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Searching for Cole Bishop was going to prevent her from assisting Dylan, but given the circumstances, it couldn’t be helped. With Eve so ill, there wasn’t a moment to waste. Besides, Dylan on his own was quite formidable, and she had no doubt that he’d do everything possible to find Julie. She just hoped he wouldn’t get hurt. Either physically or emotionally. So much was at stake.
“I’ll get back to you,” Dylan said as he acknowledged her with a nod. “And see what you can do about those files, huh?” He listened for another few moments, said his goodbye and hung up. His attention was focused on her now, but she could see the strain of the morning’s work on his face.
“How goes it?”
He shrugged. “Just trying to get up to speed. What was your meeting about?”
“I’ve got a case.”
“Now?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry. I know how important it is to concentrate on finding Julie, but this is something of an emergency.” She explained about Eve’s request, and about the ticking clock. Dylan had met Eve on several occasions and his concern for her was immediate.
“Okay, I can do this on my own, but I think we need to get an assistant now instead of waiting for the offices to be finished.”
“I agree. Any suggestions?”
He shook his head. “I’ll make some calls in the morning.”
Lily turned on her computer, ready to start the search for Cole Bishop. She heard Dylan curse softly, and when she looked up, he was staring at his notepad, his face a mask of frustration.
“What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Things aren’t adding up right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing concrete. It’s more gut feeling than anything else. Something’s eating at me.”
“Well, then, you’d better pay attention. I don’t know anyone who has better gut instincts than you.”
He gave her a sardonic grin. “Not always.”
She hadn’t meant for the conversation to go there. Dylan had been on an undercover assignment in Dallas the previous year. His gut instincts had taken him into the very heart of J. B. Crowe’s mob family, but last October, he’d made one mistake—and that was all it took in his line of work. His cover had been blown, and he barely made it out of there alive. “Come on, Dylan. Did we or didn’t we agree not to wallow in the past?”
“We agreed. But as I recall, it was after you ate an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s as you rehashed some memories I’m too much of a gentleman to bring up.”
“Subtle. Like a sledgehammer.”
“All I’m saying is the things we went through are a part of us. I don’t think we can forget about them.”
“But we don’t have to beat ourselves up over and over, do we? Frankly, I don’t want to live like that.”
He leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his neck. “So why don’t you find someone new? Someone who isn’t married?”
“Date? Me? No. No way.”
“Why not? You planning on becoming a nun?”
“Knock it off. Of course not. But I’m certainly not going to get myself involved this soon after— I mean, anything I would do now would be a rebound thing, right? I don’t trust rebound things.”
“Yeah, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean you can’t go out. There’s such a thing as dating for fun.”
“Which you would know about how?”
“Point taken.”
“I think, for us, for now, we need to focus on the agency. In a year or so, we can rethink things, but now? Let’s just be detectives.”
“Right. Good answer.”
She sighed. “So quit bugging me. I have work to do.”
He didn’t say anything, but about two minutes later, a rubber band hit her in the shoulder. Being so much older and more mature than Dylan, she let it pass.
WHEN LILY LEFT the office, it was almost eight. Dylan was hungry—he hadn’t eaten since noon—but the idea of joining the family for dinner didn’t sit well. He didn’t want to make small talk, and he certainly didn’t want to discuss his progress on the case.
Progress. As if he’d made any. The police were cooperating, to a degree, but that was only because he’d been part of the brotherhood. The evidence was sketchy as hell. Would car-jackers be sophisticated enough to wear gloves? Why else would there be no fingerprints in the car? Did they simply hold a gun to her head and force her out? Then why was there blood on the back seat?
It didn’t make sense, and Dylan’s instinct told him it wasn’t a car-jacking. And yet, there was no ransom note. No demands. There had to be something else, some third possibility he couldn’t see yet. She could have taken off, of course, but that wasn’t Julie’s style. He’d just keep digging until he figured it out.
His gaze shifted to a framed photograph on the wall behind the credenza. In it, he was with Julie and Sebastian, all smiles. Sebastian’s arm was around Julie’s waist and Julie’s head rested on his shoulder. They were the picture of connubial bliss. Although they’d spent the day on the ranch, they’d been AWOL for about an hour after lunch, and Dylan knew exactly what they’d been doing.
He’d tried like hell not to let his imagination run wild, but he should have known better. With Julie, he had no willpower, no control. She came to him in dreams, while he was out riding, during business meetings. He’d thought by now he would have accepted that she’d chosen Sebastian. He’d been wrong.
He opened his bottom drawer and took out the bottle of aged scotch he kept there. But he didn’t pour any. Instead, his gaze moved back to the photograph. To the necklace Julie wore with such pride. It was a silver heart that opened to reveal a small picture of the happy couple. It had been her mother’s locket and Sebastian had scored major points for fixing it up like he had.
