Page 105 of Roped

“Who are you?” I ask.

He keeps smiling and takes a seat at the table. “I’m a colleague of your father’s.”

“What kind of colleague?”

“The kind that do business together.”

I stare at him for a few seconds, my chest heaving. Then, “Why are you speaking for my father?” I glance over at my dad, who sits in his chair, his face blank and his eyes still locked on me.

“Because he can’t talk,” the strange man reminds me. “He lost his ability to speak eight years ago.”

I frown as my heart starts racing in my chest, not that it wasn’t already, but still. Something is so very strange about all this. Twisting my hands in the bonds even though I know I won’t get free, I snap, trying to seem brave, “I know that. I was there. Or rather, I was at camp. I know my father can’t talk. But he uses something to help him communicate. What happened to that?”

When Arsen tried to murder my father, he strangled him so badly that his voice box got screwed up. Since then, he’s had to use a special device to speak. Now that I think about it, I’ve never really appreciated his lack of voice. And how fucking poetic it is that he almost took away Radisson’s ability to talk and ended up with tubes attached to his throat too. Good. Fuck him and fuck this fucking California surfer guy.

Who says next, “It’s better if I talk.”

“Fine,” I tell him. “Let’s talk. Where’s Lynnie?”

He throws me a small smile, his eyes taking in my features. “She’s safe.”

“Well, you have me now,” I say. “Let her go.”

He looks at me for a few seconds. Then, “Actually, you’re right. We don’t really need her for plan B. We could let her go.”

My heart jumps in my chest and I lean forward. “So then—”

“But,” he interrupts me. “We’ll wait. It’s just always better to hold grudges than to let them go.”

I clench my teeth. “Who the fuck are you?”

He settles back in his seat. “I told you. I’m your father’s colleague. And together, we’re in the business of acquiring more land.”

My heart sinks because of course, it’s about the one thing that it’s always been about. “Land.”

“You know, I’m from California. I came to Montana only a year ago,” he tells me conversationally. “And the reason I came was because Montana comes highly recommended. Great land, great prices. It’s a buyer’s market out here and I’m in real estate, so it only makes sense that I buy something here. But the piece of land I had my eye on is apparently not for sale.”

“Poor you,” I murmur, venom dripping from my words.

But he simply keeps going in the same tone, “I’m not someone who takes no for an answer so I kept trying. I kept raising my price. I kept trying to make the deal look more enticing. You offer ten million dollars to anyone else, let’s say, down in Texas maybe, and they roll right over. But apparently cowboys of Montana are a different breed.”

“Nice story, but—”

“And then I met your father.”

My heart sinks further because that’s never a good thing. Not that it ever was, but there has to be a reason why he’s telling me all this. A reason that I know is going to be worse than all the other hits. I study him for a second then before glancing over to my dad. Who’s got the same expression on his face, blank with his eyes glued to me. Coming back to the California surfer man who actually is from California, I say, “If you think my dad is going to help you in any way, you’re sorely mistaken. My father’s never helped anyone but himself. So you might as well go back to whatever hole in California you crawled out of. Do you understand? You’re never getting that land. Whatever the hell piece of land it is.”

“That’s what I thought too,” he says, completely calm. “But as I said, I met your father and we struck up a deal. Apparently, the land I’m interested in is also of interest to him. Has been for decades. So I told him if he helps me get the land I want, I’ll give him a percentage of it.”

My stomach bottoms out.

No. No, no, no. It can’t be. It… I know. I know what he’s talking about. There’s only one piece of land my father is interested in, has been for decades, and he’ll do anything to possess it. Including befriending this psychopath from California. Rawhide.

“I see you finally understand,” the man murmurs.

“The Graysons—”

“Are not very friendly,” he says, cutting me off, his eyes changing, becoming harsher. “Which is the opposite of what you hear about people in small towns. You go to L.A. and someone’s rude, you think that’s the nature of things. But you come to Black Rock, Montana, a town that’s a dot on the map, and someone doesn’t want to see you, no matter how many phone calls and emails you send, that’s strange. There’s something wrong with the Graysons, isn’t there? Something does not fit. They’re too secretive, too tightly bonded. Even the men who work for them. And believe me, I tried. I tried to get them to talk, but no one did.”