Книга - In Seconds

In Seconds
Brenda Novak


They're back…Laurel Hodges has changed her identity twice. She's been on the run for the past four years, trying to outdistance the gang members who blame her for the death of one of their own. She's finally found peace and stability in the small town of Pineview, Montana. But just when Laurel thinks she and her children are safe…the nightmare starts all over again.The Crew, a ruthless prison gang with ties to Laurel's brother, will never forget and they'll never forgive. And now that they've finally tracked her down, they'll stop at nothing.Sheriff Myles King, who happens to live next door with his thirteen-year-old daughter, appoints himself Laurel's personal guardian. His growing attraction to her could change his life–Myles is beginning to picture marriage and family. But it could also end his life. If he can't save her, everything he's built, everything he wants, could be destroyed. In seconds…









Praise for the novels of Brenda Novak


“I felt a real connection to the characters…

It was an exciting, intriguing read.”

—First for Women magazine on Killer Heat

Novak “builds her characters and plot by adding genuine and

recognizable feelings—from angst to passion to terror and

beyond… A great end to a wonderful series.”

—Suspense Magazine on Killer Heat

Body Heat “is a definite page-turner.”

—RT Book Reviews

“With such a heart-stopping hero and plucky heroine,

what could I do but give this book a Perfect 10?”

—Romance Reviews Today on Body Heat

“Novak expertly blends romantic thrills, suspenseful chills, and

realistically complicated characters together in a white-knuckle

read that is certain to keep readers riveted to the last page.”

—Booklist on Body Heat

“Brenda Novak has written the best high-action thriller

of 2010…. From page one I was immediately hooked on this

fast action plot that was like solving a Chinese puzzle box.”

—Midwest Book Review on White Heat

With “distinctive characters and a nail biting plot, Novak’s

White Heat is flawless and easily a Best of 2010 contender.”

—Suspense Magazine

“A fast-paced romantic thriller guaranteed to keep you

entranced to the climactic end.”

—Fresh Fiction on White Heat

“Novak writes gripping romantic thrillers.”

—Library Journal




In Seconds

Brenda Novak







www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


To Larry and Gloria Morrill—

Thank you for opening your home and your hearts.




Dear Reader,

Last November, when one of my best friends suggested I go with her to Montana to spend a few days with her parents, I agreed. It wasn’t like me to take the time. I have a family, tight writing deadlines and lots of travel for speaking and conferences. But I’d never been to Montana. I wanted to see it and believed it would be therapeutic to have some “girlfriend” time.

I flew into Kalispell, which has a tiny but attractive airport, and met Dara there. I was looking forward to a quiet, scenic getaway and that’s exactly what I got. I didn’t realize that in these modern times, places still exist where there’s no cell service for miles, but I have to admit I really like the idea and hope it never changes—it stirs my imagination to think technology hasn’t completely tamed the Wild West.

We stayed in the Chain of Lakes area, right on Crystal Lake, which was so beautiful (especially in the mornings with the mist coming off the water) it stole my breath. Even better than the scenery was being able to feel like a kid again as Dara’s parents, Larry and Gloria Morrill, took care of us with delicious food, interesting anecdotes about their family history (they now live where they grew up), research help, sightseeing trips and love. I will always remember my stay fondly—and associate that trip with this book. Not only is the story set in a fictional town I’ve placed not far from Happy’s Inn, which is a stone’s throw from their house, I started the manuscript while sitting in one of the bedrooms in their home.

I’ve posted pictures of Crystal Lake and Libby (where Myles works) on my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Author-Brenda-Novak/120794854630624). Please go there if you’d like to see what I saw (and “like” the page). Also, I’d love for you to visit brendanovak.com, where you can sign up for my mailing list, peruse my backlist and future releases and join the many authors, readers and philanthropists who support my annual online auction for diabetes research (my son has this disease). I hold this event at my website May 1 to May 31. So far we’ve raised over $1.4 million and are continuing the fight. Here’s to a cure!

I hope you enjoy Laurel and Myles’s story!

Brenda Novak




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Epilogue




1


Pineview, Montana

It was the murder that triggered everything. The moment Laurel Hodges—Vivian Stewart as of two years ago—heard about it, everything she’d been through, everything she’d done to escape her past, came rushing back at her. And it happened at a place where she’d felt completely safe only seconds before. She was having highlights put in her hair at Claire’s Salon, which wasn’t much of a salon, just an add-on to her friend’s small home.

Although Claire had grown up here, Vivian had lived in Pineview only since she’d assumed her most recent identity. She’d chosen this town because it had an extremely low crime rate, it was so far from where she’d been before and it was on the backside of nowhere. She’d never dreamed the people who’d been chasing her for four years would think to look here. And it’d been a long enough stretch of peace and quiet to believe the terrible years were over. She’d left her old self behind, adjusted, established her fledgling purse-design business and begun to live again. She and her two children—Mia, seven, and Jake, nine—were finally starting to belong.

And now, in the blink of an eye, everything they’d created here felt threatened.

“What’d you say?” Lifting the hood of the commercial hair dryer, she leaned out so she could hear. The postman, George Grannuto, had just walked through the doors Claire had flung wide so they could enjoy the breezy June morning while she vented the fumes of the hair-coloring chemicals.

“Pat Stueben’s dead,” he repeated, handing Claire her mail. “He’s been murdered.” His face, drained of its usual ruddy color, made him appear years older than he was. Vivian knew his exact age—fifty-five—because she’d attended his birthday party last month. His wife was part of her Thursday-night book group.

Claire, only five foot three or so, leaned on the broom she’d been using to sweep up hair. Vivian had wanted a sassy cut to signify the freedom and happiness she’d been experiencing so often of late. She’d also gone back to being a blonde, which was her natural color. But going so short was a big change. Now she couldn’t help staring at the dark brown locks lying on the floor, feeling as if she’d just shed her skin.

“How? When?” Claire brought a hand to her chest. George’s words had obviously shocked her as much as they had Vivian. With the disappearance of her mother fifteen years ago and the death of her husband after only a few years of marriage, Claire had had more than her share of bad news. And now this… “Leanne and I saw him and Gertie at Fresh Ketch last night,” she said. “They were in the booth next to ours.”

Tall and bony, George resembled a cartoon stork delivering a baby when he carried his bulging mailbag down Claire’s little dead-end street, and the shorts that went with his warm-weather uniform didn’t improve his appearance. They revealed stiltlike legs with knobby knees and varicose veins. But he always wore a smile.

Except today.

“Someone called him,” he explained, “wanting to rent one of those cabins he owns over on the north shore. So after breakfast he drove around the lake to show the property—and never came back.”

If he’d said that Pat had died of a heart attack, Vivian wouldn’t have found it difficult to believe. Pat was no longer as svelte as the picture posted on his real-estate signs. But…murdered? That couldn’t be. They still didn’t know what’d happened to Claire’s mother, but no one had ever been killed in this tranquil place, not in recent memory. Folks here didn’t even lock their doors at night. If the community had more deaths than some, that was because it had more seniors.

The old cloying fear welled up, making it hard for Vivian to breathe, let alone talk. After two attempts to clear her throat, she managed to find her voice. “Who discovered him?”

“Gertie.” The clicking sound George made with his tongue was shorthand for “this makes it even worse.” “When he didn’t come home, she drove over to see what was keeping him. You know how close they are. Were,” he corrected. “The scene when she walked in was—” He shook his head.

“She got there too late?” Claire asked this question; Vivian was still chasing words around the vortex of panic in her head.

George lowered his voice. “She found him lying in a pool of blood, beaten senseless. He died before he could tell her anything.”

The hair on the back of Vivian’s neck stood on end. Beaten senseless? Who could hate Pat enough to kill him—and in such a violent manner? No one from Pineview. He was popular, jovial, well-liked.

Did this tragedy mean what she thought it might?

“Do they know who did it?” Claire beat Vivian to the question that was uppermost in her mind. It was obviously important to Claire, too, and it wasn’t hard to guess why, not with a mother who’d been missing for nearly two decades.

“I don’t think so,” George replied. “Maybe that would be different if we had cell phone service here, but we don’t. And if the sheriff knows anything, he’s not talking.”

Sheriff King happened to be Vivian’s next-door neighbor, so she knew him, at least a little. He wasn’t the type to divulge details until he was good and ready, especially if doing so might jeopardize a case. Myles was a by-the-book kind of cop. He was also a handsome widower with a thirteen-year-old daughter. He’d asked Vivian out on occasion, but she’d never accepted. Claire said she was crazy for rejecting him, but she was still trying to get over Rex McCready, her brother’s best friend who’d entered WitSec—witness protection—when she did. Besides, she was afraid to get too close to anyone who was unaware of her real situation for fear her past would come crashing into her present, just like it seemed to be doing today.

“How do you know all this?” There. She’d found her voice again. She’d also come to her feet.

“My route covers the whole lake.” He gestured toward Crystal Lake, even though they couldn’t see it from this part of town. Claire’s house was artsy, in a hippie sort of way, but it was located on the poor side of Pineview.

Claire started to speak, but Vivian plowed over her. “You were at the scene?”

“I was. So was the coroner, the sheriff, some detectives and forensic techs from the county. Boy, were they were a grim bunch. The sheriff was downright stone-faced.”

For good reason…

Heedless of the hair clippings that remained on the floor, Claire set her broom aside. “Is he the one who told you about Pat?”

“No, C. C. Larsen did. When Gertie found him, she ran to C.C.’s to use the phone.”

“But C.C.’s house is a quarter of a mile from those rentals,” Claire said. Having lived here her whole life, she knew every street, every alley, every empty field and rental cabin. She’d searched them all, at some point, for her mother.

He adjusted his bag to redistribute the weight. “She didn’t want to go to another rental for fear of who might be there. You can understand.” Wrinkling his nose, he added, “C.C. and I watched ’em cart out the body.”

“This is terrible,” Vivian muttered, but she wasn’t really thinking about what she was saying. She was wondering if the panic intensifying her sadness over Pat’s death was justified or simply an echo of an earlier time.

“I tried to get a few more details from the sheriff, but…it was useless,” George said. “He told me he’s ‘investigating the incident’ and that he’ll know more later. He also said everything will be okay. But I don’t see how it can ever be okay for Gertie.”

The sheriff had answered without really answering. Vivian recognized his “cop-speak” because she’d heard it before. When her stepfather had been shot and killed, the investigators wouldn’t tell her or her family anything. Not knowing what was really going on had been almost as agonizing as learning that they were placing the blame on Virgil, her older brother, and prosecuting him, at eighteen, for murder.

“We’ve got a right to more information than that,” Claire complained. “It’s our community, too.”

George nodded. “I see those shows on TV. I know what can happen when a serial killer gets started. Psychopaths don’t quit till someone stops ’em. And this sounds like a psychopath to me. Who else would beat a man to death for no reason?”

“Do you think maybe some drug addict wanted Pat’s wallet and he wouldn’t give it up?” Vivian grasped at any feasible explanation, hoping the truth wasn’t what she feared.

“It’s possible, I suppose,” George replied. “C.C. told me that Gertie said his wallet was missing. But there was only about fifty bucks inside. Still, a bungled robbery would be better than a serial killer. Imagine someone like that Zodiac fella or—or BTK setting up shop here in the Chain of Lakes.”

Vivian couldn’t imagine it. That was the problem. Claire’s mother disappearing fifteen years ago was the only blemish on this town, and most folks believed she’d run off. Pineview, nestled so close to Crystal Lake, was picture-perfect. Safe. Close-knit. Stunningly beautiful. Untouched by the rest of the world. Apart from it, too. As George had said, Pineview didn’t even have cell-phone reception.

It did, however, have its first modern-day murder.

“The FBI would descend on us. The media, too.” George was expanding on his psychopath theory.

Claire checked the street, probably hoping to see her sister, Leanne, roll toward them in her motorized wheelchair. Crippled in a sledding accident when she was thirteen, Leanne drove it everywhere, even through the ruts on their road. “Maybe Chester over at the paper will get a letter from the killer, taunting Sheriff King.”

George staggered under the weight of his bag. “Or someone else will die.”

A real-estate agent beaten to death inside his own vacation rental spoke more of rage than a stalking type of murder, but Vivian didn’t say so. She preferred to fade into the background, didn’t want Claire or George to think she knew anything about the subject. No one here had any idea that her stepfather had been murdered, or that her brother had served fourteen years in prison before being exonerated. They had no idea of the problems that had started upon his release, either. Because all of that had happened to Laurel Hodges, not Vivian Stewart.

“If there’s a serial killer running around, the danger is far from over,” Claire said, but Vivian wasn’t so sure this perpetrator had killed just for the thrill of it. If the violent gang her brother had joined while he was in prison had caught up with her yet again, it could be that Pat had merely gotten in the way. Like that U.S. marshal in one of the places she’d been before. The Crew had slit his throat and left him bleeding out on the floor. They would’ve killed her, too, if not for—

She couldn’t even think of what had almost happened, because it involved her children. The men who belonged to The Crew were ruthless. They’d proven that, hadn’t they? They’d also proven that they could get hold of whatever information they wanted. Vivian was convinced that someone in the very agency charged with their protection had been talking. That was the only way The Crew could’ve found them before, when they were all living in D.C. So they’d left the witness protection program, assumed new identities yet again and separated. Other than Virgil, his wife, Peyton, and Rex, who lived in Buffalo, New York, no one knew where she was, not even their handler from WitSec who’d helped them relocate the first time. After all that, what more could she possibly do to keep her small family safe?

Should she have changed her children’s names, too? Because children were so difficult to trace—they didn’t sign up for credit cards or get jobs or do any of the other things that left a trail—she’d opted to keep their first names. They had a different last name, though, which they understood was because of her divorce. Her new first name, she’d told them, was because she liked it better. Even that had taken them a while to get used to.

“We need to look out for each other, report any strangers we see,” Claire said.

“But it’s tourist season,” George responded. “There’re always strangers this time of year, most of ’em young guys who’ve come to hunt or fish or canoe. And you know how rough some of ’em can look, with all their tattoos and body piercings.”

“Then we’ll have to keep an eye on all of them.” Claire glanced at Vivian, anticipating her full agreement, and did a double take. “Oh, my God! We’ve got to get you rinsed!”



She’d changed her hair. Drastically. Myles King noticed that right off. For one thing, she was now blonde. That suited her, but he didn’t know if he liked the cut; he couldn’t see Vivian clearly enough to tell. His neighbor waited just outside the dim yellow glow of his porch light as if she feared he might press her to come inside if she moved any closer. She always approached him as warily as she might a bear or some other dangerous animal.

Why was she so skittish?

He might’ve guessed that he intimidated her. Police officers got that reaction sometimes. It came with the uniform. But at six foot two, he was only four inches taller. And maybe she was slender, but she was fit. She didn’t seem like the type to feel easily threatened.

Besides, he’d been so nice to her! He rolled her garbage can to the curb if she forgot to set it out, mowed her lawn when he mowed his, bought enough fresh strawberries to share (he’d once overheard her telling her son that she loved fresh strawberries). He couched it all as an attempt to be neighborly, and it was—being neighborly to the beautiful brunette, who was no longer a brunette, next door. But nothing he did seemed to break down her defenses. Her kids were always excited to see him, but other than those strawberries or something as small as that, she politely declined every gift or invitation.

His instincts told him he was better off not getting involved with her. But he could sense the chemistry between them, and that was what confused him. He’d never forget the time he was working in the yard without a shirt and caught her watching him from where she was weeding her garden. It was as if a lightning bolt had gone through them both, incinerating them on the spot.

