LITMIR.BIZ

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If he even knew them… “Look, your meeting is with an FBI agent and you may be transferring services,” Archie had told her. “That’s all I’m at liberty to say.”

       “Why?” she’d asked him. “I don’t want to change agencies!”

       “Hey, it’s come down from the brass, kiddo, and it sounds unusual—two federal agencies getting together on a friendly basis. Hallelujah!” Archie rolled his eyes. “No one’s going to force you to change. You’re being presented with an opportunity. You can say no. I mean it. If you don’t like this offer, you have the option to pack up and come home, with no harm done to your status here. So quit asking me questions. Go away. Don’t darken my door—for the time being, anyway. You have things to do, arrangements to make.” He’d sent her one of his lopsided grins. She liked Archie and considered him a great boss. He was always easygoing until he went into “situation” mode and then he could spew out orders faster and with more precision than the toughest drill sergeant.

       Sometimes, of course, she wondered what Archie really thought of her. She was good at her job, although some of her methods were a bit unexpected. Luckily, a lot of criminals were still sexist. They didn’t realize that a woman could and would hold them to task, shoot with uncanny aim and manage handcuffs with ease. But she’d felt Archie’s eyes on her a few times when she hadn’t really been able to explain the intuition that had led to her discovery of a cache of drugs, a hiding place—or a dead body. She even wondered if he was hoping she’d take another position.

       Today, soon, she’d attend a meeting with a man from the FBI: He had an offer for her that presumably had to do with the unique abilities she’d shown during her two years with the government, and due to the status of this particular branch of service, various government offices were cooperating. On the one hand, she felt like telling someone that if she’d wanted to work for the FBI, she would have applied to the FBI. But she was curious, and she wasn’t prone to be difficult; it was just the mystery of the situation.

       Law enforcement agencies were not known for their cooperation—rather sad, really, since they were all working toward the same goal. That was one of the reasons she’d loved working in Key West; they had plenty to deal with, but they were smaller, and thus got along fairly well. Drugs were constantly out on the waterways. The Coast Guard was overworked, ditto the state police and the county police. The cops in Key West loved the Marshals. It had all been pretty good. State police, Monroe County police, the Coast Guard and the U.S. Marshal’s Office, all getting along, most of them meeting for a beer here and there on Duval Street or some off-the-tourist track location. In her case, it had probably helped that she’d gone to the University of Miami and done an internship with the U.S. Marshal’s Office. She’d zeroed in on her chosen profession early. And she’d expected to stay in south Florida.

       To contemplate a life here, in Texas, was just…strange.

       Nothing wrong with Texas, of course.

       But she had it all figured out. It was the water. In San Antonio, there was no coast. There was the river, though.

       She glanced at her watch. Two hours until her meeting.

       When she looked out the window again, she nearly jumped. In those few seconds, a massive crow had landed on the outer sill. The damned thing seemed to be staring at her. She waved a hand at it.

       The bird didn’t fly away. It continued to stare.

       Then it pecked the window.

       She almost stepped back, then didn’t. She scowled at the bird. “I’m a United States Marshal, and I will not be intimated by a bird!” she said aloud.

       “What’s that?”

       Kelsey swung around. Sandy Holly had come breezing into the kitchen.

       “You have really big, aggressive birds around here,” Kelsey said.

       “We do?”

       “Yeah, look!”

       When she turned to the window again, the crow was gone. It bothered Kelsey to realize that the bird disturbed her. Ah, well, she had discovered earlier that one of the men she’d be meeting was Agent Crow. Maybe that knowledge had made the bird’s appearance seem like something more—like some kind of omen, for good or…

       Sandy smiled, raising her eyebrows. “Anyone would think you were trying not to like Texas,” she said.

       “No, no, I love Texas. Texas is great,” Kelsey told her.

       “Maybe you’re just a little nervous. This is the big day, right?”

       “This is it,” Kelsey agreed. Sandy Holly was proving to be a true friend. Kelsey had gotten to know her almost twenty years ago, when they’d been a pair of awkward eight-year-olds at the West Texas dude ranch Kelsey’s parents had been sure she’d want to attend. But she’d been terrified of horses, while Sandy was terrified of being alone. Sandy had ridden before, even at five, because…because she was a Texan from San Antonio. Texans rode horses and wore big hats. So, at eight, Kelsey had toughened up enough to tell Sandy she didn’t need to be homesick, and Sandy had promised Kelsey she’d learn to love horses. She did, Kelsey mused. Thanks to Sandy, she’d become an excellent rider. And, thanks to Sandy, she’d known where she wanted to stay when she came to San Antonio. The Longhorn Inn and Saloon.

       It wasn’t as if they’d seen each other frequently. After a few years, they had skipped camps of any kind. But they’d met with other friends in Vegas to celebrate their respective twenty-first birthdays and kept up with each other through Facebook and email. When she’d first talked about applying to be a U.S. Marshal, Sandy had encouraged her.

       Kelsey was particularly glad to be here because Sandy wasn’t in great shape at the moment—taking over the old inn had proven to be a monumental task, and there were problems Sandy had hinted about that Kelsey didn’t entirely understand. They hadn’t really had a chance to sit down and talk, since Sandy was running a business, which meant her time was limited. It was even more limited because she’d lost a manager the week before—the young man simply hadn’t shown up for work—and while Sandy had a great housekeeping staff of three, the organizational and hostessing duties had all fallen to her. Of course, as Kelsey well knew, Sandy could be high-strung, and she wondered if working for her friend wasn’t a little stressful. On the plus side, Sandy did like to hire college guys who needed a break on a résumé. None of them seemed to last too long, however.

       Sandy walked over to some controls on the kitchen wall and squinted as she looked at them. “Hmm. I’m going to hope this turns on the music and doesn’t open the storm windows,” she said, twisting the dial.

       Country rock filled the air.

       “I think you got it,” Kelsey told her.

       “How about some coffee?”

       “You can actually sit for a few minutes?” Kelsey asked. “And tell me what’s up?”

       Sandy poured coffee into cups and set them on the table, shrugging. “There’s nothing really wrong. The past few days around here have been tense, that’s all. People are so ridiculous!”

       “Okay, explain, will you?”

       Sandy let out a long sigh. “It’s just this haunted thing about the inn. I sometimes wonder if I was crazy or what to get involved with it, even though I like a ghost story as much as anyone. Well, you know I’ve wanted this place for years. I’ve always been fascinated by the history—especially what happened to Rose Langley.”

       “The poor girl who was killed right before the fall of the Alamo?” Kelsey asked.

       Sandy nodded. “Rose was killed by her lover—or pimp, depending on how you want to look at it—in Room 207. It’s a sad story about a good girl gone wrong. She took off from her parents’ home because she was madly in love with Taylor Grant, and when they were in Galveston, she ended up being more or less kidnapped by a notorious bad guy named Matt Meyer, who wounded Grant. She might have fought Meyer and gained

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