LITMIR.BIZ

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inside the mansion at the moment of Everly’s demise.

      No more than sixty seconds had passed. Still no one appeared in the yard to check out a shot in the dark, but the turmoil in the stables escalated.

      Six months ago what Matt knew about horses could have fit onto the head of a pin, but even then he’d have recognized the high-pitched whinnying and the sounds of hooves crashing against barriers for what it was. The edge of stampede behavior in what amounted to a lockdown situation. A disaster waiting to happen to very pricey animals.

      Was it the gunshot, or the scent of death permeating the frozen night air that incited the panic?

      Fiona Halsey had to have her hands full.

      Matt moved through the silent house toward the back. Through the open front door where Everly lay dead, Matt heard a male voice bellowing. “What in Sam Hill’s going on? Fiona!”

      Geary, Matt assumed. He stripped off his gloves and stuffed them along with the printouts into his duffel bag, then let himself out through the back door. He reversed his earlier sabotage to the alarm system and then, hugging the exterior walls of the ranch house, circled round to its southwest corner. There, crouched out of sight at the base of a box-elder hedge, he watched.

      Geary came out of the bunkhouse, stuffing his arms into a heavy parka as Matt took up his position.

      “Halsey!” His hair tousled, indignant as hell, Geary hunched down into his coat and started for the Lexus with its interior light burning and the passenger door still hanging open. Some realization must have kicked its way through to his foggy head.

      Geary stopped bellowing for Fiona, whose hands he had to know were full-up taking care of the horses. He froze in his tracks. He turned slowly and stared hard at the front door gaping wide open under the porch lights. A siren began to wail in the distance. Geary’s girlfriend popped out of a door in the bunkhouse. “Dennis, what’s going on?”

      “Get back inside, you idiot!” he barked, bellowing again for Fiona as he ran to the porch.

      Then Fiona Halsey let herself out of the barn. Her long, dark blond hair hung heavily down her back; tension rode her hard. “Geary, I swear, if you don’t cut it out—”

      She never finished the sentence. The siren grew more and more shrill, and she forgot whatever she’d been thinking about the blaring horn and gunfire and Geary’s subsequent bellowing.

      Geary had launched himself up onto the porch and out of Matt’s line of vision. “He’s dead, Halsey! Everly’s dead!” he shouted over the shrill noise of the oncoming siren. “What the devil? D’you do this?”

      Focused now on her, Matt watched disbelief replace the irritation on her face. His knees stiffened and the cold brought on a shiver. He watched her lips shaping the answer to Geary’s question, Don’t be an ass, Dennis, but what Matt supposed must be the sheriff’s SUV, brakes screeching, turned off the highway and up the country lane. The siren drowned out the sound of her voice.

      Belatedly, maybe goaded by the shrill approach, she ran toward the porch herself as Geary’s girlfriend closed herself back into the bunkhouse.

      Matt snapped shut his binoculars and shook his head in disbelief over the unlikely speed of the local law enforcement arriving on the scene. Was it the sheriff Everly had been talking to when he was gunned down?

      Matt drew a deep, silent breath and faced the crucial decision—stay or go. He had only seconds to conceal himself in a better position to observe what went on, or to head back up the mountainside. He could observe perfectly well from the spot where his horse was tethered, but he wouldn’t be able to hear what was said.

      He scanned the gabled roofs of the house, the barn and the bunkhouse, then backed around the length of hedge, keeping his options open for those few seconds as the sheriff’s vehicle slammed to a stop and two men piled out.

      The larger of the two, clearly in authority, was Dex Hanifen, the Johnson County sheriff. “Fiona? Geary? What’s going on here?”

      His deputy, Crider, scurried up to the porch at the front door where Everly’s body lay collapsed. “Oh, my God, Dex! It’s Kyle! Deader than a doornail.”

      Hanifen stared. “No way—”

      Crider began to moan, cutting him off. “Yeah, boss. He’s shot in the back. Jeez, Dex, the blood!” He swore, and then gagged and retched and threw up.

      Hanifen cut loose a blue streak about contaminating a crime scene and all but flew up the steps and as quickly hurled Crider off the porch. He shouted at Geary, ordering him to his side. “I need some help here.”

      The man stalled. “You want me to look around, Dex? I could see—”

      “Sure, Geary. I’ve got a moron deputy woofing his cookies in the middle of a crime scene, and I’m dead certain the murderer’s waiting around to be discovered,” Hanifen snarled. “Now get your butt over here and give me a hand with this freaking mess.”

      The moment Geary stepped reluctantly forward, Matt moved out. He chose the roof of the barn so that if he slipped, the noise would go unnoticed. He circled around, far outside the perimeter of the yard lights.

      At the west end of the barn he climbed onto the paddock fence and gripped the edge of the roof. He swung forward hard and jackknifed his body onto the rooftop, landing with a lot more noise than he’d hoped.

      “What the hell was that?” he heard Crider shout.

      “The horses, you ninny.” Hanifen’s voice. Wildly grateful for the sheriff’s preoccupied impatience, Matt nevertheless plastered himself to the roof. Scraped raw in the maneuver, his hands felt on fire, but he didn’t move, hardly breathed.

      Matt heard Hanifen get on the radio and order in help to seal off, search out and protect the evidence. “And the horses are getting whacked out, so whatever you do, don’t put on the siren.”

      Matt gauged his position on the roof and moved crabwise to situate himself before Fiona went back into the stables. He just glimpsed her entering below him as he molded himself to the asphalt shingles to watch what was going on.

      Not another five minutes had passed before a second vehicle with the county sheriff’s logo pulled into the yard. If the killer had made any tracks, if the shell casing had been left on the ground, if any number of possible clues to the killer’s identity remained in the drive or yard, Matt thought the sheriff’s crew was doing one hell of a job laying waste to the evidence.

      He stayed on the roof growing stiffer, colder and more irritated by the moment for nearly two hours. Photos were taken of Everly’s position when he fell over dead. Hanifen conducted a cursory search of the house and ruled out the necessity of bringing in crime-scene technicians.

      The murder, after all, had taken place on the front stoop by a shooter outside the house.

      One would think, if one didn’t know better, Matt thought, that the sheriff didn’t give a damn about preserving the integrity of the evidence. Matt had to wonder if there was any percentage at all in staying on the roof, observing, listening.

      Then, just as he’d decided to move out, Matt got his payoff. Hanifen and Crider wound up virtually beneath Matt’s position, leaning in against the stable wall, lighting their smokes.

      “I’ll bet you anything the princess killed him,” Hanifen’s underling was saying.

      “Maybe,” the sheriff returned, “but I’m not taking her in tonight.”

      “But—”

      “But what?” A cloud of smoke chased the sheriff’s abrupt interruption, wafting upward toward Matt.

      “Well, she’s a flight risk for one thing—”

      “Oh, stifle it, Crider,” Hanifen snapped. “This is not New York and you are not on NYPD Blue. Fiona Halsey has motive up the ying-yang, she had opportunity, and—”

      “And

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