LITMIR.BIZ

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“I don’t know you well enough to have you figured out. Yet. But Etta does—or thinks she does. She cares about you. Her feelings matter to me. If whatever is going on with you harms her, you’ll have me to deal with.”

      Her eyes went hot. “I love Etta. She gave me a job, a place to live. I owe her. I would never hurt her.”

      “I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t just take your word for it. I intend to keep an eye on you.”

      “Do it from a distance.” He saw the tremor in the hand she used to shove her bangs out of her eyes. “I don’t want to jog with you, McCall. I don’t want to eat breakfast, lunch or dinner with you. Is that clear?”

      He kept his eyes cool and steady on her face. “Crystal.”

      “Fine. So please leave me the hell alone.”

      He watched her dash toward the road, her tanned legs pumping, ponytail bouncing.

      “Not a chance, sweetheart,” he murmured.

      Chapter 4

      Five minutes into that evening’s shift, Regan knew Josh McCall’s prediction had been right—word of what happened that morning had spread like a wildfire across Sundown. Every customer seated at the bar had commented on the accident and her part in aiding the teenage victims. Even the pair of grizzled regulars whose usual topic of conversation was the catch of the day had shifted their focus to the wreck at Wipeout Curve.

      While she poured drinks, washed glasses and filled bowls with peanuts, Regan had made sure to shrug intermittently and comment she’d taken a few first aid classes. That had satisfied some of the questioners. Others had given her a skeptical look, but hadn’t pushed for additional details.

      At two hours before closing time, most of the talk had shifted to which fisherman had racked up the most points so far in Paradise Lake’s fishing derby. That, and the fact McCall hadn’t darkened the tavern’s doorstep, had Regan hoping she’d weathered the storm. If she could just fade back into obscurity and keep her distance from McCall for however long he spent in Sundown, her luck might hold.

      That feeble hope went up in flames when Burns Yost, owner of the Sundown Sentinel, settled onto a stool at the bar.

      “I need a beer and an interview, Regan.”

      Icy panic jabbed through her while the balding, middle-aged man pulled a pen and small notebook from the pocket of his gray shirt. Yost had been only second to the police chief in people she’d made a point to avoid during her six months in Sundown. Especially after Etta told her Yost had once been an investigative reporter for a major newspaper and had gained fame by sniffing out a huge corruption-at-the-Pentagon story. A few years later, Yost had been fired when a high-profile exposé of his turned out to be fraudulent. He’d come home to Sundown and bought the Sentinel.

      As far as Regan was concerned, a reporter was a reporter, no matter what was in his past. And this one apparently smelled a story.

      She filled a frosted mug, set it in front of him. “Here’s your beer. You want one of Howie’s hamburgers to go along with that?”

      “No, I want to interview you about what you did today.”

      “I witnessed an accident and watched a young girl die, Mr. Yost. That’s not something I want to talk about.”

      “Amelia’s death was unfortunate,” Yost said over the clatter of pool balls, loud talk and blare of a boot-scootin’ boogie from the jukebox. “I’ve just come from her grandparents’ house and they’re beyond grief.” He sipped his beer. “When I told them I planned to interview you, they asked me to give you their thanks for helping Amelia.”

      “I did what anyone else who’d taken a few first aid classes would have done.”

      Yost’s mouth curved. “I also talked to Helen and Quentin Peterson. They’re the couple who stopped at the wreck the same time as you and Josh McCall. The Petersons think you’re a doctor.”

      “People tend to get impressed when someone checks a pulse while tossing out a few medical terms. That doesn’t mean they have M.D. after their name.”

      “Okay, so you’re not a doctor. What are you?”

      “A bartender.”

      “That’s what Josh McCall said.”

      The bands around her chest tightened. “You interviewed McCall?”

      “Tried to. He wouldn’t even invite me in, just stood on his front porch sipping a beer and saying the same thing as you. He doesn’t want to talk about the young girl who died.”

      For an instant Regan was back in that twisted, glass-strewn car with Josh, working feverishly to save Amelia. And when the girl died, Regan had looked into his dark eyes and felt a connection snap into place. A searing, wrenching link. Now, it wasn’t just her body reacting to him, it was her emotions, too.

      For a woman wanted for murder to allow herself to feel any sort of connection with a cop was ridiculously reckless. As was talking to a reporter.

      “Neither McCall nor I want to comment about Amelia,” Regan said. “Looks like you struck out all the way around, Mr. Yost.”

      “More like I’ll have to wait until the next inning to score.” He took a long drag on his beer. “McCall also refused to comment about what he’d witnessed you do while the two of you were in that car, tending to Amelia. Since he’s a cop, I don’t take his stonewalling personally. The boys in blue trust the press about as much as they trust politicians and lawyers.”

      Yost grabbed a handful of peanuts out of the nearest bowl, began shelling them. “Besides, you’re the story, not McCall. There might not be a lot of people in Sundown, but the ones who are here have a right to know what’s going on in their town. At present, you’re what’s going on.”

      The dread inside Regan built. There was no way she could get away from Yost as long as he chose to sit at her bar. She was going to have to deal with him, the same way she’d dealt with McCall. Which, in retrospect, had only heightened his curiosity.

      “All right, Mr. Yost, I’ll give you a comment. First, my heart goes out to the families of those two teenagers. Second, it’s time the Sundown city council does something about Wipeout Curve. You should research how many accidents have occurred there, find out how many people have been injured and/or died in those accidents. Your running articles on that in the Sentinel could prevent more deaths.”

      Yost made a note on his pad, remet her gaze. “An exposé on Wipeout Curve won’t appease the curiosity of my readers, Regan. They want to know about you—where you’re from. How you wound up tending bar in Sundown. Why you’re doing that instead of working in the medical field.”

      In a finger snap of time her thoughts shot back to Josh. Don’t you know that the less you tell someone, the more they want to know?

      Until this moment, she hadn’t realized, not fully, the repercussions of what she’d done today. Having the attention of both a cop and a reporter focused on her was the last thing she needed. Both had the potential to discover she was using a fake identity. If that happened, the next logical step would be to try to find out her real name. Armed with that, the murder warrant would pop up on some computer run.

      She took a slow, deep breath to try to control the adrenaline spewing through her system. She could almost feel Payne Creath’s hot breath on the back of her neck.

      “You’ve got my comment.” She tightened her unsteady fingers on the rag in her hand and wiped it across the bar’s scarred, polished wood. “It’ll have to do.”

      Yost tossed a couple of bucks beside his mug, flipped his pad closed and slid off the stool. “We’ll talk again soon, Regan.”

      At closing time Regan dealt with her duties, then said good-night to Howie. If the cook wondered why this was the first night she’d

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