LITMIR.BIZ

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wound, which had narrowly missed her heart.

      The tall, slender Spanish-looking woman had long manicured nails. The nursing staff had put her ample head of jet-black hair up. Her Angelina Jolie lips were pale and dark circles shadowed the skin beneath her eyes. But even the signs of her close brush with death didn’t diminish her beauty.

      Three knocks on the door brought him turning to see a well-dressed man with neatly trimmed and combed brown hair and nickel-gray eyes.

      “Jasper Roesch from Dark Alley Investigations?” the man queried.

      Jasper stood and faced the man. “That’s me. And you are?”

      “Steven Truscott.” He stepped forward. “Sadie’s security officer.” After a brief shake of hands, the man looked over at Sadie. “She said she was going to hire one of you.”

      “I figured she had a reason for showing up at DAI.” And that reason ended up shooting her. “How did you find out she was here?”

      “The doctor called her home and her estate manager notified me.” Steven said. “Your agency called before the hospital. The estate manager passed the number on to me. Kadin Tandy said you were here watching over Sadie until I arrived.”

      The founder of DAI had let Jasper know Sadie’s security officer would be coming to the hospital to explain a homeless man’s murder case. He’d thought it odd someone like that would show up rather than a family member.

      “I was assured her safety would be your top priority,” Steven said. “I can’t be with her all the time.”

      “Where did you come from?”

      “Sadie runs an organization for the homeless. She has three facilities, one in New York, one in Dallas and headquarters in San Francisco. I work intermittently at her headquarters.”

      “Her address is in Wyoming.”

      “She works remotely.”

      He did, too, if he only worked intermittently. Many people worked from their homes, but something about this didn’t add up. Sadie worked from her home but the one person who came to see her at the hospital is her head of security who works remotely as she did.

      “She prefers reclusiveness,” Steven added, as though he felt he needed an excuse. Jasper would have questioned him further if he hadn’t turned a grave face to Sadie.

      “I worried something like this would happen,” Steven said. “She’s been after the police to catch Bernie’s killer. I kept telling her to stay out of the investigation. A woman like her stands out in a crowd.”

      Who wouldn’t be after police to catch the criminal who’d killed someone close to them? Bernie, he presumed, was one of her homeless men and the victim of murder that had brought her to DAI’s door.

      “Is there a reason she should stay out of the investigation?” Did she just want to avoid the public? Jasper hadn’t heard of her so she couldn’t be so famous for that to be a threat.

      “As I said, she prefers to remain reclusive.”

      The more he talked with this man, the more suspicious he became. He questioned a lot of criminals, many of them experts at lying. Steven was no expert, at least not when it came to Sadie. Maybe her being shot had caught him off guard.

      “Has anyone notified her family?” he asked.

      “I’m the closest she has to family. Her father passed several years ago. She was his sole heir.” He eyed Jasper as though sharing a piece of gossip. “Holdings in an oil and refining corporation.” So, Sadie had inherited her wealth, but hid herself from the rest of civilization in Wyoming. Why?

      “What about Bernie King?” Jasper asked. “Who is he to her?” For Sadie to hire DAI to investigate his murder meant she cared more than she might if Bernie was just another one of her homeless people.

      “Bernie is a special friend.”

      Movement from the hospital bed shifted Jasper’s concentration. Sadie began to open her eyes. He went to stand beside her, Steven going to the opposite side of the bed.

      “Steven?”

      “Yes, Sadie, I’m here.”

      Steven took her hand and held it while Sadie groggily smiled up at him. “I thought you went home.”

      “I did. But then someone from Dark Alley Investigations called and told me what happened.”

      Steven had been here recently? Jasper wondered if that was how the shooters had found her. He also noticed she had no accent. She looked Spanish but she must have been raised in the United States. He hadn’t had time to dig into her background yet.

      Sadie’s brow twitched in confusion. Memory must elude her after enduring the trauma she had. She slowly turned her head and soft chocolate-brown eyes fringed with thick dark lashes found him. Their clear, dramatic beauty struck him. The unexpectedness made him clamp down on the attraction. She stared at him for endless seconds, confusion going to recollection and then purely personal observation.

      “This is Jasper Roesch,” Steven said. “The founder of DAI put him on Bernie’s case.”

      “Oh.” She stared at him awhile longer and then her brow twitched again. “Where am I?” She looked around the room.

      “You were shot outside Dark Alley Investigations,” Jasper said.

      She stared at the ceiling awhile and then seemed to connect more dots. Driving up to DAI, getting out...

      “I remember going there, but I don’t remember what happened after I got out of my car.”

      “Someone drove by in a stolen car and shot at you,” Jasper said. “There were two, a driver and a passenger. They both wore hats and sunglasses.” Kadin had run the plates. The car had been found outside town.

      “She was coming to see you about the murder of Bernie King,” Steven said to Jasper. “He was a homeless man going through Sadie’s reestablishment program at the Revive Center. There are no leads.”

      Jasper nodded a couple of times. “I’ve got a call in to the lead investigator. I’ll meet with him and get all the details.”

      “I saw you in front of Dark Alley Investigations,” Sadie said to Jasper.

      “Yes. I saw you, too. You were a little hard to miss.” While he meant because of the men who’d shot at her, she was hard to miss for an entirely different reason. He wondered if he revealed too much about how seeing her had impacted him. A moment of awareness of the effect of that first sight passed between them.

      Jasper shook off the distraction. “The doctor said you’d be released by the end of the week, but you’re going to need time to recover. I’ve got some security guards ready to accompany us to your house.”

      “I don’t need security. I have my own.” She looked up at Steven with a soft, exhausted smile that revealed how much she valued the man, maybe as a family member but probably more as her head of security. She valued his protection.

      Jasper began to have a lot of questions. Sadie had her own security, worked remotely and liked reclusiveness, although he didn’t quite believe that. Steven had seemed to throw that out for Jasper.

      What were the two of them hiding?

      “Don’t argue with the man, Sadie,” Steven said. “You said it—this about more than murder.”

      “I’m only talking about getting us there safely. I’ll evaluate what you’ve got on your property and decide if it’s enough,” Jasper said. “How’s that?”

      “Thank you,” Sadie said tiredly. “I don’t want to tell anyone they’re out of a job.”

      He didn’t care where the security came from, as long as it was solid. If hers met DAI requirements, they’d be fine. And they’d

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