Dylan had given her earrings. But she wasn’t wearing those in the photo. Just the necklace. Which was appropriate, of course. But he’d wished…
Screw that. It was over. Over and done, and Julie was with Sebastian. If Julie was alive, that is. If he could find her.
Although he wasn’t a man who ordinarily prayed, he closed his eyes and repeated the desperate bargain that had become almost a mantra in the last six months. “God, please keep her safe. Bring her home. If you do that, I swear I’ll stop loving her.”
CHAPTER THREE
LILY TURNED UP the music as she merged onto U.S. 87. Another few hours and she’d reach Abilene. She’d found Cole Bishop easily enough. Now came the hard part. Getting him to come back with her.
Thanks to the Internet, she’d actually learned a good deal about his work. He had a successful midsize ranch—the Circle B—just outside the small city of Jessup where he raised prize-winning Black Angus cattle. He had an excellent breeding program, but what he was most noted for was the way he managed the ranch. His techniques had been written up in The Cattlemen and the High Plains Journal, two big trade magazines. His approach to ranching was modern and cost-effective. Clearly, he was a smart cookie.
What she didn’t find was anything about the man himself. No personal information at all. She couldn’t find any pictures, either.
It occurred to her that perhaps Mr. Bishop wanted to connect with Eve again, but that he didn’t know how. Men, especially ranchers, could be stubborn as mules. So maybe her appearance would be just the excuse he needed to mend his fences and go back into the fold.
But somehow she doubted it. Why? She couldn’t say. Like her brother, she trusted her gut instincts. They’d always been alike that way. Most of her insights had been about Dylan; it was a twin thing, which she’d discovered wasn’t uncommon at all. But when she’d moved out of the house, other events seemed to trigger that sixth sense of hers. It wasn’t as if she had ESP or anything. Just that from time to time her radar would go off.
It had gone off with Jason Gill, but she’d ignored it. There had been that small worried voice in the back of her head when he’d asked her to leave New York and transfer to the Dallas office. But had she listened? Oh, no. She’d moved, lock, stock and barrel. Once she’d turned off her receiver, it had stayed off. She’d believed every honeyed lie, and she’d fallen hard. She still got monthly issues of Bride magazine at the house. Instead of canceling the damn subscription, she preferred to stack the magazines in a pile by her bed. A towering reminder to heed her intuition.
Of course, sometimes listening to the quiet voice inside led to things that were hard to deal with. As a forensics specialist working for the FBI, she’d learned how to go by the book. Except that one time. The small voice had led her to discover that the death of a pregnant teenager and the child inside her had not occurred in a drive-by shooting, as the police believed, but at the hands of her own father.
She’d realized then that forensics wasn’t where she belonged. It wasn’t all bad. But the case of the teenager, and of course the whole Jason mess, convinced her to leave Dallas and come home. That, at least, had been a positive thing.
The memories had shattered her good mood, and that wasn’t acceptable. She turned up the radio until the car vibrated with Reba singing “Fancy.” Lily sang along, not caring that her voice was terrible, and that she only hit some of the notes some of the time. She loved singing in the car, and she didn’t give a hoot who saw her doing it. She had a long road ahead, and nothing like good old country music to help her along the way.
By the time she reached the tiny town of Jessup, Texas, she was sung out, rung out and starving. The town looked like a hundred others in South Texas. The biggest single store was the grain and feed. Then a Wells Fargo branch. There was an antique store next to a gun shop, and next to that Pete’s Dry Cleaning. Then she spied a little diner, Josie’s, and she pulled around back to the parking lot. She’d purposely waited to eat until she arrived in Cole Bishop’s town. Waitresses in small-town diners could be a wealth of information.
She peeled herself off the seat then shut the door; her car looked a little worse for wear, but that wasn’t because of this trip. It had only taken six hours to get here from the ranch. The sports car was almost ten years old, and the Texas weather had beaten down the old broad. But there were some good years left in her. At least, Lily hoped so.
She ran her fingers through her hair, straightened her blouse and skirt and headed inside.
It took her a moment to adjust to the dim light after so much bright sunshine. But once she did, she felt as if she’d been there before. It was a familiar setup, typical of diners all over the country. Four or five booths, a few tables, a counter, a small soda fountain. The waitresses wore jeans and T-shirts with white aprons slung low on their hips. The other truly Texas touch was the preponderance of Stetsons on the clientele.
Lily headed to the middle seat at the counter, between a wiry old cowboy who looked as if he slept in his boots and a middle-aged woman eating a salad, her paperback book open behind her plate.
The waitress, Ginny, according to her name tag came to Lily with a menu and a smile. “Afternoon.”
“Hi.”
“You headin’ to Fort Worth?”
Lily shook her head. “Nope. But maybe you can help me?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“First, I need some chicken-fried steak.”
“Smart girl. There’s none better in the county.”
“Excellent. And I’ll have an iced tea, please.”
Ginny wrote the order, then turned and put it on a clip in the window opening to the kitchen. She poured the tea, gave the cowboy some fresh coffee and came back to Lily. “So what else can I help you with?”
