Fatal Deception (Bent County Protectors), page 1
About the Author
Nicole Helm grew up with her nose in a book and the dream of one day becoming a writer. Luckily, after a few failed career choices, she gets to follow that dream—writing down-to-earth contemporary romance and romantic suspense. From farmers to cowboys, Midwest to the West, Nicole writes stories about people finding themselves and finding love in the process. She lives in Missouri with her husband and two sons, and dreams of someday owning a barn.
Booklist
Books by Nicole Helm
Mills & Boon
Bent County Protectors
Vanishing Point
Killer on the Homestead
Fatal Deception
Hudson Sibling Solutions
Cold Case Kidnapping
Cold Case Identity
Cold Case Investigation
Cold Case Scandal
Cold Case Protection
Cold Case Discovery
Cold Case Murder Mystery
Covert Cowboy Soldiers
The Lost Hart Triplet
Small Town Vanishing
One Night Standoff
Shot in the Dark
Casing the Copycat
Clandestine Baby
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
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Fatal Deception
Nicole Helm
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN-13: 9780008948191
Fatal Deception
Copyright © 2025 by Nicole Helm
Published in Great Britain 2025
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises ULC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Dedication
For all the reluctant helpers.
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright Page
Note to Readers
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
About the Publisher
Chapter One
Audra Young didn’t mind having the whole ranch to herself, even if it meant working from sunup to sundown. She didn’t mind the quiet, the solitude. She didn’t even mind making her own meals.
If her neighbor, Natalie Kirk, didn’t send over leftovers, Audra baked herself silly and subsisted off brownies and breads. Either worked for her.
Which was good because she was losing roommates left and right. First, her second cousin, Vi, had gotten married and moved into town with her daughter and new husband. Then, just last week, her sister, Rosalie, had gone and married Duncan Kirk and jetted off on a long and well-deserved honeymoon.
Which just left Audra’s other cousin, Franny Perkins. But Franny was at a writer’s conference that would culminate in spending a few weeks in Washington with her folks.
Audra was well and truly on her own for at least three more weeks. The first few days had been fun. She got to do everything her way, which included none of Rosalie’s messiness or Franny’s distracting conversations.
Moving into week two of just her, it felt a bit lonely. She walked up to the mailbox, her usual post-workday but pre-dinner routine, thinking some company would be nice. Maybe a dog or two to trek around with her. But Franny was terribly allergic to dogs, so it didn’t seem right to get one.
Maybe she could hire on a hand. No doubt she could find a woman who wanted a little work in exchange for room and board.
But that was the problem. Audra couldn’t offer much more than that. She was still digging out of the hole her parents had left her four years ago, and keeping the ranch just breaking even meant not hiring anyone on.
She paused when she opened the door to the mailbox, surprised to find a package inside. She wasn’t expecting anything. Probably Rosalie sending something from Italy just because she knew it would give Audra a thrill.
Smiling at the thought of that, and her sister happily married to her absolute perfect match, Audra pulled everything out, then took the long walk back to the house.
Nothing much had changed there in the last thirty years. Her parents had never been ones for improvements.
Audra patched up what she could when necessary, doing everything in her power to avoid the expense of hiring someone to fix things. But that porch was starting to sag, and come spring, she’d need someone to check on the crooked gutter.
And she’d have to figure out a way to afford it because if things didn’t get done now, Rosalie would start trying to pay for things because her new husband was loaded.
Franny claimed it was pointless Wyoming stubbornness that kept Audra refusing Duncan’s overtures, and maybe she was right, but Audra wanted to know that she… Well, that she was better than her parents.
And sure, that was probably worthy of some therapy in and of itself, but she couldn’t afford that either.
Back home, she scraped off her muddy boots on the outside mat, then immediately toed them off in the entry. She carefully lined them up where they belonged before making her way into the kitchen, where she flipped through the mail, then retrieved scissors to open the package.
