LITMIR.BIZ

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some slack because he was, after all, still relatively new.

      “We don’t do ‘or’ here, Harold. We don’t even think about ‘or.’ Just one tiny instance—or even the hint of that kind of impropriety—and everything we’ve ever done here is going to be viewed as suspect and called into question. The amount of work that would be generated by something like that would be astronomical. Have I made that clear enough for you?”

      She didn’t want to come off as sounding belligerent, but there should be no question about how procedures were conducted.

      “Just kidding, boss lady,” Harold told her, raising his hands as a sign of surrender.

      “I know. But it doesn’t hurt to reiterate how we do things out loud every so often so that we don’t ever lose sight of our function here. Because it only has to happen once and suddenly, we’ll get our walking papers and be out on the street.”

      “Understood,” Harold assured her. “But even so, you could stand to improve your vocabulary,” he told her. “I could work up a whole host of multiple-syllable expletives you could hurl at yon studly homicide detective the next time your paths cross. You don’t want to be caught unarmed, do you? Or worse, tongue-tied?” he concluded, pretending to shiver at the very thought of that happening.

      “You miss the salient point. I don’t want our paths crossing, period,” she said, getting to the heart of the matter.

      “For that even to be a remote possibility at this police precinct, one of you is going to have to put in for a transfer. Like, to a different city.” Harold’s shallow complexion seemed to brighten instantly as he thought over possibilities. “Do I get a vote as to which one of you should go?”

      She wasn’t about to feed the intern any more straight lines. Given half a chance, the man could go on talking for hours, like a windup toy whose spring had somehow malfunctioned and while she liked him and felt he did have a great deal of potential, she definitely didn’t want to encourage him, especially not when there was work to do.

      “Just do the test, Harold,” Susie requested.

      The lab intern saluted her comically as he said, “I hear and obey, my liege.”

      Susie rolled her eyes as she got back to her work.

      * * *

      Susie couldn’t be right, Ryan stubbornly thought as he got back into his car. Starting it up, he pulled out of his parking spot, turned the sedan around and headed back to the Lucky C.

      The forensic team, obviously, had come and gone. They had a reputation for being very thorough. Although he had been the one to initially call them in to see if he had missed something, he wanted to go back and go over the latest crime scene one more time to see if perhaps they had missed something this time around.

      It was worth a shot. What did he have to lose?

      Especially when he stood to gain so much more if he was right and Susie wasn’t.

      What he wanted to do with this latest return trip to the Lucky C was find something that would negate what Susie was claiming: that that was Greta’s blood at the crime scene. That it was Greta’s blood that was all over the jagged edges of the broken window.

      What possible reason could Greta have for vandalizing the family ranch?

      If his sister had a grievance—which would have been news to him—she would have gone to talk to whomever she had the issue with.

      Talk to them, not deface their property. For heaven sakes, if anything, Greta had become even closer to the family—certainly closer to their mother—ever since she’d gotten engaged. Greta and their mother were busy planning Greta’s wedding. She wouldn’t just suddenly turn on her mother like that, despite any bizarre tales of hormonal bridezillas to the contrary.

      Still, he knew how conscientious Susie was. She wouldn’t have just haphazardly conducted that DNA test, or allowed it to become contaminated.

      Yet how could her findings be right?

      Ryan felt a surge of anger flare up within his chest, anger where his heart was supposed to be.

      Try as he might, he couldn’t come up with a way that both he and Susie could be right. One of them had to be wrong and he found the idea that it was him really upsetting. Not because he had any kind of a problem with his ego—he’d been wrong before, most notably when he’d deployed back overseas and cut Susie loose like that, as if she was some inconvenience instead of someone he had found himself caring for deeply—but because that would mean that there was something seriously bad going on with Greta.

      He knew Greta. His sister wasn’t a criminal. And she didn’t harbor some dark side that none of them were aware of. That was just plain ridiculous.

      Leaning over, Ryan switched on the radio. The car was instantly filled with the strains of music, instrumental music meant to promote and instill a sense of peace into what was usually a hectic day. He’d never needed it more than he did now.

      If he couldn’t find evidence at the crime scene that could point him in another direction—the right direction—he was going to have to call his sister and question her about the events that had been transpiring here at the ranch. He wasn’t looking forward to that because, despite his attempts to keep to himself, he found that he was rather transparent when he was dealing with his family. And once he started questioning Greta about the strange events at the ranch and she realized what he was getting at, there would be a breach between them.

      And most likely, between him and the rest of the family, as well. Greta was, after all, the baby of the family, as well as the only girl. Brothers tended to be protective of their little sisters.

      Hell, he felt that way, too. But he was also a homicide detective and he had a job to do, a sworn duty to get to the bottom of things and to bring the guilty parties in as well as to protect the innocent ones.

      “Damn it, Greta, I sure hope that you’re innocent—for both our sakes,” he murmured.

      And then, because it wasn’t affecting him, he turned the music up louder, hoping to be in a better, calmer frame of mind by the time he got back to the Lucky C.

      Hoping, but being realistic enough to know that hope alone didn’t change a damn thing no matter how much someone might want it to.

       Chapter 2

      Ryan isn’t going to like this.

      The thought echoed over and over again in Susie’s head as she looked down at the results from the latest DNA test. It was the third such test she’d authorized and this one she’d again done herself. She knew she was wasting her own time, not to mention the lab’s precious resources, just to make doubly sure—or triply sure as the case was—that the final results were the same as what had already been concluded the first and second times the test had been run.

      There was no mistaking the findings. It was Greta Colton’s blood that had been found along the edges of the broken glass from the vandalized stable. It wasn’t just a vague familial match, which would have meant that the blood might have belonged to a family member, like Big J or one of Greta’s brothers. The match she was looking at was dead-on.

      The blood belonged to Greta.

      There wasn’t a single trace of anyone else’s blood on the jagged broken glass. No accomplice, no one else’s blood on the scene.

      Only Greta’s.

      Greta had been the one, for whatever reason, who had broken into the stables via the window instead of going in through the door, which as far as she knew, had been Greta’s normal custom.

      What the hell was going on here?

      Why would Greta be breaking into the stables through the window? It

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