He knew desire when he saw it; she was as attracted to him as he was to her. So why wouldn’t she let him take her to dinner?

“Can I help you?” Determined not to try any harder than he already had, Myles kept one hand on the door. It’d been a hell of a day. The last thing he needed was to top it off with another dose of sexual frustration.

“Um, yes…maybe you can.” She cleared her throat. “I’m afraid my fridge has gone out.”

The images of blood and death he’d seen earlier still filled his head, making it difficult to immediately comprehend her words. He’d returned from the scene of Pat Stueben’s murder more than an hour ago, but he’d carried the grisly sight home with him. The fact that anyone would beat a good man, a friend to everyone, in Myles’s own backyard, so to speak, made him so angry he couldn’t think of anything else. “Did you say your fridge?” he clarified.

“Yes.”

He felt his eyebrows go up. “Okay…”

“It went on the blink a couple of hours ago and… Claire told me you’re a better handyman than Byron Jacobs.” She flashed him a quick smile. “She said he had to call you when he couldn’t fix her stove last month.”

She was here for a favor? She never darkened his door, except to drag her son away. Jake slipped over whenever he could. The kid liked to follow him around, even help with the yard work, so Myles had been training him to use the weeder, the edger and the pruning shears.

But he wasn’t in the business of fixing other people’s broken appliances. He’d done Claire a favor. He wouldn’t mind lending Vivian a hand, too, but it’d taken him three days to screw up the nerve to ask her if she’d go out on the lake with him two weeks ago. And her response? She had to clean her house—an excuse that was almost as bad as telling him she had to wash her hair.

He opened his mouth to turn her away. He was about to say the food would last until Byron could get to it in the morning. But he couldn’t make himself go through with it, which just proved how obsessed with her he’d become. His wife had died of cancer only three years ago—but thirty-six months of celibacy felt a lot longer to his body than his heart. Not only that, this was the first time Vivian had invited him inside her home. From what he could tell, she didn’t ask anyone in. Except maybe Claire and Vera Soblasky, who occasionally watched Jake and Mia for her.

Curious to see how she lived, he heard himself accept. “Sure. I can come over right now, if you want.”

“Marley won’t mind?” she asked.

His daughter had a friend over; they were watching a movie upstairs on the big screen in his room. They wouldn’t miss him if he stepped out for a few minutes. “No. She’ll be fine.”

Vivian’s face lit up. “Great. Thank you so much.”

When that rare smile shot like an arrow to his groin, Myles cursed the testosterone that made him so…male. He had single women coming on to him all the time, but he wasn’t interested in them. Instead, he wanted this complicated neighbor who’d let him know in no uncertain terms that she wouldn’t welcome him even as a friend.

But tonight she needed help. And he was planning to make sure she got it. Apparently even the gruesome murder of an upstanding Pineview citizen couldn’t lessen her impact on him. “I’ll grab my toolbox and come over.”




2


Vivian sat at the kitchen table while the sheriff unplugged her fridge and tore apart the motor. She hadn’t been sure he’d agree to help, but now that he had, she hoped he wouldn’t be able to tell she’d sabotaged it herself. She also hoped the job would take long enough to strike up more than a superficial conversation with him. It hadn’t required much effort to cripple her fridge. She’d yanked out a few wires and was afraid he’d simply reconnect them before she could learn anything about Pat Stueben’s murder, see if he had any idea who might be responsible.

“Kids in bed already?” he asked as he worked.

“Yeah. They’re usually out by nine.” He looked better in a pair of jeans than any man had a right to. She tried not to let her gaze drop to the assets those jeans displayed, but it wasn’t easy. She hadn’t allowed herself to get this close to a man in the two years she’d been living in Pineview—especially a man who made her so aware that she’d soon be heading to bed alone. Just like every other night.

“What do you do after they’re asleep?”

A screw fell to the floor. She bent to pick it up so he wouldn’t see the warm blush that’d infused her cheeks. “Work. The hours from nine to one are my most productive.”

“You must not get much sleep. Not with kids who wake up at…what, eight?”

“Or earlier.” She rolled her eyes for emphasis.

“Where’s Jake and Mia’s father?”

He’d spoken conversationally but this was information he and almost everyone in town had been dying to get out of her since she’d moved here. They didn’t like how closed off she was; they weren’t used to it. But she hadn’t revealed any details about her ex so far, and she wasn’t starting now. If she didn’t give Pineview’s good citizens a loose thread to tug on, they couldn’t unravel the whole ball. “He’s no longer part of our lives.” And that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject. She didn’t add that, but her tone implied it.

“I see.” If he was offended by her clipped response, he didn’t show it. His fingers brushed hers as he took the screw and her stomach did an inconvenient little somersault. “So once they go to bed, you design purses?”

He smelled like soap. She wondered if he’d come home and showered. Probably. Anybody would want to wash after seeing what he’d seen. She knew because she’d watched two men gunned down four years ago. In some ways, it seemed as if eons had passed since that night. She’d come so far since then, had changed so much. In other ways, it felt like only yesterday, as if the horrifying sights and sounds of those murders were forever etched onto her brain and would stay there, as vivid and constant as the moment it happened.

Myles had stopped to look at her; she hadn’t answered. “I do some designing, yes. I also handle orders, do the accounting, check out my competition or look at the photographs for my new catalog.” Or, occasionally, Claire talked her into taking the night off and watching a movie. “I’ve got more than enough to stay busy.”

“Your job is unusual for someone living in the wilds of Montana.” He put the screw she’d picked up in his back pocket and she had to fight to keep her gaze from lowering to his ass. “How’d you get into designing?”

Although they’d never discussed this—they typically exchanged nothing beyond a few pleasantries—she was fairly sure he’d heard the story through the grapevine. That much of her past she’d already divulged. But if he wanted to make small talk while she waited for an opening to bring up the murder, she had no objections. He didn’t seem to think there was anything strange about what had happened to the fridge, thank God. “I entered a contest sponsored by Coach purses and Vogue magazine while I was living on the East Coast and—” she shrugged “—my design won.”

The interest in his green, brown-flecked eyes felt as good as a long massage. Maybe it was the two glasses of wine she’d drunk to get up the nerve to go next door, but a warm tingle swept through her whenever he looked up or smiled. She missed having a man in her life. She hadn’t realized how much.

“Were you surprised?” he asked.

“Shocked.” Even that was an understatement. Other than the births of her children, winning that contest was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

“To what do you attribute your success?”

To an intense fascination with fashion and design. To watching every show there was on the topic. To reading all the beauty magazines. To trial and error. She was self-educated, but careful not to miss the tiniest detail. She had too many handicaps to overcome, she couldn’t afford to be halfhearted or sloppy. But exposing the desperation that had fueled her dream seemed too personal. “Luck,” she said to make it simple.

“That contest must’ve opened the right doors.”

“It did. Coach asked me for other samples of my work, so I quickly came up with a few.”

“They liked those, too?”

“Even more than the one that was selected as the winner.”

“You must have natural talent.”

With the kids asleep, the clock ticking rhythmically above the sink and the wine circulating in her blood, it was easy to let down her guard enough to enjoy his company. “That’s what my boss at Coach said when he offered me a job. Before I went out on my own.”

“Had you been to fashion school?”

She laughed out loud. There’d been no time or money for that. “No.”

“Where did you go to college?”

Her levity vanished. Inevitably one question led to another. And so much of her past was too painful to talk about, or would be too dangerous to reveal. That isolated her from others, kept her from being able to connect…?. “I didn’t.”

Once again, he paused. “You didn’t have the opportunity?”

“No.” She jerked her head toward the fridge. “That looks pretty complicated. Have you ever fixed one before?”

Taking the hint, he continued working. “Actually, I have.”

“Did they teach you that at the police academy?” She grinned to make up for her coolness. Prickly wasn’t her true nature. It was a learned response, the only way she could create the space and privacy necessary to function somewhat normally.

He changed the head on his electric screwdriver. “Not quite. My father was an attorney, but he was raised by the most frugal individual on earth. Fortunately, he didn’t turn out to be quite as tightfisted as his old man, but he refused to hire anyone to fix what we could learn to fix for him. He believed boys should grow up to be self-reliant. And there were four of us, so he had a lot of ready labor.” He raised his voice to compensate for the hum of the screwdriver. “He’d find broken garbage disposals, toasters, fans—you name it—at the dump and haul them home just to make us fix them.”

“What’d you do with those things after you got them working? Four boys could potentially fix quite a few toasters.”

“We’d sell some.”

She could picture him in a household of rough-and-tumble brothers. With his charm and energy, she guessed he’d be right in the thick of trouble. “And the others?”

“We’d give them to the poor. Until I got into college, anyway. Then I was ‘the poor,’” he said with a chuckle. “I survived and paid my tuition by fixing various appliances. And cars. When I turned sixteen, my dad had a tow truck deliver an old clunker for me to rebuild. That was my birthday present.” He gave her the crooked smile that had half the women in Pineview swooning over him. “Now I love to tinker.”

Trying not to be taken in by that smile, Vivian leaned against the edge of the table. “Is that what you do in your garage late at night?”

She’d often seen the light seeping out from under his garage door. When she stepped onto the screened-in porch in the middle of a dark and silent night, she sometimes heard the whine of his power tools—even though quite a bit of space separated her home from his. Enough for two old sheds and a large garden, and that was just on her side. On his property, an expansive deck and party-type barbecue area took up most of the back and side yards. She’d never known him to use it, though—and she would’ve noticed since there was no fence. She was pretty sure he’d built it as a gift to his wife. She’d heard from Claire and the other women who liked to discuss the handsome sheriff that he’d finished it shortly before Amber Rose passed away, and then couldn’t bear to see it once she was gone.

“I’m restoring an old Ducati,” he explained.

“A Ducati’s a…car?” When he glanced at her, she couldn’t help wondering whether he liked her new haircut. He hadn’t mentioned it, despite the fact that it was now as short as his.

“Motorcycle.”

Briefly it occurred to her that Jake might have seen it. Was this one of the marvels that drew him next door?

She didn’t ask, didn’t want to acknowledge her neighbor’s massive appeal to her nine-year-old, or all the manly activities and shared interests Myles could offer Jake that she could not. “How long does a project like that take?”

“Depends. I’ve been at it for six months, but it should’ve been done already.” A dimple appeared in his cheek. “I haven’t made a concerted effort.”

Maybe there was a reason for that. Maybe he was afraid to finish for fear there’d be nothing left to distract him during those lonely hours. Sometimes she’d slip out, hoping to hear him working so she’d know she wasn’t the only one walking the floor while the rest of the world slept. If he wasn’t in the garage, she’d occasionally spot him sitting on his porch, drinking a cup of coffee or tea. He’d stay there for some time, even in the dead of winter, staring into the inky blackness. She’d stay, too, until he went inside. She could feel the hole his wife’s death had left in his life, knew he missed Amber Rose. But Vivian was too attracted to him, and too afraid of where it might lead, to lend him more support than these secret vigils.

“Are you almost done with it?” she asked.

“Getting close.”

“Will you keep it or sell it?”

“Don’t know yet.”

Vivian was about to bring up the murder, but he spoke before she could. “Are you glad you branched out on your own?”

Cursing herself for not jumping in sooner, she forced a smile. “Definitely.”

“Why’d you leave Coach?” He was on his hands and knees so he could reach whatever he needed in the motor.

“I wanted more artistic freedom and control, and that meant establishing a separate brand.” She’d also had to quit, but she couldn’t tell him that. There was no way to keep her job and assume a new identity. “It’s a little lonely being such a small enterprise. I have only three employees who run my showroom in New York. But we’re starting to grow.”

“Did you ever consider using your name, like so many other designers?”

Which name? Certainly not her real one. She had to stay behind the scenes or run the risk of putting her life, not to mention her kids’ lives, in jeopardy. She had Colleen Turnbull, her most experienced employee, handle all media appearances. “No, to me Big Sky Bags lent itself to a certain look and a certain feel, which was more in keeping with the type of brand I was hoping to create.”

He held up one part of whatever made her fridge work. It wasn’t the part she’d damaged, fortunately. “This fridge isn’t that old. I’m surprised it’s giving you trouble already.”

Planning to place the blame on rats or precocious children once he diagnosed the problem, she mumbled something about having bought a lemon and got him a paper towel so could set the part on the floor.

“How long have you been out on your own?” he asked.

“Since forever.”

When he twisted around to look at her, she wondered why she’d said that. He’d asked in regard to her business. But she was just so tired of having the same superficial conversations with everyone. She wanted to go deeper, to really talk to another human being—to talk to him—but she couldn’t. She had to watch herself even with Claire. She couldn’t trust anyone.

“Care to elaborate on that?” His voice suggested he understood her desire to open up and welcomed the honesty, but she already knew she could say no more.

“No. Sorry. It’s the wine.” She waved an apologetic hand. “I started Big Sky Bags the minute I moved here.”

She could sense his reluctance to let the more personal comment go, but to his credit he didn’t pry. And for that, she was grateful. Her brother constantly warned her, in almost every one of his weekly emails, that she couldn’t trust anyone. Especially a cop, who had access to far more information than the average Joe.

“Isn’t it tough to succeed as a designer when you’re so far from New York City and all your competitors?”

It was hard. For months she’d been afraid that she’d taken too much of a gamble when she launched Big Sky Bags. But a lot of designers lived west of the Rockies. Like her, they had their showrooms, their PR companies and their ad agencies in New York and their warehouses in New Jersey, but so many things could be done over the internet these days that it worked. Although she’d initially planned on running her business exclusively on the internet, and had been managing in just that way for two years, her designs were gaining popularity among a few influential fashionistas in Los Angeles. In the past three months, several high-end boutiques had begun to stock her purses. She felt encouraged, as if she was entering a whole new phase of her career. It was one of the reasons she’d been so happy recently.

But now, after Pat’s murder, she had no idea whether or not she might have to move again, just like before. And she simply couldn’t face the thought of it, couldn’t deal with the loss.

“It’s not as important to be in New York as it once was,” she told him. “The internet makes it possible for me to work from almost anywhere. The factories are in Hong Kong, anyway. Once the sample purses arrive, I hire a freelancer to take photographs and load them on my website. Then they go to my showroom, where they’re seen by department-store buyers and the wholesale places that focus on more niche markets. I don’t have to be in New York to do that.”

“It’s a long flight if you have to go back there.”

She’d already had to go twice this year, once when she’d decided to change her ad agency and once to meet with her PR firm. She didn’t mind because it gave her a chance to see Virgil and Peyton, his wife, who were now going by the names Daniel and Mariah Greene. They lived seven hours from the city. But it wasn’t easy for Vivian to leave the kids at home. Fortunately, Vera Soblasky, who lived behind the church in town, had been willing to take them in the past. An unmarried retired schoolteacher, Vera worked as a librarian three days a week, but since she had no children or grandchildren, she preferred to spend her free time with Jake and Mia, who didn’t have a grandmother of their own. Not one they had contact with, at any rate.

Vera was another reason Vivian couldn’t move. She couldn’t tear her children away from their “Nana.” They’d never forgive her. Then there was Claire, who’d become such a big part of her own life. Claire was always willing to help out with the kids but usually had to work.

“I try to avoid the trip, if possible,” she said.

“Here’s your problem.” He held up the metal piece from which she’d removed the wires. “These are supposed to be attached.”

She frowned as if this was surprising to her. “I wonder what could’ve happened to them. Could a rat have done that?” She felt like a rat just saying this.

“It’s possible.”

“So…can you fix it?”

