LITMIR.BIZ

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was surprised that Susie had taken the time to find that out. It wasn’t as if they ran in the same circles these days. And back when they were together, their worlds had contained only each other, to the exclusion of everyone else. That meant family members, as well.

      “Best in the business,” Ryan confirmed.

      “Maybe she was passing by the stable at that hour for some reason, looked in and thought she saw smoke coming from the stable. Or maybe she thought she saw a horse in distress. The fastest way from point A to point B is still a straight line.” She shrugged carelessly, unable to come up with any better explanations at the moment. “Maybe that was why she broke the window.”

      Although he appreciated her effort, he thought that Susie was definitely reaching. “And she didn’t stick around to tell anyone what she did?” Ryan asked skeptically.

      Susie took her theory to the next step. “She was probably too embarrassed about breaking the window for no reason so she didn’t hang around, waiting for someone from the family to hear her out. Most likely, she’s just working up the nerve to answer for what she did. Nobody likes to admit that they made a mistake or acted rashly,” she pointed out.

      They were talking about his sister, and Susie was giving him ammunition to defend Greta’s actions, but he really wasn’t convinced.

      “I suppose that sounds plausible enough,” he allowed. “But I’ll believe it when I hear it from Greta’s own lips. Last I heard, she’s not even supposed to be in Tulsa right now.”

      “Well, she might not be, but her blood certainly is,” Susie said, indicating the printouts he was holding. “I don’t have to point out that you can’t have one without the other.”

      “Unless someone’s trying to frame you,” Ryan said as the idea suddenly occurred to him. The only thing that wasn’t occurring to him was why someone would go to the sort of trouble that actually framing his sister would require.

      But even as he began to vaguely entertain the idea, he saw Susie shaking her head.

      Exasperation seeped into his tone. “What?” he asked.

      She had to stop him before he got carried away with the idea he seemed to be embracing. “If someone for some obscure reason actually did manage to have a sample of your sister’s blood—and I’m talking about enough to smear on the jagged edges of the window—it would have started to coagulate in a vial. There are certain characteristics of stored blood that would have shown up in the blood workup that was done. They didn’t,” she informed him flatly. “This blood was fresh when it came in contact with the broken glass.”

      “I was afraid of that,” he murmured, again more to himself than to her.

      Susie’s slender shoulders rose and fell, not in a show of indifference, but to signify that some things just couldn’t be changed no matter how much one might want them to be different.

      “So, go back to your initial plan,” she told him.

      “Which was?” he asked, wanting to see what Susie thought his plan had been.

      “You said you were going to go question your sister and ask Greta what she was doing there at that time of night. Ask her why she thought it was necessary to break into stables that she could have just as easily accessed the proper way—through the door.”

      Susie was right of course. But the more he thought about it, the more this proposed conversation with Greta was not going to be a conversation that he was looking forward to. Added to that was the fact that Greta had been a little jumpy since their mother had been found battered and beaten.

      In the past couple of months his normally cheerful little sister had become increasingly uneasy, at times acting almost paranoid, and questioning her about the acts of vandalism and the break-in at the Lucky C was definitely not going to help the situation or Greta’s frame of mind, he thought.

      He could feel Susie’s eyes on him, as if scrutinizing his very thought process. What she said next all but confirmed his suspicions.

      “Maybe you should take another family member with you when you go to question her,” Susie suggested.

      Susie pressed her lips together. She knew she should just keep out of this. After all, the man had all but callously torn her heart right out of her chest without so much as a warning shot. She owed him nothing.

      But even so, the look on his face had her feeling for him. She knew that if she were in his place, confronting this sort of situation, she would feel awful.

      Memories from the past tried to break through, memories of a time when they were each other’s entire world.

      But that was then, this was now, she reminded herself. She had to get a grip on her emotions. They had absolutely no place here.

      “Thanks,” he said, surprised that Susie would even bother to attempt to give him helpful suggestions, given their past. “But that’s not a good idea. If I take one of my brothers with me, Greta will think we’re ganging up on her. She’s been on edge ever since our mother was attacked.” He remembered being called to the scene by his frantic father and racing to his mother’s side. The whole episode was vividly imprinted on his mind.

      “Just before she slipped into an unconscious state, when I asked my mother who did this to her, she just stared at me and then started to cry. I couldn’t get her to say anything or even indicate whether or not she had seen the attacker’s face. She slipped into a coma right after that.

      “When she finally came out of her coma, every time Greta was anywhere near her, my mother looked, I don’t know, spooked I guess is the best word for it. As for Greta, she just looked uncomfortable—and hurt.” He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what to make of any of it.”

      For a moment Susie forgot that she wasn’t supposed to be talking to Ryan beyond uttering a few monosyllabic responses. All she saw was an all-too-human homicide detective, torn between job responsibilities and familial loyalties—a fellow human being in need of some kind of support.

      That was the Ryan she was talking to.

      “If not another family member, maybe you could take another female with you to be supportive of Greta as well as you,” she proposed.

      “You?” Ryan asked in surprise. Was she actually offering to come with him to question Greta?

      Susie shrugged. She had painted herself into a corner with that one, she thought. The focus wasn’t supposed to be on her but on the situation—and the crime. She’d meant the suggestion in a general way, but there was no denying that she was a female.

      “I do qualify for the category,” she was forced to admit, almost against her will.

      Ryan smiled then, remembering a time prior to the breakup he had engineered. A time when everything had seemed perfect despite the claim the service had on him. Remembering a very small island of time when he had been in love, and had just allowed things to “be” without any in-depth analysis.

      “If memory serves me, you more than qualify—and thanks for offering—but this is something I have to do on my own,” he told her. “I think that the less people Greta sees when I arrive, the better this whole situation might work out.”

      Or at least that was what he hoped.

      Susie didn’t know if he was just being protective of his sister, or if Ryan was once again dismissing her wholesale out of his life.

      In either case, she told herself, her conscience was clear. Despite the extenuating circumstances, she’d offered to do the right thing. That she had done so was not negated by his refusal of her offer. It just made her square with him.

      “Suit yourself,” she responded, doing what she could to sound indifferent. “You always know best.”

      The last part had sounded incredibly cold as well as formal and withdrawn to his ear. Whatever bridge they had

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