LITMIR.BIZ

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in Garza County?”

      His eyes narrowed slightly, and she realized she’d made a mistake. What would a Barstow County deputy know about a construction company two counties to the south?

      “Have you been investigating me?” His tone wasn’t threatening, but his grip on the Ruger tightened enough to make her stomach turn a flip.

      She decided honesty was her best option. “We don’t get a lot of strangers in Cold Creek.”

      “So you did a background check?”

      “Not quite that drastic. I just looked up your name in the computer. With a few search parameters.”

      “What did you find?”

      “More questions than answers.”

      His lips quirked at her admission. “I’m an open book.” He didn’t even bother to pretend he was telling the truth.

      She smiled. “If you were, you wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.”

      One of his dark eyebrows lifted, but he didn’t respond.

      She was starting to feel shaky again, she realized. Some of the adrenaline that had kept her on her feet and moving had begun to seep away, and her injuries were making themselves known again.

      She tried not to let it show, but John’s sharp gaze missed nothing. “I think that car is trying to wait us out. So maybe we should do the same. We have backup coming. So let’s go sit by the fire. It’s cold in here.”

      She let him lead her back to the fireplace and gratefully sank onto the comfortable cushions of the sofa. The heat from the fireplace felt like a living thing, wrapping around her with tendrils of warmth until some of the shivers subsided.

      “You’re a Cold Creek native?” John asked a few minutes later, breaking the silence that had fallen between them.

      “Born and bred.”

      “You like it out here?”

      “I do,” she said with a slight lift of her chin. She saw the hint of a smile curve his lips in response and felt a little childish, as if she’d stamped her foot and dared him to disagree.

      “It’s not quite what I expected.” He didn’t sound negative, just bemused, which was a good mark in her book. She knew few people who could appreciate the flat, wind-blown plains and endless isolation. But at least John Blake hadn’t outright dismissed the possibility of its appeal.

      “What did you expect?”

      “More heat, for one thing.”

      “You came to the wrong part of Texas at the wrong time for that.”

      “So I’ve discovered.”

      “Where are you from originally?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

      He shot her a look. “Didn’t your background check tell you that?”

      “I didn’t find your birth certificate or anything.”

      “Johnson City, Tennessee,” he said.

      Where his father’s accounting firm was located. “You worked for an overseas company a while back, right?”

      His lips quirked again. Not quite a smile, but close. “Yeah. For about a year.”

      “Didn’t like global marketing?”

      Her question made him smile. A knowing, secret-keeping smile that made her curious streak vibrate like a tuning fork in the pit of her stomach.

      “I think it’s more a matter of global marketing not liking me—” He stopped short, his head cocked. “Do you hear that?”

      She listened, hearing nothing. “I don’t hear anything.”

      “Exactly.” He rose and edged his way back toward the window, staying clear of the glass panes as he checked outside. His back stiffened. “The car is gone.”

      Miranda joined him at the window. He was right. The car was no longer idling on the highway out front. “Do you think it’s a way to lure us out of the house?”

      He gave her a thoughtful look. “I don’t know. But I don’t hear its engine running anymore. Do you?”

      “No.” But she did hear something else, she realized. “Sirens.”

      They were only faintly audible. She supposed the walls of the house muffled the sound somewhat. But whoever had been sitting in that sedan outside might have heard them coming a good bit earlier.

      “Maybe the sirens scared them away,” John said, reading her thoughts.

      Within a couple of minutes, a sheriff’s department cruiser pulled up outside the house, and the sheriff himself, Miles Randall, emerged from the cruiser, along with one of the younger deputies, Tim Robertson.

      John unlocked the door and opened it before the sheriff had a chance to knock. Randall stepped back in surprise, one hand dropping to the pistol holstered at his hip.

      “It’s okay,” Miranda said quickly, showing herself.

      Randall reacted with surprise at the sight of her. “Good God, Duncan, You look like hell.”

      “Thanks.”

      Randall gave John Blake a quick, curious glance, then looked at her again. “Want to tell me what happened?”

      “That,” she admitted, “is a very good question.”

      * * *

      IT TURNED OUT that the deputy Sheriff Randall had brought with him had previously been a volunteer fireman with some paramedic training. Tim Robertson looked ridiculously young to John, but he assessed Miranda’s condition as if he knew what he was doing, working with a skillful efficiency that set John’s mind at ease.

      Sheriff Miles Randall was a tall, rangy man with a drawl as big as, well, Texas. He questioned John about what he’d witnessed, asking good questions and not overplaying his suspicions. But John could tell Randall wasn’t ready to trust his word completely.

      John couldn’t blame the sheriff. He wasn’t exactly a man without secrets.

      “I think we need to get you at least to the clinic in town,” Randall told Miranda after Tim Robertson finished his examination. “Tim’s not a doctor, and your daddy would kill me if I didn’t make sure you’re not going to keel over the second I leave you alone.”

      Miranda smiled. “I promise, I won’t. But shouldn’t someone stay here and protect the crime scene?”

      “That’s what Tim’s here for.”

      Miranda’s gray-eyed gaze slanted toward John, as if looking for his input. He straightened his spine, surprised. What did she expect him to do, back her up? Tell the sheriff he wanted her to stay?

      He did, he realized. He wanted her to stay. But that was a selfish impulse, fed by his hormones and his isolation out here.

      “You should do what the sheriff says, Deputy Duncan,” he said, keeping his tone impersonal. Formal.

      Her brow wrinkled briefly at his words, but her expression shuttered quickly. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Blake.”

      “Glad I was here.” As she started to turn to go, he said, “Wait.”

      She looked at him, her expression somewhere between curious and wary.

      He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Inside, he withdrew the card he’d picked up earlier that morning at the hardware store. Her father’s name was on the front. He flipped it over. “Can I borrow a pen?” he asked the sheriff.

      The sheriff pulled a pen from his front breast pocket and handed it over, his expression watchful.

      John jotted his

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