royal connections. He pressed this narrow advantage by using her name. “C’mon, Fiona. We both know you won’t pull the trigger.”
Her chin went up. “Try me.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt you’d kill me, but…” He shrugged. “You’re not going to do anything that would upset Soldier.”
“Soldier Boy,” she answered, the grit in her voice turned more lethal than sensual, “is already upset.”
“You should have seen him an hour ago.” But it occurred to him that provoking Soldier to a frenzied rage might serve her purposes. The thought congealed into a nasty suspicion that he must be very careful not to underestimate Fiona Halsey. “It wouldn’t take much to send Soldier over the edge, would it?”
“No.” She cocked a hip forward, agreeing…softly. Bitterly. Choked. “It wouldn’t take much at all.”
He found his weak-kneed self, the one reacting to her voice, suffering. What man wouldn’t want to spare her the turmoil of loving a horse who would never again return her emotional investment?
Fool. He should be baiting her into the stall, disarming her. What was he doing? What was the point of playing her—or letting her play him? Soldier’s flesh skittered under his hand, and the stallion threw his head up.
But there was a point in goading her, he knew. The smoking Remington made her suspect. The scope made it even more likely. She could have gone five hundred yards up the tree-lined lane leading into the main ranch house with the rifle, picked Everly off and made it back to her quarters in time to make it look as if she had never been gone. He went on stroking the massive animal she loved, subtly stoking her resentment that Soldier tolerated him at all while he offered up his theory.
“Here’s how I see it. You have to be worried about the possibility that I saw what happened. That I saw you do it.”
She stared at him, unblinking. “You think I shot Kyle?”
“Yeah. I do.” He nodded, appreciating her quickness, leading her farther down the path. “And I can appreciate your dilemma. Should you shoot me next, and have to call Hanifen back, or—”
“Or,” she interrupted, anticipating him, “maybe fire off a round and cause Soldier to trample you to death.” Her chin went up. “It would be a little less efficient than a bullet through the heart.”
“But really, not a bad trade-off in terms of explaining everything to Dex.”
She blinked. “It wouldn’t do to leave alive a witness to the murder.”
He nodded. The flint in her voice was backed by tempered steel at her core. If she’d decided to murder Everly, she was capable of it. If she had, Matt was toast. Somehow, in spite of the solid possibility, he doubted that she had done it. “You’d get away with all of it. Plays nicely, I think.”
“Except that your premise is fatally flawed. I didn’t shoot Kyle.”
“Really? Is that your gun?”
“Yes.”
“When’s the last time you used it?”
“Months ago. What difference does it make?”
“Then someone else shot Everly with your gun, princess.”
Her eyes narrowed. He knew them to be a stunning hazel-blue, but all he could see was an angry darkening. “Who—”
“Check it out, Fiona. You may have been the local debutante, but you’re not green. Are you telling me you can’t smell the spent powder?”
Whatever color there was in her face drained away. “I didn’t shoot—”
“I think you did.” But he really didn’t know. Her reaction could be taken in two completely exclusive ways. Either she’d shot Everly in the back and was now caught red-handed with the murder weapon, or she had only just now figured out that someone had neatly framed her.
It struck him that if Kyle Everly had an arsenal of weapons stashed somewhere on the Bar Naught, which was what Hanifen’s deputy had seemed to imply, weapons Fiona Halsey knew about, she would have been smarter than to used her own Remington.
She swallowed hard. He watched the pitching of her throat beneath the delicate, luminous skin of her neck in the low lighting of the stables. Rustling sounds, scrapes and hooves and clanking of the other Bar Naught horses, filled the silence.
“Who are you?” she demanded, her chin thrust forward.
Her question was more complicated than she knew. Matt answered more honestly than he’d had any intention of doing. “Whoever I need to be.”
He watched the shadows alter on her face, knew that her jaw tightened. “What were you doing hiding out in here?”
“Basically, I thought I’d be better off staying out of Hanifen’s way.”
“Just shy, I suppose.”
He cracked the smile, but the image of Everly dropping dead of a bullet in the back was not far from his mind.
She lowered the rifle a bit. If she truly wasn’t the one who had shot Everly in the back, then she had at least to suspect that she had the murderer in her sights. But she had a problem, he knew. She wasn’t willing or inclined to kill him, or she’d already have pulled the trigger. But if she turned her back on him to call Hanifen, he would either kill her or get away.
Why was she willing to stand here jawing with him?
Then the thought occurred to him that she had known all along that there was someone hiding out in the stables. She’d kept an eagle eye on the horses during the last few hours. He’d heard her come and go a couple of times before Hanifen and his men cleared out, making the rounds of stalls, calming the valuable animals by her presence and her soft, sultry reassurances.
She hadn’t come near Soldier’s stall. He’d sensed her nearby, smelled hesitation on her, but in his oxygen-deprived head, he’d chalked it up to Soldier’s inhospitable attitude. Now he had to wonder. He took the stab in the dark. “You knew before Hanifen and his boys left that someone was holed up in here with Soldier, didn’t you?”
Her chin pitched up. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Why didn’t you turn me in when you had the chance, Fiona?”
Her trigger finger flinched almost imperceptibly. Her shadowy eyes narrowed. “Maybe…No, you’re wrong. I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
“Maybe?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“I think you were.”
“You think?” she mocked him.
He turned his head slowly, minutely, back and forth. “You knew.” He knew, now, without a doubt. His stab in the dark had struck a nerve. He still didn’t get it. What possible reason could she have for not exposing an intruder’s whereabouts to Hanifen? For that matter, why wasn’t she persisting till he gave her straight answers as to who he was and what he was doing at the scene of a murder?
“All right, then,” she tossed back, at last releasing the firing pin, lowering the rifle butt-first to the ground. “Why do you think I kept my mouth shut?”
“It’s a mystery to me.” More so with every moment. Why put the rifle down now? “Maybe you aren’t at all sorry that he’s dead.”
“Hmm.” He heard heavy derision in that noise. “Maybe I wanted to find out who hated Everly more than I do.” She tossed her head, sent her long hair flying. For the first time he saw uncertainty edging in. She gritted her teeth “Maybe I wanted to help whoever did it get away. Maybe I wanted to kiss you—”
She cut herself off awkwardly. Her mouth clapped shut. “I mean—”
He knew what she meant.