She studied it more carefully now. It was addressed to “the family of Audra Young.” Which was…weird and definitely not from Rosalie. Weirder still was the bright orange sticker on the bottom corner that read Cremated Remains.
Audra paused. Her father had been cremated, but that was four years ago, and the remains had been given to his other family. Audra was quite fine with that.
Had they changed their minds? Divvied some up? Did Audra want to know?
Not wanting to dive into those questions, she dealt with the rest of the mail first. She threw away the junk, put the bill in the to-pay pile and then turned back to the counter, where she’d left…the remains.
She sighed. She had to do something about them. She couldn’t just leave a box labeled Cremated Remains lying around. Unless Audra hid it away in her room,
Gripping the scissors, Audra grimaced and cut through the tape keeping the box closed. Maybe if the ashes were in a smaller container she would be able to find somewhere to hide it away. Maybe Rosalie would…want this.
Though Audra doubted it. Rosalie used to worship their dad, but Audra had ruined that when she confessed last year that Audra had been the one to do or make Dad do all the things Rosalie had given him credit for over the years.
Audra still regretted coming clean, except Rosalie had needed to know that in order to get over her reservations about Duncan. And he was perfect for her. Now they were married and happy and…
Audra blew out a long breath. “Okay, Audra. Be a grown-up.” She pulled the flaps of the box back to reveal a bunch of bubble wrap. Trying not to think, just act, she pulled out the contents, then slowly began to unwrap them.
Eventually, a fancy black urn came into view. It had to be Dad. It had to be.
There was a little engraved plaque on the side, so Audra turned it over and read…
Audra Gail Young.
For a long moment, she stood perfectly still, having absolutely no thoughts in her head as she stared at her name engraved on this container.
Cremains.
And her name.
But she was here, and alive, so there was some kind of mistake. She had to remind herself of that in order to take a breath.
A mistake. Similar to when the power had mistakenly gone out for three days right around Rosalie’s wedding because someone had called the power company and told them she was dead.
Then there were the messages she kept getting from a cemetery one town over.
Audra put down the urn, then stepped back. She rubbed at the tight band of stress that tensed in her chest, frustrated to have such a visceral response over a mistake. It wasn’t like her.
Even when different types of trouble cropped up around the county, sometimes affecting her loved ones, friends, or neighbors, Audra rarely worried. Anyone who knew her thought she was a soft, sweet thing. And she supposed, in some respects, she was.
But she was tougher than anyone gave her credit for and had the target-shooting awards to prove it.
The problem was…shooting wasn’t going to get her out of her identity somehow getting mixed up with a dead woman’s, and Audra didn’t have the first clue how to solve that problem.
She couldn’t go to Rosalie. What was her sister going to do from Rome, where she was having the most amazing and romantic honeymoon ever? Audra didn’t want to go to Thomas, her cousin’s husband—not with Vi so close to her due date.
But there was someone who would help, who wouldn’t worry. Someone Audra couldn’t pretend she liked, but… Well, he wasn’t all bad.
She hoped.
* * *
COPELAND BECKETT SAT at the desk that he shared with another detective and sipped the horrible coffee he’d poured himself after arriving at the Bent County Sherriff’s Department.
Laurel Delaney-Carson was already out on a case this morning, and Thomas Hart was coming in late in order to go to a doctor’s appointment with his wife.
Things had quieted down lately, which was good for Bent County, but left Copeland feeling…edgy. Too much time where his brain wasn’t actively engaged left it free to do its own thing.
No thanks.
So he was happy when someone walked into his office even if, had he placed a bet on who’d walk into his office on this cold, gray morning, she wouldn’t have even been on the list.
He stood. There was something about Audra Young that seemed to call for a chivalry he would have claimed he didn’t possess. Cowboy-code nonsense.
He was definitely no cowboy, but he supposed she was, in a manner of speaking.
