LITMIR.BIZ

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hope I didn’t hold up dinner,” he said. Rozalyn, he noticed, hung back as he mounted the steps of the back porch to Emily.

      “Oh, no, you’re right on time,” Emily said, gracing him with a smile as she took his arm and led him toward the back door. “We’re just delighted that you could join us.”

      “As am I,” he said, the tension between the two women like sloughing through neck-deep mud, as Rozalyn followed them inside.

      Emily still had hold of his arm as they stepped through a set of French doors into a large dining room.

      He thought for a moment that Rozalyn had changed her mind about joining them for dinner, but when he glanced over his shoulder, he saw that she’d stopped in the wide French doorway and was now watching him with obvious suspicion.

      “I just realized—”

      “I hope you’re hungry,” Emily said as if Rozalyn hadn’t spoken.

      “—that I didn’t catch your—”

      “Starved,” he said.

      “—name,” Rozalyn finished.

      “I’d like you to meet my daughter,” Emily said. A woman in her late twenties was seated at the round dining room table. She and a young man who resembled her had had their heads together when he and Emily had come in. Now the two looked up in surprise, cutting off an obviously intimate conversation in midsentence and appearing almost…guilty.

      “This is my daughter Suzanne and my son Drew,” Emily said. “Mr. Lancaster has graciously accepted my invitation to dine with us tonight.”

      “Lancaster?” Rozalyn said behind him in the doorway.

      He turned to look at her and felt himself tense at the frown on her face. Clearly, she was trying to place the name.

      Drew, who appeared to be a few years older than his sister, had gotten to his feet and was holding out his hand. Ford took it but noticed the young man’s attention was more on Rozalyn.

      “Mr. Lancaster is staying in our guest house for a while,” Emily was saying.

      “Really?” Suzanne was a younger version of her mother. Slim, blond and blue-eyed. Her eyes seemed a little glazed, and he noticed that not only was her dirty wineglass empty, but also the bottle in front of her was almost spent.

      “Lancaster?” Rozalyn repeated from the doorway.

      “Why don’t you sit by my daughter,” Emily said to him.

      He went around the table, aware that Rozalyn still hadn’t joined them. Emily had left a chair between Suzanne and Drew for her other guest.

      “Rozalyn, if you’d care to join us,” Emily said, her tone as sharp as a glass shard. “Let’s not have a scene in front of Liam’s friend and our dinner guest.”

      Rozalyn didn’t seem to hear her. Nor was she looking at the older woman. Instead, her gaze was locked on Ford. “I missed your first name, Mr. Lancaster.”

      He met Rozalyn’s brown-eyed gaze, almost afraid to tell her but not sure why. Emily hadn’t even raised an eyebrow when he’d told her. “Ford. Ford Lancaster.”

      “Ford Lancaster?!” Roz spat and stepped toward him as if she planned to leap the table and go for his throat. She definitely looked like she wanted to. “You lying bastard. You’re no friend of my father’s. What the hell are you doing here?”

      SHERIFF MITCH TANNER sat in his patrol car outside the Timber Falls Courier trying to decide what to do about Charity. A few weeks ago he’d almost lost her to a killer. Bud Farnsworth was dead, but Mitch feared that the man who killed him was even more dangerous.

      Whatever Charity wrote in her newspaper would set Wade Dennison off. The owner of Dennison Ducks was a powerful man in this town and he used that power and money to get his way. Men like that often thought they were above the law.

      One thing was for certain, Bud would never have come up with the idea of kidnapping the Dennison baby by himself. Mitch suspected he’d been paid. That’s why Mitch had subpoenaed Wade Dennison’s and Bud Farnsworth’s financial records. Wade’s attorney had held up the process for two weeks, arguing the case was closed. The kidnapper was dead.

      But Mitch wasn’t giving up because he knew in his heart that the true kidnapper, the person who’d planned the whole thing and paid Bud Farnsworth to snatch Angela Dennison, was still out there. Still walking around thinking he’d gotten away with it.

      A tap on the glass made Mitch jump. “Jesse,” he said rolling down his window. “I wish you’d quit sneaking around in the dark.”

      Jesse’s smile was all Tanner dimples. He was just a little shorter than Mitch, stockier though, with long black hair pulled back in a ponytail, a gold earring in his right ear and handsome to a fault. “Hey, little bro. Spying on your woman?”

      Mitch shook his head, not wanting to talk about Charity, especially with his brother. It was no secret that Jesse wished Charity had fallen for him. Mitch was just getting used to having his brother back in town. There’d been a time when he believed his wild, older brother was headed straight for a life of crime.

      But Jesse had come back to Timber Falls a few weeks ago and really seemed to be trying to make up for his past mistakes. Mitch couldn’t help but respect his brother for that. Jesse had also brought Mitch and their father closer.

      “I thought you’d like to know,” Jesse said now. “I just saw Wade Dennison move lock, stock and barrel into one of the units out at Florie’s.”

      Mitch stared at him. “Nina’s old unit? Aries?” Florie, a self-proclaimed psychic, had turned her motel into bungalow rentals years ago and named each of the twelve for the signs of the Zodiac. “What’s up with that?” Mitch asked.

      “Looks like Daisy threw him out.”

      What were the chances of that? Nil. Unless Daisy had something on Wade that she was holding over his head. Like she knew he was behind the kidnapping of their daughter, Angela. Or Daisy and her lover’s daughter.

      Mitch looked at Jesse, both of them no doubt thinking the same thing. If Angela had been a love child, then the father of that baby might very well be their own father, Lee Tanner. Lee and Daisy had had an affair in the year before Angela was born.

      “How’d Wade seem?” Mitch asked, even more worried about Charity now.

      Jesse shook his head. “He didn’t look good. I’d say the man was about at the end of his rope. Can you imagine what will happen when this gets around town?”

      And it wouldn’t take long for that to happen given that Charity’s Aunt Florie was one of the biggest gossips in town. And then there was Charity.

      Mitch groaned at the thought of Charity’s newspaper hitting the streets in the morning. There would be fireworks, sure as hell. He just hoped no one got killed.

      “Damn,” he swore, wondering if he should pay Wade a visit tonight. By the next day, Mitch was pretty sure he’d have the financial reports on Wade Dennison and Bud Farnsworth. And he figured he’d be paying Wade a visit once he had proof in hand anyway. No reason to court trouble tonight.

      The patrol car radio squawked. Mitch took the call. A man had been found unconscious at the bottom of a cliff, not far from the recent Bigfoot sighting spot, and dropped off at the hospital. No ID.

      Mitch turned to his brother. “Sounds like one of those damned Bigfoot hunters fell off a cliff and is over at the hospital.”

      “You need any help? I was headed home but I could tag along.”

      Mitch shook his head. In remote areas of Oregon, sheriffs worked alone—unless they needed to call in state investigators for help—or they could deputize someone locally for the short term.

      “Later, then,” Jesse

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