Close Range Christmas by Nicole Helm (best free ebook reader .txt) 📕

of an engine interrupted the quiet of the morning. Faint at first, but growing louder until Jamison’s truck appeared on the rise.

Sarah let out an audible whoosh of breath, but Dev didn’t match her relief. She was happy Jamison was here to take care of things, but if Jamison was here this early, it could only mean he’d gotten a similar threat.

When Dev realized Cody was in the passenger seat, his dread dug even deeper. The secret he’d kept, no matter how guilty it had made him feel for a decade now, was showing up on his doorstep in the worst possible way.

A threat to his brothers.

They got out of the truck—his oldest and youngest brothers, respectively. Both lived out in Bonesteel with their wives and children. For Jamison that meant his wife, Liza, and her young half sister, Gigi. For Cody that meant his high-school sweetheart, Nina, eight-year-old daughter, Brianna, and a baby on the way.

Just like you.

Except he did everything in his power not to think about Sarah’s baby as anything close to his. Because Sarah’s baby wasn’t his. It was a favor he’d done her at only a slight cost to himself. Mainly, his sanity. There couldn’t even be that cost now. That secret was even more paramount than the one he’d carried since his father had injured him irrevocably.

Jamison and Cody wore matching grim expressions as they walked toward him and Sarah.

“I see you got the same message we did,” Cody said, nodding toward the tire.

Dev pointed at Jamison’s truck. “Quick fix.”

Jamison shook his head. “Mine was on the door to my office at city hall. Along with a machete.”

“Mine was wrapped around a brick that went through my storefront window,” Cody said with an even tone, though fury was stamped across his features.

“Gage had an arrow through his patrol car window, Brady had a dead animal on the porch with the note, and Tucker’s was on his porch as well—sticking out of a charred, headless doll,” Jamison continued, using that emotionless cop voice that usually grated on Dev’s nerves.

This morning he found it oddly reassuring.

“The notes all said the same thing,” Cody continued, as if the image of a charred, headless doll didn’t bother him.

“It can’t be Ace,” Sarah said, her voice an octave too high. Dev had forgotten about her there.

“You need to get inside,” he said gruffly. It was cold and she was supposed to be taking it easy, not panicking in the frigid temperatures. He thought of the feeling of the baby’s foot pushing against her stomach. A real, living, thriving human being.

He couldn’t think about any of that.

“You will not order me inside, Dev Wyatt,” she fumed.

“We’ll all go inside,” Jamison offered in a conciliatory tone, gesturing Sarah toward the house. “And you’re right, it can’t be Ace,” he agreed as they all trudged toward the door of Grandma Pauline’s house. Except for Cody, who was collecting the note and knife in evidence bags.

“We were too careful to doubt he’s dead,” Jamison was saying to Sarah as he held the door open for her.

“What else isn’t over that has to do with all six of you, though?” Sarah asked.

Jamison and Sarah moved into the warmth of Grandma Pauline’s kitchen, but warmth seemed all wrong. So Dev could only hesitate on the threshold, even as Cody came in behind him.

Grandma stood at the stove. She had a wooden spoon in one hand and her white hair was pulled back in a bun. Dev noticed the flash of worry in her gaze before she schooled it away into her usual take-no-prisoners demeanor.

“Well, what are the cavalry doing here?” she demanded.

Jamison and Cody gave her weak smiles. When Grandma saw Sarah she immediately grabbed her and had her in a chair with a plate of food in front of her before Dev could even move.

“You rest and eat,” Grandma ordered Sarah. “You three can discuss your business elsewhere.”

“No,” Sarah argued through a mouth full of biscuit. “I have to hear this too. I think we all do.”

“Tucker, Brady and Gage will all be here when they can. We want to compare notes,” Cody said. “We all got threatening notes this morning.” He held up the bag to Grandma Pauline, and she squinted to read.

Her mouth firmed, but she went back to stirring her gravy without another word.

“I talked to my friend at North Star on the way over,” Cody said, referring to the secretive group he’d worked for to help take down their father’s gang. “The Sons of the Badlands are weak, mostly disbanded, but that doesn’t mean they’re all gone or in jail. Any one of them could still harbor a grudge.”

“Wouldn’t they just hold that grudge against North Star?” Sarah asked.

“Not just. I think they’d hold a grudge against anyone they could. And North Star is a group of highly trained operatives. Hard to find, harder to pin down. We’re a much easier target. We’re the reason Ace was in jail when he was killed.”

“But you’re not the reason he’s dead,” Sarah argued.

“Depends on how in touch with reality you are. Ace’s cronies often weren’t. We’d be easy to blame. He doesn’t get stabbed in jail if he’s not there,” Jamison said.

“But that wasn’t all six of you,” Sarah insisted. “You and Cody were the ones instrumental in getting him in jail.”

“But Felicity and Gage were instrumental in the trial,” Cody returned, speaking of their brother Gage and his wife, Felicity. “Which was what prompted Ace to be moved to the prison where he died. Brady too, for that matter.”

“What about Dev? He hasn’t done anything.”

That might have felt like a stab if it were true. Unfortunately, it wasn’t true at all. He’d done something no one was ever going to forgive him for.

He thought of the list Cody had gone through outside. All the different ways this message had been given to his brothers. All the ways they were now in danger. Maybe it wasn’t because of him, but it didn’t