“I’ll be in touch, Ben.” Letter to Reader Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN Copyright

“I’ll be in touch, Ben.”

He nodded and handed Abby his card. “You do that,” he said, then slammed the car door.

She watched him saunter away, strides long and easy, his broad shoulders formidable, his butt—For Pete’s sake, they were working together, not getting involved.

You can admire, a little voice in her head whispered.

“No,” Abby told herself, “I can’t”

Dating was fun. Right up there with the perfect ski run, and no more serious. Ben Shea didn’t smile. He didn’t flirt, and he took her seriously. All of which made him a dangerous man. Abby didn’t do dangerous men. After years as a firefighter, she knew what it meant to get burned.

Anyway, thanks to the shining example of manhood set by Daddy dear, revered police chief, Abby had no desire to bring home a man for good Sometimes her two brothers-in-law gave her pause, but not for long.

Abby put her car in gear and pulled out onto me road, hoping the big dark cop would recede in her thoughts as surely as he did in the rearview mirror.

Dear Reader,

Two of the most interesting characters I’ve ever written about happen to be in the PATTON’S DAUGHTERS trilogy: Abby Patton and Jack Murray. Both challenged me in unanticipated ways. They’re more complex, more flawed, less obviously “hero” or “heroine” material than usual. Abby, I came to realize as I wrote, had to be deeply troubled. How could she not be, given her abusive father and desertion by her mother and older sister, her mother-surrogate? In defense she had learned not to care, and to manipulate men because she felt that they must all, on some level, be like her father. I found that I cared about her. I wanted to heal her, but in a believable way.

Jack, of course, wasn’t the answer. His entire life has been shaped by one painful, humiliating moment when he wasn’t strong enough to stand up for the girl he loved. One of these days, Jack Murray must be a hero, because that’s the only way he can redeem himself.

As you’re reading A Message for Abby, I’m writing about Jack and finding that I love the challenge of writing about people who aren’t any simpler in their motivations and reactions than you or I are. I’m crossing my fingers that some of you choose to let me know what you think about PATTON’S DAUGHTERS and especially about the brittle, intelligent woman in A Message for Abby.

Thanks for reading my stories. (I invite you to visit my website at http://www.superauthors.com/)

Janice Kay Johnson

A Message for Abby

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

HER DEAD DADDY’S PICKUP sitting beside the road, smoldering from an arson fire.

That was Abby Patton’s first thought on seeing the truck—that it was Daddy’s—and now she couldn’t get rid of the willies.

The pickup wasn’t really his, of course; it couldn’t be. Ed Patton had been dead for three years, his Chevy sold only months after he went in the ground. This one was just the same color, the same vintage.

Coincidence, is all.

Abby prowled around the pickup. For sure these plates weren’t the ones that had been on Daddy’s truck—but then, she’d bet ten to one this pair had been stolen from another vehicle anyway. Shiny, tabs new, they didn’t go with the red dust coating the dented, fading green paint of the pickup.

Firefighters had smashed the passenger side window and pumped foam on the seat, just to be sure a blaze didn’t leap to life later. Wearing their gear and sweating in the hundred-degree heat, they had made a few choice remarks about the dumb ass who’d gone to all the trouble to rip the stuffing out of the seat, soak it with gasoline and set it on fire, only to roll up the windows and lock the doors.

“Doesn’t every schoolkid know fire needs oxygen?” one of them had asked, shaking his head. A minute later they’d tooted a fare-thee-well and were gone.

Now, left beside the road with nobody but jackrabbits and the wind to keep her company, Abby said aloud, “And why bother?” Why not junk the truck if it wouldn’t run, sell it on a lot if it would?

Because setting fires was fun? Because the pickup was stolen and some teenage perp thought he could get rid of fingerprints this way? Or because the arsonist needed to destroy the vehicle for some other reason? There sure wasn’t anything in the rusting bed of the pickup.

Before taking a closer look, Abby got on the radio to run the plates. While she waited, she leaned against her car door and looked around.

Barton Road was paved, even had a yellow stripe down the middle, but at the bottom of the gravel banks to each side, gray desert scrub stretched away, bordered by ancient barbed wire attached to rotting fence posts. Cattle must have grazed out here once upon a time, or why bother fencing, but this now looked like the pronghorn country it had once been.

She guessed she was five miles outside the Elk Springs city limits, east of town where the land got bleak and flat mighty quick. Just a few miles west, ranches started studding the landscape, including her brother-in-law’s, the Triple B. But here no houses were visible, and only three vehicles had gone by in the past twenty minutes. Plus, the arsonist could have seen anyone coming far enough away to disappear in a cloud of dust before the passerby arrived.

Some teenage boys out here target shooting had used a cell phone to report the fire. Interesting they’d seen flames. Either the fire setter had just left, or they’d lit this baby themselves.

A voice crackled from the receiver. “Marshal Patton, the plates belong to a blue 1997 Chevrolet Lumina, registered to—”

“Whoa,” Abby interrupted. She repeated the plate number. “You’re sure about the vehicle?”

“Yes, ma’am. The registered owner is Shirley Barnard, address 22301 Butte Road, Elk Springs.”

Shock silenced Abby long enough for the dispatcher to say, “Do you need a repeat?”

“No! I...” She shook her head. “No. Thank you.”

The prickle of some kind of primitive fear crept up her spine.

A fire set in a pickup that could have been Daddy’s decorated with stolen plates belonging to her sister Renee’s mother-in-law. And one of Daddy’s daughters was an arson investigator.

Coincidence, Abby tried to tell herself again, but disquiet stirred the hair at her nape. She suddenly felt as if somebody was watching her.

She gazed around one more time, but the sagebrush wasn’t dense enough to hide a man and the road stretched bare and shimmery in the noonday sun.

Abby shivered despite the heat. Pulling on latex gloves, she walked back to the pickup. Reaching through the broken window, she gingerly lifted the latch and shouldered open the door.

The interior was filthy and dripping with gasoline and retardant. The upholstery appeared to have been slit with a knife and then ripped open; most of the fabric was on the floor. Blackened from the fire, stuffing cascaded after the seat covering, exposing springs.

The smell was bad. Really bad. Instinctively Abby began breathing through her mouth. Gasoline, charred plastic and fabric and some sharp overtone that made her think of burning urine. What was that stench?

Oh, no.

She lifted the guts of the upholstery and turned it. Burned bits crumbled. She didn’t notice, was too absorbed in the dark stain on the woven material. When she let it go, the latex fingers of her gloves were pink.

Blood, and plenty of it. Could have been dried before the gasoline and then the foam used to put out the fire had liquefied it again.

Abby stepped back, scanning the road and the dry landscape again, reassured by the emptiness and by the weight of the revolver at her hip.

She proceeded methodically then, examining every inch of the cab. Glove compartment was empty but for dirt, an old paperclip, a 1985 penny. More of the same—and nothing else—under the seats; the floors looked as if they hadn’t been vacuumed since the year the penny had been minted. No stickers on the door or windshield showing when oil changes or tune-ups had been done. She bagged and tagged what little she found, in case it became evidence in a homicide, but she was betting whoever had set the fire hadn’t touched any of this. He’d been damned sure nothing incriminating was left, however.

She looked beneath the hood, even scooted on her back under the chassis just to check for the unexpected.

Then she returned to her car and called the Butte County Sheriffs Department, Investigations Unit. Too bad Meg was on maternity leave, Abby thought as she waited to be connected. Married two years now, Meg and Scott had decided to give Will and little Emily a brother or sister. Not that Will would care—he’d be off to college soon.

Abby’s call was eventually relayed to Detective Ben Shea. Abby knew her sister had worked with Shea and thought highly of him.

“Patton?” he said in a deep, easy voice. “This Abby?”

“Yes.” She watched in the rearview mirror as a dust cloud materialized into a camper coming down the road toward her. “Meg’s told you I’m with the arson investigation squad, right?” If two investigators could be called a ‘squad’—Butte County wasn’t New York City yet, thank God. They were kept busy enough, but in these parts most arson fires could be nailed on teenagers or business owners.

“Sure. What’s up?”

The camper passed, several people—kids among them—craning their necks to see why an official vehicle sat beside the road. She relaxed again. “I’m on Barton Road, approximately five miles east of the city limits. I have a pickup truck with stolen plates. The seat was ripped up, soaked with gasoline and set on fire. The perp forgot to roll down the windows, so the fire didn’t go far. Appears the seat is soaked with blood. I thought you folks might be interested.”

“Yes, indeedy,” he said. “Do you mind sitting tight? If you want, I’ll call for a tow, but I’d like to see the vehicle before we take it into the yard. Just in case,” he echoed her earlier thought, “this amounts to anything.”

“No problem,” she assured him. “I’ll wander around here a little, see if maybe he got careless and tossed a cigarette butt or something.”

While she waited she wondered why she hadn’t told him the pickup was a ringer for her father’s, or that the plates belonged to Renee’s mother-in-law. That part she’d have to tell him, of course, but would he think she was shying at shadows if she admitted to wondering that there might be some message for her in this whole business?

Maybe. She’d see what she thought after meeting him. Despite the fact that he worked off and on with Meg, somehow Abby never had come face-to-face with Shea. She supposed it was natural that he and Meg hadn’t socialized. From what her sister had said, he was closer to Abby’s age than Meg’s. And unmarried without children. Outside of work, they probably didn’t have much in common.

She walked a hundred yards up the road, then back on the other side, doing the same thing going west. The dry gravel and dirt didn’t hold tracks well. She’d parked on the opposite side of the road from the pickup, but the fire truck had pulled in ahead of it and could have obliterated other tracks.

Abby slid down the bank and climbed over the fence, snagging her trouser leg on the barbed wire and swearing. She wanted to go back up to the road and sit in her air-conditioned car. She could feel wet patches under her arms, trickles of sweat making their way down her spine to her panties. She could hardly wait to plunge into the YMCA pool after work and swim her laps.

Scouring the ground for footprints or anything that didn’t belong, she searched in steadily widening semicircles from the pickup. Nothing but reddish dirt, rabbit holes, largish round droppings—maybe deer?—and gray-green sagebrush.

One other car passed, slowing briefly. She was too far away to see faces. The next vehicle, a Bronco with the sheriff’s department emblem on the door, pulled to a stop on the shoulder behind her car. Abby trudged back, stepped carefully over the barbed wire and scrambled up the bank, feet slipping in the loose gravel until she had to put her hands down. Sweat fogged her vision as she topped the bank, shoved sticky hair off her forehead, and straightened to face Detective Ben Shea.

