunkhouse.”
He nodded.
Thomas grunted. “Logan, these brackets ain’t gonna install themselves, and I’d like to finish before I die of old age.”
Logan turned. “You’re twenty-two.”
“And every minute I spend watchin’ you two make eyes at each other ages me another year.”
Grace threw the dishrag at Thomas’s head.
***
The bunkhouse smelled like leather, sweat, and the pine shavings Jonah stuffed under his mattress because he claimed it kept the bugs away. Whether it did remained debatable, but what it definitely did was make the whole room smell like the inside of a lumber mill.
Grace pulled Jonah’s shirt off the hook. Checked the pockets, because men put things in there and forgot about them.
Left pocket. Empty. Right pocket.
Paper.
She pulled it out. Jonah had folded it twice, and it had gone soft at the creases the way paper got when it’d been handled a lot. This had clearly been carried around and opened and refolded until the fibers gave up and turned into something closer to cloth.
Not her business. Jonah’s pockets held Jonah’s things, and she’d just put the paper back and—
J,
The Greenwich job went south. Mickey got nabbed. Keep your head down and stay out of the 4th Ward until I say otherwise. The take from the harbor job is in the usual spot. Your cut is 12. Don’t spend it stupid. Burns saw you talking to that girl outside Reilly’s. Knock it off. You get sloppy, you get us all pinched.
A
Grace read it twice.
Three times.
The paper shook in her hand. No. Her hand shook. The paper just went along with it.
The Greenwich job. Mickey got nabbed. The take from the harbor job. Your cut. You get sloppy, you get us all pinched.
A.
Ace.
She knew the name the way you knew the name of a storm you’d only heard about secondhand. Jonah’s boss. The one he mentioned sometimes. JustAce says thisorAce needs me for that, and she’d always assumed—
What? What had she assumed? That Ace ran a construction outfit? That Jonah hauled lumber and mixed mortar and came home late because the work ran long?
The truth sat in her hand. Creased, soft, and spelled out in cramped letters on cheap paper.
Her brother ran with thieves.
All those years, all those nights he’d come home late with money he couldn’t explain, all those friends with hard eyes and their hands in their coat pockets…
She stuffed the letter back in the trouser pocket, piled Jonah’s things on top of Mason’s, and walked out of the bunkhouse into the sun.
Where would Jonah be right now?
The stable. He’d said something at breakfast about trimming hooves today. Something about how one of the draft horses had a crack starting, and Logan wanted it dealt with before it split.