He turned the part over. “It’d be easy if this wire wasn’t so damaged. It isn’t safe with so much of the protective coating gone. But I might have some wire in the garage that’ll work.”

Rubbing damp palms on her shorts, she blew out a sigh. “That’s really nice of you. I appreciate it.”

He went home and returned a few minutes later with a piece of wire, and put the motor back together—which left Vivian scrambling for a way to keep him longer. She hadn’t broached the subject of the murder; she was afraid to blurt out her questions for fear she’d give away her true intention in having him over.

“I think we’re set,” he said when he plugged the refrigerator back into the wall and it began to hum.

“Wow. That’s amazing. Thank you so much.” The guilt she felt about lying made it difficult to meet his eyes.

“No problem.”

“Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked as he packed up his tools.

She’d surprised him. That was obvious from the way he straightened. “Okay.”

It’d been so long since Vivian had had company, she felt awkward, out of practice. Her life wasn’t conducive to socializing. Even after coming to Pineview, she hadn’t entertained. Not a man, anyway. Claire and Vera dropped by every now and then. But she tried not to get too attached. What if she had to pull up stakes and leave?

That question hung over her. Always.

At least she was the only one who had to endure the weight of it. Her children didn’t understand why she was so guarded. And she didn’t want them to know, didn’t want them to become as paranoid as she was. But that left them unprotected from possible disappointment.

“Did you grow up wanting to become a cop?” she asked as she poured chardonnay from a new bottle.

He put his toolbox by the kitchen door, which led to a mudroom on the side of the house facing his property, and took a seat at the table. “Pretty much. My uncle was in law enforcement. He used to come over on the weekends, help me work on whatever project I had going. And while we worked he’d talk about his job. His stories not only fascinated me, they made me passionate about seeing justice done. I wanted to get involved in that fight.”

She set his wine in front of him. “You didn’t want to be a lawyer, like your father?”

“No. Definitely not enough action in that.”

“What about an electrician?”

“I figured that could be a fallback. But I was more interested in police work.”

She’d already drank enough wine for one evening. It didn’t take much to make her tipsy. But she was so self-conscious. And the alcohol was doing a great job of relaxing her.

One more glass… “If you want action, what are you doing in a sleepy little town like this?”

He studied his wine, swirled it around. “My wife visited here once, with her parents, when she was a child. They spent the whole summer. She’d always dreamed of coming back to live. So once she got sick and the doctors said there was nothing more they could do, I thought it might be the best place for her.”

He’d done everything he could, even built her that expensive deck. Claire had told Vivian how, in her last days, he’d carry Amber Rose outside and hold her on his lap so she could feel the sun…?.

Did it hurt him to talk about his late wife? Vivian wanted to ask, but such personal questions fell into what she’d designated a restricted area. She had to respect other people’s boundaries if she wanted them to respect hers.

“Where did you live before?” she asked.

“Phoenix.”

She cradled her glass. “That’s a big change.”

“And yet I love both places,” he said with a shrug.

“Will you ever go back?”

His nicked and scarred hands served as a testament to all he did with them. And they were so large they made his glass appear small by comparison. “No. Marley’s settled here. She’s happy. After she lost her mother, I’d never take her away from her friends. I think stability’s important, don’t you?”

Very. That was the problem. Thanks to The Crew, stability wasn’t an easy thing for her to provide. “But do you think it’s as safe here as we once believed?”

Weaving his fingers together, he clasped them behind his head. “You’ve heard about the murder.”

She’d found the lead-in she’d been searching for. But she was afraid she’d given herself away. He could read people so well. She’d seen him do it many times—watched him step in to defuse a disagreement at the Fireworks by the Lake show last July fourth before it could erupt into a fight, watched him steer various inebriated people away from the bar so he could drive them home before they tried to get behind the wheel, watched how gently he deflected unwanted female attention. He kept his finger on the pulse of everything that went on around him, noticed changes and figured out the reasons for them. And inviting him over had definitely been a change. So he had to be wondering. And watching for clues.

“I think most people have heard about the murder,” she said. “You know what gossip is like in this town.”

“I do, which is why I’m curious…”

When his eyes latched onto hers, she knew he wasn’t going to limit his comments to the superficial and polite. And that made her uncomfortable enough to drain her glass. “What?”

“Why no one ever has any dirt on you.”

Her stomach muscles tensed, but she smiled. “You’re changing the subject.”

“Maybe I am. But I can tell my statement doesn’t surprise you. And that makes me even more curious.”

“I haven’t given anyone a reason to talk,” she countered.

“Exactly. You don’t flirt. You don’t date. You don’t sleep around. You don’t get involved in church or the school board or the politics of this town.”

“I take the kids to church on Sundays.”

“That’s it, though. You rarely even go out for a drink. As far as I can tell, your social life consists of having Claire over to watch an occasional movie and book group on Thursday nights. You live in the background of a place that’s already in the background. Why?”

Oh, God. She shouldn’t have had him come here, let alone served him a drink. “I’m too busy with my business and raising my children.”

“You don’t feel the need for intimacy?”

He wasn’t talking about sex but, thanks to the wine, that was precisely where her mind went. By the time her marriage ended, she’d cringed whenever Tom touched her. But her opinion of making love had improved once she met Rex McCready. Giving pleasure was one thing Rex could do right. “How do you know I’m not in a relationship?”

“I’d notice if a man came to the house.”

Was he as preoccupied with her as she was with him? She hoped not. For the past several months she’d been absolutely infatuated. He and he alone occupied her thoughts during the long nights when she was too tired to work but couldn’t sleep. Claire was starting to pick up on her interest and badger her about why she kept turning him down.

More wine. Right away. Getting up, she retrieved the bottle and poured herself another glass. She offered him a refill, too, but he shook his head. “Maybe I had a bad experience, so I’m hesitant to take the risk,” she murmured.

He ran a finger over his lip in a thoughtful gesture. “Bad in what way?”

The anxiety that’d been gnawing at her seemed to have lost its teeth, but she held fast to the rules she’d established for herself when she moved here. She was already too close to Claire; she didn’t need to wag her tongue to the sheriff. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

That should’ve been direct enough to head him off. He couldn’t possibly have missed her “you’re treading too close” signal. But the sheriff wouldn’t let it go. Not tonight. “What’d he do to you?”

She downed more wine as she searched for a casual response. But even the alcohol couldn’t stifle the painful memories. Tom forcing her to have sex with him several times a night whether she was interested or not. Tom heaping on the guilt simply because she craved other people and relationships in her life, especially girlfriends. Tom undermining her attempts to get a job so she’d be completely dependent on him. And then there was the physical abuse, the worst of which she’d blocked out…?.

When she finished what was in her glass, the sheriff was still waiting, and watching her closely. “He was abusive, okay? I’m sure you’ve guessed that already. But if you want to hear me say it, I just did.”

“Physically?”

She winced as she remembered some of the humiliating things Tom had made her do, how easily he’d been able to manipulate her because of their children. “Yes.”

He leaned over and touched the scar where Tom had cut his initials into her arm. “Did he do this to you?”

That had been minor, compared to some of the other stuff. She pulled away. “That and more.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. I just hope he never finds me.” There were others she feared far more, but she couldn’t tell him that. This would appease the sheriff’s curiosity; make him believe he understood why she was so withdrawn and secretive. Make him stop questioning her about the past.

“You think he’s looking?”

“He could be.” She’d had a lot to drink tonight, too much, and wanted even more—anything to further numb the sharp edge of fear—so she refilled her glass.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wouldn’t have pushed. Except…I’ve tried asking you out so many times.”

She didn’t want to talk about them. “Sheriff, please.”

“Sheriff?”

“Myles, then.” It wasn’t easy to say his name; it felt too familiar. “In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not interested in a relationship.”

Instead of getting offended, he leaned forward again and caught her chin so she had to meet his eyes. “Is that right?”

She got the impression he wanted to touch her. Desperate for even this small amount of contact—it’d been so long since she’d been with a man—she drew a shallow breath. “You don’t believe it?”

“Sometimes the way you look at me is…a bit contradictory.”

Gazing at him from beneath her lashes, she attempted to deny it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Take now, for instance.”

The wine was going to her head. But she welcomed it. She’d had to battle for her life and the lives of her children for so many years that she felt too weary to continue. “Now?” she repeated.

“Yeah, now. This very second. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re definitely…interested.”

He could’ve said aroused, because she was. The warmth of his body appealed to her, the hard muscle, the completion he could offer, but… “Not in a relationship,” she said.

“Then what?” The softness of his voice begged her to level with him, but she couldn’t. The fantasies she’d indulged in over the past twelve months stood between them. So did his job.

“N-nothing.”

“You know I’d never hurt you the way your ex did, right?” He ran his fingers down her arm, light as a faint breeze.

“Look, you—you don’t want to get involved with me,” she said, but turned her hand over to reveal the more sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist.

“You’re sending me mixed messages again,” he pointed out.

She couldn’t seem to help herself. Although she was starved for the physical stimulation she’d grown accustomed to during the year she’d spent with her brother’s best friend and former cell mate, she couldn’t let this go any further. Myles had a daughter. And he’d suffered enough with the loss of his wife. She needed to take that into consideration. She’d hate herself if she brought any more pain and unhappiness into their lives.

“You’ll have to trust what I say.”

His fingers continued to glide back and forth, creating goose bumps. “What if I prefer what you’re not saying?”

He didn’t realize what he was doing, stirring up such longing. She was so tired and scared she couldn’t seem to marshal her self-control. “What do you want from me?” she whispered.

His hand stilled. “I’m thinking yes to dinner would be nice. Any chance we could start there?”

Dinner? That wasn’t enough. Not now. Everything she’d been missing, craving, imagining in the dark hours of night was bearing down on her all at once—distilling into a reckless abandon unlike anything she’d experienced before. Nothing seemed to matter except obliterating that aching need. “I have a better idea.”

He cocked his head, and she swallowed hard before continuing. “What if we made an…arrangement?”

“What kind of arrangement?”

Her heart felt like a fish flopping around on the sand. “An arrangement that would…last for one night.”

When his eyes narrowed, she knew she’d piqued his interest. “The only arrangement I know that lasts for one night is called a one-night stand.”

When she didn’t tell him he’d gotten the wrong idea, as he so obviously expected, he sat up and blinked. “When a woman turns a man down for dinner as many times as you’ve turned me down, he pretty much figures sex is out of the question.”

That didn’t mean it had to be. They couldn’t have a relationship. But one night wasn’t a relationship. It was an escape.

She wet her lips. “Is that a no?”

He took an even closer look at her. “You’re serious.”

“It’s a simple question.” She’d knocked him off balance but she’d been off balance from the beginning. “Do you want to make love to me or not?” Don’t say no. I can’t keep waging this battle alone. Just one night with company in my solitary world. That’s all I ask…?.

He shoved back in his chair, the small movement a sudden explosion of energy. “Is that a trick question? Because if this is…some sort of test…I mean, if you think that’s all I’m after—”

He was searching for pitfalls when there were none. “You don’t understand. That’s all I’m after. One night. Just promise me two things.”

Several creases appeared in his forehead. “What?”

Vivian curled her fingernails into her palms. “You have to keep it to yourself—”

“What kind of person do you think I am?” he retorted.

She didn’t bother answering, because this next part was the clincher. “And you can’t ask me out again. Ever. You can’t come over here hoping for a repeat, either. We agree to forget about tonight, act as if it never happened, and we go back to being polite neighbors. That’s all. It’s a…a time-out for both of us.”

Jumping to his feet, he paced to the counter. “Listen, I’m sure it’s probably been as long for you as it has for me. I understand how—” he seemed to be choosing his words carefully “—lonely you must be…living the kind of life you’ve been living, taking care of your kids, working so much and devoting any free hours to your garden. But…there’s a lot we don’t know about each other. And we’re not the most transparent people in the world.”

He was trying to be kind, using we.

“I’m not sure having sex is the best way to start a friendship,” he finished.

“It’s not a friendship,” she corrected. “It’s a one-night stand, like you said.”

“But we’re neighbors. We live in the same small community.”

She knew it would be awkward afterward, but they could deal with it, put the barriers back up. And if they couldn’t, she didn’t care. She refused to be logical, to acknowledge the risks. Fortunately, the wine made that easy. Couldn’t she just act for once, before her self-control regained the upper hand and denied her yet again? How much more sacrifice could life demand? She was thirty years old and she’d had one fulfilling sexual relationship, which had lasted less than a year. “You don’t have to explain or justify your decision. You merely have to make up your mind. Do you want me or not?”

When he cleared his throat and adjusted himself, she could tell he wasn’t unaffected by the tension crackling between them. “This isn’t about want, for Christ’s sake. If that was the only thing I had to consider, I wouldn’t think twice.”

“Then stop thinking.”

“I can’t. Taking off our clothes isn’t the right place to begin a relationship.”

Why was he saying that again? She’d already told him she didn’t want a relationship. There was no beginning. Only an end. And she’d let him choose what that end would be.

She gave him a rather tight smile. “I understand. Thanks for fixing my refrigerator.”

He went stone-still despite all the energy that seemed to be coiled up inside him. “Thanks? That’s it? What about a movie? Bowling? A hike? Boating on the lake? We could drive into Libby if you’re afraid someone here might see us and make an issue of it.”

Her head suddenly felt as if it weighed a ton; just holding it up became a struggle. She was too weary to continue carrying her usual load, which had been made all the heavier by Pat’s murder. And now she knew there’d be no relief, not even for a few hours. “No, but thank you.”

“This is crazy,” he said. “You want to sleep with me, but you won’t go out with me? Why?”

“I can’t.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

She pressed her palms to her eyes. “Please…go. I—I should never have asked. I wouldn’t have, except…” Except she had no other alternative. She felt she had to grab hold of someone before she lost all ability to cope. “Never mind. It’s no excuse for my behavior, but…I’m tired.”

“Listen.” The tension threatened to escape his control, but he managed to bridle it. “You’ve had too much to drink. That ties my hands right there. But…you never know where dinner might go.”

“I understand,” she said again. “But no, thank you. I had no business asking. I can’t even imagine how it must’ve sounded.”

“I want to get to know you better first, use a little caution. We’re not eighteen.”

“Right. It was my mistake. I’m sorry.”

That she agreed with him only seemed to bother him more. “But it’s still a no.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Fine. Forget it.” With a frustrated scowl, he strode to the door, where he turned back and studied her as if he couldn’t believe they’d reached this impasse.

She forced herself to look away. “Your daughter’s probably wondering where you are.”

Cursing, he grabbed his toolbox and left.

The click of the door echoed in Vivian’s mind as she sat alone, staring at the wine bottle that had come between her and some restraint.

“Great. I just propositioned my neighbor,” she muttered. “And it was the county sheriff.” What’d gotten into her? Could she really be desperate enough to make such a fool of herself?

Apparently so. Embarrassment would consume her in the morning. She could already feel a hint of what she had coming, dancing just beyond the fuzziness caused by the alcohol.

Pouring herself the last of the wine, she decided she could deal with that later. First, she had to contend with the cold emptiness that’d settled into the pit of her stomach.

Laying her head on her arms, she looked at the clock on the wall, watching the second hand move slowly from dot to dot. One minute… Two…

She hadn’t even gotten any information out of him about the murder. Shit… Shit, shit, shit…

Then she remembered the shock on his face when she propositioned him and started to laugh. If she didn’t laugh, she’d cry. And what good was crying? There was no one to hear her, no one to help…?.

As usual.




3


I have a better idea… What if we made an arrangement?… What kind of arrangement?… An arrangement that would last for one night…?.