She blinked and stared in horror. She was going to kill Meg. Why hadn’t she thought of some excuse to introduce him to her younger, single sister? At the very least, how could she have failed to mention, if only in passing, that Detective Shea was a spectacular man? Mr. January. No, Mr. Calendar Cover himself. Six-two or three, straight dark hair, cool gray eyes and a strong, impassive face.

And she was both sweaty and filthy. Her hair must be lank, her mascara dripping down her cheeks; she could taste grit.

Oh, yeah. Meg was going to pay.

If he’d smirked, Abby would have killed him, too.

His gaze flicked over her in a lightning-quick assessment, but his mouth formed no smile. “Marshal Patton?”

“That’s right.” Her voice sounded gritty. She cleared her throat. “Detective Shea?”

“Ben.” He held out a hand, which she took; his enveloped hers.

Abby would have given anything to be...well, herself. Made up, hair smooth, smile saucy. To be together. She liked his big warm hand, his strong clasp. She wanted to see interest spark in those cool eyes.

“Abby,” she said with a wry smile.

He dropped her hand with unflattering speed. “Let’s take a look,” he said, and he wasn’t talking about her. Unfortunately.

She trailed behind as he strolled to the pickup, pulled on a latex glove and fingered the upholstery fabric as she’d done.

“Run the plates?” he asked without looking over his shoulder.

“Yes. Do you know my sister, Renee?”

That earned her a startled glance. “Yeah.”

“These plates should be on her mother-in-law’s car. I know Shirley is over in Portland visiting her daughter and grandson. Which means her car is most likely garaged at the Triple B.”

Shea swore softly and moved away from the pickup. “Funny coincidence. I mean, you being the one finding out.”

“There are only two arson investigators in Elk Springs.” Facts were facts. Today, she didn’t like this one. It fed that uneasy feeling this pickup had been waiting for her. “Even if you didn’t know our schedules, chances would be fifty-fifty I’d be the one to check out this fire. Actually, John is always off on Mondays.”

Ben Shea’s gray eyes narrowed for a moment. “You don’t think it is coincidence.”

“No.” Okay, there it was, right out in the open. “The thing is, this pickup is the exact model and color of my father’s. We sold it after he died three years ago.”

The detective muttered an obscenity. “Vehicle ID number?”

“Haven’t checked yet.”

He turned and stared at the pickup. “Goddamn.”

“You’re supposed to tell me I’m being paranoid. That coincidences happen.”

“Coincidences happen,” Shea said automatically. He didn’t have to add that he didn’t mean it. “Better make sure, first of all, that Renee’s mother-in-law made it to Portland.”

“Oh, my God,” Abby said, already backing away. Fear had leaped into her throat, nearly gagging her. She liked Shirley Barnard. “I didn’t think of that. I should have. All that blood...”

At her car, she grabbed her cell phone rather than her radio.

“Triple B.” A male voice picked up.

“Daniel Barnard,” Abby said peremptorily.

“He’s riding, I think. No.” She heard laughter in the background. “You’re in luck. Who’s calling?”

She told him; a moment later she was talking to her brother-in-law with the blue eyes to-die-for.

Poor choice of words, Abby thought with a lurch.

“Daniel, we just found a pickup with stolen plates. They belong on Shirley’s Lumina.”

“What the hell?”

“It gets worse,” she warned. “The seat of the pickup is drenched in blood.” Into the silence, she asked quietly, “Daniel, have you talked to your mother? You’re sure she got to Portland okay?”

He swore, which he seldom did. Then, “Yeah. Yeah, she called last night. But I’ll phone right now. And go check her car. Where are you?”

She gave him her cell phone number so he didn’t have to hunt for it. “You’ll get right back to me?”

“Count on it.” He sounded grim.

She flipped her telephone closed and, still sitting in her car with the door open, looked up to find Ben Shea leaning against the left fender of her car, arms crossed. Even through her haze of anxiety, Abby had a fleeting twinge of awareness. His strong body filled out his uniform very nicely.

“Daniel talked to his mother last night,” she said.

Glance razor-sharp, Shea remarked, “Blood’s fresh.”

“But she was in Portland. Do you really think somebody went over there and kidnapped her, murdered her and abandoned the pickup here?”

He frowned at her. “No. But it seems as if you were meant to think that.”

“You really don’t believe I’m imagining things,” Abby said hollowly.

“Nah.” His mouth twisted. “This looks real personal to me.”

“Aimed at me? Or Shirley?”

“There’s a question.” With a sigh he straightened. “You take your own pictures?”

“Usually. But if this might be a murder scene...”

“I’ll call for the techs,” he agreed.

While he was doing that, her phone rang.

“Shirley’s fine,” Daniel said without preamble. “The garage was still locked, but damned if the license plates on her car aren’t missing.”

“I’ll send someone out to fingerprint, just in case this guy got sloppy.”

“What the hell is going on?” Daniel asked, tone baffled.

“I don’t know.” She couldn’t lie and tell him it had nothing to do with his family, because it did. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to steal those plates from Shirley Barnard’s garaged Chevy. The Triple B, where she lived in the original farmhouse, was isolated. A cutting horse operation, the ranch employed a dozen or more stable hands and trainers. You didn’t just drive up, hop out, break into the garage, unscrew the plates, then depart without somebody noticing.

“Keep me informed,” he said.

“Will do.” She pushed End and looked up at the detective. “Evidence crew on the way?”

“Yup.” He was frowning at her.

Abby sneaked a glance at herself in her rearview mirror and almost groaned at the dirty gamine face reflected there. No wonder he was frowning.

“Hot out here,” he said, seemingly at random.

Or was he acknowledging that he understood why she looked like hell?

Maybe. But why didn’t he? she wondered resentfully. The sheen on his brow added to his masculine appeal. Even the smell of sweaty man was pleasing to a woman’s nostrils. Life wasn’t fair.

“So,” he asked in an idle, musing way, “have you ticked anybody off recently?”

“Not in the past couple of days,” Abby snapped.

He lifted a dark brow. “Try the past ten years.”

“I was a firefighter until last fall. I don’t make people mad as often as you do.”

He stayed leaning against the fender, relaxed, his stillness annoying her as much as his questions. She felt wound tight. If it weren’t so hot, she’d have been out of the car pacing. As it was...

“You want to get in, so I can turn on the air-conditioning?” she asked.

He looked surprised, which also irked her. Man, impervious to climactic conditions, was reminded of the frailty of mere Woman.

Detective Shea shrugged, as if to humor her. “Why not?”

“I hate heat,” she muttered when he got in.

“Move to the coast,” he suggested.

Cannon Beach with its rearing sea stack, rocky beach and cool afternoon fog sounded blissful to her right now.

“Winters there are dreary.” She turned on the ignition and cranked up the air-conditioning. “I like to ski. Besides, my family is here.”

“Speaking of which...”

“Yeah, yeah.” Abby gazed out the windshield at the straight empty road. Not a car had passed since he arrived. “I just can’t imagine Shirley having made anybody mad. Have you met her?”

“Yeah, she works part-time at the library. Nice lady.”

“You read?” she asked in mock astonishment before thinking better of it.

“Learned in first grade.”

Unaccustomed to feeling graceless, Abby said, “I was kidding.”

“Uh-huh.”

Chagrined, she decided it was best get back to the subject at hand. “Unless Shirley made somebody mad when she phoned about their overdues, it’s hard to imagine how she can be the target of this.”

“I agree. Although appearances can be deceptive.”

“I know her.”

The narrow-eyed glance he flicked Abby’s way was impatient. “What, the Patton clan is without sin?”

Abby wrapped her fingers around the steering wheel, feeling the need to steady herself. “No,” she said slowly. “My father was...not universally liked.”

“So Meg says.”

“But he’s dead,” she argued, making the point to herself more than him.

“Yup.”

Abby let out a huff of air. “This is pointless.”

“You’re right,” he said agreeably. “All we can do is our jobs, and then wait and see.”

“Right.”

Detective Shea cleared his throat. “Abby? I’m freezing.”

“Really?” She turned to look at him in surprise. As far as she was concerned, the temperature had just gotten pleasant.

He’d tucked his hands in his armpits. “You had your metabolism checked lately?”

“Maybe your blood’s too thin,” she suggested. “You ever thought of moving to Arizona?”

“I don’t mind seasons.” He reached for the door handle. “My body just doesn’t much like changes that are too abrupt. An icy oasis of winter in the middle of a July day is a shock to the system.”

“No, it’s a blessed relief.”

“Uh-huh.” He seemed to like saying that, in a tone that indicated anything but agreement. Relief infused his voice when he added, “Ah. Here comes the cavalry.”

Abby suddenly had an itch to leave. Just drive away. She’d done her part. If murder had been committed, the arson had been no more than a failed effort to cover it up. She liked solving puzzles, but this one wasn’t her kind. As Ben Shea had said, it was personal. It seemed to be tapping at the door to her subconscious, saying, Want to think about long ago? Remember nights of terror and tears?

Well, no thanks, she didn’t. The past wasn’t something she thought about much. She left worrying to her sisters. She didn’t like to get too emotional about anything.

And no creep with a grudge was going to shake her foundations.

“Do you need me to stick around?” Abby asked, giving in to her restlessness.

Looking briefly surprised, then thoughtful, Shea stopped with the passenger side door open. Hot air shoved in. “Nah. I can stay. You have another job?”

“Fifteen.” She lifted her contractor-style clipboard. “That’s assuming nobody torches any other cars or buildings today.”

“Thunderstorm’s building up over the mountains.” He nodded toward Juanita Butte and the Sisters. “Nature’s going to do some torching of her own this evening.”

She glanced uneasily over her shoulder toward town and the mountains beyond. Dark clouds climbed above them. She was just as glad she wouldn’t be called out tonight when a spear of lightning set the dry woods aflame.

“I’ll be in touch.” She handed him her card.

He nodded, taking it and producing one of his own. Then he climbed out and hesitated with his hand on the car door. She felt his gaze, turned to meet it. For just a second something as intense as those white bolts of lightning crackled between them.

The next instant he’d shuttered the sheer force of that look and Abby wondered if she’d imagined it.

“You do that,” he agreed, and slammed the door.

Shaken, she watched him saunter away, strides long and easy, his broad shoulders formidable, his butt—Abby exclaimed aloud. For Pete’s sake, they were working together, not getting involved!

You can admire, a little voice in her head whispered.

“No,” Abby told herself, “I can’t.”