“Hart isn’t in yet,” Copeland said by way of greeting.
Her polite smile didn’t change, but her blue eyes got a little frosty. She was the kind of woman that could be polite and frosty all in one look, and Copeland found on the seemingly soft and quiet Audra Young, he didn’t know what the hell to do with it.
Or her.
He wouldn’t say that she was prettier than her sister, exactly. Rosalie was a short, annoying firecracker. Audra was a slim, icy…he didn’t know. Sometimes she reminded him of a statue of a goddess. All untouchable ivory. Her hair wasn’t as red as Rosalie’s, but it leaned that way. Her eyes weren’t nearly as violet as her sister’s. They were a dark, summer-sky-blue.
She was dressed in what he’d learned was the typical uniform for ranchers around these parts. Boots. Lots of denim and flannel. Hair in a long braid down her back. She didn’t wear a hat, but he had no doubt there’d be a Stetson on the dash of her giant truck.
He knew she didn’t like him. No matter that he’d helped find her cousin when the woman had been kidnapped. Never mind that he’d apologized to her sister when their concurrent investigations had led to Rosalie getting injured.
He knew when a woman didn’t like him, because it was a rare thing indeed. Oh, he was an abrasive SOB, but women found him charming, or interesting, or a challenge.
Except the Young sisters. It was annoying from Rosalie because she was a private investigator, so she was always hounding him for information. But from Audra…well, Copeland wouldn’t count it as annoyed.
So he smiled because he was a little perverse and wanted to see how far he could make that dislike go.
“I wasn’t looking for Thomas this morning,” she said carefully, shifting a box she carried in her arms. “I have a problem that I’d like your help with.” She powered on before he could even register shock. She moved forward and put the box on the desk between them. “This was sent to me.”
Copeland raised an eyebrow at the bright orange sticker that read Cremated Remains. He peered in the box. A shiny black urn sat in there. He might have thought nothing of it except the plaque on it read Audra Gail Young.
He looked up at her, already knowing the answer, but he was a detective. Had to ask. Read the reaction. “Some same-named relative of yours?”
“Not that I’m aware of.” Her hands clasped together in front of her before she released them. She managed a strange gesture, almost like a shrug. “That’s my name. And when I put that together with some of the other issues that have been going on, I… I know it might not be criminal, exactly.” Her eyebrows drew together. “But I don’t know what to do.”
Always interested in a puzzle, Copeland didn’t dismiss her out of hand. “What other issues?”
She went through them. Her power being turned off. Messages from a cemetery. He supposed it sounded like a mix-up, but it was definitely a strange one.
“I guess it’s just some sort of mistake—they’ve mixed up my name with this poor person, but I don’t know how to get to the bottom of it. I was hoping you could help, even if it isn’t criminal…exactly.”
Copeland considered. It was a bit of a strange gray area, and he didn’t mind those. In fact, he rather preferred them to the Bent County obsession with black and white, right and wrong. If it had been anyone else, he would have jumped right in.
But this was Audra Young. He studied her. Stiff and polite. Pretty and untouchable. All Western tough girl with the strangest undercurrent of…soft princess.
And she absolutely did not like him—whether it was because of his abrasive personality, that Bent County distrust of outsiders, or something else, he didn’t know. Didn’t really matter. Except, he wanted to know.
“I do have a somewhat pressing question before I decide.”
“Why am I bringing this to you and not…literally anyone else?” she asked, with just a hint of self-deprecation.
He tapped a finger to his nose. “You’re smart.”
She made a noncommittal sound. “Rosalie is enjoying her honeymoon, and I want it to stay that way. I don’t want her coworkers at Fool’s Gold to be put on the spot where they might have to lie to her. Vi’s due any day now, and Thomas might not take his full paternity leave if he’s handling this for me. With just about every other person I considered, this gets back to Rosalie or Vi. I know how they all worry about me out there by myself. I’d like to keep this…quiet.”
