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“Are you lost?” he asked.
“I was looking for someone.” Dillon brushed past the man and climbed the stairs. Back in the foyer, he saw the woman who’d been in the bar standing there, and beyond her, the elaborately coiffed hostess watching nervously from behind her stand. He glanced back and saw the burly man enter the foyer. Time to go.
Outside, artificial light illuminated his way. Past the circular drive, he stepped onto the lawn and looked back to check how safe he was. The big man had stopped on the front porch, holding a radio to his mouth. Safe enough. He wasn’t going to follow.
Dillon jumped over a cluster of pansies, his feet crunching on mulch as he maneuvered through the wide and curving border. When darkness cloaked him, he stopped. The knuckle-dragger still stood on the front porch. Dillon moved behind the trunk of a pine tree and waited.
Rustling in some nearby shrubbery made him turn. There was someone there. He walked toward the sound and stopped when he saw a girl. She inhaled her alarm, taking a step back. He recognized her. She was new to town. She and her grandmother had just moved here. She had long, thick, dark brown hair and green eyes, but it was her hot body that had always caught his eye.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“What are you doing here?” she countered.
Had she recognized him? “Why are you hiding in the trees?”
Pursing her lips, she folded her arms and stuck out a trim hip. “Why are you?”
He chuckled and held out his hand. “I’m Dillon Monroe.”
After a brief hesitation, she shook his hand. “Hallie Taylor.”
“I know who you are. We go to the same school. Did you come here for dinner?” He knew she hadn’t but he played ignorant.
She frowned while she studied him. “You go to Cold Plains High?”
He nodded. She didn’t recognize him. “I’m a senior.” Or he would be in the fall.
“I’m going to be a junior.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I noticed you at school last year. You’re new to town, right?”
“Yeah.”
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say, and they were standing in the landscaping like a couple of delinquents.
Finally, he glanced back at the inn. “Samuel Grayson is in there.”
She frowned again, this time from a different kind of curiosity. “Is that why you’re here? Did you have dinner with him?”
“No. My parents are friends with him. I can’t stand the man.”
She seemed to ease her tension, but there was an element of distrust that surrounded her. She did seem really quiet at school. She hung out with one girl and didn’t seem to have many other friends. Not popular, but she could be. She was pretty enough. She just wasn’t all that outgoing. He wondered if the reason she was here had anything to do with that.
Her gaze shifted and he looked toward the inn again. Samuel emerged with his goons, but someone else with him made Dillon take notice. Chief of Police Bo Fargo.
“I knew it!” Hallie said, moving beside him.
Dillon looked over at her. “I thought you came here for dinner.”
Her green eyes moved up to meet his confrontation. “I never said I came here for dinner.”
He grinned because she’d fallen right into his trap. If she hadn’t come for dinner, why was she here, hiding in the trees?
“I better get going.” She started walking toward the road on the other side of the trees that encompassed the inn.
“Hey, I don’t care why you were here. I came to spy on Grayson and I’m pretty sure you came to do the same.”
She didn’t stop or acknowledge him.
He could understand her fear. Her reason for being here had to stay secret. If the wrong person found out, she might catch Grayson’s attention.
They reached a bicycle lying on the ground and she picked it up.
Dillon touched her arm to stop her. “My truck is right up the street. I can drive you home.”
“I can ride my bike.”
Just then a silver BMW drove by with Grayson in the back. He saw them. The BMW passed without stopping and Dillon let his held breath out. That was close.
“Come on, I’ll drive you home.”
She didn’t argue as he took the bike from her and pushed it to his twenty-year-old blue-and-white Chevy truck. While he put it into the back, she looked up the street, chewing her bottom lip.
He opened the passenger door for her and she got inside. Walking around, he sat behind the wheel and started the engine. Hallie told him where she lived but fell into deep thought after he began driving.
“My dad hangs out with Samuel all the time,” Dillon put out there. It’d be great if she started talking. Maybe they could team up.
Her gaze moved for a tentative glance but she said nothing.
“That’s why I started watching him,” he continued as though he hadn’t noticed. “I followed him to the inn tonight. I think Samuel did something to change him. Not that my dad was all that great before. He’s always treated my mom like dirt. She hates going anywhere with him anymore, but he keeps making her. He likes going to the community center all the time. There’s something weird going on there.”
Hallie’s head turned a small degree, enough for her eyes to once again glance his way.
“My mom’s been drinking a lot. I’m starting to get really worried about her.”
“Is that why you’re following your dad?”
Finally. He’d gotten her to talk. “Yeah. She needs someone to watch over her. My dad’s not going to. He’s going to drag her into a garbage can.”
“That’s really sweet. That you’re watching over her.”