Dating was fun. Right up there with a perfect ski run, and no more serious.

Ben Shea didn’t smile, he didn’t flirt, and he took her seriously. All of which made him a dangerous man.

Abby didn’t “do” dangerous men. After years as a firefighters, she knew what it meant to get burned. Besides, she’d made that particular mistake once, and she was a quick learner.

Anyway, thanks to the shining example of manhood set by Daddy dear, revered police chief, Abby had no desire to bring home a man for good. Sometimes her two brothers-in-law gave her pause, but not for long. You never did know what went on behind closed doors, did you?

Still, she could let herself be comforted by Detective Shea’s competence and by the fact that he had listened to her. She knew cops, and plenty of them would have sneered at her fear.

But it was real, sitting in the pit of her stomach like potato salad gone bad. Because, damn, that did look like Daddy’s pickup truck, and she hadn’t seen one that color since they’d sold his. Somebody had spilled a hell of a lot of blood in it and then set it on fire.

Sort of like sending her an obscene note.

She just wished she could read this one.

Abby put her car in gear and pulled out onto the road, hoping the big dark cop would recede in her thoughts as surely as he did in the rearview mirror.

CHAPTER TWO

BEN SLOUCHED IN HIS CHAIR and propped his feet on his desk, crossing them at the ankles. A swallow of coffee woke him up, the acid burning another millimeter of tissue on the ulcer he felt forming. His imagination, the doctor said. The doctor golfed on Sundays. He didn’t look at dead bodies.

Holding up Abby Patton’s business card, Ben dialed. Though her voice mail wasn’t what he had in mind, he left a message. Her card included a cell phone number, so he tried that.

She answered brusquely on the second ring. “Patton here.”

“Detective Ben Shea.”

“Shea.” She sounded...something. He couldn’t put his finger on what. Not neutral. Not surprised. But a quiver of some emotion had briefly changed the timbre of her voice.

He was hoping it meant that she was pleased to hear from him. Unfortunately, there was another possibility, which was that she’d disliked him from the get-go.

Ben chose to be an optimist.

“News?” she asked.

A direct man, he got right to it. Business first. “That blood came from a deer.”

“What?” she exclaimed.

“The kind with horns and a hide,” Ben elaborated helpfully.

After a long silence Abby Patton said, “I wish I could look on that as good news.”

He turned his head to gaze, unseeing, through the slanted blinds at the parking lot. “You want my opinion?”

“Yeah.”

“It is good in that I don’t have another murder to investigate. But for you personally...” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I’d say this makes it even more likely that coincidence didn’t play a part in your discovery yesterday.”

“He had those windows rolled up on purpose. So the fire wouldn’t get very far. So I’d be sure to see the blood.”

“That’s my guess.”

Again she was silent.

“No fingerprints on the door handles, steering wheel, emergency brake... The ones we found were in spots he didn’t wipe clean. My bet is, they’re old.”

“Did you run the VIN?”

“Yup. It isn’t your father’s pickup. This one was sold by a rancher up in the Dalles a year ago to a—” he glanced down at his notes “—Julia Carvenas. She reported it stolen a week ago.”

“Did you check her out?”

“I can’t see any connection to Elk Springs.”

“Horses? You know my brother-in-law—”

“No horses,” Ben interrupted. “I asked. She runs a landscape business.”

“Then this is a dead end.” Dismay sounded, clear as the cry of a hunted animal.

Abby Patton had struck him as a supremely poised woman. She’d been a firefighter; now she’d added the training to make her a cop. He wondered when was the last time she’d felt any emotion approaching fear.

He kept his gruff voice low and soothing. “I’ll be talking to the teenagers who discovered the fire. I’ll go door-to-door at the houses on the outskirts. See if anybody noticed the pickup passing. I’d like to know how the perp got back to town.”

“Motorcycle?” she suggested. “He could have carried it in the bed of the truck.”

Okay, so she was sharp. Ben didn’t know why that surprised him, even faintly. Yeah, she was a leggy blond beauty with sky-blue eyes, Hollywood’s stereotype of a bimbo, but so was her sister. And he’d long ago learned that Meg Patton was smart and tough, a cop first and a woman second. Hell, their sister Renee, just as pretty and blond, was about to be sworn in as the new Elk Springs police chief.

“Motorcycle’s my guess, too,” Ben said. “Usually loners are the ones who do something so...” Not wanting to alarm her, he hesitated.

“Warped?”

He cleared his throat. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I would,” she said, blunt enough to satisfy him, before she added dismissively, “Thanks, Shea. Let me know if you learn anything further.”

“Wait.” Okay, where had that little spurt of panic come from? So what if she hung up—he could call her back. He knew where to find her.

“You have something else?” she asked, her surprise edged with curiosity.

This should be easy. He’d thought about it all day. She was a foxy woman; he knew from Meg that Abby wasn’t dating anybody seriously.

So why did he put his feet on the floor and sit up straight as if for inspection before he could spit out his question?

“Any chance you’d like to have dinner?”

“Dinner?”

She didn’t have to sound as if he’d suggested bungee jumping naked, thought Ben, stung.

Nonetheless he said doggedly, “Yeah. We could maybe talk this over. Uh... Get to know each other.”smooth. Real smooth.

“As in a date.”

Goddamn it. There she went again, making him feel small.

“That such an outlandish idea?” he asked, his voice edgy.

He could feel her thinking in the moment of silence that followed.

“No,” she said finally. “I don’t usually date cops, is all.”

“There some reason?”

“We’re just...too much alike. We have too much on our minds. I like to have fun. Lighten up. You know?”

“I can have fun,” he said defensively, knowing it was a lie. Yeah, okay; sure he enjoyed himself sometimes. But fun? The way she meant? Probably not. He didn’t drink, hated loud music and detested parties. “We don’t have to talk about work,” he added.

“Dinner.” She sounded cautious. Wheels were turning in her head; he could damn near hear the clatter.

“How about tonight?” Ben asked.

“I’m going to Renee’s tonight. We’re having a war council. So to speak.” She paused. “If you want to come...”

What did this mean? She went from telling him he might not be fun enough to taking him home to meet her family?

“I don’t want to intrude...”

“No, you might have something useful to offer. Daniel’s the one who wants to talk this out.” She sounded mildly impatient. “He’d be glad to have you.”

“What about you?” Ben asked. “Would you be glad to have me?”

“To dinner?” She paused just long enough to be sure he got the point—no innuendos allowed. “Why not?”

He knew where the Triple B was. She suggested they meet there, which he accepted without argument. Most women liked to drive themselves on first dates. She wouldn’t be stuck with fending him off on the doorstep if she came to the conclusion that this had been a mistake.

Hanging up the phone, Ben wasn’t sure how to feel about this evening. Hell, he didn’t know whether it was a working dinner or a date.

He did know he wasn’t used to being rejected. I don’t usually date cops, she’d said, as if he’d crawled out from under a rock.

He wouldn’t take it personally, Ben decided. Maybe she got hit on all the time down at the station. Given her looks, she probably did.

Funny, when he thought about it, because it wasn’t her glorious legs or lush mouth or tangle of honey-blond hair that had gotten to him—although he’d noticed them, he couldn’t deny it. But he didn’t ask out every beautiful woman he met, either. And normally her princess act would have turned him off. A man couldn’t warm his hands on a chilly woman.

But he’d seen something in Abby Patton’s eyes. Something defensive, even scared. Her defiance was a cover-up, he thought, for a woman who didn’t want to admit she was lonely.

And if he was wrong—well, maybe he, too, would be glad they were going their separate ways tonight.

TIRES CRUNCHING on the red cinder lane, Ben drove past the turnoff to the handsome new home that crowned the ridge above the Triple B barns and the pastures, improbably green from irrigation in the midst of brown, high mountain desert country at midsummer. Fences enclosing pastures, paddocks and two outdoor arenas sparkled with fresh white paint. The place was prosperous, the horses and cattle he could see at a distance glossy.

Someone was working a cutting horse in the nearer arena. More like going along for the ride. The horse seemed to be doing the thinking. He was separating one steer from a clump of six or eight, anticipating the poor dumb cow’s every dodge, moving so surely, so quickly and fluidly, it was pure poetry.

Ben had never been out here, but he’d heard stories about the ranch: the senile old man—Daniel’s grandfather—wandering out into the wintry night, his body never found; Daniel’s father dying when he got thrown into a fence post; and finally the human skull brought home by a dog.

Now this.

On the way to the Patton family war council, Ben had decided on a minor detour. He wanted to see for himself how hard it would have been for a thief to slip into Shirley Barnard’s garage to steal the license plates from her car.

The guy sure as hell couldn’t have driven right by in broad daylight. Before Ben reached the first barn, two men stepped out, looking toward him.

He pulled to a stop, set the brake and turned off the engine. Between barns, he saw a young cowboy walking a horse with sweat-soaked flanks. In the aisle of the barn, another horse—this one a fiery red—was cross-tied and being shod, from the sound of metal ringing out.

Ben got out of his car and nodded at the two men waiting. “Good day.”

“Can we help you?” one asked.

“I’m with the sheriff’s department. Detective Ben Shea.” Ben showed his badge. “And you are?”

“Lee LaRoche.” The taller and older of the two tipped back his Stetson. “I’m a trainer.”

“Jim Cronin.” The younger guy couldn’t be much over twenty-five. Stocky and strong, he wore the ranch uniform: dusty denim, worn cowboy boots, white T-shirt and buff-brown Stetson. “I just work here.”

Ben nodded. “You two fellows know about the break-in at Mrs. Barnard’s?”

“You mean, her garage?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hell of a thing.” The trainer shook his head. “Shirley wouldn’t hurt a fly. Why would someone go picking on her like that?”

“Maybe just to show he could.” Ben watched the two carefully; saw nothing but perplexity and mild curiosity about why a Butte County detective was out here questioning them about such a minor crime. “I just thought I’d find out whether someone could go right on down there without being noticed.”

“Not in a car.” LaRoche sounded sure. “We don’t get much traffic out here. Someone’s coming right now.” He nodded past Ben toward the main road leading from Butte Road and the Triple B gates onto the ranch.

Ben turned. A plume of lava red dust rose like the spray behind a hydroplane. That nice shiny 4x4 was going to need a bath.

Like his own car, he realized ruefully.

LaRoche continued. “Especially at this time of year, we have plenty of warning. Somebody always pokes a head out to see who’s come calling.”

“What about at night? With Mrs. Barnard away?”

