LITMIR.BIZ

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button. “You have a visitor, sir,” she announced.

      There was a murmur. “Who is it?”

      She looked at Carson. “The gentleman who starts fires with hand grenades,” she said sweetly.

      Carson stared at her with icy black eyes.

      Cash’s door opened, and there was Carlie’s father, a man in a very expensive suit and Cash.

      That explained why her father had left home so early. He was out of town, as he’d said he would be; out of Comanche Wells, where they lived, anyway. Not that Jacobsville was more than a five-minute drive from home.

      “Carson,” Cash said, nodding. “I think you know Reverend Blair and my brother, Garon?”

      “Yes.” Carson shook hands with them.

      Carlie was doing mental shorthand. Garon Grier was senior special agent in charge of the Jacobsville branch of the FBI. He’d moved to Jacobsville some time ago, but the FBI branch office hadn’t been here quite as long. Garon had been with the bureau for a number of years.

      Carlie wondered what was going on that involved both the FBI and her father. But she knew that question would go unanswered. Her father was remarkably silent on issues that concerned law enforcement, although he knew quite a few people in that profession.

      She recalled with a chill the telephone conversation she’d had recently with someone who called and said, “Tell your father he’s next.” She couldn’t get anybody to tell her what they thought it meant. It was disturbing, like the news she’d overheard that the man who’d put a knife in her, trying to kill her father, had been poisoned and died.

      Something big was going on, linked to that Wyoming murder and involving some politician who had ties to a drug cartel. But nobody told Carlie anything.

      * * *

      “WELL, I’LL BE OFF. I have a meeting in San Antonio,” Reverend Blair said, taking his leave. He paused at Carlie’s desk. “Don’t do anything fancy for supper, okay?” he asked, smiling. “I may be very late.”

      “Okay, Dad.” She grinned up at him.

      He ruffled her hair and walked out.

      Carson was watching the interplay with cynical eyes.

      “Doesn’t your dad ruffle your hair?” she asked sarcastically.

      “No. He did lay a chair across it once.” He averted his eyes at once, as if the comment had slipped out against his will and embarrassed him.

      Carlie tried not to stare. What in the world sort of background did he come from? The violence struck a chord in her. She had secrets of her own from years past.

      “Carson,” Garon Grier said, pausing at the door. “We may need you at some point.”

      Carson nodded. “I’ll be around.”

      “Thanks.”

      Garon waved at his brother, smiled at Carlie and let himself out the door.

      “Something perking?” Carson asked Cash.

      “Quite a lot, in fact. Carlie, hold my calls until I tell you,” he instructed.

      “Sure thing, Boss.”

      “Come on in.” Cash went ahead into his office.

      Carson paused by Carlie’s desk and glared at her.

      She glared back. “If you don’t stop scowling at me, I’m going to ask the chief to frisk you for hand grenades,” she muttered.

      “Frisk me yourself,” he dared softly.

      The flush deepened, darkened.

      His black eyes narrowed, because he knew innocence when he saw it; it was that rare in his world. “Clueless, aren’t you?” he chided.

      She lifted her chin and glared back. “My father is a minister,” she said with quiet pride.

      “Really?”

      She frowned, cocking her head. “Excuse me?”

      “Are you coming in or not?” Cash asked suddenly, and there was a bite in his voice.

      Carson seemed faintly surprised. He followed Cash into the office. The door closed. There were words spoken in a harsh tone, followed by a pause and a suddenly apologetic voice.

      Carlie paid little attention. Carson had upset her nerves. She wished her boss would find someone else to talk to. Her job had been wonderful and satisfying until Carson started hanging around the office all the time. Something was going on, something big. It involved local and federal law enforcement—she was fairly certain that the chief’s brother didn’t just happen by to visit—and somehow, it also involved her father.

      She wondered if she could dig any information out of her parent if she went about it in the right way. She’d have to work on that.

      Then she recalled that phone call that she’d told her father about, just recently. A male voice had said, simply, “Tell your father, he’s next.” It had been a chilling experience, one she’d forced to the back of her mind. Now she wondered if all the traffic through her boss’s office involved her in some way, as well as her father. The man who’d tried to kill him had died, mysteriously poisoned.

      She still wondered why anybody would attack a minister. That remark of Carson’s made her curious. She’d said her father was a minister and he’d said, “Really?” in that sarcastic, cold tone of voice. Why?

      “I’m a mushroom,” she said to herself. “They keep me in the dark and feed me manure.” She sighed and went back to work.

      * * *

      SHE WAS ON the phone with the sheriff’s office when Carson left. He went by her desk with only a cursory glance at her, and it was, of all things, placid. Almost apologetic. She lowered her eyes and refused to even look at him.

      Even if she’d found him irresistible—and she was trying not to—his reputation with women made her wary of him.

      Sure, it was a new century, but Carlie was a small-town girl and raised religiously. She didn’t share the casual attitude of many of her former classmates about physical passion.

      She grimaced. It was hard to be a nice girl when people treated her like a disease on legs. In school, they’d made fun of her, whispered about her. One pretty, popular girl said that she didn’t know what she was missing and that she should live it up.

      Carlie just stared at her and smiled. She didn’t say anything. Apparently the smile wore the other girl down because she shrugged, turned her back and walked off to whisper to the girls in her circle. They all looked at Carlie and laughed.

      She was used to it. Her father said that adversity was like grit, it honed metal to a fine edge. She’d have liked to be honed a little less.

      They were right about one thing; she really didn’t know what she was missing. It seemed appropriate, because she’d read about sensations she was supposed to feel with men around, and she didn’t feel any of them.

      She chided herself silently. That was a lie. She felt them when she was close to Carson. She knew that he was aware of it, which made it worse. He laughed at her, just the way her classmates had laughed at her in school. She was the odd one out, the misfit. She had a reason for her ironclad morals. Many local people knew them, too. Episodes in her childhood had hardened her.

      Well, people tended to be products of their upbringing. That was life. Unless she wanted to throw away her ideals and give up religion, she was pretty much settled in her beliefs. Maybe it wasn’t so bad being a misfit. Her late grandfather had said that civilizations rested on the bedrock of faith and law and the arts. Some people had to be conventional to keep the mechanism going.

      “What was that?” Sheriff Hayes’s receptionist asked.

      “Sorry.”

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