Page 114 of With Spite

Patrick looked at his brother and then back to me. “We had a thought.”

I swallowed back the immediate “fuck you” and forced myself to calm down.

They were my first suspects.

But all three of them had been getting drunk at Hopps since noon. There was no way that they were a part of her kidnapping.

“Well.” Patrick shifted from foot to foot. “There was this guy. A nurse. He was in Hopps ranting while we were there last night.”

A nurse.

I sat forward. “Small guy? Black hair? Soft?”

“Yeah.” Patrick nodded. “He was bitching about a woman. A house he just bought. And losing his job.”

Chan.

He was talking about the nurse they were going to fire today.

Bernice said they hadn’t, though.

He hadn’t been on my suspect list.

He’d been seen multiple places—mainly Hopps and The Mercantile—that I hadn’t thought to suspect him at all.

Plus, he just didn’t fit the bill.

Chan was gay, no doubt about it. He was also small and looked like he couldn’t hurt a fly. Let alone force a woman to do something she didn’t want to do.

But maybe…

“He bought that new place across from the Windsor Ranch.”

The old man’s property.

The one Denver had just been complaining about.

What the fuck?

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called Denver.

He answered on the second ring. “Hey, I’m looking at…”

“Go to the ranch,” I said. “The old man’s place. Will you go look there? I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Denver paused. “I’m around the corner. Was she spotted?”

“No, but the Hubers just let me know that the nurse that they were going to fire today was living there, and that he was bitching about his job and Bernice while they were at Hopps last night.”

“I’ll go. I have Gentry and Boone with me.”

I nodded my head at the brothers. “Thank you.”

Patrick shrugged. “Just didn’t want you to keep thinking it was us.”

I didn’t say anything, just ran to my pickup and took off toward Denver’s place.

Instead of making the left into his ranch, though, I continued straight to the old man’s place across the road.