“I live there.” The lanky older man pointed to a small white-painted cottage in the cottonwoods beside the creek. “Some of the hands have places in town, but a couple room in the bunkhouse. Cronin here’s one of ‘em.”

The young ranch hand scratched his chin. “Well, I won’t say if we’d heard a car we would have fallen over our feet rushing out to see who was here. But we’d have most likely glanced out. Mrs. Barnard don’t get that many folks coming by, and Lee’s place is the only other one on down the road.”

“But he could have parked a ways back and walked.”

Lee LaRoche slowly took off his hat and ran a hand through sweat-streaked hair. “Well, now. Sure. I suppose so. ’Course, if someone had come along he wouldn’t have had anyplace to hide. With no trees till you get down to the creek. And his car would’ve stuck out like a palomino in a herd of bays. Say, if Daniel or Renee had come or gone. But at, oh, three, four in the morning... Sure.”

He sent Cronin with Ben to check out the garage itself. The structure was detached from the original farmhouse where Daniel Barnard’s mother still lived. Through a small dusty window, Ben could see the blue sedan. The lock on the side door was one of those push-button models, not a dead bolt. Anyone good with a paperclip could have gotten in. The main door, the cowboy told him, had an automatic opener.

“So Mrs. Barnard can drive straight on in, like in the winter. Daniel installed it himself.”

“How long have you worked here?” Ben asked idly.

“Only about a year.” Jim Cronin’s face was boyish, despite the beginnings of lines at the corners of his hazel eyes. “I like to move around. See the country.”

Not so different from the ski bums who operated lifts up at Juanita Butte, or the temporary crews that fought fires in the dry woods every summer.

“Barnard good to work for?” Ben asked.

“The best,” the man said simply. “Cutting horses bred and taught their tricks here are in the top ten every year. I’d like to train horses, not just ride ‘em and muck up after ’em. This is the place to learn.”

The two men walked back to the barn where Ben had left his car. Ben thanked Jim Cronin for his time and watched him disappear into the barn. Well down the aisle, Lee LaRoche appeared briefly, looking Ben’s way. When his gaze met Ben’s, he tipped his hat and faded back into the shadowy interior of the huge barn. Had he been watching for Ben? Making sure Cronin went right back to work?

Ben paused before getting behind the wheel of his car. He liked to take in his surroundings, soak them up as he did the sun’s midday warmth in winter. It never paid to be hasty, he’d found; he learned things on a subliminal level if he allowed time.

Giving him curious glances and civil nods, a man and a woman rode by. The horses ambled, heads down, sweat darkening shoulders and flanks. Tiny puffs of dust bloomed beneath their hooves. Reins lay slack against the dark shiny necks.

Car door open, Ben watched them go, the horses both possessing the powerful, chunky hindquarters of the quarter horse breed, the two riders swaying easily in the Western saddles. Two barns away, a mare and foal were being loaded into a fancy-looking trailer. The foal didn’t want to go, and kept shying away at the last minute, skinny legs flying. The men doing the loading were patient, giving the skittish colt time to settle down. In the arena, a different horse was being worked now. A gray-haired man with a skinny butt sat on the fence watching, heels hooked over a rail.

Busy place, this. An unlikely choice to burglarize. No, someone had wanted to send a message: I can get at you anywhere.

More than the blood or the stolen pickup truck, the license plates lifted from Shirley Barnard’s car were what worried Ben. The message was not a comforting one.

And he had to believe, it wouldn’t be the last.

Ben slid in behind the wheel and slammed his car door. Time to be getting up to Daniel Barnard’s place, before Abby started to worry about his absence.

In your dreams, he jeered, and started the car.

THE LAST TO SIT DOWN, Abby scooted her chair forward and braced herself for an in-depth analysis of the arson fire set in the pickup truck.

In his paternalistic mode, Daniel Barnard looked around the table with an air of quiet satisfaction. The troops were gathered. Even Will, Meg’s sixteen-year-old son, had been allowed to stay. Only Emily, Meg’s three-year-old adopted daughter wasn’t at the table; Meg had settled her in the living room where she was out of earshot but in sight, happily occupied with a pile of blocks and half a dozen puzzles.

Meg had even wanted to invite Jack Murray, her former lover and Will’s father. “This concerns Will,” she’d said. “Which means it concerns Jack.”

Abby had gently discouraged her sister. There were things Meg didn’t know. Jack was just as uncomfortable with Abby as she was around him.

Both did their best to encounter each other as seldom as possible.

Now, Daniel’s survey of the family complete, Abby’s brother-in-law nodded toward Shea. “Good of you to come, Ben.”

The detective inclined his head. “Abby suggested it.”

Beside him, Abby said nothing. She wasn’t about to admit that she hadn’t invited him as the investigating officer, that in fact this was a trial run for a real date. That she was trying to decide whether her original assessment of Ben Shea was accurate.

Could she have a good time with the guy? Or would he be getting serious before he broke off the first kiss?

Really, it would be too bad if she had to tell him to get lost before that kiss. Darned if he didn’t look even better out of uniform than he did in. Faded jeans hugged long, powerful muscles in his thighs. A sage-green T-shirt got just as familiar with the planes of his chest and solid biceps. Nice neck, too, Abby thought, sneaking a glance. Tanned, smooth, strong without being bullish. Assertive jaw, sexy mouth, icy clear eyes, and cheekbones prominent enough to cast shadows on his clean-shaven cheeks.

Kissing him would be fine. Better than fine, she suspected. Maybe too fine, which was her biggest fear. Only once had she come close to falling in love, and what a mistake that had been! Jack Murray had been using her. She’d been barely out of high school, but she had spent years seething at the knowledge that she’d been a Meg substitute.

No, once was enough. Giving a man the upper hand—that was scary stuff. She didn’t need it.

“Abby?”

She started, to find that her entire family—and Ben—were staring at her.

“What?” she said.

Daniel lifted his brows in that way he had. “Why don’t you get this rolling? Tell us what you found.”

“And make it snappy.” Renee chimed in. “The turkey breast is coming out of the oven in fifteen minutes, whether we’re done talking or not.”

“Well, I don’t know what you think this will accomplish, but here goes.” Succinctly, Abby described the pickup, the lack of fingerprints, the blood and the short-lived fire.

“Maybe this guy was just dumb,” suggested Scott McNeil, Meg’s big auburn-haired husband. General manager of the ski area, he knew the great American public. “Believe me, dumb is not uncommon.”

“But why would he set a fire to burn up upholstery soaked with deer blood?” Meg asked, lines of worry puckering her forehead. She sat with her hands splayed on her belly, swollen with a baby due in a few weeks.

Daniel leaned forward. “Maybe because he took it out of season. He was afraid somebody would see the deer if he slung it in the bed of the pickup.”

“He could have just put a tarp over it,” Renee said. “Plastic garbage sacks. Anyway, the truck was stolen. He was abandoning it. Why bother with the fire?”

Forestalling Abby, Ben raised his voice. “You’re missing the point. None of this was casual. Whoever this guy is, he worked hard to get his hands on those license plates. There had to be a reason for that. A message. He’s saying, ‘See how easy I can get to you?’ And when part of that message is a whole hell of a lot of blood, I’d have to take that as a threat. Unless anybody has a better idea.”

No one did. He’d silenced them. They’d wanted to believe there might be logical explanations for what Abby had found yesterday—explanations that had nothing to do with the Barnard or Patton families. But Abby agreed with Ben: why waste time and hope?

A muscle jumping in his cheek, Daniel spoke up. “I talked to my mother again. With one exception, she’s never had an enemy. Some of you know she was raped years ago by a ranch hand.”

Will jerked. Obviously he hadn’t known. “Aunt Shirley was raped?”

His mother touched his arm. “Pretty crummy. huh?”

Looking disconcertingly like Jack, Will frowned. “But why didn’t I know?”

“Because it was her right to tell people or not,” Meg said gently.

“Oh.” The tangled emotions of a teenager flitted across his face, but at last he nodded.

Daniel continued. “Dad beat the crap out of the guy and threw him off the place. Mom didn’t want to testify. When this came out three years ago, we found out the bastard is in the Washington State penitentiary at Walla Walla for another rape. After you called yesterday—” he looked at Abby “—I had Renee check on him. Harris. Theon Josiah Harris. He’s out. They released him a year ago.”

“But what’s the connection? It doesn’t make sense,” Renee said persuasively. “Shirley didn’t prosecute. Why would he come back? He has nothing to get revenge for.”

Ben propped his elbows on the table. “Unless this guy has some reason to think she tried to get him. Maybe influenced a judge to give him the top end of the sentencing range.”

Will, with the gruff voice of a man, said, “But if Aunt Shirley never told anyone...”

No wonder he didn’t sound like a kid! Abby thought. Will Patton was used to cop talk. Murder and rape weren’t big-screen fun and games to this kid.

His mother shook her head. “Let’s face it, none of this is exactly sane. Going to all the trouble to steal those license plates out of a locked garage here on the ranch, then killing a deer just for the blood... Things fester, when someone is in prison long enough.”

“I don’t believe this has anything to do with Shirley.” Abby hated to be the one to remind them, but somebody had to. “This guy may have gone to a lot of trouble to steal the plates off her car, but that was nothing compared to finding a pickup that looked exactly like Daddy’s and stealing it.”

“That could be coincidence,” Renee said, but her voice held no conviction.

Abby shook her head, but said no more. What was the point?

Emily abandoned her puzzles, pieces scattered all over the floor, and trotted into the dining room. “Mama! I wanna sit on your lap.”

Meg gave her a distracted smile. “Sure, punkin, but I don’t have very much lap right now.”

“Why don’t you come and sit on Daddy’s?” Scott pushed back from the table and lifted the little girl into the air. Over her happy squeal, he said, “Seems to me we can’t do anything just yet except be extra careful.”

“Maybe nothing will come of this.” Meg almost sounded convinced.

Abby could hardly believe big sister Meg, the cop, could sound so foolishly optimistic. The bad guys would all go away. Why worry?

Was it marriage or pregnancy that had blunted her wary intelligence?

“Ben’s still hoping to find an eyewitness,” Abby said.

“Nobody is invisible,” Shea commented. “I might get lucky.”

A few nods all around, and Renee said, “If you’ll all excuse me, I’d better work on dinner.”

Abby stood, too, shaking her head at her older sister who was making “getting up” motions. “No, you stay put, Meg. Watching you on your feet makes me tired. I’ll help Renee.”

