“You wound me, little bird,” Cypress replies, not sounding at all hurt as he places a hand over his heart. “I am a law-abiding citizen.”
Aiden barks out a laugh. “The letter of the law, maybe, but not the spirit of it. And I would say both are currently shot to hell by the four bodies we left behind.”
Cypress shrugs, staring at Aiden as he replies, “A man has a right to defend what’s his.”
“What’s yours?” I repeat.
“The horses.” Aiden’s jaw ticks to the side, the corner of his boot digging into the dirt. “We had to come back to get our horses.”
“Oh.” I flush, feeling embarrassed again for not immediately realizing. Because what else would there have been to make them… “Wait, I have to go back,” I blurt out. “Tess is…”
Aiden pivots his body slightly, now giving me a clear view of three horses standing underneath a nearby tree. Not one of them is tied up, though judging by the way Tess is currently dozing snugly between the two others, I don’t think she’s in a hurry to run off.
“We have your things from the hayloft, too,” Aiden says, reclaiming my attention. “You shouldn’t go back to Preston, but we’ll take you anywhere else you want to go. Won’t we, Cy?”
Cypress nods, his fingers starting to tap against his leg as he says, “Of course.”
“I don’t…”I don’t have anywhere else to gois what I was about to say, but instead, I opt for something that hopefully sounds far less pathetic. “I had things to take care of there. Zeke was supposed to find me a bounty hunter.”
I leave out the part about how he told me that he knew I couldn’t afford it, about how he was trying to convince me to leave instead. How he had also given me a warning and I’d been stupid enough to think that the greatest wound was to my pride.
“Zeke?” Aiden repeats. “The deputy?”
I nod, and they exchange a look before Cypress asks, “Why do you need a bounty hunter, Cora?”
“My father was killed a few months back. Someone shot him down while we were in Preston as he was walking right outside the sheriff’s office, but a bounty hunter was the only way to get them to do something about it. The law wouldn’t really help otherwise.”
Aiden makes a noise that’s caught somewhere between a laugh and a grunt of frustration. “I’ll bet not.”
“Do you know what he looked like?” Cypress asks next. “The man who killed him?”
“Tan hair. Short beard. Light eyes. A powder burn on his left arm,” I recite for what feels like the hundredth time, only Cypress is the first person who actually appears to be listening. “He took off headed northwest.”
Cypress nods, then claps his hand together. “Well, that’s settled then.”
“What is?”
“We will help you find him.”
“What?” both Aiden and I say at the same time.
“We will help you find the man who killed your father,” Cypress repeats, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. “Least we can do considering the trouble we’ve caused. Isn’t that right, Aiden? You said yourself that we hold responsibility here, and it would beunforgivableif we didn’t try to make amends.”
Aiden stares him down in such a way that I’m certain if I was on the receiving end of it, I would be shrinking back to avoid the impact. Cypress, however, seems perfectly relaxed as he stands as one of three points on a triangle, apparently having no intention of being the first to fall in line.
“You don’t have to help me,” I say, refusing to invest any real hope in something that sounds far too good to be true. “You’ve already done enough. And you both must have better things to occupy your time.”
“Not a thing that I can think of,” Cypress attests. “And even if we did—”
“Youshould,” Aiden says, blocking off whatever Cypress was about to say as he steps in front of me again. “Cora, I would think carefully on if this is what you really want.”
“It is,” I say, sure of that at least after being asked so many times by the sheriff and his son. “Iwantto find my father’s killer. I owe him that much.”
“It won’t give him his life back.”
“I know.”
“And it might take yours.”