LITMIR.BIZ

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a go at making him a drug-sniffing dog, but Juno doesn’t obey anyone but me, so he flunked out. Mastered only the first lesson.”

      “What are you saying?”

      He pulled a plastic pill bottle from his pocket. “These were on the bedside table. Do you know what she takes them for?”

      Mia took the bottle and held it up to the light from the engines. “It’s her blood pressure medication. I pick up her prescriptions myself.”

      Dallas frowned.

      Mia felt the seeds of dread take hold deep down. She put her hands on Dallas’s unyielding chest. “Dallas, please tell me what you’re thinking.”

      “The first lesson, the only one that Juno mastered...”

      She found she was holding her breath as he finished.

      “Was alerting on drugs...like cocaine.”

      * * *

      Dallas mentally berated himself for mentioning Juno’s behavior at that moment. Mia was already trembling as the shock of what had happened settled in.

      Should’ve waited. How many times had he said that to himself?

      This time he did not allow her to pull away when he folded her in a smoky embrace. She was so small, so slight in his arms, and he resisted the urge to run his hands along her shoulders. He thought of all the things he should say, the comforts he could whisper in her ear, but everything fled, driven away by the feel of her. She stiffened suddenly, and he wondered if she’d been hurt in the fire.

      “There,” Mia gasped, pointing behind the house.

      He turned in time to see a woman with a wild tangle of red hair framed by the trees that backed the property. She stood frozen for a moment, eyes wide and face soot-stained and then she bolted into the woods.

      “Stop,” Dallas called, and he and Juno took off into the trees, Mia stumbling along behind.

      “Who was that?” she asked, panting.

      He didn’t know.

      “I thought I saw her outside the clinic one time, talking to Cora, but I’m not sure,” Mia said.

      A cursory search yielded nothing, though the falling rain and smoke didn’t help. After a short time, they left off looking to follow the ambulance to the hospital.

      In the waiting room, Mia sat on a hard-backed chair, and Dallas paced as much as the narrow hallway would allow until the doctor delivered his news. “I’m sorry. She didn’t make it.”

      Dallas watched the spirit leak out of Mia as she put her head in her hands. Something cut at him, something deeper than the grief at Cora’s death. He swallowed hard and stepped aside with the doctor. “Do you have a cause of death?”

      The physician, whose name tag read Dr. Carp, hesitated. “She was dead upon arrival, but we called the police immediately after you told us about the pills. They took possession of them. Autopsy will be later this week.” That much Dallas already knew as he and Mia had told their story to a young uniformed cop named Brownley.

      The doctor left and Dallas sat next to Mia. He didn’t speak. There was nothing to say anyway. Best to wait until she could articulate the thoughts that rolled across her face like wind sweeping through grass. Finally, he took her hand, hoping she would not yank it away. She didn’t.

      “Cora wanted to tell us something, something important,” Mia said, her voice wobbling as she clutched his fingers. “Can you guess anything at all about what it was?”

      Dallas shook his head. “No.”

      “I’m sure Juno was wrong about the pills,” she said, a tiny pleading note to her voice. “Those were for her blood pressure. I delivered them to her myself. They couldn’t have hurt her. Could they?”

      He covered her hand with his palm. “Whatever this is, however it went down, was not your fault.”

      “That woman... Who was she?” Her brown eyes were haunted. “Dallas...” she whispered. “I’m scared.”

      He pulled her to her feet then and embraced her because he did not know the words to say. He never did, probably never would. “I’m taking you home.”

      A short, balding man with a thick, silvered mustache came close. “In a minute. I’m Detective Stiving, Ms. Verde, and I need to ask you some questions.”

      Dallas felt his gut tighten. Stiving. Perfect.

      He and Stiving had been oil and water since Dallas had butted in on a missing-person’s case and found a teen lost near Rockglen Creek whom Stiving had insisted was a runaway.

      “Kid’s a loose cannon,” Stiving had insisted. “Drinks and parties like his father.”

      Runaway or lost, Dallas and Juno found the kid named Farley who’d fallen into a ravine, and the press was there to catch it. Since then, Dallas had gotten a bogus speeding ticket and been stopped twice by Stiving for no particular reason. Not good, but in a small town like Spanish Canyon, Stiving was it.

      “Doc says you’re making allegations about drugs,” Stiving said, holding up the bottle of pills nestled in an evidence bag. “Looking to get some more publicity for yourself?”

      “Juno alerted on that pill bottle.”

      “Juno is a drug-sniffing flunk-out, from what I’ve heard. I thought his forte was tracking down idiots who get lost in the woods.”

      Mia wiped her sleeve across her cheeks. “What kind of talk is that for a law enforcement officer?” she said indignantly. “Cora is...was a long-time resident of this town. I should think you’d want to be thorough investigating her death.”

      His blue eyes narrowed, face blotching with color. “Yes, Ms. Verde, I will. I started by running a check on you. It made for interesting reading. Since you’ve had such a long and storied history with law enforcement, I guess you’d know that I’ll be contacting you for follow up information as soon as I get this to the lab.”

      Mia went white and then red.

      Dallas clenched his jaw. Don’t mouth off to the cops, Dallas. “We saw a woman with red hair running away from the house.”

      Stiving blinked. “Really? Did you recognize her?”

      Mia shook her head. “She might have come to the clinic to talk to Cora, but I’m not sure. I only saw her for a moment.”

      “And you?”

      Dallas shrugged.

      “Right. Well, we’ll investigate that while we’re checking into things.” The detective’s phone rang, and he walked away to answer it and then left abruptly.

      Mia put a hand on Dallas’s wrist, her fingers ice cold. “I have to go. Tina needs to get home, and I want to read Gracie a story before bed.” She looked at her soiled clothes. “It will take some explaining about why I look like this.” Her lip trembled. “I’ll need to tell Gracie about Cora.”

      He wondered how a woman with filthy hair, torn clothes and a grief-stained face could look so beautiful, like Whistler’s painting of the woman in white he’d seen in his mother’s art books decades ago. Would she be so trusting if she knew the truth about what brought him to town? Dallas had been many things in his life, a gang member, a wanderer and a drinker. He’d never been a liar, not until now, with her. It tightened something deep in his gut. He had to remind himself he had good reasons for the subterfuge.

      He’d been hired by Antonia, Mia’s sister, to keep watch over her due to the prevalence of Mia’s ex-husband Hector Sandoval’s many enemies. Cora, a friend of Antonia’s new husband, was in on the whole thing. An accomplice, he thought ruefully, who’d arranged for Dallas to hang out on her property just as often as the stubborn and ferociously independent Mia did.

      He returned to the truck

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