Sweet? He’d kick his dad’s behind if he ever hurt his mom again. “I saw a tattoo of D on his hip.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know if my mom has one, but I bet she does. He probably forced her to do it with him.” That made him so mad.
“Even if she didn’t want to?”
“She drinks way too much. It’s like she tries to blot out the fact that he’s turning into a whack job and taking her with him. Compliments of Grayson.” He didn’t even try to hide his disgust. He used to be close to his dad. Now his dad barely noticed when he came and went.
“What are you going to do?” Hallie asked.
Without even telling him, she’d revealed their common interest. They both despised Samuel Grayson.
“Keep following my dad. Maybe I’ll catch him or Grayson doing something wrong.”
“Are you blind? Bo Fargo was there.” Her emotion gave away the reason she’d gone to the inn. Bo Fargo.
He didn’t ask her why. She probably wouldn’t tell him anyway. “He’s one man in a whole police department.”
“The Chief of Police.”
“Not everyone supports Samuel Grayson.”
“Yeah, but who would that be?”
“Ford McCall wasn’t at the inn tonight. He doesn’t meet Grayson anywhere.”
After a moment, she asked, “You think he isn’t one of them?”
“He never goes to any of those seminars, and I never see him anywhere Grayson is unless the whole town is there.”
They reached the street where she lived. As he drove around the corner, flashing lights elicited a startled gasp from Hallie.
“My grandmother!”
After frantically running to every window and door to make sure they were all locked, Gemma didn’t think she’d ever been happier to see firemen and police officers. The five minutes it had taken for them to get here seemed like hours, each second spent frightened out of her mind that Jed would find a way inside Martha’s house. The firemen had already checked her out and the police had arrived to ask questions. She and Martha had just finished answering them. Gemma looked for Ford again—she’d done that several times. Where was he?
Gemma joined Martha on the sofa. The woman’s gravity-ravaged face and stunning light blue eyes were drawn with strain. She’d given the poor old woman quite a scare.
“I think you saved my life tonight, Martha.”
Martha’s smile eased the lines of tension. “I haven’t had this much excitement since my son went missing. My old ticker can’t take much more of that.” She patted her chest above her large and sagging breasts.
What she’d said about her son caught Gemma’s attention in a hurry. “Your son is missing?”
“Mmm-hmm. Since a few months ago.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
With that, the old woman grew uncertain. “The police say they’re looking for him.”
It didn’t sound as though she believed that.
“They think he left of his own free will,” she added.
“But you don’t think so?”
What Gemma had thought was uncertainty became something else entirely. Distrust. Martha eyed Gemma with anxious hesitation.
Her discussion with Ford gave her a moment of uncertainty herself. Was there something going on in this town? Something that made Martha suspicious of her neighbors?
Someone burst through the door. Gemma looked up, expecting Ford. When she saw Martha’s granddaughter charging into the room, followed by a slightly older boy, she restrained her disappointment. There were plenty of policemen here. She didn’t need Ford.
“Grandma!” the girl yelled.
The boy entered the house and stopped just inside.
Using the armrest for support, Martha stood up from the sofa and the girl threw herself against her for a hug. “Oh, my God. Are you okay?”
“Great goats, Hallie, I’m fine. It was our neighbor who needed help.” She leaned back. “Gemma was attacked by her ex-husband again.”
The girl glanced down at Gemma and then began touching her grandmother all over as though having to feel for herself that she was all right. It was so moving. Gemma had never had anything like that growing up. She’d never felt that close to her mother.
“We drove up and there were all those lights.” Hallie’s eyes misted. “I was so scared.”
Martha gave her granddaughter a kiss on her cheek. “Oh, now, you see everything is all right.”
“I didn’t know, with all the trouble we’ve been—” She shot a look at Gemma. “I just didn’t know.”
What had the girl stopped herself from saying? Trouble with what? Martha’s son? Hallie had to be his daughter.
“Gemma!”
At the sound of the rich, deep voice so full of concern, Gemma looked up to see Ford striding toward her, maneuvering through firemen and police officers to reach her. The sight of him sent sparks of gladness chasing through her. She couldn’t explain why. Why was he different than the other officers? She didn’t care.
She stood as he neared.
Instead of taking her into his arms as she half-expected, he took her hands and surveyed her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
He surveyed her all over again. “Are you sure?”
“I got away before he hurt me.” Again.
“Or killed you,” he shocked her by saying, reminding her that Jed had promised to take her home … or kill her if she refused. She shuddered.
Ford rubbed her arms. “I should have been there.”
He was concerned. Really concerned. More than a police officer should be. Absurdly, this was exactly what she craved. For him to be here, making her feel safe … and more.
Seeming aware of the intimacy at the same moment, he regained his composure. “What happened?”