Holy hell. Myles had so many hormones coursing through him he couldn’t even bring himself to sit down. Leaving the lights off—the darkness gave him a sense of privacy he desperately needed right now—he prowled around his living room, fighting the urge to return to Vivian’s. If he couldn’t convince her to go out with him, why not take what he could get? Tonight might be his only chance.

But that was a pretty creepy way to look at it. He really didn’t want to be that big an asshole. For one thing, she’d had too much to drink. That meant he couldn’t.

There were other issues, too. He still felt some loyalty to Amber Rose, hadn’t been with anyone since. Then there was Marley and how irresponsible it would be for him, as a father and a police officer, to be intimate with someone he wasn’t even dating. And what about Pat? The murder of a Pineview citizen should’ve been enough to keep him occupied and well beyond temptation. He’d assigned his two best investigators to the case, but he’d have his work cut out for him in the morning, when the press began to call and everyone started demanding answers. He should be getting some sleep. The whole community was depending on him…?.

But he wanted her. There was no question about that. As guilty and disloyal as it made him feel, he’d wanted her almost from the first day he saw her, watering her lawn wearing that pretty summer dress and no shoes. Would one night of hot, sweaty sex be that reprehensible?

If he indulged himself, maybe he’d be able to start living again. He felt as if his life had been on pause since Amber Rose died. He’d convinced himself to go out on a couple of blind dates set up by well-meaning friends, and he’d joined a softball team in an attempt to socialize, but he was merely going through the motions, pretending to be whole when he wasn’t. Except for the love he had for his daughter and the interest Vivian sparked whenever he saw her, he felt very little passion for anyone or anything—even, to a point, his work.

This might be the answer, might bring him back to the man he used to be.

He imagined taking Vivian to the lake, pictured himself peeling off her swimsuit and bringing his mouth to her breast, and nearly groaned. Allowing himself to dangle at the far edge of restraint was driving him mad—

“Daddy?”

His daughter’s voice acted like a splash of cold water in the face. Whipping around, he saw her charging down the steps, heading toward the kitchen. He’d left the light on in there. Her best friend, Elizabeth, trailed after her. Their movie must’ve ended.

“Yes?”

His answer, coming from the direction it did, startled her. She hadn’t expected to find him brooding in the dark.

After hesitating for a moment, she came forward. “Is something wrong?”

A lot was wrong. But he felt as though fifteen minutes with Vivian could fix at least some of it. “No, why?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Just thinking.”

When she leaned closer, he could tell she was trying to see him more clearly in the light spilling from the hallway. “Why is your hair messed up?”

Better his hair than his clothes, he thought, and jammed his hands in his pockets. “I must’ve shoved my fingers through it.”

“It looks funny.” She nudged Elizabeth and they both giggled. But then she sobered and the worry was back. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

That was a question he hoped he’d be more capable of answering in the affirmative tomorrow. “Of course. What’s up?”

“Elizabeth and I were wondering if I could stay over at her house tonight.”

“No!” The quickness of his reply revealed that he hadn’t even considered it. She wouldn’t like that, of course, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t let her stay elsewhere. Not until they found Pat’s killer. Besides, her absence would leave him with an empty house, making it that much more difficult not to slip over to Vivian’s.

When she summoned the pout he usually couldn’t resist, he knew she wasn’t going to accept his answer without an argument. “Why not? It’s summer. It’s not like I have school tomorrow.”

He hated to tell her about Pat, but she obviously hadn’t heard. “Pat Stueben was murdered today, Marley. I don’t want you going anywhere.”

The “please, please, please” part had been coming next. He could tell. But this brought her up short. “What do you mean…murdered?”

He put some effort into gentling his voice. “Someone killed him.”

She gaped at Elizabeth, whose horrified expression matched her own. “The real-estate agent?” she breathed when her attention shifted back to him. “The guy who sold us this house?”

“That’s him.”

“Oh, no!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Now I feel awful for making fun of that plaid jacket he always wears…wore.”

Her comment might’ve been comical under different circumstances. Under these circumstances, Myles wasn’t even tempted to laugh. “It’s very sad, especially for his wife.”

“Are you sure someone did it? It wasn’t an—an accident?”

“I’m sure. A person doesn’t get beaten to death by accident.”

“So that’s why you’re pacing around in here.”

The murder was part of it; his angst over Vivian was the rest. That lust could take center stage on a night like this made him question his own character.

Marley turned on a lamp. “But…how could someone do such a thing?”

The sexual tension that had held him in its grip was beginning to dissipate. His daughter grounded him, helped him remember what was important. He’d made the right decision coming home. How could he expect Marley to approach sexual relationships with respect and caution if he didn’t set the proper example? “I don’t know, but we’re going to do everything we can to find the culprit.”

“Are you investigating it? I thought you had people who did that for you.”

“I do, but I’m in charge, so I’m responsible for how it’s handled.”

Troubled eyes regarded him as she pondered the news. But with typical teenage narcissism, she reverted to what she wanted almost immediately. “So why does that mean I can’t go to Elizabeth’s? You don’t think it’s safe?”

That wasn’t what he’d meant to convey. He didn’t want to cause mass panic in Pineview. He simply preferred to have his daughter at home tonight, where he could watch over her. And he wanted to remove the temptation to unleash the anger, disappointment, sexual frustration and myriad other emotions of the past three years on his neighbor. Taking Vivian up on her offer wouldn’t have made dealing with their lives afterward any easier. “That’s not what I’m saying. I just want to be cautious while my investigators figure out how and why it happened and make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

“You think someone else could be killed?”

Unless the perpetrator had already moved on. For the sake of everyone who lived in this small town by the lake, Myles hoped the danger had passed. But he also craved justice for Pat and understood how much harder it would be to obtain if his killer had left the area. “I can’t even guess. Like I said, we need to be cautious until we know more.”

“Oh, my gosh!” She grabbed her friend’s hand. “Then can Elizabeth stay here instead?”

So much for being afraid he’d spook her. With a sigh, Myles stretched the taut muscles in his neck. “Sure. As long as it’s okay with her parents.”

“We’ll call,” she said, and they hurried into the kitchen.

Despite the opening and closing of various cupboards—Marley digging out a snack—Myles heard Elizabeth on the phone.

“You know that real-estate guy? The one with the fake hair and that old-fashioned jacket? He’s dead,” she told her parents. “Someone killed him.”

The horror in those words doused the last of the arousal burning inside Myles. He had no business obsessing about a woman who wouldn’t even go out with him, not when he had a murder to solve.

And yet he was still up, rambling around the house, long after the girls fell asleep. Never had he missed Amber Rose more. It’s not fair. She should still be here with us.

But life wasn’t fair. No doubt Pat Stueben would tell him that.

If he could…



Vivian woke angry at Myles. It was the only way to avoid the embarrassment that would set in otherwise. After he’d shown a great deal of interest in her over the past year, she’d been nice enough to offer him the physical intimacy he had to be missing—and it wasn’t going to cost him so much as a meal. But he’d refused her. She had no patience with a guy like that. What was he, some kind of saint?

“Of course he is,” she grumbled. She’d heard what everyone had to say about him—how hard he tried to be a good father, how tender he’d been with his wife. This town considered him their guardian angel, the answer to every problem. He was even more popular than the mayor. But she didn’t have the luxury of living in a world where she could welcome the possibility of love. Not without putting the person she loved in danger. Or taking the risk of being wrenched away from him. That was why, in some ways, Rex had been perfect for her. Falling for him hadn’t drawn him into her problems. As Virgil’s former cellie and an ex–Crew member himself, he’d been involved before they ever met.

Tightening her robe, she tossed both wine bottles in the recycle bin. Pat’s murder had sent her reeling, made her reach for an antidote to her pain and fear. But the fact that someone had been killed was all the more reason to keep her wits about her. Especially since Claire would be over soon, wanting to know if Vivian had heard any more about the murder, if the sheriff happened to mention it to her, if she could ask him whether it might have a connection, however remote, to her missing mother. When Myles first came to town, he’d reopened the case as a favor to Claire, but her sister, Leanne, didn’t want to be reminded of the past. She’d reacted so badly to the investigation that Claire had asked him to stop.

Movement next door drew Vivian’s attention to the kitchen window. Myles had emerged from his house.

Don’t look at him!

She didn’t want to, but couldn’t resist. Tall and commanding in his uniform, he was as gorgeous as ever. She knew Virgil and Rex wouldn’t approve of her fascination with a cop. After having spent so much time in prison, they didn’t care for the type of personality generally attracted to law enforcement. But, as Claire so often pointed out to her, Myles was different. He was real, warm, unaffected by the power his office gave him. That was because he had a natural sense of authority, and even if he wasn’t the sheriff, she felt pretty certain that people would expect him to take charge—

Wait! Was he looking back at her? Yes! Startled by the realization, she ducked out of sight and, a few seconds later, heard his car start.

“Thank God,” she whispered as he drove away.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Jake had come stumbling into the kitchen. Although he was dressed—in swim trunks, a T-shirt and flip-flops—his thick blond hair stood up on one side and his eyelids drooped with sleep.

A bit self-conscious about being discovered hiding behind the curtains, Vivian pasted a smile on her face. “Nothing, honey. What are you doing up so early?” She glanced at the clock. “It’s barely six.”

“Nana Vera is taking me fishing. She’ll be here any minute.”

A trickle of unease slid down Vivian’s spine. Last week, when she’d agreed to let Vera take Jake for the day, she’d had no idea they’d planned an activity so out of the ordinary. “What do you mean, you’re going fishing?”

“Nana Vera said I could do anything I want. Today is my half birthday.” He grinned at the idea of having a second birthday in one year. “So I picked fishing. I’ve never been fishing before.”

A twinge of guilt added yet another element to the chaos of Vivian’s emotions. Myles had invited her and the kids to go out on the lake a few weeks ago, had specifically mentioned how much her son would enjoy it, and she’d refused.

She didn’t feel comfortable with Jake being near the water today, either. She wasn’t as afraid of letting him grow attached to Vera as she was Myles. Vera seemed far safer in that regard. She needed Vera’s help too badly to avoid letting her have contact with the children, anyway. But she wasn’t sure their “nana” was completely reliable when it came to keeping Jake safe so close to the lake. Would she have the physical strength and agility to save him if he fell in?

Or was she being overprotective? He’d be wearing a life jacket, he knew how to swim and no doubt he’d be fishing from the wharf, where so many young men liked to go.

Because of everything that had happened—the release of her brother from prison, his and Rex’s attempt to leave The Crew and The Crew’s determination to stop them or make them pay—Vivian had a tendency to shield her children too much. That only made her son more determined to escape the strictures of her concern. She could sense him pulling away from her as he grew older, preferring to spend time with Myles and other men, to embrace life without fear or reservation.

But there was so much Jake didn’t know, so much she wouldn’t tell him for fear he’d have to carry the same burden she did…?.

“What about your sister?” she asked, stalling while she decided whether or not she’d go along with this.

He selected a box of cereal from the pantry. “It’s not her half birthday, so she doesn’t get to go.”

“Why not?” This came from Mia, who’d entered the kitchen behind him. Still in her nightgown, she looked as tired as Jake. But, in true Mia fashion, she wasn’t about to miss out on anything. She seemed to feel as if she should be able to trail after her brother 24/7.

“Because it’s not your half birthday,” he said with sufficient exasperation to tell them both that he was tired of repeating it. “You’ll get your turn. I was born first, so I get to go first. You heard Nana.”

Her bottom lip jutted out. “I want to catch a fish.”

Vivian handed Jake a bowl and a spoon, which he carried, together with his cereal, to the table. “Then ask Nana to take you fishing when it’s your turn,” he said.

“I’m calling her!” Mia started for the phone on the wall, but Vivian intercepted her by sweeping her into both arms for a hug. She was getting too big to carry, but Vivian couldn’t resist. Besides, this day meant a lot to Jake. Vivian felt she had to agree to it or risk driving an even bigger wedge between them.

“We’ll let Jake have his half birthday and plan yours, okay?” she said.

Mia opened her mouth to complain, but Vivian spoke before she could. “What are you going to do for yours?”

The furrows on her forehead disappeared. “Make a cake,” she announced. “And have a party!”

“That sounds like fun,” Vivian said. “Will I be invited?”

Her daughter gave her an impish grin. “Will you bring a present?”

Vivian laughed. “Of course.”

“What kind of present?”

“Aren’t presents supposed to be a surprise?”

As Mia tried to weasel an answer out of her, Jake wolfed down his cereal, set his bowl in the sink and went up to brush his hair and teeth.

Just as Vivian heard the faucet go off, a car horn sounded outside.

“Nana’s here!” she called up to him.

Rapid footsteps pounded the old wooden floor in the hallway above as he dashed for the stairs and jumped down them two at a time.

“Have fun!” Vivian said, but she almost couldn’t leave it at that. Wanting to warn Vera about all the dangers of the lake—and to make sure she’d heard about Pat Stueben’s murder so that she’d be extra cautious—she nearly followed him out of the house. But that was precisely the sort of thing that upset Jake.

Vera was careful with the kids. She’d take good care of him.

“I can’t wait till it’s my turn.” Mia’s wistful comment broke the silence that had rolled over them like a fog in the wake of Jake’s rushed departure.

Vivian smoothed her daughter’s hair off her forehead. “Your turn will come soon enough, sweetheart,” she promised. If they were able to stick around…

Where would they go if they had to leave? And how would she manage another relocation? She’d been on a rent-to-own plan and had recently signed the contract to purchase her house. She no longer had the government’s help and, expecting the coming fall to be her best year yet, she’d invested what money she hadn’t put into the house in her business.

Just when she’d stopped looking behind her…

Eager to send her brother an email, to get some reassurance that he, Peyton and Rex were okay in upstate New York and to keep him apprised of what was happening in Montana, she quickly prepared Mia’s breakfast. Then, sitting at the desk in one corner of the living room, she went online—and that was when her throat closed as if someone had tightened a noose around it.

It was Tuesday, not Sunday. This wasn’t the day she and Virgil usually communicated. But there was a message from him. And it was marked Urgent.




4


Myles went straight to the vacation rental where the murder had taken place. Now that the initial shock was over, and the forensic techs and the coroner were gone, he wanted to examine the scene by himself. He planned to look at it from all angles to see if he could get some impression of the events that’d led up to Pat’s death. He also wanted to see if he could figure out a possible motive.

But, early though it was, he wasn’t the first person at the cabin. An old dented Porsche 911 sat parked off the narrow road on a thick layer of pine needles. Myles recognized it as belonging to Jared Davis, the investigator he’d put in charge of this case.

“Who’d want Pat dead?” Jared called out as soon as Myles stepped over the yellow crime-scene tape. But he was nowhere to be seen. He must’ve heard the cruiser and glanced out the open door before Myles came up the walk.

“No one I know,” Myles replied to the disembodied voice.

“There’s his wife.”

“Gertie? She wouldn’t have the upper-body strength.” He found Jared in the dining room, crouching not far from the blood on the kitchen tiles, notepad in hand. It was cool outside, about sixty degrees, but the temperature would soon climb to eighty. Why Jared would be wearing a trench coat and wing-tipped shoes, Myles had no idea, but the investigator reminded him of the character on the TV show Columbo, which his mother used to watch. He even acted like him—a little disheveled and disorganized, often absorbed and seemingly inattentive, although he rarely missed a thing.

“She could’ve hired someone to do it.”

Myles was just as skeptical of that, but Jared continued before he could respond.

“She stands to collect half a million in life insurance. I checked.”

