LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      Cam Delaney did not care for being ordered around. It had been one thing in the military. A way of life, one with a clear hierarchy. He could take an order from a superior officer, no problem.

      In Bent, Wyoming, the only hierarchy he paid any attention to was the fact that he was a Delaney, and no one told him what to do. There were no superior officers, because he was it.

      His little sister hadn’t gotten the memo.

      “I have a situation,” Laurel said with no greeting as Cam stepped out of his truck. He’d parked in the lot of the Bent County Sheriff’s Department thinking he’d meet Laurel inside, but here she was waiting for him.

      “I told you not to agree to marry a Carson, but—”

      “Not that,” Laurel returned, not even cracking a smile or offering some sibling teasing back. Which could only mean she was in full-on cop mode. “I’ve got a woman in here trying to file a missing persons’ report for a man who doesn’t exist.”

      Cam slid his hands into his pockets, trying to find some patience with his bullheaded sister. “What’s that got to do with me?”

      Laurel sighed as if Cam was a special kind of stupid, which didn’t make him any happier about being summoned. “There’s not much I can do to help her in a professional capacity. But you—”

      “I run a security business. For profit. We’re not private investigators, and we don’t work for the sheriff’s department.” It wasn’t a we as of yet, but Cam had plans. Big plans.

      “There’s something here.” She glanced at the squat building that acted as Bent County’s sheriff’s department. “I can’t put my finger on it, and I don’t have time to figure it out. But you do.”

      “Laurel—”

      “What big bad security jobs do you have? You’re just getting started. If my town gossip is correct the only job you’ve been hired for is watching Frank Gainville’s cows.”

      “He had a serious potential cattle-rustling situation happening,” Cam replied loftily.

      “Wasn’t it some teenagers trying to hide their pot?”

      Small towns. Why had he decided to move back to one?

      Unfortunately the answer to that question was something he wanted to dwell on even less than he wanted to do Laurel’s bidding. “Still solved, Deputy. Which is more than I can say for you and whatever this is.”

      Laurel nodded toward the building, a sign for him to follow her. “Woman came in wanting to file a missing persons’ report. Subject has been gone for a week. Not uncommon he goes off for a few days, but a week has never happened.”

      “Sounds routine enough.”

      “Would be. She didn’t have his social security number or any pictures, so we ran him to find a social or a photo from the driver’s license.”

      “And you can’t find anyone by that name?”

      Laurel opened the door and waved him inside. “It’s a common enough name. But we tried every spelling and none of our hits are him, according to the woman. The man she’s trying to find doesn’t exist in any records we have.”

      “I still don’t see what that has to do with me.”

      “She seems lost. She needs help, Cam, and I can’t do it. It’s outside my job description, and I have a wedding to plan that could very well implode the whole town. I’m telling you, there’s something about this thing that makes me itch.”

      He knew that kind of itch. He’d been a Marine for fifteen years. Most people got gut feelings, but military and law enforcement people tended to hone this sense, and to listen to it more closely than civilians.

      Except you, when it matters most.

      “Just talk to her,” Laurel urged. “See if you don’t get the same feeling I do.”

      It took Cam a few seconds to bring his mind from his biggest failure back to the present and his little sister asking for his help.

      He would never be able to make up for the ways he’d failed in the past. His conscience ate at him, a black worm of rot that had led him not to re-up with the Marines. That had led him to come home, and try to find some way to help the people of Bent, the people of his blood and bones and history.

      If he could help, he should. He would. It would be something to do anyway, and Laurel was right. His fledgling security business wasn’t exactly swimming in customers. Bent was isolated, but he hoped his military background might be lure enough to get some outsider customers. There was a big mine over in Fremont. Some ritzy folk with ranches here and there. He had plans. Big plans.

      “Cam?”

      He blinked at Laurel and the note of concern in her voice, and the softening features of her face. The last thing he wanted from Laurel, or anyone in his family, was sympathy. Because sympathy was only one step away from pity.

      “Who’s the man who doesn’t exist? How is he related to the woman reporting his disappearance?”

      Laurel gave him a raised-eyebrow look as she held open another door and gestured him inside. “Her father.”

      * * *

      DAD WOULDN’T BE HAPPY. That thought sat uncomfortably in Hilly’s gut as she sat in the small police station.

      But he’d been gone a week. He never disappeared for a week. Three days, tops, that was the rule. So, she’d waited three days. She hadn’t really worried until day five. For the past two days she’d searched for him herself.

      He’d never been gone this long, and he hadn’t left her with the tools to survive without him. She didn’t have contact with the outside world. Only he did.

      Why hadn’t she questioned that more? Why hadn’t she insisted on him giving her more understanding of what to do if he never came back?

      He had to come back.

      She swallowed and looked around the station waiting room. It was mostly empty. Occasionally the front desk phone would ring and the man on duty would answer. Mutter a few things, then hang up.

      The people in this place kept telling her there was no record of her father. Had seemed generally baffled by their inability to find any information on him.

      It was a mistake,

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