LITMIR.BIZ

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chuckled softly. “Be careful what you say when you think people aren’t listening,” he added. He turned and left her staring after him.

      * * *

      LATER, SHE ASKED her father if he’d ratted her out.

      He chuckled. “No. But the house is bugged like a messy kitchen,” he confessed. “Be careful what you say.”

      “Gee, thanks for telling me after I said all sorts of things about Carson,” she murmured.

      He laughed. “He’s got a thick skin. It won’t bother him.”

      She studied him quietly. “Why are they after me?”

      He drew in a long breath. “There are some political maneuvers going on. You have a photographic memory. Maybe you saw someone other than the murder victim, and the man behind the plot is afraid you’ll remember who it is.”

      “Shades of Dalton Kirk,” she said, recalling that the Wyoming rancher had been warned by the woman who became his wife about a vision of him being attacked for something he didn’t even remember he’d seen.

      “Exactly.”

      She poured them second cups of coffee. “So I guess it’s back to checking under the truck every time I drive it.”

      “Oh, that never stopped,” her father said with a chuckle. “I’ve just been doing it for you.”

      She smiled at him. “That’s my dad, looking out for me,” she said with real affection.

      His pale blue eyes were sad. “There was a long period of time when I didn’t look out for anybody except myself,” he said quietly. “Your mother wouldn’t even let anybody tell me how sick she was until it was too late.” He lowered his gaze to the coffee. “I made a lot of mistakes out of selfishness. I hope that someday I’ll be able to make up for a little of it.”

      She sipped coffee. “You never talk about your life before you went to the seminary,” she pointed out.

      He smiled sadly. “I’m ashamed to.”

      “You were overseas a lot.”

      He nodded. “In a number of dangerous foreign places, where life is dirt cheap.”

      She pursed her lips and stared at him. “You know, Michelle’s guardian, Gabriel Brandon, spent a lot of time overseas also.”

      He lifted an eyebrow and smiled placidly. “Are you fishing?”

      She shrugged. But she didn’t look away.

      He finished his coffee. “Let’s just say that I had connections that aren’t obvious ones, and I made my living in a shadow world.”

      She frowned. “You aren’t wanted in some country whose name I can’t pronounce?”

      He laughed. “Nothing like that.”

      “Okay.”

      He stood up. “But I do have enemies who know where I live. In a general sense. So it’s smart to take precautions.” He smiled gently. “I wasn’t always a minister, pumpkin.”

      She was remembering Carson’s sarcastic comment when she’d mentioned that her father was a minister. She hadn’t known that he was aware of things about her parent that she wasn’t.

      “I feel like a mushroom,” she muttered.

      He bent and kissed her hair. “Believe me, you’re better off being one. See you later. I have some phone calls to make.”

      * * *

      HE LOCKED HIMSELF in his study and she went to watch the news on television. It was mostly boring, the same rehashed subjects over and over again, interspersed with more commercials than she could stomach. She turned it off and went upstairs.

      “No wonder people stopped watching television,” she grumbled as she wandered back to her bedroom. “Why don’t you just stop showing any programs and show wall-to-wall commercials, for heaven’s sake!”

      She pulled up her game and tried to load it when she noticed that the internet wasn’t working.

      Muttering, she went downstairs to reset the router, which usually solved the problem. Except the router was in the study, and her father was locked in there.

      She started to knock, just as she heard her father’s raised voice in a tone she’d rarely ever heard.

      “I told you,” he gritted, “I am not coming back! You can’t say anything, threaten anything, that will make me change my mind. And don’t you say one more word about my daughter’s safety, or I will report you to the obvious people. I understand that,” he continued, less belligerently. “Trust me when I say that nobody short of a ghost could get in here after dark. The line is secure and I’ve scrambled important conversations, like this one. I appreciate the tip, I really do. But I can handle this. I haven’t forgotten anything you taught me.” He laughed shortly. “Yes, I remember. They were good times.”

      There was another pause. “No. But we did find out who his enforcer is, and our local law enforcement people are keeping him under covert surveillance. That’s right. No, I didn’t realize there were two. When did he hire the other? Wait a minute—blond hair, one eye, South African accent?” He burst out laughing. “He hired Rourke as an enforcer?”

      There was another pause. “Yes, please, tell him to come see me. I’d enjoy that. Like old times, yes. Okay. Thanks again. I’ll be in touch.”

      Totally confused, Carlie softly retraced her steps, made a racket coming down the staircase and went directly to the study. She rapped on the door.

      “Dad? The internet’s out! Can you reset the router?”

      There was the sound of a chair scraping the floor, but she never heard his footsteps. The door suddenly opened.

      He pursed his lips and studied her flushed face. “Okay. How much did you hear?”

      “Nothing, Mr. Gandalf, sir, I swear, except something about the end of the world,” she paraphrased Sam from Lord of the Rings.

      Her father laughed. “Well, it wasn’t really anything you didn’t already know.”

      “Who’s Rourke?” she wondered.

      “A man of many talents. You’ll like him.” He frowned. “Just don’t like him too much, okay? He has a way with women, and you’re a little lamb.”

      She gave him a blithe look. “If I could get around Barry Mathers, I can get around Rourke.”

      Her father understood the reference. Barry, a classmate, had caused one of Carlie’s friends a world of hurt by getting her into bed and bragging about it. The girl had been as innocent as Carlie. He wasn’t even punished.

      So then he’d bet his friends that he could get Carlie into bed. She heard about it from an acquaintance, led him around by the nose, and when he showed up at her house for the date, she had two girlfriends and their boyfriends all ready to go along. He was stunned. But he couldn’t call off the date, or he’d have to face the razzing of his clique.

      So he took all of them out to dinner and the movies, dutch treat, and delivered Carlie and the others back to her house where her friends’ cars were parked.

      She waited until the others left and she was certain that her father was in the living room before she spoke to Barry. She gave him such a tongue-lashing that he literally turned around and walked the other way every time he saw her after that. He never asked her out again. Of course, neither did anybody else, for the rest of her senior year.

      Barry, on the other hand, was censured so much that his wealthy parents sent him to a school out of state. He died there soon afterward in a skiing accident.

      “You had a hard time in school,” her father said gently.

      “No harder than most other

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