Because most murders were committed by family or friends, Jared had classified her as a “person of interest.” That was standard procedure, to look close to heart and home. But Myles didn’t believe Pat’s killer could be Gertie. “You’ve got to eliminate every possibility, right?”

Jared stood but at five foot eight he barely came to Myles’s shoulder. “You don’t think it’s her.”

Myles had made that clear yesterday. “Not a chance. I saw her after she found her husband. She was destroyed. Grief like that can’t be faked. Besides, they were happy, always together.”

“Maybe she’s a hell of an actress. Maybe, when I dig a little deeper, I’ll find out she’s been embezzling from her husband’s real-estate company and he was about to audit the books.”

The interior of the house contrasted sharply with the beautiful day dawning outside. Birds sang in the towering trees that shaded the property and the lake lapped gently at the shore only fifteen yards or so from the front entrance. It was a rustic paradise. Pine and moist earth overpowered every other scent, and the forest behind the house created a deep and resounding quiet. Everything about this crime seemed incongruent with its surroundings.

Trying not to let the disturbing sight get to him the way it had yesterday, Myles ordered himself to maintain some emotional distance. He’d grown soft since coming here, had gotten caught up in the idyllic life of a “safe” community. “You’re jaded, you know that?”

“I’m just saying. It wouldn’t be the first time a wife decided to off her hubby to avoid detection. With humiliation and divorce on the one hand and the answer to all her financial problems on the other…” He let his words fade away.

“She didn’t need to embezzle. Pat would’ve given her any amount. They’d been married for forty years.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Myles arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re jaded, like I said.”

“Yeah, well. You spend twenty years working for the LAPD and that’s what you get.” He shrugged. “You can take the cop out of L.A., but you can’t take L.A. out of the cop, not after that long. I plan to check her bank accounts and telephone records, just in case.”

“You do that. I’m relying on you to be thorough. Don’t waste a lot of time, though. I want to catch this bastard. And the longer you dick around with Gertie, the less chance we’ll have.”

“I don’t dick around when I’m on the job, Sheriff.” Jared sounded insulted. He had a tendency to take things literally and to carry logic to illogical extremes.

“I’m telling you not to pursue her exclusively, okay?”

“Of course I won’t. I’ll follow every lead.”

“Perfect.”

“You seem uptight,” he added. “Is there a reason?”

“Pat’s murder isn’t reason enough?” Myles retorted, but he knew his agitation had as much to do with Vivian as Pat. He couldn’t figure her out. He wanted to feel angry at her for being so unreasonable, but those marks on her arm, the ones put there by her ex-husband, made it impossible to hold her resistance against her. She probably didn’t want to give another man any control over her life, and yet her body craved what every healthy adult body craved.

Including his…

“We’ll get the guy who did this,” Jared promised.

Myles tilted his head as he studied the smeared blood on the tiles, the fingerprint dust, the partial footprints, the spatters on the wall, baseboards and cupboards. In some places, so much blood had been spilled that it hadn’t completely dried. Knowing it came from the man who’d sold him his house made Myles sick to his stomach. He’d seen death—car accidents and gang shootings when he worked for the police department in Phoenix—but never such a brutal slaying. And never anyone he knew. “What about Pat’s stepson?” he asked.

“Delbert’s on my list.”

Jared’s absolute reliance on logic was usually helpful in an investigation. At any rate, no one else had as much experience with murder. Since Myles had taken over as sheriff, his office hadn’t dealt with a crime worse than hunting without a license or holding up a liquor store with a Super Soaker. “Good.”

“You placing your bet on Delbert?” Jared asked.

Myles propped his hands on his hips. “I’m not placing any bets.”

“So why’d you bring him up?”

“Because he’s at least as likely to have killed Pat as Gertie is.”

“Except that he lives in Colorado.”

“Travel being what it is, maybe he came back.”

“I spoke to a few of Gertie’s neighbors last night. I guess she and Pat had some sort of falling-out with her son over a vehicle?”

That hadn’t been cleared up? Myles had all but forgotten it. “About a year ago, Pat and Gertie lent him the money to buy a new truck. He was supposed to pay them a couple thousand the moment he received his tax refund but he didn’t. I remember Pat complaining about it when he came to the station to deliver the calendar he gave out at Christmas, but…I haven’t heard about that since.”

“I’ll see what Delbert has to say,” Jared said. “If I can reach him.”

“You’ve tried?”

“Three times. Could be he’s on his way here.”

Myles walked over to the sliding glass door and found droplets of blood even there. Pat had put up a fight; he’d simply been overpowered. “I’m sure he is,” he said. “Especially if he expects to be included in the will. Delbert has always taken his parents for everything he can.”

Jared wrote a note about Delbert on his pad with a pencil that’d been broken in half and barely had any lead.

“Is that shitty pencil the best you can do?” Myles asked, momentarily distracted.

Jared held up his hand to examine the pencil stub. “What’s wrong with it?”

Myles opened his mouth to say that he could at least carry a decent pen—but snapping at such an inconsequential detail only revealed his stress. What did it matter as long as that pencil put words on paper?

Once again reining in the irritation that’d been lurking ever since he crawled out of bed, Myles waved away Jared’s concern. “Not a thing,” he said, but Jared was too literal to let it go. He couldn’t understand why Myles would mention it if he didn’t expect some action to be taken.

“There might be a pen in my car…?.”

“Forget it.” Even if there was a pen in his car, he had little chance of ever finding it. His vehicle was so full of wrappers, receipts and other flotsam, Myles often wondered if it violated the health and safety codes. “What about the call Pat received prior to coming here? Do you know who made it?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

Jared blinked at him. “The number goes to the pay phone outside the Kicking Horse Saloon.”

The fact that Pineview didn’t have cell service wasn’t going to help them solve this crime. Here, pay phones were still an important form of communication, which meant that call could’ve come from anyone. And that particular location, right outside the town’s favorite bar, made it unlikely that a bystander would pay attention when someone was using it.

“So you’re checking out Gertie and Delbert,” Myles summarized. “Who else is on your list?”

“All the hunters, campers, fishermen and recreationists who’ve come through here the past couple of days.”

Myles eyed the blood spatter on the wall. The photographs shot by the forensic techs would be sent to an expert. But it would take time to get the analysis. Everything took time…?. “How many people do you figure that is?”

“Least fifty.”

“That narrows it down.”

Jared didn’t react to his sarcasm. “We got a partial thumbprint—in blood—on the door handle. That should help. Especially in conjunction with all the footprints.”

Except that none of them were very clear. They’d lifted the prints with tape but who knew if they’d show anything useful. “If we find a suspect these things might help. Otherwise…”

“If it’s not Gertie or Delbert it’s one of the campers.”

“Why would a camper call about a rental and then kill the real-estate agent?”

“Sometimes there isn’t a reason.”

“You think we have a psychopath in the area?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“I don’t know about that. Pat wasn’t attacked as soon as he and whoever he was with came into the house. He was murdered in the kitchen—as if he spent some time with his assailant, had a discussion first. If death was the goal from the beginning, there’d be no reason to pretend to be a prospective renter. Not once the killer got inside the house anyway.”

“So you’re suggesting he knew his attacker,” Jared responded.

Which was why Jared kept going back to Pat’s family. “There are holes in that theory, too,” Myles said. “Anyone who showed up here intending to kill would bring a weapon. This offender used some sort of blunt object. To me, that suggests he grabbed whatever was close at hand.” Myles wasn’t sure what that was. A rock? Part of a tree branch? A hammer? He was relying on the autopsy to reveal more about the wounds Pat had sustained and what could’ve caused them.

“But if the murder resulted from a spontaneous act, a sudden flare of temper, why couldn’t Delbert be our man?”

“He could. Except that Pat wouldn’t have driven over here to meet Delbert. What would be the point?”

“Delbert could’ve lured him here under false pretenses.”

“We just established that this wasn’t a planned killing. The evidence doesn’t support it.”

Jared scratched his chin. “Do you know how hard it is to solve a truly random crime, with no eyewitnesses? If our offender was a visitor to the area, we might never narrow it down.”

“Exactly what I’m afraid of.”

Putting his pad in his coat pocket, Jared turned to leave.

“Where are you going?” Myles asked him.

“I’m meeting Linda at the Golden Griddle.”

Linda Gardiner was the other investigator Myles had assigned to the case.

“We’re hoping to come up with a list of people who used the pay phone yesterday when Pat received that call,” Jared went on.

The Golden Griddle was across the street from the bar. Anyone there would have a clear view of the pay phone—if he or she happened to look. But that restaurant only served breakfast. “It closes at one. The call came in shortly after two.”

“True, but it takes the waitresses an hour or so to clean up. If we’re lucky, one of them saw someone at that pay phone while she was getting into her car and can at least give us a description.”

If we’re lucky. What if they weren’t?

They’d have nothing but a body.




5


Heartbroken, Vivian gaped at the screen.

“Mommy?”

She could hear her daughter calling her but Mia’s voice sounded small and tinny, as if it came through the dark tunnel of a dream. Vivian didn’t react, couldn’t react. She was frozen in time and space. It wasn’t until her daughter came up and tapped her arm that she was able to blink and look away. And then the many years of practice she’d had hiding her fear and disappointment from her children came to her rescue, and she managed to conceal her reaction to what she’d just read. “Yes?”

Mia’s eyebrows knotted. “Why wouldn’t you answer?”

“I was concentrating on something else.” She wondered if Mia was getting old enough to see through her smile. She would at some point, wouldn’t she? Vivian was screaming inside: This isn’t fair! Not again! Not Rex!

“Oh.” With a shrug of her thin shoulders, Mia let it go. Nothing bothered her for long. “Watch me, okay? I’ll show you my new dance.”

Mia was taking ballet lessons and, much to Jake’s chagrin, she often made up her own routines and insisted on performing them, even in public.

Vivian schooled her features into a pleasant expression as Mia leaped and twirled. No music played, but that didn’t diminish Mia’s enthusiasm. She danced just to move and she did it whenever the mood struck her. Costumes were more important to her than music, but this morning she hadn’t bothered to change into the tutu she sometimes wore all day.

Vivian believed her daughter had real talent, but ballet was far from her thoughts right now. The terror that’d begun to advance on her when she heard about Pat’s murder raced up to smack her right in the face as the meaning of what she’d just read went through her mind.

Rex is missing…Rex is missing…Rex is missing…

Where? How? Was he dead?

No, that couldn’t be. She was still in love with him. Maybe. Or maybe she only wished for what could’ve been. Even if her feelings weren’t quite that strong—even if desperation, familiarity and the need for a safe harbor had brought them together in the first place—he’d been a good friend and a talented lover, relief from the loneliness that had plagued her both before and after their breakup.

“Do you like it, Mommy?” Mia sang out.

Vivian’s face ached with the effort of maintaining her smile. “Of course. It’s beautiful.”

Beaming at the compliment, Mia lengthened her performance by stringing other routines together, ones she’d been taught in class that Vivian easily recognized. “Aren’t you going to clap?”

Vivian dutifully brought her hands together.

When, at last exhausted, her daughter finished, Vivian clapped again. “Bravo!” she cheered, but trying to staunch her tears only caused the lump in her throat to swell.

Fortunately, Mia seemed satisfied. She ran off to change and brush her teeth, leaving Vivian alone to deal with Virgil’s news.

Propping her chin on her fist, she returned to the computer. What could’ve happened to Rex? Virgil had given her very little information.



Hey, I hate to tell you this, but Rex is missing. Two weeks ago, he mentioned going to Los Angeles to see a woman he met on the internet. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. He took off on his motorcycle.



Vivian didn’t have to wonder how he got off work. From what she’d heard, he was still doing jobs here or there for Virgil but was no longer a partner in their bodyguard company. He’d talked Virgil into buying him out shortly after they moved to Buffalo and had been burning through the money ever since.



I probably wouldn’t be so worried except that every time I call his cell, it goes straight to voice mail. I haven’t been able to reach him since the day after he left. And I know he wasn’t planning on being gone this long. I have a job coming up—told him he could have it. Lord knows he needs the money.



Apparently he wasn’t still burning through the money. He’d already finished it. She’d figured it was just a matter of time.



I’ve reported his absence to the police. They’re doing what they can, but I doubt he’s a priority. They’re searching for him as Wesley Alderman; I couldn’t give away his true identity without adding more risk. I didn’t see how it would help, anyway, to divulge the past. He obviously made arrangements to be gone, so they feel he might merely be delayed. And they have other cases they consider more urgent.



So what did this mean? Now that he was broke, had he returned to The Crew, where he could get an endless supply of the OxyContin he craved?



He’d die before he’d give either of us up. I just don’t know if we can count on him staying off the pills. And that could change the situation. He hasn’t done well since you left. Anyway, I had to warn you.

He’d never done drugs when she was with him. But she’d known they were a big part of his past. Drugs were epidemic to the gang culture he’d embraced at one time. And now he was back at it.



I’ll let you know if anything changes. Keep your eyes open.

V.



Vivian’s gaze strayed from the screen to the phone on the desk at her elbow. They’d agreed not to communicate by telephone; doing so would establish a traceable link between them. She didn’t see The Crew as being sophisticated enough to find and follow that link, but they could’ve hired a private investigator or someone else to do the tracking. Harold “Horse” Pew and his foot soldiers had certainly found them before. That was why they’d split up, to be cautious. But she had to talk to her brother, even if it meant breaking the rules. She missed him so much, hadn’t seen him in two years.

With equal amounts of trepidation and excitement, she dialed the cell-phone number Virgil had given her to use in case of an emergency.

She had a blocked number. Probably hoping it was Rex, he answered on the first ring with a quick and eager hello.

The tears she’d been holding back sprang to her eyes at the sound of his voice. “It’s me,” she murmured.

“Laurel.” He used her real name, then cursed under his breath. “I was afraid you’d call.”

She understood why he might not be happy to hear from her, knew he was worried about the risk, but his response stung all the same. Emails couldn’t replace personal contact. He had his wife. She had no one. She’d been so happy in D.C. After fourteen years of waiting for Virgil to get out of prison, she’d had family she could both love and trust, only to have him once again ripped away from her. “Don’t…”

He seemed to understand that she couldn’t tolerate being chastised right now. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“That depends on your definition of okay. I was doing great until Pat Stueben was murdered yesterday morning.”

“Who’s Pat Stueben?” Obviously he’d expected her reaction to the news about Rex, not this.

“A friend.”

“I’m sorry.”

The concern in those words made her feel a bit better. “He was more of an acquaintance actually—the man who helped me find this house, my—my Realtor.” Tears streamed down her face; she hadn’t adequately mourned Pat. The possibility that she or one of her children might be next had kept her grief bottled up, along with her fear.

“Hang on a sec.” She heard jostling, then a door closing. When he came back on the line, he spoke more loudly. “Okay, I can talk.”

“Are you at the office?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s business?”

“Not quite what it was in D.C., but building.”

She remembered when he and Rex had started their bodyguard service, how pleased they’d been with their success. After selling out in D.C., Virgil had reincarnated the business under a different name when he moved to upstate New York. He had Peyton’s help now, at least in the office. Although she normally worked in corrections she’d left her job when they moved and didn’t plan to return to her career until the kids were older. Even with Peyton there three days a week, it wasn’t the same for Virgil. He missed Rex as a full-time partner. But once Rex’s mother died and his family blamed him for the grief he’d put her through, he’d gone downhill.

As much as Vivian wished it wasn’t so, she was sure their breakup had added to the problems that’d sent him into a tailspin.

Luckily for her, she hadn’t been around to see the worst of it. She’d heard about the fallout from Virgil, via his weekly emails. Then, during his more sober moments, Rex had begun calling her again, even though, for safety’s sake, he wasn’t supposed to.

