LITMIR.BIZ

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what she thought of him; that wasn’t why he was here.

      Carla looked at him and frowned as though replaying the events of last night through her mind. As he looked at her, he couldn’t help but wonder if she was still drunk from the night before, or if the alcohol on her breath was just this morning’s continuation of last night’s party.

      “I don’t think I was driving.” She leaned around him, looking out into the driveway for a car that wasn’t there. “Bubba drove me home. I kinda remember...”

      Gwen crossed her arms over her chest as she glared at her mother. “Are you kidding me? You don’t even remember how you got home last night? This has to stop. It’s only a matter of time until you’re going to get into real trouble—” Her glare shifted to him as if she remembered exactly who he was. “So what did she do this time? How bad is it?”

      The look on her face made him want to be standing anywhere but in her bull’s-eye.

      “Actually, I was here for—”

      “Where’s Bianca?” Carla interrupted, glancing behind her for her other daughter—a daughter who wasn’t going to come.

      “Mom, be quiet. Bianca will be along,” Gwen said, moving between her mother and the door as if she was so embarrassed by her mother’s ramblings she wanted to hide her from his view.

      He cleared his throat, wishing he had loosened the top button of his uniform before he’d made his way to the door. Even his body armor felt tight, and he gave it a slight tug in an effort to dispel some of the discomfort he was aware wasn’t really physical.

      “Actually, I’m here about Bianca.” As soon as the name fell from his lips, Gwen’s scowl disappeared, replaced by a wide-eyed look of fear.

      “She’s upstairs,” Gwen said, absently motioning toward the wooden staircase that led to the second floor of the ranch house. “Do you want me to go get her up?” There was an edge to her voice, a sharpness that came with panic.

      He moved to touch her, but stopped and gripped his hands together in front of him to keep his body and emotions under control.

      “I’m afraid to tell you this, Ms. Johansen,” he said, moving slightly so he could look the older woman in the face as well. “Mrs. Johansen. I’m sorry, but in the early morning hours, we found Bianca’s body. She is...deceased.”

      He knew he should have just said dead, but he couldn’t get the word past his lips. It was too harsh for Bianca, the veterinarian who’d been a regular at Dunrovin. He’d seen her so many times over the years, and they had a friendship based on their mutual attachment to animals—and her sister. In fact, Bianca had been kind to him, offering him tidbits about Gwen’s life and her dating status, and once in a while pushing him to make his move to get her back. But he’d always brushed away Bianca’s urging. He and Gwen had already had their chance—he couldn’t go through that kind of heartbreak. It nearly broke him once. He couldn’t risk something that raw again.

      “Deceased?” Gwen said the word as though she tasted its full, bitter flavor and spat it out.

      He wanted to look down at the ground, to escape that gaze of hers that made every part of him charge to life. “Yes. I’m so very sorry for your loss.”

      Carla stared at him and blinked, the action slow and deliberate. “No.”

      Gwen’s hand slid down the door with a loud squeak, like nails on a chalkboard...but he knew what the sound really was—it was the sound of a heart breaking.

      She collapsed on the floor, her head hitting the wood with a thump so loud he rushed to her side to make sure she was still conscious.

      “Gwen...Gwen, are you okay?” He touched her face and looked into her eyes. They were filled with tears, tears that wet his hand as they dripped over his skin and fell to the floor. There wasn’t blood or a bruise where her head had hit the ground, but she wasn’t okay. She wasn’t going to be okay for a long time.

      He stroked away her tears as she lay on the floor and cried. Her body was riddled with sobs, hard and heavy.

      He wanted to tell her everything was going to be all right. That she would get through this. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to lie.

      Some people held the belief that time healed all pain, but he knew all too well it wasn’t true. All time did was push it further from the mind, but just like a deep flesh wound, any time he brushed the area the pain was just as all-consuming and powerful as when the blow first struck. That cliché about the healing power of time was for the weak—for the ones who couldn’t face the reality of a future filled with wounds that wouldn’t heal.

      Regardless of the state Gwen was in, he knew how strong she was. How much it took to bring her to this point. And he’d been the one to break her.

      He hated himself.

      “Shh...” he said, trying to calm her and help her in the only way he knew how.

      Carla opened the door wider and stepped by him and out into the crisp morning air. “Not again...”

      Gwen looked at her mother and, moving his hand aside, she rubbed the tears from her face and took a series of long breaths. “I’m fine... I’m fine...” she said, as though she was trying to convince herself. She sat up and smoothed back her hair.

      Wyatt stepped out of her way and tried to ignore his feelings of rejection at her pushing him away. “Currently, Bianca’s body is at the crime lab. As her death was unattended, she will need to undergo an autopsy in order for us to generate a full report.”

      Carla hugged herself as she rocked back and forth. Gwen stood up, and, brushing off her red plaid nightgown, she stepped to her mother’s side and wrapped her arm around Carla’s shoulders. “It’s okay, Mom. It’ll be okay.”

      At least one of them had the strength to feed Carla the lines she needed to hear.

      Gwen looked at him, her eyes red and thick with restrained tears. “A full report? What does that mean? You don’t know how she died?”

      He shook his head. “The coroner was unable to make a determination as to the cause of death. It will need to be fully investigated by the medical examiner.”

      She frowned and her gaze flicked to the right as though she was remembering something. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped, and then after a moment started again. “Where did you find her?”

      The discomfort he had been feeling amplified. “She was found in the stables of the Dunrovin Ranch.”

      “Your family’s place? Again?” Gwen asked, like she was calling him out for somehow being party to her sister’s death.

      He nodded, guilt rising in him as her poorly veiled accusation struck. “One of my mother’s mares had come up lame. Last night, Bianca came to assess the animal and determine a course of treatment. We found Bianca’s body at about 1:00 a.m. From our estimates she had been dead for at least an hour.”

      “No one found her until then?” Gwen’s voice rang with disgust. “How is that possible? You have more hands and staff than most working ranches. Someone had to have found her before then.”

      He heard the slam at the fact that his family’s place was merely a guest ranch and not a working cattle ranch like theirs. Her words were flecked with pain, anger and denial—whatever she said now couldn’t be held against her.

      “I don’t know the ranch’s current schedule. I’ve been out of that world, or at least a casual bystander, ever since I went to work for the department.” He realized he was answering her and defending himself against her allegations when all he should have been doing was being compassionate and taking the verbal hits she chose to let fly.

      “You’re a bastard,” Carla spat out. “You and your dang family. You’re a scourge on the valley. You are the reason...you’re the reason my daughter’s gone. And now you tell me you don’t know

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