Vincent Blake’s ranch was about a two-and-a-half-hour drive north, stretching for miles along the Texas/Oklahoma border. Taking the helicopter cut our travel time down to forty-five minutes, plus transit on the ground. Landon had done her part, so the press arrived shortly after I did.
“Earlier today,” I told them in a speech that I had rehearsed, “the remains of a man that we believe to be William Blake were found on the grounds of the Hawthorne estate.”
I stuck to my script. Landon had timed the leak about the body perfectly—the story she’d planted was already up, but it was the footage of what I was saying now that would define it. I sold the story: Will Blake had physically assaulted an underage female, and Tobias Hawthorne had intervened to protect her. Law enforcement was investigating, but based on what we’d been able to piece together ourselves, we expected the autopsy to reveal that Blake had died from blunt-force trauma to the head.
Tobias Hawthorne had dealt those blows.
That last bit might not have been true, but it was sensational. It was a story. And I was here now to pay my respects to the deceased’s family, on behalf of myself and the remaining Hawthornes.
I didn’t take questions. Instead, I turned and walked toward the boundary of Vincent Blake’s property. I knew from my research that Legacy Ranch was more than a quarter of a million acres—nearly four hundred square miles.
I stopped under an enormous brick arch, part of an equally enormous wall. The archway was big enough for a bus to fit underneath. As I approached, a black truck barreled toward me from inside the compound, down a long dirt road.
Beyond this wall, there were more than eighty thousand acres of active farmland, more than a thousand productive oil wells, the world’s largest privately owned collection of quarter horses, and a truly substantial number of cattle.
And somewhere, beyond this wall, on these acres, there was a house.
“You’re about to trespass on private property.” The men who exited the black truck were dressed like ranch hands, but they moved like soldiers.
Hoping I hadn’t miscalculated—because if I had, the entire world was witnessing that miscalculation—I replied to the man who had spoken. “Even if I have one of these?”
I opened my fingers just far enough for them to see the seal.
Less than a minute later, I was in the cab of the truck, barreling toward the unknown.
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It was a full ten minutes before the house came into view. The driver, who was definitely armed, hadn’t said a word to me.
I looked down at the seal resting in my palm. “You haven’t asked where I got it.”
He didn’t take his eyes off the road. “When someone has one of those, you don’t ask.”
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If Hawthorne House looked like a castle, Vincent Blake’s home called to mind a fortress. It was made of dark stone, its square lines interrupted only by two giant round columns rising into turrets. A wrought-iron balcony lined
the front perimeter on the second floor. I half expected a drawbridge, but instead there was a wraparound porch.
Eve stood on that porch, her amber hair blowing in the wind.
Blake’s security followed me as I walked toward her. When I stepped up onto the porch, Eve turned, a strategic move designed to force me into following.
“This all would have been so much easier,” she said, “if you’d just given me what I asked for.”