“What exactly happened to your friend?” Virgil asked.

“Someone beat him to death.”

“Why?”

“He was robbed, but…this went far beyond robbery.”

“Who did it?”

“No one knows. Not yet. That’s why…why I was already nervous when I received your email.”

“You think there’s some connection between your Realtor’s death and our situation?”

“Maybe. That type of thing doesn’t happen here.”

“Didn’t you tell me you have a friend whose mother went missing?”

“Fifteen years ago, and there’s never been any proof of foul play. Maybe she simply walked off into the sunset.”

“How often does that happen?” he asked drily.

“Often enough.” She’d done it. Twice. She still wondered what the people at her job in Colorado must’ve thought when she left. One day she was there, the next she was gone, without any explanation or contact since. She did the same thing in D.C.

“There’s no rhyme or reason to Pat’s murder,” she told him. “He couldn’t have put up much of a fight. Word has it his wallet didn’t contain a lot. Why would he risk his life over fifty dollars?”

“You’ve lived there for two years. If The Crew had followed you, they would’ve acted by now. Don’t assume too much.”

“It’s not just that there’s been a murder,” she explained, terrible though that was. “It’s the violence involved. If you’d known this man… No one would want to kill him. He was in his sixties, sweet, harmless. Then, on the heels of his death, I get the news that Rex is missing.”

“Could be totally unrelated. Maybe Rex heard from his father, or one of his ‘successful’ brothers, and that sent him over the edge. You know how he is.”

She did know Rex. She knew what he’d done for her and Virgil in the past, what they owed him regardless of his self-destructive tendencies. “Surely The Crew can’t still be after us. It’s been four years since you and Rex quit the gang. Surely they’ve gotten tired of chasing us and turned their attention to other things.” She couldn’t come out of hiding, couldn’t present herself as a target, of course, but did she really have to worry about them searching for her? Still?

“That kind of thinking could get you killed.”

“I’m tired of running.”

“You have no choice.”

She eyed the walls she’d painted herself, remembered how important it was that she get the perfect color. These walls weren’t ordinary walls. They were her walls; she’d planned to look at them for years.

“Why?” she asked, unable to accept his answer. “How long could this grudge of theirs last?”

“After what we did?”

“We did nothing!” Everything Virgil had been through, everything she’d suffered as a result of being related to him, could be blamed on their uncle and mother. Thanks to Ellen’s soliciting her brother’s help, Gary Lawson had killed Martin Crawley, their step father, then let Virgil pay for it. If Virgil hadn’t spent so much time in prison, he wouldn’t have joined The Crew, or had to get out of it, and they wouldn’t have tried to kill her as both warning and retribution.

“That’s not strictly true,” he said. “When they came after you in Colorado, I told the authorities everything I knew about them. Several of those guys went to prison, and two of the ones already inside were dumped into the federal system and moved because of me.”

“You would’ve kept your word and stayed silent if they hadn’t tried to kill me. That’s when you decided you owed them nothing.”

“Doesn’t matter. As far as they’re concerned, Rex and I are both traitors. They’d love nothing more than to make examples out of all of us.”

“But—”

“Listen, I was trusted by those who held power, put above others who’ve remained loyal. It humiliated them when I left. And if they can’t get to me, they’ll go after you again. Especially since they lost some of their own in Colorado. Getting to you would be just as good as getting to me, because they know it would kill me to see you or your children hurt.”

“It’s just so pointless to keep this going! Revenge is…stupid!”

“To you and me. But there’s nothing worse to a gang leader than appearing weak. It’s about street cred, taking care of business. That’s all they have—their pride in being badasses.”

She found it hard not to resent him at this moment, no matter how close they’d always been. If not for him, she wouldn’t be in this predicament. But it wasn’t his fault. In her heart, she knew that. They were both victims of circumstance and had done the best they could to handle what was thrown their way. “They have to make a living, too. Isn’t that hard enough? Doesn’t running prostitution rings and—and smuggling drugs and evading police take time and effort? My business is legitimate, yet it takes every ounce of energy I’ve got.”

“If they need money, they send someone to hold up a liquor store. It doesn’t take much time. They’re profiting off other people’s hard work, not their own. Nothing has a higher priority than nursing a grudge and paying off old debts. Especially a debt as personal as this one. Their lives revolve around planning violence, perpetrating violence or taking credit for violence. They won’t stop looking for us. At Shady’s funeral, Horse swore a blood oath to avenge his death. Rex heard about it while we were living in D.C. Don’t you remember?”

Mia had come downstairs to play with her Barbies, so Vivian lowered her voice. The last thing she needed was for her daughter to repeat something she’d overheard to the sheriff or someone else in Pineview. “Maybe we should’ve stayed in WitSec.” Without the program to fall back on, they were walking a tightrope without a safety net. “Maybe there was no leak.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Rex is the only one who’s contacted anyone from his past,” she said. Because he’d been estranged from his family for years, she and Virgil had never expected him to be the one who’d have trouble forgetting the people he once knew. But the emotional issues he had as a result of those old dysfunctional relationships had kept him in a state of limbo, kept him checking back despite the danger, and once he’d found out about his mother’s death, he hadn’t been able to cope.

Walking away from everything hadn’t been easy for her, either. What she’d just told Virgil wasn’t strictly true. She’d called her mother a few times. The police had never uncovered the proof they needed to prosecute Ellen for her role in Martin’s murder, so she was still in Los Angeles going from man to man. But now that she was getting older and suffering from arthritis and type 2 diabetes, Vivian felt duty-bound to check on her every few months. She’d always used the pay phone outside the bar, however, or a phone other than her own, and been very careful about the information she divulged. After what Ellen had done to Virgil, Vivian couldn’t trust her.

“Rex hasn’t been disloyal, Vivian. That’s crazy. They want him as badly as they want us.”

“He hasn’t been the same since he heard the news about his mother. He could’ve made a deal with them, a trade.” She didn’t really believe this, but she didn’t want to believe the alternative, either, and arguing with Virgil helped blow off some steam.

“Stop it.”

“He’s the only link we have left to The Crew!” Unless their mother had revealed that Vivian had been in contact with her. But that was just too horrible to contemplate. They’d been through enough because of Ellen. Surely, after taking her brother’s side all those years ago instead of defending her son, instead of believing in Virgil, Ellen wouldn’t let them down again…?.

“Then how’d they find you in Colorado?” Virgil was saying. “Rex was still with the gang then. He’s told us someone provided insider information. It took time, but they found us in D.C., and they would’ve found us again if we’d continued relying on law enforcement to hide us.”

He was right, of course, but she wasn’t ready to stop playing devil’s advocate. “No one in the Federal Bureau of Prisons even knows where we are. That’s why I think it has to be Rex.”

“It’s not! I trust Rex with my life.” He trusted him more than their mother—with good reason. Virgil hadn’t spoken to Ellen since he went to prison. At least that he’d admit. It wasn’t as if Vivian had told him she’d been calling, either.

Problem was, she trusted Rex, too. So what was she saying? That if someone had to betray them, she’d rather it was Rex than Ellen? She didn’t want it to be either one, but she couldn’t withstand that kind of rejection from her mother. Better to attribute this betrayal—if betrayal it was—to the drugs Rex used and mitigate his responsibility that way. “You mean you trust him when he’s sober, right?”

Virgil didn’t respond to that comment, probably because it pained him to doubt Rex. Rex had been his cell mate for nearly a decade. Including their years on the outside, they’d been looking out for each other half their lives. But Virgil was obviously nervous about Rex’s state of mind and his difficulty navigating a world that didn’t include gang affiliations.

“Horse blames us as the reason Shady and the others are dead and Ink is in prison,” he said.

Horse. Shady. Ink. Just the names of The Crew members who’d come after them sent a shiver of revulsion through Vivian. Horse had taken Shady’s spot as gang leader, but it was Ink who’d appeared in Colorado. Covered from head to toe in tattoos—even his eyebrows were tattooed into lightning bolts—he was a frightening specter of gang life. His flat, dark eyes added to the unnerving effect he had on her.

She wondered what he was like now, if he’d changed. After months of physical therapy, he’d recuperated enough from what had happened in Colorado that he was no longer confined to a wheelchair. But according to the U.S. marshal who’d helped them get situated in D.C., he was still crippled. Vivian wasn’t sure how crippled, but it didn’t matter. He was serving a lengthy prison term and wasn’t likely to get out before he died of old age. That was what mattered. “Then you believe Rex is…dead?”

“I don’t know what to believe!” he snapped, and that was when she understood just how worried he was. He talked as if he had faith in his best friend but he was as scared as she was. Rex could be heroic; he could also be unpredictable, especially when he was using.

“Except that we’re not safe from The Crew,” she said. “You’re convinced of that.”

“Completely.”

Vivian remembered all the calls she and Rex had exchanged when she first came to Pineview. Their breakup had been so rough that they’d contacted each other numerous times, despite Virgil’s edict. And she hadn’t gone to a pay phone. During her weaker moments, she’d almost taken Rex back, almost had him come to live in Montana. She would have if he hadn’t started using.

Had The Crew found him and exacted their revenge for his part in the deaths of two of their own? Tortured her and Virgil’s addresses out of Rex, then killed him? Or had he gone to Mexico with some woman?

More likely he was on a drug binge, holed up in a fleabag motel or lying helpless in a gutter.

The thought of that upset her nearly as much as all the rest of it. If she’d given him one more chance, maybe he could’ve made it. There were so many times he’d seemed close. But he’d pushed her away as often as she had him.

Bottom line, they weren’t good for each other. She’d been caught in a painful cycle of breakup and reunion for eighteen months before she came here, but she was free now and didn’t want the past to encroach on her new life.

The question was…would she be able to stop it?

“What do we do?” she asked. “How do we stay safe?”

“The smartest thing would be to move.”

“I can’t,” she said, and realized it was true. She couldn’t sacrifice everything she’d established here, couldn’t drag her children away from the happiness they’d found. Not again. This was her house, the first possession she’d ever really owned. Leaving it behind would be letting The Crew win even if they didn’t find her.

“I feel the same way,” he admitted. “It was hard starting over when we moved to New York. The idea of doing it again…” He paused. “And I don’t know if Rex is stable enough to go with us. The last move hit him hard.”

Because of the timing. That move had come soon after he’d heard about his mother and started using again; that was when they’d broken up for the last time. “What’s the alternative?”

He seemed to consider the question. “We’ll have to be prepared, I guess. Do you have the gun I gave you?”

“No.” She’d been terrified one of the children would get hold of it and there’d be an accident.

“Where is it?”

“At the bank. In a safe-deposit box.”

“I suggest you get it out.”

She cringed at the thought of having to use it, even though he’d insisted on showing her how and making her practice. “Can this really be happening?”

“As much as I wish I could say no…”

He couldn’t. She understood. “I’ll get it.”

“Great. Let me know what you hear about your Realtor’s murder. And I’ll do the same if there’s anything new on Rex.”

She could tell he was about to hang up, but she wasn’t ready to let him go. “How’s Peyton?”

“Fine.”

He would’ve mentioned in his emails if anything was wrong, but it felt better hearing this assurance from his own lips. “How does she like staying home with Brady?”

“She misses corrections, but she’ll go back when the kids are in school. In the meantime, she’s enjoying a period of less stress. She’s still handling the books at the office, the advertising and some of the scheduling.”

“Are you guys ready for the new baby?”

“As ready as we can be. I just hope it doesn’t go like last time.”

Last time, Peyton had miscarried at seven months, and losing the baby had devastated her, devastated them both. Because of endometriosis, she’d had difficulty getting pregnant at all. And Vivian hadn’t been there for any of it. She could hardly believe so much had happened in the past two years. It seemed like only yesterday that she was living in Colorado, a scant five miles from the prison, hoping and praying her brother would survive until he could be exonerated. “It won’t,” she said. “This little girl will make it.”

“I keep imagining her just like Mia.” Then he asked about the kids, Pineview, her love life, and she pretended to have one. When the conversation wound down, she said, “Do you ever miss Mom?”

Their mother was a subject they usually avoided. But Vivian felt guilty for secretly keeping in touch with “the enemy.” And she couldn’t help wondering how Virgil felt about their mother these days. Was he softening at all? Should they soften? In a situation like this, was there ever a point when the past should be left in the past?

“No.” His clipped tone indicated that he didn’t want anything to do with Ellen, and she couldn’t blame him. Ellen had ruined his life when she went after her then-husband’s life-insurance policy, which she’d received. Whether or not she’d really instigated his murder had never been firmly established, but the fact that she hadn’t done more to help police uncover the true culprit, that she’d allow her son to go to prison instead, was unbelievable, unforgivable.

And yet, Vivian sometimes missed Ellen terribly. It wasn’t as if she had a father she could turn to. Cole Skinner had gone on his merry way shortly after she was born. She’d heard from him a total of three times in her entire life.

“I don’t miss her, either,” she lied. Then she told him she loved him and hung up.

“Who was that?”

Mia stood a few feet away. Vivian wanted to admit it was her brother, but that would only spark more questions. “A friend.”

A sad expression appeared on Mia’s face. “Why are you crying?”

Dashing a hand across her cheeks, Vivian struggled to contain her emotions. What was wrong with her? She was usually stronger than this. “I miss him.”

Sidling close, Mia lowered her voice. “Was it Rex?”

She remembered him. Vivian managed to smile through her tears as she hugged her daughter. The Crew had cost her the life she’d built in Colorado and Washington, D.C. She wouldn’t let it cost her what she’d created here. She’d go to the bank as soon as she dropped Mia off at ballet and get the gun Virgil had purchased for her—and then she’d defend herself and her children against anyone who threatened them. They had to stop running sometime. “That wasn’t Rex, honey, but I miss him, too,” she murmured into her daughter’s hair.

Mia cupped her face in both hands. “Maybe he’ll come for a visit.”

And maybe he couldn’t…?.




6


With its high ceilings and marble floors, Mountain Bank and Trust was cold and quiet, peaceful in the sterile vein of most banks. Vivian generally liked coming here. She knew Herb Scarborough, the manager, from sitting next to him and his wife so often at church. He waved through the glass walls of his office in the corner. Then there was Nancy Granger, one of the tellers, who’d recently joined her book group. Nancy flashed her a smile, too.

As childish as it made her feel, Vivian found the bowls of candy on the loan officers’ desks as tempting as her kids did, but today she didn’t so much as glance over to see what kind of candy those bowls contained. She was in too much of a hurry. Mia’s ballet class lasted only forty-five minutes. She wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible, then stow the gun in the trunk of her car until after the kids fell asleep this evening. No way did she want them to see it—or even the small blanket she planned to wrap it in. Why incite their curiosity?

“Hi, Vivian. Can I help you?” Naomi Jowalski, the assistant manager, stood as Vivian approached her desk. Naomi had helped her before, when she’d first come to town and brought in the tightly wrapped bundle that hid the gun.

“I’d like to get into my safe-deposit box, please.”

“No problem.” She began sorting through the large number of keys she wore on an expandable bracelet. One of those keys unlocked the door leading to the basement vault. “Can you tell me the number?”

Vivian gave it to her and showed her driver’s license—the one Virgil had purchased for her on the black market just before she’d moved here. Then she signed in and Naomi led her downstairs to the vault that held a smattering of boxes, some bigger and some smaller than her own. Considering the population of Pineview, the bank didn’t need to devote a lot of space to safe-deposit boxes and they didn’t. They’d tucked them away in a far corner of the basement and, at the moment, that basement was empty except for the two of them.

