Just finding Lana’s story? Read Part 6 here to catch up on the secret deer trail, Jesse at the river, and what Walt buried under Willow’s stall.
Last time, I was sitting on that ridge above the valley with Jesse hurt on Ghost’s back, June Whitaker clinging to Willow’s mane, and every light in June’s barn burning bright. A sheriff’s cruiser was parked right beside it. Then Jesse asked me who I had texted the river crossing location to, and I realized I had told the sheriff’s office every single step we took.
So many of you yelled at me in the comments for that text. You were right to. Here is what happened next.
The Text I Should Never Have Sent
I pulled my phone out with shaking hands. Four percent battery. The recording app still running. And right there at the top of my messages, the text I had sent to the sheriff’s dispatch line three hours earlier: the river crossing, the line shack, the time.
“Turn it off,” Jesse said quietly. “Your location. All of it.”
I did. Then I stood there in the cold feeling like the biggest fool in the whole state.
Travis was staring across the valley at that cruiser. “That’s Cole Harlan’s car,” he said. “Deputy Harlan. He plays cards with my dad every Thursday night. Has for twenty years.” He shook his head slowly. “I never thought about it. I never once thought about it.”
June didn’t say a word. She just pulled her blanket tighter and looked at her barn, where the man she had trusted to protect her was standing guard while strangers dug up the floor of her husband’s favorite stall.
Grandma used to say that when you can’t trust the people who are supposed to help, you find the people who will. So I made a new list in my head. Number one was Jesse’s ankle.
Getting Jesse Home the Back Way
We didn’t take the road. We cut down through my back pasture, through the gap in the fence I keep meaning to fix, and the second we came around the hay shed, Raven let out a long, worried whinny from her stall. I have never been so happy to hear that horse yell at me.
Travis and I got Jesse off Ghost and onto the old couch in my tack room. His ankle was swollen up like a softball. He tried to joke about it, and then he went gray and stopped talking.
I didn’t call 911. I called Marlene.
Doc Marlene Ortiz has been the large-animal vet in our valley since before I was born. She has pulled calves at three in the morning in a blizzard, and she once stitched up my chin in her truck when I was twelve because the hospital was an hour away. She answered on the second ring, listened to about ten seconds of my rambling, and said, “Don’t move him. I’m coming the back way.”
She was there in twenty minutes, still in her pajama pants and muck boots. She splinted Jesse’s ankle, checked his ribs, wrapped Ghost’s scraped shoulder, and only then turned and looked at June, and then at Travis, and then at me.
“Somebody had better start talking,” she said.
What I Recorded on the Mountain
So I played her the recording.
All of it. Travis in the clearing, his voice shaking, telling me about his dad’s debts and the buyer in Oklahoma. June on Willow’s back, explaining the forged papers from 1998 and the proof Walt hid in that ammo box. Even the car doors slamming at the line shack and somebody shouting Travis’s name.
Travis sat on an overturned bucket with his head in his hands the whole time. When his own voice came out of my phone, he flinched like it hurt.
When it was over, Marlene was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “My nephew is a state trooper out of the county seat. They don’t answer to that sheriff. Not even a little bit.”
I plugged my phone into the charger by the feed bins and sent the recording to three places. Marlene’s nephew. My best friend Maddie in Nashville, with a message that said if you don’t hear from me by noon, give this to anyone who will listen. And my own email, just in case.
For the first time all night, I felt like we had something on our side besides a stubborn gray mare.
Riding to June’s Barn Before Dawn
Everyone told me to wait for the troopers. Marlene said it. Jesse said it from the couch, three times, getting louder each time.
June was the one who changed my mind.
“If they find that box before anyone gets here,” she said, “fifty years of Walt’s life goes in the back of a truck to Oklahoma, and nobody ever sees it again. I’m not asking you to fight anybody, honey. I’m asking you to be a witness.”
So an hour before sunrise, I saddled Raven. June rode Willow, because nobody on earth was going to stop her. Travis walked ahead with a flashlight pointed at the ground. We followed the creek all the way across the valley, the water so loud over the rocks it covered every sound our horses made.
We tied the horses in the cottonwoods behind June’s place and crept up to the back of her hay barn. There’s a loft door up there that never latches. Travis boosted June up the ladder like she weighed nothing, and the three of us lay flat in the old hay, looking down through the gaps in the boards.
Dale Pruitt was standing in Willow’s empty stall with a shovel in his hands. Two men I had never seen held flashlights. And leaning against the stall door, arms folded, badge glinting on his chest, was Deputy Cole Harlan.
What Was Inside Walt’s Box
We watched them pull it out of the ground. An old dented ammo box, olive green, caked in dirt. Exactly like June said.
Dale dropped to his knees, pried at the rusted latch with a screwdriver, and finally ripped the lid open. Then he just knelt there and didn’t move.
The box was empty. Except for one folded piece of paper.
Dale read it out loud, and his voice got angrier with every word. “Dale. If you’re reading this, your daddy taught you well. The real one isn’t here. Only my mare knows where it is. Walt.“
Beside me in the hay, June pressed her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking. At first I thought she was crying. Then I realized she was laughing without making a sound.
“That old fox,” she whispered. “He never trusted anybody. Not even me.”
Down below, Dale threw the box against the wall so hard it rang like a bell. “Find the horse,” he snarled. “Tonight.”
And right then, out in the cottonwoods where we had tied them, Raven let out a long, loud whinny that echoed across the whole farm.
Every flashlight in that barn swung toward the trees.
I reached for Travis’s arm to tell him to get June down the ladder. That’s when I felt a hand settle on my shoulder from behind. A big, heavy hand. The hay crunched under somebody’s boots.
“Morning, Miss Brooks,” said a calm voice right next to my ear. “Thanks for the text.”
It wasn’t Deputy Harlan. He was still standing down in the stall. I could see him.
So now I’m asking you. Who was up in that loft with us? And where do you think Walt really hid the proof?
Part 8 is coming soon. Follow Reiterin on Facebook so you don’t miss who was waiting in June’s hayloft.