“Do you have anything on the hitlist?” I ask, moving on, to what should matter right now.
“Not yet,” he says. “I do have addresses and updates on every man who worked for you, but I haven’t made contact yet. We have to consider any one of them could be involved in this.”
“On the other hand, any one of them could be on the hitlist, too. I need to warn them.”
“You want me to handle it?”
“No. Send me numbers. I’ll call them, and I’ll feel them out when I do.”
“You sure? You have about twenty men on the list. I’m pretty damn good at feeling people out. I can record the exchanges. You really need to focus on keeping you and Ana alive right now.”
“Right. Yeah. Do it.”
“Good decision,” he approves. “Call Adam. He wants to talk to you and Ana.”
“Anything on Darius?” Ana asks anxiously. “Is he dirty? Did he set us up?”
“We don’t know yet,” Blake replies. “Any communication I can access looks clean, but he could have been using a throwaway phone, so that doesn’t mean a lot. I’m diving deeper. And so are Adam and Savage. But the very fact that you have to ask me that tells me there’s something more to this story.”
“A gut feeling,” Ana says, “which I’ve learned never to discount. He’s been acting a little off, and I can’t even explain what that means.”
“I know what it means,” Blake assures her. “And you’re right. Never ignore a gut feeling.”
“I’ll call Adam now,” I say.
“Don’t get killed,” Blake orders. “I’m sending you everything promised now.”
“Great, and if I die, Blake, cremate me and have Savage tell a stupid joke before you dump my ass wherever the hell you want.” On that note, I disconnect, glance in my rearview, and then dial Adam. I get his voicemail before I try to reach Savage. Same story.
At this point, we’re twenty-five minutes to Boulder. I need food and a few hours of rest before taking on those narrow-ass roads on the way to Breckinridge. I can fly through hell and back, but don’t make me drive it without food and sleep.
“I hadn’t talked to Jake in months,” Ana says. “You know he and his daughter had a strained relationship for years. They’d just really found each other again. And now he’s gone. We should do something for her.”
“We are,” I say. “We’re going to kill the bastards that killed him. After that, we’ll go back and tell her. I promise you, she’ll rest a little more peacefully.”
“But now she’s alone in a small town.”
“Judging by how fast she found out about her father, she’s not alone.”
“Killing them might give her peace but it won’t offer her comfort. Maybe we could take her something that reminds her of Jake. I don’t know what, but something. I guess there’s really nothing.” She hesitates, “You still think this has something to do with my brother?”
I glance over at her. “I know it does.”
“How can this be about Kasey?” she argues. “He’s been dead two years.”
And her father has been dead three, and for the first time right now, I’m connecting those dots between Kasey and Kurt, and there’s something dirty. I respected Kurt. I liked Kurt. But Kurt had a dark side, and so did Kasey. He inherited The Ranch and the business, yet had no money to pay the taxes, which never made sense to me. Kurt wasn’t a man who forgot to tie up ends, but nevertheless he did. Maybe he thought Kasey would bring in that income with the business. Kasey had skills, he was well-known as Kurt’s stepson, but even with Jake by his side, they lost business. Prideful bastard didn’t tell me or Ana, until it was too late.
I’m back to Ana won’t inherit anything from Kurt until she’s thirty-six, four years from now, and she doesn’t even know what she’ll inherit. The documents are sealed, but it should be millions. Kurt made a fortune in just the time I knew him. At the time of his death, holding back Ana’s inheritance seemed like a Kurt thing to do. He wanted Ana to learn to survive on her own efforts. He wanted her to have her dream, her life, not be consumed by his. He trained her because after losing her mother, he didn’t want her to end up dead. Not sure how her joining the FBI rather than running The Ranch made that happen, but he couldn’t control her life. That’s the point. He didn’t want his world to own her world. His world was always going to own Kasey’s.
It all made sense at the time, but now I’m not sure there isn’t more to it.
Was there another reason he wanted to keep Ana away from The Ranch?
“Luke,” Ana presses, snapping me out of my reverie.