LITMIR.BIZ

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      “What’s in Madison?”

      “What do you mean, what’s in Madison? My life is in Madison.”

      “I just meant, what do you do there?”

      “I’m an assistant to the city manager.”

      It sounded like a dull job to him, but he wasn’t about to say so. “How long have you lived there?” he asked.

      “Five years.”

      “Are you married? Any children?”

      “That is none of your business.”

      Of course not. He was just trying to make conversation. He focused on driving, both hands gripping the steering wheel. The silence stretched between them.

      “I’m not married, and I don’t have children. I’m not even dating anyone in particular,” she said after a long moment.

      “You were right,” he said. “It’s none of my business.”

      “What about you, Officer Knightbridge? Are you married?”

      Was she asking because she was truly interested, or merely to even the score? “The only woman in my life right now is Lotte.” It was a line he’d used before; if the woman he said it to smiled, he figured they might hit it off.

      Sophie didn’t smile. Instead, she glanced back at the dog, who sat in her usual position, facing forward, ears up, expression eager and alert. He understood that Lotte could be a little intimidating, if you didn’t know her. After all, part of her job was to intimidate, even subdue, criminals. “She’s really a sweetheart,” he said. “And she’s had years of training. She’d only hurt someone to protect me.”

      “I’ll keep that in mind.” But her grim expression didn’t ease.

      “Why are you afraid of dogs?” he asked. He knew such people existed, but he didn’t understand their fear. He liked all dogs. And Lotte was his best friend, not merely his working partner.

      “I was bitten as a child. I had to have plastic surgery.” She indicated a faint scar on the side of her face, barely visible alongside her mouth.

      He winced. “I can see how that would be traumatic, but I promise, Lotte won’t hurt you. Think of her as an overly hairy officer with a tail.”

      As he’d hoped, the absurd description made her mouth quirk up almost in a smile. “What kind of dog is she?” she asked.

      “A Belgian Malinois. A herding dog, like a German shepherd, but smaller. She only weighs sixty pounds.”

      “She looks huge to me.”

      “By police-dog standards, she’s on the small side, but she’s an expert tracker.”

      “Too bad she can’t track down my sister.”

      “She might be able to, if we knew the right place to look.”

      She stared out the window at the passing landscape of open rangeland and scrubby trees. “Where do we start?”

      “Like the captain said, we’ll ask around at the local motels and hotels, see if anyone remembers her.”

      “Why didn’t you do that before?”

      A reasonable question from someone to whom the missing person was one of the most important people on earth. “I don’t want to sound callous,” he said, “but with no sign of foul play and no one pressing us on the matter, your sister’s whereabouts weren’t a high priority. We’ve had murders and drug cases and even suspected terrorism to deal with. We only have so many people and so many hours in the day.”

      “Then I guess it’s a good thing I came down here,” she said.

      “Don’t think no one cares about your sister,” he said. “Remember, that reporter has been trying to find out what happened to her. But she hasn’t come up with any new information, either.”

      “How do you know she hasn’t come up with any new information? Maybe she didn’t bother telling you because she thought you wouldn’t pay attention.”

      “Oh, she knows we’d pay attention. She’s engaged to the captain. If she found out anything important, she wouldn’t give him any peace until he followed up on it.” He glanced at her. “So you see, we’re on the same side here. And maybe we’ll find out something useful today—provided your sister wasn’t staying with a friend, or camping out.”

      “Lauren definitely isn’t the camping type, and I couldn’t find that she knew anyone here in town— except Mr. Prentice.”

      “We’ve been watching his place pretty closely and we haven’t seen any sign of your sister there.”

      She tensed, and leaned toward him. “Why are you watching Mr. Prentice? Is it because he’s...what was the word the other officer used—an agitator?”

      Prentice liked to agitate all right, but Rand didn’t care so much about that. Part of wearing a uniform was knowing some people didn’t like you on principle. “Mr. Prentice’s estate is an inholding, completely surrounded by public land. It makes sense for us to keep an eye on his place.” He hoped that was enough to satisfy Sophie’s curiosity. He couldn’t tell her they suspected the billionaire was using his wealth for more than investing in real estate and businesses. Their investigations had linked him, albeit tenuously, to everything from drug runners to foreign terrorists. Sooner or later, the Rangers were going to find the evidence they needed to make him pay for his crimes.

      “How many motels and hotels are there in the area?” Sophie’s question pulled Rand’s attention back to her, and today’s search for her missing sister.

      “A bunch,” he said. “But we can narrow the field by focusing on the most likely places for your sister to stay. She strikes me as a classy woman, so we can move the obvious roach motels to the bottom of the list. Where do you think she’d be?”

      She considered the question for a moment, brow furrowed and lips pursed. “She’d probably pick the first nice-looking place she came to when she drove into town. She wasn’t the type to spend a lot of time driving around, looking.”

      “That would be either the Country Inn or the Mountain View.”

      “No chains?” she asked.

      “Would your sister prefer a chain? There’s a Holiday Inn and a Ramada closer to the center of town.”

      “No, she wouldn’t care about that, as long as the place looked clean.”

      He drove to the Country Inn first. Red geraniums bloomed in window boxes against rows of white-framed windows trimmed in white shutters. A water wheel turned in a flower-lined pond near the entrance, splashing water that sparkled in the sun. “Lauren would have liked this,” Sophie said.

      Rand parked, but left the car running, with the air-conditioning on, to avoid overheating the dog. “Lotte, wait here,” he said. “We’ll be back in a minute.”

      “You talk to her as if she understands you,” Sophie said as they crossed the parking lot.

      “Of course she understands me. Do you have a picture of your sister with you?”

      “Yes.” She took her phone from her purse and flipped to a shot of Lauren Starling seated in a restaurant booth, smiling at the camera and holding up a colorful cocktail. “I took this when she visited Wisconsin for my birthday last year.”

      He didn’t miss the sadness in her voice. “It’s a great picture,” he said. “We’ll need it to show to the clerk.”

      The lobby of the motel was busy, with a couple flipping through brochures at one end of the counter, a pair of tweens choosing sodas from a machine and a businessman checking in. The clerk behind the counter was probably a college student from the local university, Rand decided. She had

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