Tory’s eyes locked with the foreman’s anxious gaze. Oh, my God, he knows what happened, she realized with a sickening premonition of dread. Her chest felt tight and she had to grip the counter for support.
“What do you know about this?” Trask turned furious eyes on the foreman.
“Keith wasn’t involved with the likes of Henderson and Benton,” the foreman said, his face flushed, his grizzled chin working with emotion.
“Davis can prove it,” Trask said flatly.
Dead silence.
“How?” Tory asked.
Trask took the envelope from his jacket and tossed it onto the table. “Someone, a man who worked for Linn Benton when he was judge, saw Keith. George Henderson verified the other guy’s story.”
“No!” Tory screamed, her voice catching on a sob. Not Keith, too. She wouldn’t, couldn’t lose him.
“Back off, McFadden,” Rex threatened, his eyes darting to the rifle mounted over the door before returning to Trask.
Keith’s shoulders slumped and he looked up at the ceiling. “No, Rex, don’t. It’s over—”
“Shut up!” the foreman snapped, his cold eyes drilling into Trask and his gnarled hands balling into threatening fists. “You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you?”
“Why are you standing up for him? Were you involved, too?” Trask suggested.
“Save it, Rex,” Keith said, his eyes locking with those
of his sister. “He obviously knows everything.” Keith’s hands shook as he opened the envelope and skimmed through the contents of John Davis’s report.
“Not everything. Maybe you can fill in a few of the missing blanks.”
“Oh, God, Keith,” Tory said, shaking her head, her voice strangling in her throat. “You don’t have to say anything.”
“It’s time, Sis. I knew it the minute McFadden showed up here. I let Dad cover for me because I was young and scared. I don’t have those excuses to hide behind any more.”
“Please,” she whispered.
“You promised your father,” Rex reminded Keith.
“And it was a mistake. A mistake that you and I have had to live with for five years,” Keith said. “I know what it’s done to me and I can see what’s happening to you.”
“You were in on it, too?” Trask said, his voice stone-cold.
“No, he wasn’t involved,” Keith said.
“Wait a minute,” Tory said, realizing that Keith was about to confess to a man who would ultimately want to see him sent to prison. “You don’t have to say anything that might incriminate you—you should talk to a lawyer….”
“Forget it, Tory. It’s time I said what’s on my mind. Even if McFadden hadn’t come back, I would have told the truth sooner or later. It wasn’t fair for Dad to take the rap for me, or for Dad to expect Rex to protect me.”
A deathly black void had invaded her heart and she felt as if her world was crumbling apart, brick by solid brick. All because of Trask.
“What happened?” Trask asked persistently. Every muscle in his body was tight from the strain of witnessing what this confrontation was doing to Tory. Maybe he’d been wrong all along, he thought, maybe, as Keith and Neva had so often suggested, he should have forgotten it all and just fallen in love with Tory again. As it was, she was bound to hate him. He could read it in her cold gray-green eyes.
“George Henderson approached me,” Keith was saying. “He asked me if I would help him with some horses he wanted hidden up on Devil’s Ridge. All I had to do was keep quiet about it and make sure that no one went up to the ridge. I was stupid enough to agree. When I found out what was going on, how he and Linn Benton were switching expensive Quarter Horses for cheaper ones, I told George I wanted out. George might have gone for it, but the judge, he wouldn’t let me out of the deal…told me I was an accomplice, even if an unwitting one. And he was right. No doubt about it, the judge knew the law from both sides. And I did know that something shady was going on. I just didn’t realize how bad it was…or…or that it could mean a stiff jail sentence.”
“So you were in over your head,” Trask said without emotion.
Keith nodded and Tory’s eyes locked with her brother’s dull gaze before he looked ashamedly away from her.
“But you could have come to me or to Dad,” Tory said, feeling dead inside. First her father and now Keith! Her chest felt so tight she had to fight to stand on her feet. Closing her eyes, she leaned against the wall for support.