In the kitchen, Renee turned on the burner under a pan of green beans. “What’s the point of a threat if someone doesn’t understand it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Abby said with a sigh. “These rolls go in the oven?” At her sister’s nod, she ran cold water over the paper bag. “Maybe one of us is supposed to understand the threat. You ever arrested anyone for something having to do with blood on the seat or...” Knowing even that much sounded weak, she ran out of ideas. “Heck, maybe he’s a poacher who’s just trying to tell us he can kill a deer anytime he wants.”

“With my mother-in-law’s license plates on the pickup he stole up in the Dalles just so he could abandon it here?”

“Maybe it broke down.” Now she was the one trying to find an out, Abby thought ruefully.

“Oh, jeez.” Oven mitt dangling from her hand, Renee looked at her sister. “It’s all too tangled, isn’t it? Too...purposeful.”

“Yeah.” Abby stirred the green beans unnecessarily. “But what’s the purpose?”

Her sister actually shivered. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know.”

Abby rubbed the goose bumps on her own forearms. “Worse yet is the fact that we’re going to have to find out. One way or the other.”

Renee didn’t answer. She removed the turkey breast from the oven, popped the bag of rolls in, and took up the carving knife.

“I don’t see how Meg can have three weeks to go,” she said as if they’d been discussing their older sister all along. “I wish the doctor had done an ultrasound.”

“You’re not thinking twins?” Abby asked, shocked out of her absorption in the case.

“She’s awfully big.”

“Wouldn’t the doctor have noticed two heartbeats?”

“I don’t know.” Renee fretted. “But take a look at her.”

“Maybe they got the due date wrong.” There she went again; little Miss Pollyanna, smoothing away any difficulty.

“The doctor should know,” Renee said fiercely. “I just worry Meg’s not getting the care she should be.”

“Have you heard anything bad about Dr. Kennedy?”

“No-o.”

Then it came to Abby; she looked closely at her sister. “You’re just scared, aren’t you? It’s not as if having twins would be the end of the world for Meg. I mean, maybe she couldn’t go back to work, but she’s pretty much into this motherhood thing right now, anyway.” What the mysterious attraction was, Abby didn’t get. Emily was cute, sure, but her squall when she was tired made Abby think of fingernails maliciously drawn down a blackboard. But they weren’t talking about her, thank God. Dragging herself back to the point, Abby accused, “You’re afraid of losing her again.”

To her astonishment, Renee burst into tears. “Meg’s just so tired!” she wailed.

Abby gently took the carving knife from her sister’s hand, set it on the countertop and wrapped her in a hug. “Hey, what’s the deal?”

“I always said I’d make chief, and now I have, but I’d rather be pregnant!” Renee pulled back to show a pathetic, blotched face. “I want it so bad, but then sometimes I look at Meg and wonder if I really do, and if something happens to her I’ll be too scared ever to have a baby of my own! So really I’m self ish!”

Okay.

“Renee,” Abby said carefully, “you’re acting really weird. You know that, don’t you?”

A sniff and a nod were her answer; Renee had buried her face in a dishtowel, using it as a giant hankie.

“PMS?” Out of nowhere, a thought zapped Abby. “Are you sure you aren’t pregnant?”

“What?” Renee whipped the dishtowel from her face.

“You heard me.”

“I...” She blinked. Blinked again. “It must be PMS. You know I get cranky.”

“But not deranged,” Abby gently suggested. “When are you due?”

“Due? Meg’s the one... Oh. You mean...” Her brow furrowed. “I don’t keep track. It just... comes.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I guess it’s been a while.” Renee’s green-gold eyes widened. “Ohmygod. What if I’m pregnant?”

“You celebrate?”

“I’m being sworn in two weeks from tomorrow!”

“Surely you wouldn’t be the first police chief in America who was pregnant.”

“Most of them are still men.” That dry comment sounded more like Abby’s big—well, middle sister.

“Buy one of those home pregnancy tests,” Abby advised. “In the meantime, I’ll carve the turkey. You go do something to your face.”

Renee squeaked at the sight of herself reflected in the door of the top oven. “I promise. I’ll be right back!”

Shaking her head, Abby picked up the knife.

“Want me to do that?”

The deep voice came from so close behind her, she was the one to squeak and jump this time. Wheeling around, she pressed a hand to her chest. “You scared the daylights out of me!”

“Sorry.” Ben Shea lifted one dark brow as smoothly as Daniel did. It gave Ben’s face a saturnine look. “Just thought I’d offer to help.”

Crowd me, you mean, she thought unkindly. But this was her fault; she’d encouraged him by inviting him tonight. No surprise he didn’t want to be abandoned to her family.

“Here. You carve the turkey.” She set down the knife instead of handing it to him. “Renee didn’t feel good for a minute. I’ll see if the rolls are hot, figure out what else she was going to feed us.”

“All right,” Ben said agreeably.

A potato salad and a fruit salad were ready in the refrigerator. All Abby had to do was peel back the plastic wrap and stick in serving spoons.

She carried them out to the dining room, tickled Emily who giggled gratifyingly, and went back to the kitchen. Intent on his job, Ben barely glanced up.

“That wasn’t you crying, was it?”

“You heard...” She stopped. “I don’t cry.”

“You don’t cry.”

“That’s what I said.”

He looked her over with the same curiosity and lack of emotion he’d shown toward the bloody cab of the pickup. “You figure men don’t cry, so you shouldn’t, either?”

“I don’t care what men do,” Abby said shortly.

“As long as they’re fun.”

She lifted her chin a notch. “And it’s fun I can live without if I have to.”

He shook his head and went back to carving. “You got a real healthy attitude.”

Oh, yeah, he’s going to kiss you good-night now.

“You want a healthy attitude, don’t ask out another cop. Try the clerk at the health food store.”

“Very funny.”

What on earth was wrong with her? Ben Shea was nice; he was gorgeous; he was unmarried. Vouched for by her sister. She should be batting her eyelashes, not being as disagreeable as a streetwalker about to be booked.

Oh, good analogy, she told herself.

He studied her with those penetrating eyes. “When’s the last time you cried?”

“I don’t know. Years.”

He muttered a profanity. “Are you armor-plated? How can you help but cry sometimes?”

She froze in the act of taking the hot bag of rolls from the oven. “You cry?”

He wanted his shrug to look careless, she could tell. “Sometimes. Like just a couple of weeks ago. This guy killed his wife and two-year-old daughter, then swallowed the gun himself. It was seeing that kid...” His body jerked, and then his eyes shuttered and he went back to carving turkey. “I did my job, but when I got home, I cried. I’m not afraid to admit it.”

Her back to him, Abby dropped the crisp, hot paper bag on the counter. Cops and firefighters didn’t often confess to that kind of weakness—for so it would be considered in the station house. Maybe he’d done it to test her—to see how deep she went Maybe he was a sensitive kind of guy who liked talking about feelings.

Or maybe the sight of the dead child had eaten at his soul until he had to tell someone the horror, and she was just the lucky nominee. Whatever his reason for talking so frankly, she knew she couldn’t blow him off.

Past a sudden lump in her throat, she said abruptly, “It was two years ago. The last time I cried.” She wouldn’t look at him. “House fire. We found these kids, all under the bed. Like they were hiding from an intruder. But you can’t hide from fire, or smoke. They looked...like dolls. Waxy and stiff. The fire had been set. Mama had dumped her boyfriend, and he was pissed. Didn’t even get Mama. She’d left her three children, all under five, alone while she worked a graveyard shift cleaning an office building. After that night I decided to become an investigator. Putting out the fire isn’t enough anymore.”

Whether the tears had been cause or effect, she didn’t know. Maybe she’d become an investigator because she didn’t want to cry anymore, not to right wrongs. How could anyone judge her own motives?

All Abby knew was, she’d hidden under the bed more than once, small and scared.

And crying made her feel weak. A big girl now, she allowed no weakness.

“Shedding some tears helped,” Ben said. “I felt better.”

Abby dumped the rolls into a basket. “I didn’t.”

His hand shot out to stop her as she passed to return to the dining room. “Are you as tough as you sound, Abby Patton?”

Tough was her private ideal, not her public image. Tough was the shield she wore like a bulletproof vest—it would keep you alive only if no one noticed you were wearing it. Because if they did, they might shoot you in the head.

Letting someone—this man—see that tough outer shield might put her in danger.

So she batted her eyes, smiled slow and mysterious, and said, light and flirty, “Oh, I don’t know if tough’s the first word I associate with myself. What do you think, Detective Shea?”

Eyes narrowed, he let her go. “What I think is, finding out might be fun. And that’s important, right? Having fun?”

She had to work at making her smile saucy. “Oh, number one. Absolutely.” She could sound blithe, unconcerned. “Why don’t we go dancing after this?” Somewhere, she thought, with really loud music. Somewhere they couldn’t talk.

“Why don’t we,” he said. “Something tells me you’ll know just the place.”

CHAPTER THREE

ABBY HAD KNOWN A PLACE, all right. Ben’s ears were still ringing the next day when he drove toward the outskirts of Elk Springs to begin knocking on doors in hopes of hitting on someone who’d seen either the green pickup or a lone motorcyclist pass down Barton Road at the right time.

After leaving her brother-in-law’s last night, Abby had taken Ben to Paganucci’s, a club aimed at the twenty-something crowd. With a population of twenty thousand and climbing, Elk Springs had gone from hick town to resort town in a few short years, although the process had been well advanced by the time Ben had taken the job here. But even since he came, the downtown hardware store had moved off Main Street to make way for an art gallery and café combo. Downtown was no longer for locals. Now antique stores, boutiques and espresso joints jostled trendy restaurants and nightclubs that appealed to skiers.

Paganucci’s was one of them. Sleek decor, dim lighting jolted by flashes of brilliant white strobes, music that vibrated through the floor and penetrated the very air the way an electric shock did. The drinks had names he didn’t recognize. The other men looked as self-consciously stylish as Don Johnson had on “Miami Vice.”

In this crowd, Ben might as well have been a cow horse among the parade at Churchill Downs.

But he’d tried real hard to have fun. Or at least to look like he was having fun, which was what counted. He felt like a goddamn idiot out on the dance floor. But every time Abby leaped to her feet with that manic glitter in her eyes and said, “Let’s dance,” he said, “Sure.”

She was in restless motion the whole evening. Dancing, tapping her fingers, swaying to the music. Never really looking at him, her gaze always elsewhere, watching other couples dance, laugh, flirt. When she talked, it was with stagey animation. Oh, yeah, she was playing for the crowd.

Or for him, Ben wasn’t sure which.