“I’ll wait right here.” Naomi stopped at the entrance to allow Vivian some privacy.

Even as she turned the key, Vivian wasn’t too happy about taking the gun into her possession. She couldn’t bear to think of what could happen if her children ever found it. But she watched her kids carefully—and just as bad was the thought of being unable to protect them if The Crew showed up. She’d been in that situation before, hadn’t she?

“Did you hear about Pat Stueben?” Naomi said.

Blocking the assistant manager’s view in case she glanced over, Vivian unwrapped the gun. She’d been in such a rush to get Mia to ballet on time she’d forgotten to bring a bag to carry it in, but she had her purse. Leaving her real birth certificate and driver’s license, along with her children’s birth certificates, in the box, she put the gun in her bag and locked up. “I did. Tragic, isn’t it?”

“Who could beat someone to death, especially someone like Pat?” Naomi asked. “For forty-eight dollars?”

Everyone was wondering the same thing. Vivian had just had a similar conversation with Pearl Stringham, Mia’s dance instructor. “No one we know. It has to be a stranger.”

“That’s what I’ve been hearing. But still—” she rubbed her arms as Vivian approached “—I get chills thinking about it.”

“Certainly makes it difficult to sleep at night.” How would Naomi react if she knew what Vivian had been through? What she was fighting so hard to prevent?

“All finished?”

Vivian nodded.

“Right this way, then.”

Supremely conscious of the gun in her purse, Vivian followed Naomi up the stairs. Having a lethal weapon empowered her in a sense. But that didn’t end the worry. What if she made a mistake? Shot the wrong person? Nana Vera and Claire—not to mention Leah, a waitress from the local diner who’d introduced her to the Thursday-night book group—had a tendency to come by at unexpected times. Occasionally they’d even make themselves at home while waiting for her to return. That was the type of community they lived in…?.

“Vivian?”

Engrossed in her own thoughts, she’d missed a question. “Yes?”

“Is there anything else we can do for you here at Mountain Bank and Trust?”

“No, thank you.”

The assistant manager donned a pleasant smile. “Have a good day.”

Eager to hide the Sig in her trunk and get back to Mia’s ballet class, Vivian lowered her head and charged through the double doors, only to run into what felt like a brick wall. Bouncing back, she hit the door, which hadn’t quite closed, and dropped her purse.

Buster Hayes, six foot four and three hundred and fifty pounds of collegiate football star, had just rounded the corner; she’d plowed right into him.

“Oh, wow! I’m sorry.” He steadied her, then bent to recover what had spilled out—but froze when he saw the Sig P220 lying on the concrete between them.

Chrissy Gunther was walking toward the bank at the same time, and came to an immediate stop. “Is that a gun?” she gasped.

Vivian scooped it up, along with the rest of her belongings. “Just a little something for self-protection,” she muttered, and hurried away.



None of the waitresses at the Golden Griddle had noticed anyone using the pay phone, which left the investigation exactly nowhere.

Head pounding, Myles turned off the lights and propped his feet on his desk. Half of Pineview had called him this morning. Chester Magnuson, over at the paper. Gertie, looking to see if he’d been able to identify her husband’s murderer. The stepson, who’d arrived in town and was staying with his mother. Delbert wondered how such a thing could happen in Pineview and wanted to know what was going on with the investigation. Even the mayor had phoned.

Myles needed a few seconds to himself. But the moment he closed his eyes, Chrissy Gunther came dashing into the reception area, squawking like an old hen. He wished he could ignore her. It was his lunch hour. Surely that meant he could take five minutes. But there was too much excitement in her voice to attribute all of it to her high-strung nature. And no matter how many excuses she trumped up to talk to him, she didn’t usually drive thirty miles to do that.

“I have to speak with Sheriff King,” she told Deputy Campbell. “Right away. It’s important.”

Wishing the painkiller he’d swallowed several minutes ago would hurry and stop the jackhammer in his head, Myles forced his eyes open and got up to turn on his light. Although married, Chrissy made a habit of seeking him out. He was pretty sure she didn’t understand how he could resist her, despite her marital status.

Deputy Campbell appeared in the doorway just as he reached for the light switch. “Chrissy Gunther is here to see you. She says she might have some information on the Pat Stueben case.”

“Really? Chrissy?” Myles could see the little dynamo coming to report that the school principal wasn’t allowing her cheer squad to use the gym, even though school was out for summer. Or that the lunch lady hadn’t refunded the three dollars and fifty cents that was left on one of her children’s lunch cards, and was therefore trying to steal it. To Chrissy, those things would be worth the drive. But her world didn’t extend beyond her kids.

Campbell cast a glance over his shoulder as if he wasn’t quite sure what to think. He lived here in Libby, not in Pineview, so he didn’t know Chrissy, but the look on his face suggested that he could tell she was a handful. “So she claims.”

“Fine. Send her in.” Perhaps she’d spotted a stranger with blood on his shoes or something. Myles could always hope. No one paid closer attention to the actions and mistakes of others than Chrissy Gunther.

Hoping that whatever she had to say would be worth putting up with her flirtatious smiles, Myles stood to one side as she came bustling past him. “I saw it myself!” she exclaimed before he could even greet her.

He tried to rub away the grit in his eyes, but the stress of the murder, his lack of sleep and preoccupation with his neighbor was taking their toll. “What are you talking about?”

“The gun.”

The headache and fatigue instantly disappeared. “What gun?”

“The pistol Vivian was carrying out of Mountain Bank and Trust a few minutes ago.”

Hearing Vivian’s name added a one-two punch. A gun belonging to anyone else wouldn’t have been particularly noteworthy, not unless there was more to go along with it. Montana’s gun laws weren’t exactly the strictest in the nation; guns didn’t even have to be registered in this state, and almost everybody had at least a rifle. But someone like his neighbor toting a handgun out of a bank? “Vivian Stewart?”

“I think you’re familiar with her. There’s just one Vivian in Pineview, right? And I’ve seen the way you watch her. It’s made all the rest of us girls jealous.”

Inappropriate as it was for her to include herself in that comment, he ignored the jab. “Are you sure?”

“That you watch her?” She fluttered her eyelashes. “How could I miss it?”

“I mean, are you sure it was her?” He suspected she’d understood what he’d meant the first time, but he wasn’t about to let her draw him into the kind of conversation she obviously craved.

Annoyed that he wouldn’t rise to the bait, she propped one hand on her hip. “Positive. And she definitely had a gun in her purse. I wasn’t the only one to see it. Buster Hayes saw it, too. All you have to do is ask him.”

Myles had no idea what Chrissy was talking about. Maybe Montana had the third-most legal gun owners per capita, only a tenth of a percent behind Alaska. And maybe the prevalence of firearms per capita in a rural county, one with eighteen thousand residents, would be even greater than the more populated parts of the state. But he couldn’t see Vivian toting around a weapon. Especially a hidden weapon. For one thing, he’d be very surprised if she had a permit to carry concealed. And she didn’t like guns. He’d heard her say so when Jake asked her how old he had to be before he could buy a hunting rifle.

So what did she plan on doing with a pistol? Why would she be attempting to conceal it? And why would she take it to the bank?

He motioned to a chair. “Would you like to sit down?”

Chrissy’s ponytail—an obvious hairpiece since he’d seen her without it—bounced as she perched on the edge of the chair.

“I suggest you speak to her immediately,” she said.

Myles tried not to notice that the vinyl was only slightly more orange than her self-tanner. “Thanks for the advice. But first, why don’t you slow down and tell me exactly what happened?”

Rhinestones embedded in the acrylic of her nails flashed as she fanned herself. It wasn’t remotely hot in his office, but the excitement of her errand seemed to be affecting her. “There isn’t much to it,” she said. “She was coming out of the bank, bumped into Buster Hayes and dropped her purse. That’s when we both saw it. She had a handgun in there that fell out.”

Myles returned to his own seat. “You’re not suggesting Vivian tried to hold up Mountain Bank and Trust.”

“Maybe she was thinking about it. Maybe she chickened out at the last minute. Why else would someone carry a pistol into a bank?”

“Did you ask her?”

“I didn’t have the chance! The minute she realized we’d seen the gun, she grabbed it and rushed off.” Chrissy lowered her voice and widened her eyes for emphasis. “I’m telling you, she was acting really strange.”

Myles imagined Vivian as she’d been last night. She hadn’t behaved like the woman who’d done her best to ignore him over the past few months, to stay out of his way. That signified a marked change, too, didn’t it?

Or maybe not. Their feelings toward each other had been changing for some time, growing more intense. On both sides. Until last night, Vivian had hovered on the edges of his life, remaining safely out of reach. But for the first couple of years after Amber Rose died, she could’ve run naked across his lawn and it wouldn’t have raised his pulse by one beat. “In what way?” he asked.

Chrissy adjusted the strap of her blouse, which had slipped off her shoulder. She dressed as if she was one of the cheerleaders she coached—short shorts, skimpy tops and always a bow. “I don’t know. Spooked. Guilty.”

“So…how do you think this firearm you saw ties in to the murder? My deputy said—”

“It’s not every day someone drops a handgun coming out of a bank!” She put her purse on the floor, leaning forward to give him a clear view down her blouse.

Averting his eyes, he straightened his stapler. “I realize that. But a lot of people own guns around here. And the murder wasn’t committed with a firearm. So bear with me. I’m searching for a link.”

Her nails clacked as she tapped them together. “Something’s up, okay? That’s all I’m trying to tell you.”

For some reason, Myles liked Chrissy even less than he had before. She wasn’t bad-looking, but her personality… He’d heard rumors about how bossy she could be and how poorly she treated her husband. They ran a secondhand shop together, situated near the bank. He’d felt sorry for Mr. Gunther before, when Chrissy came on to him at the annual crab feed or at the bar. But driving all the way out here just because she had a tidbit of information? A tidbit about someone she viewed as a rival for his attention? That made him feel even worse for the poor bastard who’d married her.

“I’ll look into it,” he said. And he planned to. He’d forgotten to give Marley money to go to the bowling alley with her best friend this afternoon, so he had to drive back to Pineview, anyway. “Thanks for stopping by.”

She jumped to her feet. “If you’d like me to go over there with you, I will.”

He made a gesture that suggested she needn’t trouble herself. “That won’t be necessary. But…can I ask you one more thing?”

Her face lit up. “Of course!”

“How well do you know Vivian?”

“Not very well,” she confided. “I met her when we both helped out at the school last year—our girls are in the same grade. I invited her to one of my jewelry parties, but she canceled the day before.” Chrissy wrinkled her nose. “She’s not very social. I don’t know what her problem is, but I’m beginning to think she’s hiding something.”

She was hiding something. She was hiding herself and her children. An abusive ex would motivate anyone to keep a low profile, maybe even buy a gun. But he planned to check out Chrissy’s report, just in case.

Chrissy hesitated at the door. “Oh, and, Sheriff?”

“Yes?”

“I’m not sure if this is important, but in light of recent events, I think it might be.”

“What’s that?”

“When Vivian first arrived in town, her daughter told my daughter that she moved here because ‘bad men’ were chasing them.”

Myles came to an abrupt stop. He might’ve expected “a bad man.” But men? As in more than one?

Was this a lie Vivian had concocted for the sake of her children? So they wouldn’t have to know that it was their father causing all the trouble? “Did she say who those bad men might be?”

“No. But it had to do with someone breaking into their house, someone who was shot and had—” she made quotation marks with her fingers “—‘blood coming out all over.’”

Another surprise. He had no idea what it meant, and yet he felt the urge to defend Vivian and Mia. “That could be make-believe, something she saw on television.”

“I know it sounds far-fetched. I thought the same thing at first. I mean, not every mother is as diligent about what their children watch as I am. But now I wonder…”

Myles wondered, too. Was Mia speaking about an actual event? If so, how did this tie in to what Vivian had told him? Was there one man she feared—or more? Did she really have an abusive ex?

And, if so, had she killed him?



Myles stood on her porch. Vivian could see his blurry image through the misted oval glass, recognized the blue of his uniform and knew why he’d come. Because of Chrissy. Buster wouldn’t have bothered the sheriff. Buster wasn’t a nosy troublemaker like Hope’s mother, who was generally known as the bane of the elementary school staff, if not the whole town. Unfortunately for Mia, Hope was turning out much the same. Before school ended for the summer, Hope had purposely excluded Mia from her popular clique.

Frowning, Vivian pushed away from her computer, where she’d been using Gchat to convince Claire that Pat’s murder had nothing to do with her mother’s disappearance. She’d been answering some of the emails that’d flooded her box over the past twenty-four hours, too. The blue-jean cutoffs and Little Big Town T-shirt she’d donned when she got home wasn’t really what she’d choose to wear in front of guests, especially male guests. But she didn’t want Mia to know the sheriff had come, didn’t want her to overhear the questions Myles might ask. So she got up and hurried to answer before he could ring the bell.

Fortunately, he knocked first, and not very loud. He could probably see her inside the living room, just as she could see him on the porch.

Determined to keep their encounter as brief as possible, she opened the door slightly. “Yes?”

When his gaze dipped to her chest, she knew he’d already noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bra. It’d taken less than a millisecond for her breasts to become his focal point and raise the tension between them. But the tension itself was nothing new. That was why she’d been bold enough to proposition him last night. She’d never dreamed he’d refuse her.

“Vivian.” He bent his head.

Forcing a polite smile, she used a similarly formal tone. “Sheriff. How are you today?”

“I’ve been better.”

So had she. For a lot of reasons. The most pressing was Rex. She couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d once meant to her, couldn’t stop wondering if he was still alive and whether or not she’d contributed to his downfall. Although she’d grown used to living with fear, guilt was new and more difficult to tolerate. Then there was the embarrassment she’d been trying so hard to avoid. With Myles standing less than two feet away, it was virtually impossible to shove the memory of her offer and subsequent rejection into the recesses of her mind.

She considered apologizing for her behavior and blaming it on the wine, but she wasn’t one for excuses. The alcohol hadn’t changed how she felt, only revealed it. He probably understood that as well as she did. Besides, if he thought she was a tramp, maybe he’d make her life easier by staying away from her and refusing to let Jake hang out with him.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” She paused, but he didn’t take the opportunity to come to the point of his visit. Instead, silence fell.

“Can I speak with you for a few minutes?” he asked when she didn’t invite him in, as he’d obviously expected.

“Of course.”

His eyebrows slid up. “Do we have to do it right here?”

Mia would be less likely to overhear if they chatted on the porch. “Why not? It’s a beautiful day. I’ll join you.”

Stepping outside, she closed the door quietly behind her and crossed the wooden planks to one of the rocking chairs she’d picked up at an antique auction last summer. She loved these chairs. Their weathered look fit perfectly with the wide veranda and stark simplicity of her hundred-year-old house. Her hundred-year-old house.

But maybe not for long. If she had to go on the run, there’d be no way to make the payments. She wasn’t even sure she’d have the money to survive. She’d have to lean on Virgil, and how long could she expect him and Peyton to take care of her? It was possible they’d have to leave what they’d created, too.

“You’re not curious about why I’m here?” he asked, trailing after her.

She sat down and pulled her legs up to hide her chest. “Judging by the uniform, it looks official, so…I’m guessing you haven’t stopped by for a quickie.” She’d thought making light of her blunder would ease the awkwardness between them, but her joke didn’t draw the grin she’d been angling for—or any other indication that they could laugh about last night.

Instead, his gaze slid over her bare legs, making her regret the reference even more.

“Forget I said that,” she muttered. “It was my way of apologizing for putting you on the spot after you were kind enough to come to the rescue of my refrigerator. That’s all.”

