LITMIR.BIZ

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Lucas and his deputies had so far been unable to do. Other than a couple of dubious footprints and generic-looking tire tracks, they hadn’t found any sign of the killer or discovered one useful clue. Lucas had hoped to find a spent shell casing or some other evidence left behind by whomever had murdered Hugh Miller and attacked Lexie Dale.

      “Lexie Dale,” Lucas grumbled her name aloud as he shoved open the front door, waited for Rocky to slip inside and then slammed it behind him harder than he’d intended.

      The woman with the intriguing violet-blue eyes, honey blond hair and the face of an angel was nothing if not an unmitigated liar. And a lousy one at that, Lucas thought with a frown.

      It was bad enough that she was a reluctant witness, but what made the situation especially troublesome for Lucas was the way the she’d gotten under his skin. For some unknown reason, she seemed to have a stranglehold on his imagination, a hold he couldn’t shake loose. There was just something about the beautiful and mysterious witness—or non-witness, as she insisted on remaining—that brought Lucas’s thoughts back to her, again and again. Even as he’d coordinated the investigation on the mountain tonight, he’d been distracted by thoughts of her. Even as he’d attempted to track a killer, he’d mentally replayed their conversation, memorizing not only her responses, but the classic contours of her face and the slightly breathless sound of her voice.

      He couldn’t stop thinking about the way she’d looked at him, the way her eyes seemed to plead with him to accept her half-truths and evasions. Although he hadn’t really been tempted to ignore his common sense, logic and well-trained instincts, he had felt a measure of compassion for what seemed like her desperate need to convince him.

      She was holding back information, he told himself as he opened the refrigerator and grabbed a beer. Although he didn’t know what kind of information, his gut told him that she might just hold the key to cracking the case wide open.

      As a lawman, Lucas had been trained to rely on facts. He didn’t put much stock in things like ESP or the supernatural, but he had learned to listen to his instincts, the instincts that gave cops what some called a second pair of eyes. And that second sight, or whatever one called it, was telling him Lexie Dale was a woman in more trouble than she could handle.

      Perhaps that was why he couldn’t seem to shut down his intense feelings of concern for her and why she seemed to bring out every protective instinct he possessed. Even now, frustrated as he was by the outcome of their interview, he still wondered if she was all right, worried that she might be in danger from whomever or whatever it was that had her scrambling to measure her every response.

      But a reluctant witness was better than none at all, he reminded himself again as he twisted the top off the icy beer bottle.

      As a cop, his strongest impulse was to drive back to the ranch, drag her out of bed and push her until she broke down and confessed to whatever it was she knew. But as a man, all he wanted to do was protect her, to comfort and console her and vanquish whatever it was that had her running so scared. But how did a man, even a county sheriff with twelve deputies under his direct command, go about protecting a woman who seemed intent on lying to him?

      “It’s a helluva situation, Rocky,” Lucas muttered and pulled open the refrigerator again to withdraw the steak he’d left defrosting that morning on the top shelf.

      Since when did he abide a liar, he asked himself, or give a damn what happened to one? He grabbed a skillet from the rack over head, slid it onto the stovetop and tossed the steak into it.

      She was lying, he told himself as he slathered the T-bone with butter and leaned back against the edge of the countertop to sip his beer without tasting and listen to his dinner sizzling with deaf ears. But why? Who was she trying to protect? Hugh Miller? Her own or the dead man’s reputation? Maybe. Or was it possible she was protecting a murderer?

      Lucas didn’t think so. In fact, he dismissed the idea even as it formed. After all, Lexie herself had been a victim of this afternoon’s violence.

      But if she wasn’t protecting the perpetrator then that left only the victim. Hugh Miller. And if it was Miller she was protecting then that meant she knew a lot more about the dead man than she was telling. But what? What was so important a man had to be protected even to the grave?

      And what about their relationship? It was obvious they’d come to Destiny Canyon Ranch together, despite the few hours gap between their check-in times. She’d been adamant about not knowing Miller before, and Lucas thought she was telling the truth. But he was also certain that Miller figured into her life. Were they business associates? It didn’t make sense for her to hide a logical connection like that.

      Lucas kept coming back to one explanation: In spite of Lexie’s denials, she and Hugh Miller must have been lovers. That possibility caused an unwelcome and uncomfortable tightening sensation in his gut. A sensation that told him he had darn well better find a way to stop thinking about Lexie Dale as a woman and start thinking of her as just one more piece in the puzzle that would ultimately solve this case.

      So what if Lexie Dale had been in love with Hugh Miller? Did it make a difference? Probably not, unless one of them was married. That would explain the attempted cover-up, and maybe even supply a suspect. Had Hugh Miller been the victim of a jealous wife? If so, Lucas doubted the wife herself had been the shooter. Not unless the woman was a trained markswoman with the stealth of a cougar.

      No. Lucas did not seriously believe that Hugh Miller had been killed as the result of a jealous rage. Criminals driven by passion left obvious signs and this killer had left no such trail, not a scrap of evidence to suggest the kind of wild emotion that led to careless mistakes. In fact, by all appearances, it would seem Hugh Miller had been the victim of a professional hit. And that possibility opened the door to more scenarios than Lucas could even begin to sort out tonight.

      The smell of scorching meat brought him up short from the growing mountain of questions for which he had no answers. At this point, all he had were the usual questions about the crime and the victim, the kind of questions that usually led to a motive, a suspect and ultimately to an arrest. Motive, means and opportunity, those were the building blocks of any case.

      “Business as usual,” Lucas told himself.

      But if that really was all there was to it, then why did this case seem anything but usual?

      The answer was one Lucas didn’t want to consider, but couldn’t deny. The answer was Lexie Dale. Or more specifically, his own intense reaction to her.

      He slid the charred steak onto a plate, grabbed a fork and knife and took his dinner and his unfinished beer into the living room where he sat in a chair by the window without eating for several minutes.

      For tonight, he would concentrate on how best to next approach his reluctant witness. She had to have some idea why someone had tried to abduct her. Was she a runaway wife? A rich heiress? A woman plagued by a stalker? She must have some idea. Tomorrow he would push her harder for answers, especially some answers about her relationship with Hugh Miller. He’d already decided that the next time he questioned Lexie it would be at his office. The more formal setting would serve as a reminder to him to keep his bothersome attraction to the woman from interfering with his judgment. With a killer on the loose, he could hardly afford to let chemistry get in the way of his duty.

      Tomorrow, armed with the facts from the background check on Hugh Miller that Deputy Ferguson was gathering even now, Lucas would have the kind of leverage he needed to force Lexie to fill in the blanks.

      With his resolve restored and firmly in place, he finished his overdone steak, then leaned back in his chair and fell into the deep sleep of a man who’d put in a long, frustrating day.

      A cold wet canine nose nudged Lucas awake hours later. “Hey, Rocky,” he mumbled as he stretched his back and frowned at the realization that he’d spent the night in his chair. “Thanks for the wake-up call, old man.”

      It was still dark when Lucas opened the back door to let Rocky out, but the sun had turned the cloudless morning sky a pale white by the time he’d showered and dressed.

      As

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