LITMIR.BIZ

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haven’t spoken in months.”

      But I heard from her. Just a little while ago. She called to me. Maggie started to utter the words, then held her tongue. She’d learned her lesson long ago. No one would believe her. Not the psychiatrists she’d visited, not her parents, who were now gone, and especially not Thane Walker, her first love, her sister’s ex-husband. Stiffening her spine, she refused to break down. “I just think I would know. Don’t ask me to explain it, okay?”

      He hesitated, then shoved his hair out of his eyes with both hands.

      “Is there something else?” she asked, determined not to let this man with his wild allegations get to her.

      “Oh, yeah.”

      Her insides churned. “More speculation?”

      “Maybe.” He mounted the steps. “As I said, it looks like I might need your help.”

      “You?”

      “The detective in charge—his name is Henderson—he thinks I had something to do with Mary Theresa aka Marquise’s disappearance.”

      “You? But why—?”

      A sharp woof heralded Barkley’s arrival. Three legs moving swiftly, the shepherd tore into the yard and raced up the steps. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled, his fangs flashed an evil white, and his mangled ear lay flat and menacing against his head as he smelled the intruder. He growled low in his throat, his black lips curling back, eyes centered on Thane.

      “Where’s Becca?” Maggie asked as if the dog could answer. Thoughts of her sister were thrust aside. Maggie’s heart pounded. She scanned the darkness, searching for her daughter.

      Barkley snarled and barked.

      “What?” Thane asked, then commanded, “Hush,” to the dog, who backed off but still growled from beneath the rusting porch swing.

      Maggie, fear turning her heart to ice, walked down the steps and headed for the corral that opened to the trail Becca had taken. Her gaze pierced the night-darkened fields. “Becca. She went riding about an hour ago. Barkley was with her…” Maggie strained, hoping to see the horse and rider but spying nothing except a few head of cattle, dark shapes shifting against the grass. Why would the dog return alone? Goose bumps rose on her flesh. “I hope something didn’t happen…”

      Brrring!

      From the open door of the cabin the phone jangled.

      Unnamed fear congealed deep in her soul. She turned on her heel, raced across the yard and up the steps to the house. Past Thane and through the screen door, she flew through the living room and snagged the receiver. “Hello?”

      The screen door banged shut, and Thane, with the growling dog guarding him, stared through the mesh.

      “Ms. McCrae? Margaret Elizabeth Reilly McCrae?”

      Her heart hammered wildly. “Speaking,” she said, her eyes fixed on Thane’s as dread took a stranglehold of her heart.

      “This is Detective Henderson with the Denver police.”

      Her knees buckled, and she sank against the wall. “Yes?”

      “Is Mary Theresa Gillette, also known by the single name of Marquise, your sister?”

      Maggie began to shake. Her blood turned to ice. Biting her lip, she stared at Thane’s face visible through the screen and nodded slowly, as if the detective could see her. “Yes,” she whispered.

      A beat.

      She wanted to die.

      Tears filled her throat.

      “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Ms. McCrae,” Henderson said solemnly. Maggie’s head pounded, her fingers tightened over the receiver. “It’s about your sister…”

      Chapter Two

      Maggie replaced the receiver slowly and licked her dry lips. She couldn’t breathe, could barely think. A thousand thoughts screamed through her head, a million denials. “That was Detective Henderson,” she said dully, her head pounding, her world suddenly out of kilter.

      Thane had entered the house during Maggie’s short conversation and stood at the door, his expression intense, his eyes narrowed.

      “I figured as much.”

      “This detective. Henderson. Do…do you know him?”

      “We’ve met.” Thane rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “He comes off like a damned bloodhound. Has a good reputation.”

      “That’s what we want, don’t we?” she asked, and met eyes that were shuttered, an intense expression that didn’t give an inch.

      “Yep.”

      Still reeling in disbelief, Maggie sagged into a chair and propped her forehead with one hand. She felt as if a ton of bricks was weighing her down, dragging her into an emotional abyss she’d seen before—one she’d tried desperately to avoid.

      “You’re right,” she admitted, as the shock gave way to pain. “Henderson thinks Mary Theresa might be dead.” The words were horrible, echoing painfully in her heart and bringing tears she refused to shed to her eyes. “I can’t believe it,” she admitted, shaking her head in silent denial. “I just can’t believe it.”

      “No one knows for sure what happened to her.” Thane took a cursory glance around the small, cozy room and walked to the river-rock fireplace where he studied the pictures gathering dust upon the old notched mantel. “There’s a chance she may still be alive.”

      “She has to be.” Maggie wouldn’t believe Mary Theresa was gone.

      “What exactly did Henderson say?”

      “Not much.” Not nearly enough. The sketchy details Henderson had given Maggie only begged more questions rather than answering any. “Just that her secretary, Eve…Oh, I’m really losing it, I can’t remember Eve’s last name.”

      “Lawrence.”

      “That’s it,” Maggie said, slightly disturbed that Thane knew so much about her sister’s life when they’d been divorced for years. “Anyway, Eve tried to get ahold of Mary Theresa and couldn’t—and I think someone from the station called as well. Anyway, the police and the news crew, I think, drove to her house and found a way in. Mary Theresa wasn’t home, and one of her cars was missing.”

      “Didn’t anyone call you?”

      “No.” Maggie shook her head.

      “Don’t you think that’s odd?”

      “Yeah,” she said, then leaned back in her chair. “But last weekend Becca and I drove up to Coeur d’Alene, and if anyone phoned, I wouldn’t have known it because I don’t have my answering machine hooked up.”

      He looked at her hard. “Why not?”

      “It’s a long story,” she said, evading the issue. It was bad enough that Thane put her on edge, but the entire situation had her doubting what was real, what was imagined. “I moved here to get away from all the rat race and chaos of the city,” she admitted, hedging just a little. Never in a million years would she have thought that she would confide in Thane Walker, the one man who had, years before, stolen her heart and callously shredded it into a million painful pieces. The less this man knew about her personal life, the better.

      He cocked one eyebrow. “Seems like an answering machine would make life easier.”

      “Sometimes, I guess.”

      “Most of the time.” He picked up a recent picture of Becca, his eyes scanning the school photograph that showed off teeth still too big for her head, dark hair that refused to be tamed, and eyes that sparkled with the same green fire as Maggie’s. “Your

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