“It rarely is,” Miranda said. That was the kind of data Jac would focus on to the exclusion of everything else. Jac was definitely a detail kind of woman. “But Lesley swore he didn’t see her before they moved. We’ll have to collaborate that with his siblings’ statements.”
“After we get them,” Carrie Lorcan pointed out.
Knight loomed behind her. Well, leaning against the wall, not saying anything, much like Clint, who stood next to him. And Joel. Joel looked practically exhausted, poor guy. He’d had another drug bust in the northern corner of his county at four a.m. the night before. Drugs in Masterson were becoming more of a problem than ever.
It was Knight who concerned her the most.
He’d practically watched her every move since they’d met up in the dining room that morning. It had her…disconcerted. In a way she hadn’t been over a man in a long, long time.
“I suggest we split up.” Miranda studied the names. “Max, you and Jac take Olivia. She’s a teacher at a small school, just over the state lines in Nebraska.” Miranda didn’t miss the way her friend winced at the assignment. Well, they weren’t going to figure things out between them if they weren’t given time alone to do it. A long drive into Nebraska would be a good place to start.
“I think that would be a good idea, but why don’t I take Dr. Appell with me instead?” Max shot her a significant look. One that told Miranda that Max knew what she had been trying to do. Max was a very smart man—maneuvering him and Jac was going to be very tricky. “So she can see the ropes?”
“I’ll take Monica—Diane,” Clint said. “Knight, you want to ride along with me? You and Agent Jac?” Clint liked Jac; Miranda could tell. It didn’t surprise her—Clint had a protective streak three miles wide, and Jac had that look about her that made people want to protect.
“That leaves Carrie and me to talk to Jenny-Kayla and Marcie-Marnie.” She could handle that. Put some distance between herself and Knight.
Miranda needed the drive today, to see the mountains and hills and fields she’d grown up loving. She just needed to put some distance between herself and Knight, too.
Miranda needed time to think. She had to figure that man out. Somehow. He was a bigger puzzle than she ever had imagined.
41
“What do you want from me? This was not why I gave you my number.”
Jim resisted the urge to curse right back. Girl always had been a witch. Just like Helen. “I’m calling to give you the heads-up. So you can warn the rest of your brothers and sisters. There’s trouble here in Masterson.”
Jim hurriedly explained it to her, popping a third top on a beer while he did. Without thinking about it. The woman he talked to always had brought out the urge to drown his troubles in beer. This time was no different.
By the time the call was done, Jim was steaming.
“Handle it. Just handle it. Get rid of that cop if you have to.”
Jim disconnected the call and threw his cell into the passenger-side window. It bounced off and landed in the floorboard. He just left it, starting the engine up again.
Everything burned through him. Gunderson. Weatherby. That ungrateful daughter of Pauline and Luther. All of it.
Jim just wanted to make someone pay.
By the time he made it to Gunderson’s, he’d finished almost the whole six-pack. He hadn’t done that so quick in a long time. At least a few years or so.
It wasn’t sitting so well on him now. He pulled over before Gunderson’s driveway and lost the contents of his stomach.
Jim pulled the rest of the way into Gunderson’s drive and just sat for a while.
No one was home. Gunderson’s truck was gone, of course.
The place had that deserted feel. With all the work Gunderson still needed to do on the place, it looked like it was haunted and about ready to be condemned. Jim sat out there in his squad car, just thinking, parked at angle blocking the driveway.
Drinking. He shouldn’t be. A part of him knew that. He shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be there. If Gunderson came home and saw him there, and smelled the beer, Jim’s career would be finished. Gone. Ended in an instant.
Gunderson would arrest him on the spot.
His own stupid fault.
But he was so sick and tired of men like Gunderson getting things just handed to them. The ranch wasn’t the biggest, and it wasn’t in that great of shape, but it was more than Jim had. No doubt because Gunderson made twice what Jim did.
How was that fair?
They’d started the academy at the exact same time. Him, Gunderson. Weatherby. Those two had teamed up against him from the very beginning.
It wasn’t right. Far from it. It wasn’t right at all.
Jim pulled his weapon free—not his service weapon, because that would just be stupid. But the smaller pistol he’d carried in his shoulder holster for fifteen years.
He tossed the can in his hand onto the ground next to his patrol car and took aim. There were shiny windows right there in front of him, with bright curtains on the inside.
There were flowers in the pots on the front porch. No doubt that pansy-ass Gunderson had planted them himself. Cooing over them like a freak.
Jim closed one eye and aimed at the first of those flowerpots as a big yellow dog came ambling up toward his car. Jim cursed, and jerked as his fingers squeezed the trigger.
And kept squeezing, even as the dog leapt right at him.
Then the dog was yelping and running, blood on its side.
He hadn’t meant to hurt Gunderson’s dog. Jim did a quick U-turn. And drove off. He hadn’t meant to hurt the dog.
Jim turned back toward the county seat and forced himself to breathe. To keep his hands steady on the wheel.
He almost missed the big, slate blue truck with Masterson Vet Services printed on the side until they