Lily guessed her age at about forty, give or take. Her short cropped hair had some gray in it, her eyes had laugh wrinkles and so did her smile. It was obvious she liked the idea of a stranger in town, with all new stories to tell. Lily sent up a mental thank-you to the patron saint of private detectives, if there was one. “I’m looking for someone. His name is Cole Bishop.”
Ginny’s pencil slipped from her fingers. The woman to Lily’s right snapped her book shut. The cowboy pushed back his Stetson. The reactions were startling, to say the least.
“Are you here for the job?”
Lily had no idea what the job might be, but it seemed a likely avenue to pursue. She couldn’t imagine what could cause such a stir. “Yeah. You know anything about it?”
Ginny glanced meaningfully at the woman with the book. The best Lily could figure, the waitress was either scandalized or jealous, or else she had an upset stomach. Finally looking back at Lily, Ginny shook her head. “I don’t know that much about it.”
Right. “Whatever you can tell me would be great. I’m not sure I got all the details.”
The woman shrugged a what-the-hell. “I’ll tell you one thing. He’s a stunner.”
“A stunner?”
“Best-looking man I’ve ever seen in the flesh.”
“I see,” she said, although of course, she didn’t. What did his looks have to do with the job? Dammit, she shouldn’t have said she was going after the job. Now it was impossible to ask straight out what it was.
“And Lord knows he could have any woman he wanted just by crooking his little finger.”
The woman next to Lily nodded her agreement. “You’d think he’d want to do things the regular way, wouldn’t you?”
Have any woman? The regular way?
“So, tell me something, sweetie,” Ginny asked, lowering her voice. “Why on earth would a beautiful young woman like you want to do it?”
It? What was it? “Uh, you know. The usual reasons.”
“Usual? I don’t know where you’re from, child, but in this part of the world, there ain’t no usual in what Cole Bishop’s up to.”
Shit! “Well, that’s the thing. I was hoping to learn more about it before I went to see him. If I go to see him.”
Ginny leaned forward and opened her mouth, but the little bell from the kitchen drew her away before she could say one word. It ended up being Lily’s lunch that was ready, and once Ginny retrieved it, she seemed ready to spill the beans. To make sure the waitress knew she had the floor, Lily quickly cut a big slice of the meat and shoved it in her mouth. What she should have done first was make sure it wasn’t scorching hot. But she just smiled through the pain as she chewed.
Ginny opened her mouth again, but for the second time, she was interrupted.
“I heard that Stephanie Davidson went by his place about two weeks ago.” The woman to Lily’s right leaned forward. “She said he was a regular son of a you-know-what.”
“I do, Patsy, I do.” Ginny shook her head and frowned. “He ‘bout bit my head off a couple days back. Just because his coffee wasn’t hot enough.”
“That’s Cole Bishop for you.”
“And yet the women fall at his feet. Except for, you know. That’s just plum crazy.” Ginny realized what she’d said, and shot Lily an embarrassed glance. “No offense meant.”
“None taken.” Lily smiled, but her imagination was going hog-wild. Was the man a deviant? A pervert? A talk-show host? Maybe Eve wouldn’t want him back in her life. Maybe Lily should get in her car and head on home. What in hell was this job?
“I don’t know.” Patsy took a swallow of her iced tea, probably just to add to the drama of the moment. Even after she put down her glass, she hesitated. “I think what the man needs is a good woman. Someone who can turn him around.”
“Wait a minute. Are you saying he’s gay?”
Ginny shook her head at Lily’s question. “Not so’s you’d notice. He sees a waitress out at Hastings from time to time. And don’t she like to brag about it. According to her, he’s got the biggest—”
The kitchen bell rang, and Ginny hustled to the window before she finished the sentence. Lily figured she knew what was so big about Mr. Bishop, but in cattle country one could never be quite sure.
“Manny sure does speak highly of him, though,” Patsy said the moment Ginny returned from her waitressing duties.
“Who’s Manny?” Lily asked.
“He works for Bishop. Young man, real polite. He’s got a girl, Rita Borrego is her name, and she works at the Millers’ place. She’s a cook and pretty as a petunia.”
Lily didn’t care about petunias. She wanted to know what was going on with Cole. It was a nightmare version of twenty questions, and Lily’s turn was about up. “So, about this job…”
“Jessica Tanksley,” Patsy said, as if Lily hadn’t spoken. “She’s my sister’s boyfriend’s cousin. She went out there.” Patsy looked up to heaven for a moment, then back down. “He looked her over like he was buying a prize heifer. Asked her about a million questions. Real personal, if you get my meaning. But she must have answered wrong. The man never did call her.”
This was getting weirder by the second. Not to mention more frustrating. What kind of a job was this? He’d looked the woman over like a cow? Asked personal questions? “What about family?” Lily asked, deciding to approach things from a different angle. “His, I mean.”
