Chapter 7: The Report

I opened the door in Boone's flannel shirt and a pair of socks.

The deputy looked at the shirt.

He looked past me at the bedroom doorway, where Boone was pulling on his jeans.

He wrote something on his clipboard.

"Morning, Miss Finch," he said. "I'm sorry to do this at dawn."

"Do what?" I said.

"I have a report from Dalton Culbertson."

"Says you took fourteen thousand dollars from him in Spokane last spring, plus a ring that belongs to his mother."

I laughed.

I could not help it.

"He filed a theft report against me," I said. "For his own theft."

"Ma'am, I'm only here to take your statement."

Behind the deputy, across the yard, the ranch hands were coming out of the bunkhouse in ones and twos.

Six men with coffee mugs stood on the porch and watched.

Orrin was at the front, with his hat tipped back.

He looked at Boone, who had just come out of my cottage with his shirt half buttoned.

He looked at the sky.

"Fine day," Orrin said to nobody, and drank his coffee.

Boone came to stand at my shoulder.

"Deputy," he said, "she doesn't have to say anything."

"I know. But I'd like to," I said.

I took my phone from the kitchen table and opened my bank app.

The statement was where I'd saved it the night I got the text, in a folder I had named DON'T.

I held it out to the deputy.

"There," I said. "The nineteenth of April. Fourteen thousand dollars, out of my account."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Keeping the Cowboy's Baby from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.