He’d be ready to write off Abby Patton and any possibility of a future with her, except for one thing: he’d have sworn that she wasn’t having fun, either. She was making a point, hammering it home.

I’m not your type, she was saying. This is fun. This is me.

Ben didn’t buy it. She fidgeted too much; her gaiety was too forced. The only real moment they’d had all evening was during the one slow dance she’d allowed him. They’d gone toe to toe; he’d eased her up against him, felt the tension and the resistance shimmering through her. Picturing a coil of wire that kept springing free of his fingers, he had nonetheless played with the fantasy of what making love with her would be like. Abby Patton would be the farthest thing from passive. He pictured her determined to be on top, willing to wrestle him for the privilege.

Now that would be fun.

The music whispered of love and the soft light of the moon, of night breezes and the tangle of sheets. Even for him, the lilting notes were suddenly evocative, sensual. He bent his head, breathed in the tangy scent of her hair, gently rubbed the taut muscles of her lower back.

And, wonder of wonders, she began to relax. She let out a sigh, laid her cheek against his neck, matched the sway of her hips to his easy movements. For one brief shining moment, they meshed.

But the music died, to throb forth a frenzied beat. The strobelight blinded Ben. Abby shot away as if he were trying to cuff her. He’d swear she didn’t meet his eyes again all night.

And out in the parking lot, she had made a breezy escape. A good-night kiss was not on the books.

Caught up in remembering—regretting the lack of a kiss—Ben took a minute to snap back to the present.

“Damn,” he muttered.

He’d already driven past the last ranch before Barton Road stretched into empty country. He’d have to go a mile back. Hell, and that ranch house had been a hundred and fifty yards off the road. What were the chances anyone had noticed the traffic two days ago?

He didn’t think about not trying. He’d have gone through the motions no matter what, but under different circumstances that’s what he’d have been doing. Every question he asked would have been perfunctory.

Today his questions would be deadly serious. The Patton sisters were all cops. A threat against them was a threat against him and every other cop.

The shoulder of the road briefly widened and he made a U-turn.

He’d wanted to kiss one of the Patton sisters last night.

Abby Patton reminded Ben of the stray cat he’d been feeding for a couple of years now. Cinderella, he called her, Cindy for short. A dainty calico with the soft hues and electric-blue eyes of a Siamese mix, Cindy had been so wild at first, he had caught only glimpses of her. She’d gobbled the food he put out, always poised for flight, her head lifting constantly. She’d gotten wilder yet when he trapped her and had her spayed and vaccinated.

It had taken six months before she would come to his call, hovering a safe distance away while he opened a can. More months before she would allow him within an arm’s reach. This spring, he had touched her. She’d erupted into the air and fled, but come warily back. Now she let him stroke her back. Someday, he was going to cuddle that cat. Take her in the house, feel her curl trustingly at his feet during the night.

Cindy had never known loving care from a human being until Ben set out that first bowl of food. She’d probably had rocks thrown at her. Loud voices had run her off.

Ben wanted to know what Abby’s excuse was.

He had a feeling he might never find out, though. She hadn’t wanted to date him from the beginning, and her minor enthusiasm had clearly waned. He was betting that if he called her today and suggested they do it again, she’d have an excuse.

No, he thought, putting on his turn signal, excuses weren’t her style. She’d be blunt. I could tell you weren’t having fun, she’d say. Or, I didn’t have fun with you. Or, You’re not my type.

He wasn’t her type. She wasn’t his.

He wanted her anyway.

The tires crunched onto the long gravel driveway that led to a rundown ranch house. He took note of the dogs racing to meet him. the sagging barbed-wire fence, the gaping hole in the old barn roof, but he kept thinking about Abby Patton.

Maybe the challenge was what appealed to him. Maybe it was more complicated; could be he had some deep-seated need to erase fear where he found it, to coax trust from the smallest seed.

But Ben didn’t know why that would be. He was usually attracted to confident, smart women. He liked honesty, serenity, a witty tongue. Timid women in need of protection weren’t his thing.

He snorted at the idea of Abby Patton, arson investigator, needing a protector. At five foot ten inches or so, she wasn’t small.

But honest, serene... He didn’t think so. She might find serenity in her old age, but that was fifty years away, give or take a few. And blunt didn’t equate to honest. Ben doubted that Abby was honest even with herself about what she felt or why.

He shouldn’t want her any more than he should indulge the hope that the small feral cat living like a ghost around his house might someday become a real pet, the kind other people had.

Rolling to a stop, Ben shifted into park, set the hand brake and turned off the engine, giving the dust and the dogs a minute to settle.

Yeah, he thought, but just the other day Cindy had hopped onto the porch railing so close to his hand she was clearly asking to be petted. So you never knew, did you?

He opened his door just as a man came out of the barn.

“Goddamn it, shut your mouths up!”

A few yaps later the two shepherd mixes sniffed Ben’s hand and decided he wasn’t the enemy.

The rancher, tall and skeletal, must have been working on some piece of machinery. His hands were black with grease, some of which he’d smeared onto his face, weathered to the texture of the desert.

“Won’t offer to shake hands.” He cast a dubious eye at the shield Ben extended. “You fellas don’t get out this way much.”

“Not much reason,” Ben said. “Day before yesterday, a pickup was abandoned and set on fire up the road a piece. I’m wondering if you ever notice passing traffic.”

“If the dogs don’t bark, I don’t come out.”

“Kind of figured that.” Ben nodded ruefully. “Hope you don’t mind my asking.”

“Anybody can ask me anything.” The rancher shrugged. “You need a little old lady, hasn’t got much better to do than peep out from behind her blinds.”

Ben nodded toward the house. “You wouldn’t have a wife or mother in there?”

“Wife never looks away from her soaps.”

Ben extended a card. “Well, if you wouldn’t mind asking her tonight,” he said just as laconically. “I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll ask.”

He had already disappeared into the barn before Ben got back in behind the wheel. Tongues lolling, the dogs gave halfhearted chase. They’d given up long before he turned onto paved road.

This was going to be a waste of time. He’d known it would be. But hell, now and again you got a surprise. At least, you did if you looked for it.

Seemed to him, Abby Patton might be one of those surprises.

BURNED WOOD had the texture of alligator hide. Abby crunched across the blackened floor of the corner grocery store in her steel-reinforced boots, not worrying too much about where she stepped.

Char licked up the walls. This baby had definitely started at floor level.

It was a no-brainer, but she did a meticulous search anyway, clicking photographs as she went. They were essential to document what she saw. Good pictures sold the prosecutor’s case to the jury like no testimony ever could.

The wooden subfloor was deeply scorched in half a dozen places, always a dead giveaway. The samples she took would show the presence of a flammable liquid, sure as shootin’. Fuse box indicated no electrical troubles; the point of origin wasn’t near wiring, anyway.

What interested Abby was the lack of ash and bits of debris on the crumpled, seared metal shelving.

Earlier the owner had come out of his hysteria long enough to claim the store was fully stocked.

“What the hell do you think?” he demanded, face flushed with fury and—she suspected—guilt. “People keep coming back if they don’t find what they want the first time? This is a grocery store. We have regular deliveries.”

Yeah, but about six months ago Price-Right had built a big store three blocks away. A little mom-and-pop place like this might have been a going concern until then; people liked convenience. They wouldn’t do their week’s shopping here, they’d go to Safeway a mile away, but they’d stop by here for a six-pack or some forgotten item. But the small volume in a store this size meant prices had to be higher. A mile was one thing; three blocks was another. This past six months had to have been a struggle.

She wandered into the back, which had suffered damage from smoke and water but not fire. The loading area was empty; the office, bare bones. The computer was darn near an antique, unless its guts had been replaced. No TV or microwave or refrigerator. Either the owner had never had any of the comforts back here, or he’d moved them out before he’d torched his place.

Abby put her vials and bags of evidence along with her Minolta into the trunk of her car, then rang doorbells half a block each way. The stories she heard confirmed her suspicions.

“He was going out of business. Had to be,” one gruff, graying man with a paunch declared. “Who the hell was going to pay what he asked?”

“Even the freezers didn’t have much in them the last time I was there,” a housewife said. “I bought milk, but the date was a little past. Mr. Joseph said a delivery had been delayed, but I wondered.”

“Yeah, I saw him and his old lady moving a TV and microwave—I think that’s what it was—out the back two days ago,” said a neighbor, whose backyard abutted the alley. “Mr. Joseph said the TV at home had gone kaput. But it makes you wonder...”

Abby’s cell phone rang and she excused herself.

“Patton,” she said in answer.

“Hi, it’s Meg. Have you heard from Ben?”

Abby was annoyed to realize she felt mild disappointment that the caller wasn’t Ben Shea. Of course, their one date had been a flop. He wouldn’t be asking her again. She didn’t want him to ask her out again. But she had hoped for news about his door-to-door questioning.

“Nope,” she told her sister. “You?”

“Not a word.” Meg puffed out a sigh that expressed acute frustration. “If I didn’t feel about as mobile as a moose stuck in deep snow, I’d go back to work part-time. Darn it, I don’t know how seriously Ben is taking this.”

Abby tried to be fair. “Pretty seriously, I think. He listened to me. Come on, Meg. You’ve never had reservations about his work, have you?”

“No...” her sister said grudgingly. “I just... Oh, I feel useless. I hate it!”

Abby leaned against the fender of her car. “Meg, you’re having a baby in a few weeks. What could be more productive?”

Her sister took a few audible breaths. “You’re right,” she finally said. “I know you’re right. This is what I want to do. But I’m not used to twiddling my thumbs!” The last came out as a cry.

“I know, I know.” Abby did her best to be soothing. Oral back-patting. “Renee’s worried you’re going to have twins.”

This sigh had an exasperated note. “I’ve gained a normal amount. All women in their ninth month look like walruses wallowing on the beach. At least, all women whose babies are probably going to weigh eight or nine pounds.”

“It’s you Renee’s worried about. She doesn’t want to lose you again.”

“She told you that?” Meg sounded surprised.

“I pried it out of her.”

“That’s not like you.”

Stung, Abby asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You usually avoid any emotional issues,” her sister said bluntly. “I’d have expected you to make an excuse to avoid having that kind of conversation with Renee. Not push for it.”

“She was crying!” Damn it, why feel hurt? Meg was right; Abby usually did evade sticky, weepy situations. There was nothing wrong with that. She just wasn’t good at them.

“You mean, you walked in on her crying?”

