LITMIR.BIZ

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tapestry and a coffee table polished to a mirror finish were tucked into a cozy sitting area. On the table sat a silver bowl piled with fresh fruit that had been delivered sometime during the day. The accompanying card said the bowl was compliments of the Waterford’s manager.

      On the few times she’d had to travel during her tenure as a Homicide cop, the department’s budget had barely covered a room in some concrete-block motel with a dollar-a-minute surcharge on the telephone.

      Her present employer, the Lassiter Group, was Dallas’s most elite security, protection and private investigations firm. Paige’s generous salary and fat expense account definitely had its perks. Perks that she would give up in a heartbeat if she could have her badge back, she thought as thunder rumbled in the distance.

      Flexing her fingers, she stared down at the scar. Where would she be if certain events on that night three years ago had never happened? If she and her partner had taken down Edwin Isaac before he’d squeezed off the one shot. If she hadn’t wound up in that hospital’s E.R. and summarily found out…

      She shook her head. She had found out. And she’d dealt with the emotional upheaval that came from learning the husband she’d loved and trusted had betrayed her. She’d gotten on with her life. No sense dwelling on it.

      She had work to do.

      The rumble of thunder drew nearer while she began processing the workshop assignments. She circled pronouns, sketched boxes around phrases that indicated gaps in time, inserted asterisks in places where words had been omitted, drew lines to connect similar words and phrases.

      After processing each assignment, she typed notes into her laptop. She paused after analyzing five assignments. Her word-by-word analysis revealed that several of the attendees had gotten caught in unmentioned time crunches at a point during their day. Some had spats with spouses, others unwittingly revealed frustrations over dealing with children, in-laws and neighbors. By the time she read to the end of an individual’s statement, Paige knew far more about the life of that person than she was sure they intended.

      She plucked the next statement off the stack and went to work. When she’d finished her analysis, she leaned back against the bank of pillows while she slid her pen end-over-end through her fingers. The author of this statement was clearly one of the female cops enrolled in the workshop. The woman had written about a family gathering she’d attended, listing her husband only after mentioning several other people. Without meaning to, she had revealed that she considered her husband the least important of those people. Not the best of relationships, Paige mused. If anything criminal happened to the husband, and the wife claimed they’d been close, the statement in Paige’s hand would shine an entirely different light on the relationship.

      She was adding information to her typed notes when her cell phone rang. Paige reached for it, then hesitated. After Isaac called her two weeks ago and left the voice mail message, she’d been tempted to get a new number and list it under an alias. Doing so, though, wouldn’t help track the bastard. So she’d allowed the cops to insert a state-of-the-art tracking chip inside her phone. If Isaac called again, they had a good chance of nailing his location.

      She checked the phone’s display. The number beaming via the caller ID feature had her smiling.

      “Hey, handsome.”

      “How’s my favorite girl?”

      She relaxed against the pillows. “How’s my favorite guy?”

      “I asked first.”

      “Couldn’t be better, Grandpa.” Toying with the long silver chain she always wore around her neck, Paige gave silent thanks that the rough-hewn retired Texas Ranger couldn’t see her bruised cheek. Not only would Tate Carmichael grill her like a rack of ribs about every aspect of the mugging, he would strap on a revolver and hightail it to Oklahoma City to act as her personal bodyguard. “What are you and Mom up to?”

      “Sara Sue’s off doing her volunteer work at the legal aid clinic tonight. We’ve been thinking a lot about you today.”

      Because it’s February tenth, Paige thought. If it hadn’t been for her grandfather and mother, she wasn’t certain she’d have gotten back on her feet after her life upended. Even now, whenever she found time to visit her grandfather’s small cattle ranch outside of Dallas, she occasionally caught one or both of them watching her with narrow-eyed concern.

      Thunder crashed; Paige glanced up as rain frozen to sleet began pelting the floor-to-ceiling windows. “I could tell you and Mom to stop worrying, but I’d be wasting my breath.”

      “You always were as sharp as barbed wire.” Her grandfather waited a beat before continuing. “I’ve been checking with my law enforcement contacts, Paige. No one’s caught sight of Isaac.”

      “If he’s smart, and we both know he is, he’s out of the country by now. Sitting on some beach, drinking rum.”

      “And thinking about you, like he said he’d do on that voice mail he left.”

      Closing her eyes, she replayed Isaac’s clipped, cultured voice. A shiver ran down her back.

      “As long as all he does is think about me, that’s fine.” She half hoped her grandfather would agree with her about the high probability of Isaac’s leaving the country, if for no other reason than to ease the edgy tension that seemed to prickle across the phone line. But she knew he wouldn’t—her grandfather wasn’t that type of man. The facts were the facts, he would see no purpose in padding the truth to soften the blows.

      “Consider the man, Paige. You tracked him down. He blames you for destroying his life. He’s still thinking about what he’d like to do to you. Isaac wants a second act. We both know it.”

      “I refuse to go into hiding,” Paige said, trying to waylay what she knew was coming next.

      “I’m not asking you to tuck your tail between your legs, girl. I’m just saying it’d be smart for you to pack up and come on home. Stay on the ranch with your mom and me until the law finds that murdering bastard.”

      If Isaac was planning to exact revenge, Paige knew staying on the ranch would put her family in danger. No way would she chance that.

      “I can take care of myself, Grandpa. You know that. Just because Isaac’s on the lam isn’t reason for me to change my schedule.”

      “How about to keep an old man from worrying himself into the grave?”

      She couldn’t help but smile. “You’re not old. And you’d worry about me whether I was sitting in your living room, or a thousand miles away.”

      “Can’t argue that. You wearing your lucky necklace?”

      She glanced down at the handcuff key and miniature Texas Rangers badge that hung on the silver chain. Her grandfather had given her the necklace the day she graduated the police academy. “I even sleep in it.”

      “What about the asp?”

      “It’s on the nightstand. Consider me armed and dangerous. Now, enough about me. How many head of cattle did you buy on last week’s trip to Fort Worth?”

      After Paige said good-night to her grandfather, she called her former partner in Dallas PD Homicide. His answering machine picked up so she left a message. Not only did she need replacement copies of the reports that had been in her briefcase, she also wanted to talk to him about a vague theory they’d developed during their investigation into Isaac.

      Too unsettled to go back to the workshop assignments, she slid off the bed, wandered to the sitting area and plucked a banana out of the silver bowl. Tapping it against her palm, she moved to the wall of windows. Ice hazed the glass and marred her view of what she’d learned was the priciest real estate in Oklahoma City. Frowning, she conjured up the mugger’s voice.

      Give it up, bitch. The voice, the words didn’t fit Isaac. From all witnesses’ accounts, “Gentleman Jim” had conducted himself in a mild, meek manner when he approached each intended victim who worked the

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