LITMIR.BIZ

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him then.

      …especially after what she’s been through.

      He knew, from the file he’d read at Redstone headquarters before he’d come here, that Kate had been married once, and had lost a child to illness. Maybe that, he thought now, was the reason for that circle the wagons feeling he was getting. But that had been years ago. And she’d left Summer Harbor long before that, and only come back in the wake of that tragic loss.

      Or maybe it was simply the dynamic of a small town.

      Rand shook his head in wonder. He’d been around the world, been in cities, villages and places even smaller than Summer Harbor, where the nearest civilization was hundreds of miles away, but he’d never spent a lot of time in small-town America. And while he couldn’t deny the sheer beauty of this part of the world, this kind of tightly knit community already had him completely bemused.

      He thought about what he’d learned about Kate Crawford this morning. That for the most part, Summer Harbor loved her. And that she had been, at most, a bit edgy of late. Hardly enough to convict someone for theft.

      But added to the fact that she had motive—apparent financial problems—and opportunity, it was enough to keep her way up on the suspect list.

      And if he didn’t care for the idea, it was only because he already liked her grandparents. He didn’t like thinking about what it would do to them to find out their granddaughter was a thief.

      He checked once more on the gun lockbox under the seat. His two-inch .38 was inside to avoid discovery, and he hoped fervently he wouldn’t have to use it.

      Chapter 4

      “No, not that one, silly boy! Don’t you know a weed when you see it?”

      “Apparently not,” Rand said with a grin as he released the threatened plant.

      He’d been working in the backyard with Dorothy ever since he’d returned from his exploration. He’d figured it would be a good way to keep an eye on Kate since she spent so much time here, but he was soon enjoying himself.

      “My mom used to say a weed was just a plant growing where you didn’t want it to,” he said.

      Dorothy laughed. “Well, she’s right. Do you see her often, Rand?”

      “Not often enough,” he said. “But it’s not all my fault. She and my dad retired and they’re off globe-trotting more than they’re home these days.”

      “Oh, how nice,” Dorothy said. She left it at that, but Rand had the feeling “for them” had followed in her mind. She was just too polite to say it aloud.

      “This one goes?” He gestured at the next questionable plant he saw. At her nod he began to dig out the offender as he continued the conversation. “You don’t like to travel?”

      “Oh, we go to the coast now and then, and we used to go down to California in the winter, and up to Canada in the spring, but we love home the best so we stay here most of the time now.”

      He wondered if they had had to curtail their travels for health reasons or financial reasons. He’d brought in the mail for them—their mail box was out at the end of a very long driveway—when he’d returned from his first recon of the area. He had noticed several windowed envelopes that made Dorothy frown when she saw them. But she’d merely put them away with a sigh in a desk cubby that held several more of what appeared to be the same kind of envelopes.

      Definitely motive, he thought, yanking out a dandelion rather fiercely at the thought that Kate might have had to resort to stealing to help these sweet people.

      Well, Dorothy was sweet, anyway; Walter Crawford was a bit of a curmudgeon. Rand got the sense the silver-haired man with the bushy moustache used the gruffness to hide a too-soft heart, but he was honest enough to realize he might be projecting his memory of his own grandfather onto this man who somewhat resembled Robert Singleton.

      “You really don’t have to help me with this chore,” Dorothy said.

      Rand tossed the excavated weed into the trash bag they were dragging around with them. “I don’t mind. Unless you’d rather do it all yourself. I can understand that. My mom used to feel like that sometimes. She said the only thing that kept her sane was working in her garden.”

      “And what was threatening to drive her insane?” Dorothy asked, with a sly grin that told Rand she was already guessing the answer.

      “Yeah, yeah,” he said, but he grinned back at her.

      He had likely had the most normal family life of any of the Redstone security team, and his choice of careers had made his mother crazy. His father, at least, had understood, but then, he’d been a cop for nearly two decades before Rand’s mother had prevailed upon him to retire—something he hadn’t been that reluctant to do, saying all the good feelings had been driven out of the job anyway by the holes in the system and too many losing battles.

      But Rand couldn’t deny what Dorothy had said was true, most of the time it had been he himself who had driven his mother to the brink. If it hadn’t been for Josh, who had, to Rand’s shock, invited his entire family in to tour Redstone headquarters and then have lunch with him while he convinced them that he would look out for their only son, his mother would have made his life unbearable with her worrying.

      But Josh had convinced them, and while Rand didn’t tell his mother everything, he’d never been seriously hurt on an assignment for Redstone. Of course, his mother’s opinion of what constituted seriously hurt might differ slightly from his, he admitted silently.

      “Are you an only child?” Dorothy asked as they moved on to a shady flower bed full of what she told him were hostas and fuchsias.

      “No, I’ve got a little sister. My mom said after my terrible twos she was sure there was never going to be another one. Took her nearly ten years to change her mind and have Lisa.”

      “Are you and your sister close?”

      “Pretty much,” he said. “I tried to always look out for her as a kid, although it was tough when I was sixteen having a six-year-old trailing after me.”

      “I can imagine,” Dorothy said with a laugh. “Your friends must have loved to tease you.”

      “That they did,” he agreed, thinking for the first time in years of the one friend who had gone way too far with his teasing.

      “Oh, that was an unpleasant thought,” Dorothy said, and Rand realized something must have shown in his face.

      “Yeah. I was thinking about one friend of mine, when we were in high school. He got tired of Lisa always tagging along, so one day he locked her in a closet so that she couldn’t follow us.”

      “Oh, dear.”

      “Yeah. Worst part was he forgot to tell anyone. We didn’t find her for hours.” Rand shook his head. “I’ll never forget the look in my parents’ eyes when they thought she was truly lost or had been taken.”

      “What did your friend do?”

      “He apologized. My dad somehow kept himself from trouncing the guy, and Lisa said she was okay, she wasn’t really scared at all, but we knew better.”

      “What did you do?”

      “Me?” The question surprised him, but after thinking about it a moment he answered, “I found some better friends.”

      The smile Dorothy gave him then warmed him in the same way his grandmother’s approval had once warmed him.

      “You remind me so much of my own grandmother,” he said, and her smile widened even farther.

      “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

      “Do. She was a wonderful lady, and I miss her and my grandfather every day.”

      “How long since you lost them?” Dorothy asked,

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