“No, we talked about you, and then I suggested that maybe she wasn’t worried about twins, she was scared of losing you, and—” Abby stopped. Swallowed. “I care.”

Her sister’s voice softened. “I know you do.”

“Anyway, you might talk to her.”

“Okay. Sure.” Meg paused. “Why don’t I call Ben, too?”

Quickly—too quickly—Abby said, “No, I’ll do that. You’re on maternity leave. The case is mine, anyway. I’ll let you know if he’s learned anything.”

Feeling grumpy, she had to get in the car and hunt through her leather folder to find Ben Shea’s card. Why hadn’t he gotten in touch with her? Why was she having to beg for information?

His cell phone was either turned off or he was out of the area, a mechanical voice informed her. Voice mail told her Ben Shea wasn’t available. “But leave a message!” the chirpy canned voice encouraged her.

Abby did, short and to the point. “Call me,” she said tersely.

He did. An hour later. She was back in her office, writing up a report on the mom-and-pop grocery incendiary fire.

“Shea, here. Don’t have much to report,” he said.

“Sorry I didn’t get to you sooner.”

Considering they had dated the night before, she thought that was pretty brisk. How are you? Hope you had fun last night, would have been nice. This was not the way to get the girl, Abby thought derogatorily.

Of course, maybe he didn’t want to get the girl.

Which was fine with her.

“Nobody paid any attention to the traffic?”

“One guy heard a motorcycle pass about the right time. He was shoveling manure behind the barn, couldn’t see the road, but he admitted that his dream is to buy a Harley-Davidson when he retires. He figures he and his wife can see the country on it.”

For no good reason, Abby was diverted from the point. “What’s she think of that?”

“Not much, from the rolled eyes I saw in the background.”

She snorted. “Why would he expect anything different? Who wants to stare at a man’s back for hours every day?”

“You’d want to be the one gripping the handlebars, wouldn’t you?” An odd tone infused his voice.

“Darn tootin’ I would.” Abby wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Why should men get all the fun while women went along for the ride?

After a brief pause Ben mused, “Seems a shame. The guy looked so wistful.”

“We all have dreams.” And she didn’t want to talk about ones that were doomed.

“Yeah, well, the point here is, he noticed the growl of the motorcycle because it triggered a brief fantasy of him eating up the miles on a hog. The one he heard wasn’t a Harley—something smaller, less powerful.”

“And easier to lift into and out of the bed of a pickup truck.”

“You got it.”

“So now what?”

“Unless forensic evidence shows us something—and I’m betting it won’t—we’re out of luck. You know that.”

“Until something else happens,” Abby said slowly.

“If it happens.”

“If,” she agreed.

“I don’t like it.” Shea was silent for a moment. For the first time he sounded human, even intimate. “I’m sorry, Abby. I wish there was more I could do.”

“No. No, that’s okay. I know there isn’t. I was just hoping...”

“Would you have dinner with me Friday?” he asked abruptly.

A rush of relief disconcerted her. She just didn’t like feeling rejected, Abby told herself.

Perversely, she didn’t say, “Yes. Please.” She didn’t tease or flirt. Oh, no. Those were ways to land the guy. She didn’t want to land this one.

“Last night wasn’t a great success,” she said instead. “I could tell that wasn’t your scene.”

“Friday night, it’ll be my choice.”

“Which is?” she asked, immediately suspicious.

“Haven’t decided yet. What do you say?”

Her eyes narrowed. “How about you decide first.”

“What, you’re a coward?” he mocked. “I won’t take you skydiving, if that’s what scares you.”

“I took skydiving lessons a couple of years ago. Not much scares me.”

“And here I thought you’d say, ‘nothing scares me.’”

Just like that, anger blossomed in her chest like a water balloon smacking down on the pavement. “You don’t think much of me, do you? Why did you ask me out in the first place?”

He was silent so long, she almost ended the call. The anger spread down to her fingertips, burning as it went.

When Shea did speak, the timbre of his voice had changed; the mockery was gone, leaving something quiet and too solemn in its place. “I think I would like you, if you’d let me get to know you.”

“What do you call last night?” Abby asked tartly.

“Did we exchange ten words?”

“We were supposed to be having fun.”

“My eardrums still hurt.”

“Like I said, I could tell it wasn’t your scene.” She sounded brittle, even to herself. “Which suggests we don’t have much in common.”

Anger to match hers sparked in his voice. “I’d say we have a hell of a lot in common. We do the same kind of job. We have to live with having seen things other people never do. We care about the same things. We both live alone, isolated partly by our jobs. We probably shop at the same goddamn grocery stores. We could exchange recipes.”

She was fighting a losing battle; she could feel it. But “stubborn” was Abby’s middle name. “That’s one more thing we don’t have in common. I’d have to tell you my favorite microwave dinners.”

“You don’t cook?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“I like to cook. See? We’re made for each other.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “All right, all right,” Abby conceded. “Just let me know whether to wear shorts or a strapless dress, okay?”

“I will.” Amusement played a bass note in his slow, deep voice. “As soon as I decide.”

“But tell me one thing, will you?” Get it out front, she decided.

“Sure.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Shea echoed. Although he asked, “What do you mean?” he sounded wary, which meant he’d guessed.

“Why me? Why are you so determined? Is it just the challenge?”

Again he was silent for a long moment. Again his voice had changed, although this time she couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking. “No. I like a challenge. But...no.”

“What, then?”

“You’re beautiful.”

“No more so than plenty of other women. Most of whom are easier to get along with than I am.”

“You look lonely.”

“Lonely?” Abby gave a derisive laugh. “You’re seeing things.”

“I don’t think so.”

“And if I am? So what?”

“I thought we might...connect. That’s all. Do we have to analyze our relationship already?”

She let out a sigh he wouldn’t be able to hear. “No. I just wanted to find out whether it was my charm that had gotten to you.”

“That was it,” he agreed.

“Friday,” she said. “Call me before then.”

ABBY HAD A LATE DINNER: a spinach salad and microwave penne pasta. Afterward she tried to read, but found her attention wandering. TV seemed like an idea, but nothing on tonight grabbed her. Using the remote control, she turned the television off just as her telephone rang.

“Abby, Scott here,” Meg’s husband said. “I’m up at the ski area. Just leaving. I need you to look at something. Can you come?”

“Up to Juanita Butte?”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s late.” He sounded grim. “But I really think you need to see it”

A chill stirred the hair on her nape. “What is it?”

“I’d rather you see for yourself,” Scott repeated.

“Is this something like the fire?”

“Yeah. But uglier. Or maybe it just got to me personally, I’m not sure.”

“All right.” She was already slipping her feet into canvas sneakers. “Don’t move. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

The clock on the dashboard said 9:04. Here at midsummer, night was just settling, the first layer like purple gauze, the next denser and darker.

The mountain loop highway climbed fast, bare at this time of year. Abby rolled down her window and breathed in the distinctive scent of pine and earth ground from red lava. The air was cool, dry; it became cold as the elevation rose. In the shadow of the mountain, nightfall came more drastically. She switched on her bright lights, noting how little traffic she met.

The ski area parking lot opened before her, huge, bare and empty, a paved sea that looked alien in the middle of nowhere. She could just make out the bulk of the lodge and the first lift towers rearing above. Patches of snow still lay up there, where plows had formed towering banks during the winter. Her high beams spotlighted Scott McNeil’s Jeep Cherokee. parked in its usual spot behind the lodge. He was half sitting on the bumper.

She parked next to him and climbed out, flashlight in hand. “What is it?”

A big man with dark auburn hair, he nodded toward the driver’s side of his Jeep. “Over there.”

She circled the back bumper, then stopped, shock stealing her breath.

A child’s car seat sat beside the driver’s door, facing the parking lot and highway. Just as Emily’s car seat had, the freezing cold night when she had been abandoned.

A doll was buckled into this seat. Abby trained her flashlight beam on it, wanting to be mistaken about what she was seeing.

The doll was plastic, the kind with arms and legs and a head that attached to sockets in the hard body.

This one was missing its head. From the empty, blackened socket, trickles of red dripped down the pink dress.

CHAPTER FOUR

IN THE BRIGHT illumination from the headlights of his Bronco, Ben Shea squatted beside the child’s seat. Abby overheard his muttered profanity.

“I shouldn’t have called you,” she said to his back. “I know there won’t be any fingerprints, and there sure as heck aren’t any witnesses.” She glanced involuntarily around at the dark parking lot. “I didn’t think. I assume this is connected...”

“The doll’s neck socket is seared.” He sank back on his heels and shot her a look. “Why wouldn’t you call me?”

“You were home...”

“Staring at the boob tube. Trust me, you didn’t interrupt anything.” Ben stood in a lithe movement. “This is some scary bastard. You’re probably right. We won’t find fingerprints. But I needed to see this. I’d have been fried if you hadn’t phoned.”

Abby could hardly look at the mutilated doll. How must Scott feel, having found this obscene echo of the past?

Emily had been abandoned here in her car seat two and a half years ago. Scott and Meg had found Emily’s mother, murdered, the next day. Somehow she must have persuaded her killer to leave the baby where Scott would find her. But he had admitted once to Abby that he still had nightmares about having bunked down at the lodge, as he used to do sometimes. In his dreams he came out to his car at dawn to find the little girl dead. Frozen, eerily pink in the morning light. He’d shuddered when he described the nightmare.

Abby stole a look at Scott now, standing behind the Jeep, staring at the night. Was he, like Abby, wondering whether somebody sick enough to create such a macabre tableau was capable of carrying through on the implicit threat? Was Emily in danger? Will? Or Meg, too pregnant to defend herself from attack?

Were they all?

“Okay,” Ben said, startling her from her dark thoughts. “Scott, I wasn’t here the night you found Emily. Tell me about it. What did this guy get right? What did he get wrong?”

They discussed positioning; both times, the child’s seat had faced the parking lot and highway, so that Scott had been looking at the back as he approached.

“Which may have been chance, with Emily,” Abby pointed out, “but tonight you know dam well this SOB did it so Scott couldn’t see what was in the seat until he got here. Suspense and shock value.”

Scott grunted. “Otherwise, this is a different kind of car seat. It’s been around the block. Look at the tears. They didn’t make ones like this anymore even when...” his hesitation was barely perceptible “... when my ex-wife and I had our little boy. I think these were designed for babies up to six months old or so. Most of the seats nowadays are convertible.”

Ben made a note. “We’ll check secondhand stores. We can talk to people that had garage sales this past week or so, too.”

