She should’ve just grabbed Queenie and left him to it, but this man had gotten her dander up. She might have to call him sir, but she wasn’t going to completely kiss his butt.
“I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t have Sheriff Willaby’s password.” It was a bald-faced lie. Sheriff Willaby hated paperwork and had turned over most of it to Dixie as soon as she became his deputy. Something Officer Hayes would find out if he called the sheriff. Luckily, it turned out that he disliked dealing with the sheriff as much as everyone else did.
His eyes narrowed on her for a long moment before he nodded his head. “Then I guess I’ll be on my way.” He pulled on his hat. “But I’ll be keeping an eye on you, Deputy Meriwether.” He turned on a boot heel and strode out of the office.
When he was gone, Dixie mimicked him in a peevish voice. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you, Deputy Meriwether.” She slammed the door closed and gasped when she saw her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back. A blue film of dried gel covered her face. “Just great, Dixie Leigh. You certainly know how to make a first impression.” She moved to the desk and grabbed some tissues out of the box. “Not that I wanted to make a good first impression on uppity Lincoln Hayes, Texas Ranger,” she said as she wiped off her face. “It’s obvious the man likes to throw his weight around like Sheriff Willaby. And my daddy.”
Although he could’ve pulled out his phone and reported her spa day to the sheriff. And yet, he hadn’t. Since he seemed like a straitlaced lawman who followed the rules to a tee, she had to wonder why. Maybe he didn’t want Sheriff Willaby finding out he had stopped by to take a peek at his files.
After getting Queenie out of her carrier, Dixie scooted the chair closer to the computer and quickly pulled up the case files. There were only three missing persons reports filed in the last year. One was for Ernie Finnegan’s missing Labrador retriever. The dog had been found three weeks later at a ranch twenty miles away with a pregnant female basset hound. One was for Mildred Hampton’s husband. It turned out Mildred was a seventy-three-year-old woman who had never been married and was hoping to change that. The last missing persons report was for Sam Sweeney.
Dixie remembered this one. Sam’s daughter, Maisy Sweeney, had come in and filed the report with Sheriff Willaby. Afterwards, she’d stopped in the outer office to chat with Dixie. She was a sweet young woman who claimed she rode wild broncs for a living. Dixie couldn’t believe that a woman would want to spend her time being flipped off a horse. Just like she couldn’t believe Maisy’s daddy had met with foul play in Simple, Texas.
But that was exactly what Sheriff Willaby seemed to believe.
Or not in Simple itself, but on a ranch just outside of the small town. The Double Diamond ranch was the last place Sam had worked. The ranch had been a boy’s ranch for trouble teens at the time. In his notes, Sheriff Willaby wrote about his suspicions that the delinquent teenagers who had spent the summer there were somehow responsible for Sam’s disappearance. He’d even listed each teen by name.
Cru Cassidy. Logan McCord. Holden Lancaster. Valentine Sterling. Sawyer Dawson.
Dixie’s eyes widened as she read the last name.
And Lincoln Hayes.
Chapter Two
Lincoln steered the horse he was riding away from the gopher hole and glanced up at the clear blue Texas sky. Damn, it felt good to be back at the Double Diamond ranch with his friends. It had been too long since they’d all been together. He glanced at the four men who flanked him on either side. Sixteen years had added height, muscle, and maturity to the group.
Or maybe not maturity.
“We should camp out under the stars tonight.” Cru Cassidy fidgeted in the saddle as if he was struggling to keep his horse at a sedate pace—which he probably was. Cru had always been hyperactive. “We could get a keg of beer and make some s’mores.”
“Beer and s’mores?” Holden Lancaster stared at Cru as if he’d gone off his rocker.
“Let me guess,” Cru said. “You’d rather have caviar and champagne.” Holden had been a snobby rich kid when he’d first come to the Double Diamond Boy’s Ranch as a teenager. Now he was a country lawyer who dressed in faded jeans and western shirts and spent most his time trading legal advice for hound dog puppies and homemade banana bread.
“Actually, I was thinking milk goes better with s’mores. And I can’t camp out tonight. Devlin’s making me dinner. She has some surprise to tell me. Probably about the research she’s been doing.” Holden’s wife Devlin was a geoscientist who had given up her job of searching for oil to research new energy resources.
“I can’t camp out either,” Logan McCord said. “Evie isn’t due for another couple months, but I’m still nervous about leaving her. I missed Clint’s birth. I refuse to miss this one.”
“I’ll have to pass too.” Val said. “Reba’s helping me plot the next book in my Diamond Ghost Ranch series tonight.” Valentine Sterling had been the definition of a book nerd when he’d first come to the ranch. He’d grown up to become a sophisticated bestselling fiction author who lived in New York City. . . until he’d fallen in love with the owner of the only hotel in Simple. Now that he and Reba were married, he’d become a small-town business owner who spent his time baking for the guests at the Dixon Boardinghouse and writing ghost stories for middle school kids.
Cru leaned over and punched Lincoln in the arm. “Then it looks like it will just be you and me eating s’mores and sleeping beneath the stars, Linc.” His cellphone pinged with an incoming text.
