LITMIR.BIZ

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know she had arrived safely.

      And then, sitting alone in the truck, she realized she didn’t feel quite as brave as she had a few minutes ago. But she couldn’t just sit there. She turned in her seat and took a look through the windows all around the truck before she opened the door, just in case someone was there waiting to jump her. A trio of cars slowly drove by and she found herself closely watching them, heart in her throat, half expecting to see that nutjob from the mesa with his hat pulled down low and a bandanna over the bottom of his face riding inside one of them.

      Of course, that was not the case. They were just normal people going about their business in a small western town in Nevada. Nothing threatening about that.

      So much for willing herself to be calm and fearless.

       Dear Lord, I pray for Your presence and protection and I thank You for it.

      Why was prayer so often the last thing she thought of for comfort when it should have been the first?

      Pondering that, she crossed the street heading for the accountant’s office. Hopefully, talking about numbers would take her thoughts off her other worries for the next hour or so.

      Her grandparents and the Sandovals were not wealthy people, but they’d been willing to take a chance and invest their retirement savings in the guest ranch because all of them wanted to live and work in the horse-friendly kind of setting they loved. When they discovered they didn’t have enough money to buy the property they’d chosen and pay for all the repairs and renovations they’d need to convert the operation and pay the bills until the business started to turn a profit, Vanessa had contributed her own money to the venture.

      And they’d promptly assigned her as the person to deal with the accountant because none of them wanted to do it. But she hadn’t minded. A genuine smile crossed her lips as she thought of how blessed she was to have such good and loving people in her life. She would think of them every time the image of that hammer-swinging stalker up on the mesa tried to worm its way back into her mind.

      Vanessa had an awkward first few moments with the accountant as she explained the bruises on her face and what had happened to her. Fortunately, after checking to make sure she was all right and didn’t need to postpone their discussion, the accountant followed her lead and they quickly redirected the topic to the financial issues concerning the ranch. After an hour and a half of talking numbers, Vanessa was finished and she headed back across the street to the library for the next item on her list of tasks.

      This wasn’t for the ranch, but for her research into her father’s murder. There were many articles about the case, but they yielded frustratingly few details. Vanessa pored over them carefully, hoping to find some detail previously missed or ignored, but her hope dwindled as the hours passed.

      Later, when Vanessa stepped out of the library, she gazed out at the dusky horizon to the east. She should have left sooner. But she’d gotten so caught up in old newspapers that she hadn’t realized how late it was until a librarian told her they needed to close. She texted Rosa to tell her she was on her way. Rosa replied that she, too, had gotten caught up in what she was learning and had also lost track of time. She would be waiting outside the tech coach’s office for Vanessa to pick her up.

      Vanessa had printed a few articles at the library and now held the pages in the crook of her arm. Current editions of the Torchlight Beacon newspaper were available online, but older editions were not. There were no digitized archives she could access and she’d had to do her research the old-fashioned way by looking at spools of film at the library. At least the clunky old last-millennium viewing machine she’d had to use was connected to a printer.

      She started down the steps to the sidewalk and spotted a familiar figure in a dark blue police uniform standing by her grandfather’s truck. She glanced around to make sure she hadn’t missed a no-parking sign. “Don’t tell me you’re giving me a ticket,” she said to Levi as she walked up to him.

      He responded with a half smile and Vanessa’s heartbeat sped up a little. Then he shook his head. “No ticket. I just thought I’d hang around until you came out of the library to see how you’re doing. And also thank you for sending me the information I’d asked for.”

      “So you’re following me now?” she teased him a little, hoping to see that fleeting bit of a smile again. Most of the time, he looked so serious and professional. Which was fine for a police officer. But that hint of a smile threw something boyish into his appearance. And Vanessa wanted to see it again.

      “I didn’t have to follow you. I was in the neighborhood.” He hooked a thumb toward the police department headquarters on the opposite side of the street the next block down. “The truck you’re driving is distinctive. I noticed it when I was at the ranch.”

      The right front fender of grandpa’s truck was canary yellow while the rest of it was sky blue. “I came out to grab something for dinner and spotted it. I went inside the library to see if you were the driver. You looked pretty engrossed in what you were doing. I didn’t want to disturb you, and I knew you’d be out soon since it was just about closing time. So, here I am.”

      He’d been waiting for her. She felt like smiling but didn’t let it show.

      The tickling sensation in her stomach had to be part of the emotional aftereffects from the attack last night. Vanessa Ford did not get giddy over men she barely knew.

      “Well, I’m fine,” she said, her voice coming out a little higher pitched than normal. “Is there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”

      “Yeah.” He held up her phone. “Do you recognize this?”

      She nodded and reached for it. “That’s mine.”

      “It was found a pretty good distance from where our trackers believe you tripped.” He handed it to her. “I haven’t heard back from the phone company about accessing your records yet. If you want to punch in your password and read off the number from the hang-up call you received yesterday, I can send it to our tech guy to trace. Hopefully, it’s not an anonymous prepaid number.”

      She tapped a few digits on the screen until it unlocked. She quickly found the number and read it off. Levi sent his text.

      “Is there anything else you need?” she asked.

      “That’s all for now. But I’m going to hang around until you’re safely back in your truck and on your way.”

      “Thank you.” Vanessa shifted the stack of articles she held in the crook of her arm as she reached into her purse for the truck keys, but she shifted at the wrong angle and the papers fluttered down, fanning across the grimy sidewalk. She snuck a look over to the officer standing by her side. What would be his reaction when he saw that they were all articles about her father’s murder?

      * * *

      Levi leaned down to help Vanessa pick up her dropped papers before the breeze sent them out into the street. A slight gust blew one of the sheets over as he reached for it, displaying a screenshot of a front-page banner headline: “Cowboy Shot Dead on Morgan Mesa.”

      A picture filled the top half of the page and showed a smiling young man wearing a gray cowboy hat and a Western shirt. He had Sam Ford’s thick mustache and longish face. But his hair was the same pale blond color as Vanessa’s. Below the picture, in smaller type, the caption read “Local rodeo champ Josh Ford dead at twenty-eight.”

      Vanessa gently tugged at the paper in his hand and he let go of it. Her eyes were red and starting to shimmer. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for her to have to read something like that. Never mind the heartache of having to live through it as an eight-year-old child.

      “I remember my parents talking about this when it happened,” Levi said as he helped her collect the rest of the dropped pages. “They didn’t know your dad personally, but they’d seen him competing at Torchlight Rodeo Days a couple of times.”

      Vanessa straightened the papers in her hands and nodded to let him know she’d heard him. Tears fell

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