“The...doll isn’t dressed anything like Emily was that night.” Scott rubbed his chin. “Maybe he didn’t feel the need to bother with details. God knows, the general message has plenty of punch.”

“You could say that,” Ben agreed dryly. “On the other hand, maybe our friend was dependent on what was printed in the newspaper. Anybody remember how much was written about Emily?”

“Not that much,” Scott said. “Remember, we didn’t find Shelly’s body until the next day. By the time reporters heard about Emily’s abandonment and made the connection, nobody was asking what Emily had been wearing. The focus was on Shelly’s murder and her heroism in saving her daughter. Somebody might have mentioned that Emily was warmly dressed. I don’t remember.”

None of them could help looking at the doll, her bare plastic legs sticking out from beneath the skirt of the pink dress. Socks on both feet, one shoe.

No head.

Ben seemed to shake himself. “Let me get some pictures, and then I’ll take the seat. We’ll let the crime lab go over it. The guy had to have touched the doll. Maybe he was careless.”

Abby doubted it.

The flash created bursts of brilliant light as Ben worked. After he was done, he put on latex gloves and lifted the whole child seat into the rear of his Ford Bronco. When Scott wasn’t watching, Abby saw Ben lift the doll’s skirt. Earlier, before he came, she had done the same. Thank God the creep who’d wrenched the doll’s head from the socket, who’d dripped fake—or real?—blood from her neck, hadn’t committed any outrage with a sexual connotation on the realistic plastic body. She was equally grateful that Scott, who didn’t spend his days dealing with the scumbags of the universe, hadn’t even considered such a possibility.

Or else he’d checked before Abby’s arrival.

Ben peeled off the gloves and held out a hand to Scott. “I’ll let you know what we find. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to keep an extra close eye on Emily.”

“Have Will be careful, too,” Abby added. “Make sure Meg locks the doors even during the day.”

A muscle jumped in Scott’s cheek. “You can be sure of that.”

“Has anyone told Murray what’s going on?” Ben asked. “I assume Will spends time with him.”

“There’s more than that.” Ashamed to be responsible for excluding Jack Murray—who was, after all, Will’s father as well as the sheriff—Abby admitted, “He’s pretty closely connected to us. As much as Daniel’s mother.”

“Because of Will?”

“Because he dated Meg.” She added deliberately, “And me. If...if this is someone who knew us back when...”

“Does Meg know...” Scott hesitated, giving a brief cough. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

“No. She doesn’t know I dated Jack.” Abby heard the bite in her voice. “Why would she care?”

Looking stiff, Scott said, “I spoke out of turn.”

“Tell her.” Abby gave an elaborate shrug and turned away. “Suit yourself. It’s more Patton history. We know how to write it.”

“You can tell her,” Scott said quietly. “If you choose to.” He touched her shoulder. “Thanks for coming, Abby.”

She watched him climb into his Jeep Cherokee and slam the door. A moment later, he backed out.

Aware of Ben, a silent witness to her admission, Abby said, “Well? What do you think?”

“That you’re pretty steamed at your sister. Care to tell me why?”

“Why’s a good word.” She hugged herself, the chill of a mountain night penetrating her bones. “As in, why would I? Like I said, it’s ancient history. Which means it’s none of your business.”

Sounding brusque—which she deserved—Ben said, “Unless it has something to do with these cute little messages you guys are getting. Or with the fact that you’re mad at me for no reason I can see.”

“I’m not mad...” Abby bit her lip. She hated having to apologize. Hated knowing she had behaved so gracelessly. “I’m sorry. This scares me. I don’t like feeling scared. I’m taking it out on you.”

“Tell me straight.” Ben hadn’t moved; his voice hadn’t softened. “Do you think the fact that you and your sister both dated Murray has anything to do with these threats?”

She walked a few steps, closed her eyes. Sighed. “No. Who knows what set this guy off? Not some guy my big sister and I both saw.”

“Just don’t hold back on me.”

Abby whirled around. “I haven’t yet! I wouldn’t. It’s not me I’m scared for.”

He moved then, taking a step toward her, lifting a hand as though to touch her but stopping short of doing so. “This was symbolic. We have no reason to think this guy intends to hurt Emily.”

“Maybe not,” Abby said tautly, “but there’s a pretty strong suggestion of violence here, wouldn’t you say?”

“We’ll find him.”

“Will we?” She didn’t let him answer. “It’s late. I really do appreciate you coming, Ben. Call me.”

“I will.” He watched her get into her car. Just before she backed out, he knocked on the window. Abby rolled it down a few inches. “By the way, forget the strapless dress. Wear a bathing suit and shorts. We’re going rafting. I’ll bring a picnic.”

“Rafting.” It was almost a physical wrench, this transition her mind had to make from the bloodied headless doll, from the man she and her sister had shared. Blankly, Abby said, “You mean, Friday.”

“As early as you can get off work.”

“White-water rafting?” Maybe he was a man after her own heart, after all. The physicality, the adrenaline rush, of battling the river sounded like just the panacea she needed.

“Nope. We’re going to drift Listen to the birds and the breeze, soak in some sun. Maybe swim. Spend a lazy couple of hours.”

Die of boredom.

He smiled as if he’d read her thoughts. “Trust me. It’ll be fun,” he said with gentle mockery.

Abby’s heart lurched. No, she doubted if she’d be bored. Not with Ben Shea. Irritated, maybe. Defensive, uncomfortable, maybe sexually aroused. But definitely not bored.

“Right,” she said, and rolled up her car window.

He slapped it with his palm, and walked away.

His headlights were in her rearview mirror all the way down the mountain. She could hardly wait to turn off the main road and escape him.

Why, oh, why, had she agreed to go out with a man who made her feel so edgy?

RENEE ASKED MEG and Abby to meet her the next day for lunch. Abby had a suspicion she knew why.

Meg was the last to arrive, waddling into the café on the main floor of the antique mall. They often had lunch there. The minestrone soup and berry cobblers were unbeatable. Abby, for one, rather enjoyed the irony in the old police station where Daddy had reigned. His office now held shelves and nineteenth-century armoires overflowing with quilts and antique lace. He wouldn’t have minded old guns. Lace he would have hated.

Today the three sisters talked about the doll in the car seat and what it meant until the waitress brought their orders.

Renee didn’t even look at hers, waiting only until they were alone again. “I’m pregnant,” she announced.

Meg lumbered to her feet. “Oh, Renee! Congratulations!”

They hugged and squealed a couple of more times. Abby felt like a fifth wheel.

But when they stepped back from each other and she saw their wet cheeks, she found her own eyes were stinging. Rising to her feet, she said quietly, “You’ll be a great mother.”

Renee sniffed. “Thank you.”

“Funny, isn’t it,” Meg mused as they resumed their seats. “The idea of us as mothers.”

“I wouldn’t know how to begin,” Abby heard herself say. “Being a mother, I mean. You’re so patient, Meg.”

“I guess I’m lucky,” she said. “I remember Mom the best. She was gentle, always willing to listen or to admire the latest artwork or whatever. I can still hear her giggle, as if she was a kid at heart. She loved us.”

“I can’t even picture her face.” Again Abby was startled to discover she was the one speaking. She often chose to tune out these conversations. “I mean, now I have pictures,” thanks to Meg, “but they’re all I see when I close my eyes and try to envision her. Sometimes I have this feeling...” She frowned. “Feeling” wasn’t quite the right word. Fleeting impressions: a brush of a soft hand, a scent, a murmured voice telling stories, a warmth and sense of security. Even such amorphous memories always ended up swallowed by emptiness and loss, as if her later hurt had acted as WiteOut, obliterating her mother’s existence. In frustration and anger at herself, Abby blurted, “I was old enough when she left. I should remember.”

Meg touched her hand. “Maybe the memories will come back. After I had Will, I found myself thinking about Mom all the time.”

“But you’d just seen her,” Renee argued.

“Yes, but...” Meg shook her head. “It’s as if she’s two different people for me. The mom from our childhood, and the one I watched die. I... never linked them, not really. Does that make sense?”

Her sisters nodded. Sandwiches sat untouched.

“The one I remember is Mom. Our childhood mother. I say something to Emily, and I think—Mom said that, too. Or I have little ways of doing things, and I realize that I’m imitating her. Have you seen that poster that says, ‘I looked in the mirror and saw my mother?’ Sometimes that’s how I feel. As if she’s part of me.”

Renee nodded solemnly. “We’re imprinted. Like goslings.”

“Right.” Meg leaned forward, elbows on the table, silverware clinking. Her face was alight with enthusiasm. “And you are, too, Abby. You were old enough. Your conscious mind can block some things out, but I’ll bet motherhood will trigger your subconscious. Through your own words and behavior, you’ll recover her.”

A sharp slice of pain tightened Abby’s voice. “Do I want to?”

Meg’s eyes held warmth and understanding. “She loved us.”

“She left us.”

“Yes, she did, and I’ve never forgiven her.” Meg looked inward for a moment and then laid her hands on her belly, which shifted and bulged briefly. Voice soft, she asked, “But does one betrayal, however huge, discount everything that came before it?”

Once Abby would have said yes without hesitation. Once she would have been certain she didn’t want to remember her mother’s touch, her mother’s face. Daddy hadn’t been perfect, but he’d been there. The first rule of parenting: you must be present in your children’s lives.

But perhaps Daddy had been there for the wrong reasons, and their mother gone for the right ones. Or at least for ones that a grown-up Abby could understand. Even forgive. She wasn’t sure yet, but she was coming around.

“I don’t know,” she said now, to her sisters. “I don’t remember what came before.”

“You will.” Meg smiled comfortably. She touched her swollen belly with clear meaning, the tenderness she felt for her unborn child expressed in the small gesture. “I know you will.”

Abby swallowed a lump in her throat and gave a brief nod. Then she turned to Renee. “What did Daniel say to your news?”

“Hallelujah.” Renee grinned and at last reached for her sandwich. Around a big bite, she said, “You know I’m the one who wanted to wait to have children. He’d have been happy if I’d been pregnant the day after our wedding.”

“Or the day before,” Meg murmured, devouring her lunch, too.

Renee poked her. “Are you impugning my virtue?”

“Yup.” Meg’s mouth was full.

Without interest, Abby moved the greens of her salad around with her fork. “Meg, did Daniel talk to you last night when he got home?”

Her sister gave her a strange look. Once she’d swallowed, she said, “Well, of course he talked to me. Unless... Oh, God. He didn’t tell me something. Was there a note? Or...” Horror crossed her face. “Not something really perverted?”

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