“It was an apology?”

“That’s right.”

“Not a suggestion.”

She cleared her throat. It definitely wasn’t a suggestion. “I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.”

“How sorry are you?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m just wondering if you’re sorry enough to change your mind about letting me buy you dinner.”

Most men would be grinning while they threw out a line like that, but he wasn’t. Hugging her knees closer, she shook her head. “More like…embarrassed enough to avoid you in future.”

His eyebrows knotted in frustration. “You’re not giving us a chance.”

And he wasn’t used to that. She couldn’t name a single unattached woman, at least one anywhere close to his age, who wouldn’t drop everything to spend a couple of hours with him. All she heard was, “That poor Sheriff King. How he loved his wife.” While it was a compliment, it was almost always spoken with a certain wistfulness that said the speaker would like to be next in line.

Vivian wasn’t any different. She felt that same desire to have what Amber Rose King had enjoyed. But that wasn’t something she could have, not unless she somehow managed to free herself from the past. “Maybe I don’t have a choice.”

The interest that evoked made her regret saying it. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” She slapped the armrests of her chair for punctuation. “What brings you by today?”

He didn’t bother answering. “What are you afraid of?” he asked.

She ran a hand through her freshly cropped hair. A new habit. It still felt so foreign to her. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“I’ll help if you’ll let me, Vivian.”

“I know.” She smiled sadly. “There’s nothing you can do. Just…tell me why you’re here.”

His lips, normally so full and soft-looking, thinned. “When you were coming out of the bank today…”

Sitting taller, she steeled herself for what was coming. “Yes?”

“You were carrying something.”

“Chrissy Blabbermouth told you.”

“You thought she wouldn’t?”

“I knew she would. She uses any excuse to get your attention. But that doesn’t make her interference any less infuriating. What a busybody!”

He had a way of watching her as if he was waiting for an opportunity to peel back another layer. “Believe me, I’m not thrilled by her interest, but this time I’m glad she stuck her nose where it doesn’t belong.” He placed his hands on his hips. “Why don’t we talk about the gun.”

Too uncomfortable to remain in the same position, she released her legs. “It’s a method of self-defense, right? Surely I’m not the only one who has a gun around here.”

Judging by the unrelenting sternness of his mouth, he wasn’t going to let her dismiss it that easily. “Do you have a permit to carry a concealed weapon?”

She didn’t answer.

“Is that a no?”

Damn… “Everyone carries concealed around here whether they have a permit or not. Unless they’re waving it around in someone’s face or they’re making threats or they’re drunk…no one really cares. Or are you going to be a hard-ass?”

“Maybe.” He leaned against the railing. “Where’d you get it?”

“It was a gift from a relative.”

“You have relatives?”

He was teasing about the way she kept her life under wraps. She acknowledged it with a smirk. “One or two.”

“Where?”

“One’s in prison, if you must know.”

“Which prison?”

He was marking every detail she dropped. So why was she giving him another nugget of information? “That’s none of your business.”

“Are we talking about a father or a brother?”

She couldn’t resist. “Neither.”

“Then who?”

“An uncle, okay?” That was far enough removed…?.

“What’d he do?”

“Something that’s destroyed my life and the lives of almost everyone I love.”

“And that was…”

Taking a deep breath, she lifted her chin. “Never mind.”

“You can’t tell me that much and then retreat.”

Sure she could; she’d already gone too far. “It’s not something I’m willing to discuss.”

He was sifting through the possibilities. She could tell by his speculative expression. “That means you had two violent men in your life.”

“True.”

“How does your uncle connect with your ex? Did he shoot him?”

“No.”

“The two stories are unrelated?”

“Completely.” Except that she probably wouldn’t have married Tom if she hadn’t left home so early and been so desperate for a friend.

“Okay, so what were you doing with a gun at the bank?”

They were back to that. “What do you think?”

His scowl told her he didn’t understand why she had to be so contrary. “A straight answer might serve you better.”

The sun was hot today, but the trees around her house blocked its direct rays, and a gentle breeze, coming off the lake, cooled the air. Rarely did it go above eighty in Pineview. With all the wildflowers in bloom right now—the lupine, the Indian paintbrush, the kinnikin-nick ground cover—it was a beautiful time of year. She loved it here, especially in summer.

“I was getting it out of my safe-deposit box. What else?” she said with a shrug.

“Why today?”

“Why not today?”

“Does it have anything to do with recent events?”

“If by ‘recent events’ you mean Pat’s murder, yes.” It had even more to do with Rex’s disappearance, and the fact that he knew where she lived and could tell the wrong people if sufficiently motivated or careless, but that was one of those things she couldn’t talk about. Over the past four years, she’d gotten so good at guarding her tongue she weighed almost every sentence she spoke. The constant vigil was taxing, which must be the reason she was suddenly slipping up. She was so tired of the charade, of the caution and worry. She was also tired of spending so much time alone or on the internet, trying to fill her life with strangers or business associates who posed no threat. Even Claire didn’t know who she really was.

“How does Pat’s murder affect you?” he pressed.

“Unless you’ve caught the person who’s responsible, it affects everyone, doesn’t it?”

He shoved away from the railing. “That’s it? You’re worried about safety?”

“I think we all are.”

“Pat’s murder doesn’t hold any special significance to you.”

“I’m sad it happened.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

She ruffled her hair again. As short as it was, she couldn’t do any damage. “Then I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re after.”

“This doesn’t relate to your uncle or your ex-husband?”

“No.”

“Do you know anything about why it occurred? Who might be responsible?”

Guilt stabbed her like a knife to the gut. It was possible she did. If what she feared was true, she should say something. But what if she was wrong? The information she had to offer could derail the investigation as easily as help it…?.

It was better to wait. Why ruin the life she’d created here, which she was so intent on protecting, if she didn’t have to? “Of course not. What makes you think I might?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Something’s up with you. I can’t figure out what it is but—”

“I already explained.”

“When you told me about your ex-husband.”

“That’s right.”

“And his name is…”

Fresh alarm curled through Vivian’s veins. She couldn’t give him Tom’s name in case Myles used it to dig up her real identity. And yet she couldn’t come up with a good excuse not to. “I don’t even want to say it.”

“Because…”

Shit. She’d thought a quick mention of her abusive ex would put an end to the sheriff’s queries, provide an excuse for her secrets, but it’d only made him hungry for details. After two years in this place, she’d broken down and done exactly what she’d sworn she’d never do—she’d shared a specific detail that could, if she wasn’t careful, unravel the whole truth.

“Because he’s part of my past and I won’t revisit those years,” she said.

He turned her arm so he could see the scar Tom had left. “Tell me about this.”

Thanks to years of healing, the initials her ex had carved with his pocketknife weren’t as visible as they’d once been. Even if Myles could decipher them, there wasn’t much he could do with TH. But the possibility that she could be underestimating him added to her anxiety.

“There’s no need to go over it.” She pulled her arm out of his grasp. “It’s not related to anything.”

“Did you kill him?” His eyes seemed to drill a hole right through her.

“Who? My ex-husband? Of course not!”

Lines formed on his forehead. “Then why won’t you tell me about him?”

She stood. “Because it has nothing to do with you or…or this town…or Pat’s murder.”

“Are you on the run, Vivian?”

“No!”

“Then what?”

“I just want to mind my own business, to be left alone!”

He looked disappointed. “Thanks for the trust.”

“Why should I trust you? We barely know each other!”

“Is that right?”

“Yes! We—we’re neighbors, nothing more,” she said, but couldn’t quite meet his gaze because what they’d done in her dreams was certainly more intimate than anything that would occur between strangers.

He lowered his voice to a muted growl. “Then why do you find excuses to come outside whenever I’m working in the yard?”

Her mouth dropped open. This was the last thing she’d expected. “I—I don’t!”

“And why do you follow my every move when you think I’m not aware that you’re there?”

Oh, God… Heat rose to her cheeks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The invitation you extended last night didn’t come out of nowhere, Vivian. There are plenty of other men in Pineview who’d gladly take you to bed. But, to my knowledge, you’ve never had any of them over here.”

“That doesn’t mean I won’t!”

“Yes, it does. That’s not your style. What happened last night didn’t come from wanting to get laid as much as it came from all the hours you’ve watched me…like I’ve watched you.”

It was difficult to speak with her heart in her throat, but she had to make the effort, had to reel in the emotions that seemed to be exploding between them. “Look, I’ve already tried to explain. Last night was a—a mistake. One you won’t have to worry about me repeating. I don’t know what I was thinking or…or feeling, but…it was just a weak moment, okay?”

“And now you regret it.”

“Exactly.”

“Would you regret it as much if I’d said yes?”

“Probably more,” she admitted.

“That’s why I refused.”

She narrowed her eyes. If he wasn’t going to let her get away with anything, she’d hold him to the truth, too. “That isn’t the reason.”

“Then what is?”

“You’re afraid of me. Afraid of what you don’t know.”

He ignored the accusation. “About that gun…”

Her stomach muscles tightened. “What about it?” Would he confiscate her Sig? She got the impression he was considering it. But now that she’d made the decision to keep the weapon close at hand, she didn’t want to lose the advantage it could give her.

“It’s dangerous to have it in the house.”

It was more dangerous not to have it, which was why Virgil had given her the Sig in the first place. “I’ll be careful.”

“Do you really need it? I mean…I’m right next door.”

With a thirteen-year-old. No way would she get him involved if The Crew came to call. The Crew would kill him and Marley, just like they’d butchered that U.S. marshal…?.

The panic she’d felt as she called 9-1-1 that night a few years ago returned to her mind, along with the memory of the marshal’s blood, still warm, as she tried to hold the wound in his neck closed. She couldn’t let anything like that happen again. Ever. Which meant she had to control herself and her emotions. “Thank you, but…I can take care of myself.”

She’d offended him. He wanted her to rely on him as a lawman, if nothing more, but he didn’t argue with her or try to convince her. He nodded once and turned to go.

Unable to stifle the impulse, she followed him to the steps. “So…that’s all you have to say?”

When he faced her again, the hooded expression he’d worn since he arrived dropped, revealing raw desire. “Yes. No. Yes. No. You’re driving me crazy,” he murmured.

She was driving herself crazy, wanting what she couldn’t have. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?” he said, repeating her line from a moment before.

“Yes.” What more was there? She had no choice but to do exactly as she was doing.

“No.” He shook his head.

“No?”

“You want to keep your gun?”

Where was he going with this? She slid one arm around the pillar to steady herself. “You know I do.”

The emotion that’d burned so bright only a second before disappeared behind a professional facade. “Then go for a ride with me. Tonight at six-thirty. Marley will babysit.”

“The kids can’t stay here—” she started, but he cut her off.

“Then we’ll take them to my place.”

Even if The Crew was in town, they’d have no reason to go looking for her or her children at the sheriff’s house. Mia and Jake would be safe. But still… Was she getting in over her head?

“What if I refuse?”

“I’ll take your gun from you right now.”

She swallowed hard. “And if I go with you?”

“You might have a chance of keeping it.”

“Might?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether or not I’m convinced you know how to use it.”

This, she hadn’t expected. “Excuse me?”

“Bring it with you,” he said, and walked away. When he reached his car, he called back, “And dress warm. We’ll be taking the Ducati.”




7


Myles knew he shouldn’t push it with Vivian. She was too dodgy. Chasing someone so mysterious and closed off was asking for trouble. And yet…she attracted him like no one else. He hadn’t seen it coming, not initially, at least not the way it was currently playing out. He’d assumed he’d date her, see whether or not it went anywhere, and probably wind up moving on to the next candidate. He had no real hope he could meet someone he loved as much as Amber Rose.

But Vivian wouldn’t let their mutual interest travel along that well-worn path. She was so different from anyone he’d been with, so different from the kind of woman he’d married. Amber Rose had been a safe bet. Trusting, warm, sunny. Vivian, on the other hand, was complicated and full of shadows. That made her a definite risk. And he had no business taking a risk at this point in his life. Not with a daughter who’d already lost her mother…

So why couldn’t he seem to back away and forget his pretty neighbor?

Because he wanted her too badly. It was that simple. He’d been trying to engage her without climbing in too deep—get to know her better before deciding whether or not to lower his defenses. This was part of the reason, aside from the fact that she’d had too much wine, that he’d refused her last night. But she wouldn’t allow him to play it safe. He’d have to jump in over his head if he wanted to get wet at all.

Which was a stupid thing for him to do, right?

Of course. When he presented it to himself like that, he could see the danger easily enough.

He should call her and cancel…?.

But even as the thought crossed his mind, he knew he wouldn’t. Last night had lit a fuse. Now it burned quickly toward detonation and he was actually looking forward to the explosion. For the first time since Amber Rose died, he felt some positive emotion about life in general and his neighbor specifically—excitement, eagerness, arousal, curiosity. If Vivian offered him another opportunity like last night, he’d take it. Even if he wound up mired in regret, at least he’d escape the numb emptiness that had replaced the pain of losing Amber Rose.

He glanced at his watch. Pat’s autopsy was scheduled for three. He’d expected to have plenty of time to make it back, but lunch with Marley had taken longer than expected. He’d also stayed at Vivian’s too long. He needed to hurry if he wanted to observe the procedure.

The needle on his speedometer edged up to seventy-five as Pineview faded in his rearview mirror. Like his office, the morgue was in Libby, thirty minutes away. But less than five miles down the road, he spotted a vehicle broken down on the shoulder.

Because he was so intent on reaching the morgue, he almost left the driver to work it out on his own. Two men were with the car. But there wasn’t any cell service here, so they couldn’t call for help, and when he saw one of them limp around the vehicle to reach the engine, he slowed.

The man had an awkward gait, as if one leg was shorter than the other. Maybe the second guy, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, wasn’t any more mobile and that was why he hadn’t gotten out.

Flipping on his lights to warn other motorists to give them a wide berth, Myles pulled in behind the economy-size truck and cut the engine. Then he ran the California plate, only to learn that the computer system was down and had been for the past twenty minutes.

“No big deal,” he muttered. These boys just needed a hand. If he got them on their way soon enough he could still make the autopsy.

As Myles got out, the handicapped man leaned around the hood. “Afternoon, Officer.”

“Looks like you got trouble.” A red bucket of bolts, the truck probably hailed from the early nineties.

“Radiator’s busted,” came the response.

Camping and fishing gear filled the bed, not unusual for this time of year. The person inside the cab stared at Myles through his open window but stayed put. He seemed young. Not young enough to be the driver’s son, but maybe a nephew or brother.

The lame guy leaned heavily on his hands, as if it pained him to support his own weight. Although dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a ball cap, which didn’t expose a lot of skin, what skin Myles could see as he drew closer was covered with ink, even his face. The images of snakes and gargoyles were off-putting enough to make Myles wish he’d been able to run the license plate. He dealt with a lot of tourists, mostly men, some of them pretty rough. But this guy went beyond anything he’d seen since his days on the force in Phoenix. His appearance and lack of relief at the prospect of having help, not to mention the way the fellow behind the wheel pulled his ball cap down and sank lower in the seat, set Myles’s cop instincts abuzz.

He immediately thought of Pat’s murder and wished he could find out if they were driving a stolen vehicle or had outstanding warrants. “Engine’s hot, huh?” he said.

“Too hot to drive without cracking the block.” A jug of water sat on the ground next to the speaker. Obviously he’d done what he could to remedy the problem.

Judging by the burned smell, Myles thought it was too late to save the engine. “If that’s true, it can’t be driven. Why don’t I call for a tow? Harvey can come out, pick you up and take you and your vehicle into town.”





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