LITMIR.BIZ

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surmised that Lincoln kept paper products on hand for events such as this. He had a big pantry full of them.

      “Here you go, honey.” Camille handed Remy a plate and took one herself. “Let’s fill up.”

      Oh, no. Did she mean to sit by her? Remy had no other choice than to precede the woman to the spread on the counter by the stove. She put a dog on a bun and covered it with chili, followed by a few fries.

      Just as she’d feared, Camille led her into the dining room off Lincoln’s living room, where someone had lengthened the table and added a few chairs, and sat beside her.

      Camille ate a few bites before using her fork as a conversational pointer. “You know,” she said, “Lincoln is my oldest.”

      “Yes, he told me.” She ate a fry.

      That news seemed to give Camille pause. “You two have been getting close.”

      “Oh, no.” Why did everyone think that?

      “Lincoln isn’t exactly an open book. Especially after Miranda.”

      Remy sensed his mother testing her. Did she know about Miranda? “Who is that?”

      “His girlfriend. He was going to marry her. He’s never told me that, but I know.”

      “What happened?”

      Camille abandoned her fork, and sadness sobered her eyes. “They were on vacation in New York, walking down a busy street when a drive-by shooting took place. The shooter was targeting someone else, but she was in the way. It was completely random.”

      The violence of it caught Remy unprepared. Lincoln seemed to attract that kind of mayhem. And now Remy had dragged him into her mess.

      “That’s horrible.”

      “He still thinks there’s something he could have done. It happened more than seven years ago, and still he can’t let it go.” Camille shook her head with lingering sadness. “It’s the reason he became a bounty hunter.”

      Remy went still. Bounty hunter? “I thought he taught martial arts.”

      “He does. But he hunts bail jumpers, too.”

      Lincoln entered the room with his plate, joining the rest of his family at the table and sitting on the other side, two chairs down from his mother. He caught her look and eyed his mother, clearly picking up on the somberness of their talk and not liking it.

      And didn’t it just figure that he was a bounty hunter? If Remy could, she’d get up and run out of here and keep running. Her dog and fear of Tristan stopped her. Maddie sat beside her, begging for food with just a look and a string of drool hanging indecorously from her whisker-peppered cheek. She had to find a safe place for Maddie while she cleared her name.

      * * *

      Lincoln shut down his computer, simmering over what he’d just learned from his internet search. It hadn’t taken long.

      His family had finally left after midnight, and after he took Remy over to her house for a bag of clothes and toiletries, she’d gone to bed and he’d sneaked into his office. He’d still been annoyed after trying to get his mother to tell him what she and Remy had discussed at dinner. His mother had feigned ignorance on her way out the door, claiming she had only tried to get to know his new girlfriend. Remy wasn’t his girlfriend. Nor would she ever be after what he’d just read.

      Now he understood why she was so reluctant to talk to police. She was wanted for murder in Newport Beach, California. And he was drawn into the trouble.

      Lincoln was furious.

      Not caring about her privacy, he went down the hall and opened the guest room door. She stood beside the bed, covers in hand, ready to climb in. Freezing when she saw him, she stared, unconcerned with the spaghetti-strap, knee-length nightie she wore. Right now, neither was he.

      “We aren’t going to sleep until you tell me about Kirby Clark. And make sure you don’t leave out the reason why you tell everyone your name is Remy Lang.”

      A couple webpages had revealed that. Clark’s murder was all over the news, and so were pictures of a striking look-alike to Remy Lang, known in Newport Beach, California as Sabrina Tierney, top HR executive for OneDefense Corporation. A far cry from the assistant she was now. He’d stopped reading then. He wanted to hear it from her. Better yet, he’d rely on some strategic friends for better intel.

      At last she gathered her wits and straightened.

      “I didn’t kill him,” she said. “Tristan Coulter is trying to frame me for his murder.”

      “Why?” His patience had already worn thin, and he struggled to hang on to what was left of it now.

      “I was a friend of Kirby’s.”

      He stepped forward. She stayed on the other side of the bed. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

      Ramrod straight and still, she didn’t respond. Why would she? She’d assumed a false identity to escape the trouble that had chased her away from California.

      “What kind of friend was Clark to you?” he said to help her open up.

      Several seconds slid into the past before she turned and sat on the bed.

      He went there and sat beside her, partly to let her know he wasn’t leaving until he had answers, and partly as a supportive gesture. He had no idea where the latter came from. The woman had lied to him. But he wanted her to tell him the truth.

      “I met him at a conference,” she finally said. “We struck up a friendship after that. He wanted more. An opening came up at OneDefense, and he helped me get the job.”

      “What conference?”

      Again, she hesitated. “It was a gun show.”

      A gun show. “You like guns?”

      “I’ve taken up an interest recently.” She sounded almost sarcastic.

      “What’s recent?”

      “Over the past two years. But I’ve target practiced before that.”

      She didn’t strike him as the type to have an NRA membership. “Did you know about the job when you went to the gun show?”

      “No. The gun show was a few weeks before the job became available.”

      “And you suddenly took an interest in a job at OneDefense? Didn’t you already have a job?”

      “I worked for an insurance company that wasn’t paying well. Certainly not as well as OneDefense. And...”

      And what? Had she known about the illegal gun sales? Had her allegiance with Kirby primed her to get in on the profits?

      “Did you ever become romantically involved with Clark?”

      Her eyes blinked. “As I said, he wanted more. I didn’t.”

      He’d seen from pictures that Kirby Clark was an attractive man. Divorced. Available. Had she used him to get in on the gun sales? She claimed to be trying to gather evidence against Tristan. That much must be true. Lincoln had seen the envelope, and Tristan was trying to kill her. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have her own agenda where the gun sales were concerned. And she had developed an interest in guns before she’d met Kirby.

      “Why was he murdered?” he asked.

      That upset her. She averted her head and again didn’t reply immediately.

      “We had plans to go for drinks and dinner one night. I was early getting to his office.” She looked up at him, and he saw the truth in her eyes. “Tristan was there. He was trying to convince Kirby to join him in his illegal operation. I couldn’t tell if Kirby was seriously considering it or if he was playing along to keep Tristan under control. Tristan saw me in the doorway. There were still a lot of

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