Lisa Childs - Return of the Lawman

Warner nodded. “Yes. Lindsey, I met your mother at college. When she heard I was from this town, well…”

Lindsey didn’t say anything, but her fingers clutched Dylan’s hand so tightly, he’d have indentations of her short, no-nonsense nails in his skin.

“She told me everything,” Will Warner explained.

“What was ‘everything,’ Mr. Warner?” Dylan asked. “I mean, how did Chet Oliver figure into this?”

“He was the lawyer who handled the adoptions.”

“A baby broker. Is that legal?” Lindsey’s dark eyes widened.

“It was if your mother signed away her parental rights of her own free will,” Dylan clarified. “It would be considered a private adoption. A lot of people prefer them.”

“And if it wasn’t of her own free will?” Lindsey’s dark eyes swam with her mother’s pain and loss. “Then you have a motive for Chet Oliver’s murder. That’s why you’re here, huh, Dylan?” She dropped his hand and whirled away.

“Lindsey!” But she didn’t stop. She stomped down the corridor, and the guard at the outside door didn’t attempt to stop her.

“Is that true, Dylan?” Mr. Warner grabbed Dylan’s arm again. “Is my wife a suspect?”

Dylan shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. She left here early yesterday afternoon. She wasn’t found until late this morning. Chet was murdered last night. No one can account for her whereabouts. I don’t know.”

LINDSEY DIDN’T GLANCE UP when Dylan approached her. She continued to balance one hip on the front bumper of the patrol car. With the toe of her hiking boot she pushed a couple of leaves across the asphalt. “What’s that saying about going home again?” she asked.

“You can’t do it.” His tone was flat, unemotional. People said that about him. His mother died when he was still a boy, and with her had died Dylan Matthews’s capacity for emotion. But Lindsey never believed what people said when it came to Dylan Matthews.

She shook her head. “Naw. It feels like it always did. Marge gossiping about me down at the diner. Mom having her episodes. Dad keeping his secrets. Naw. If this was ever really my home, then I came back to it. Why would I do something so stupid?”

His shadow fell across the asphalt at her feet. She glanced up, but he’d put on his sun glasses again. What did it matter? She’d never had a chance of reading his mind. But she was a reporter to her soul. She had to ask her questions. “Why would you?”

He expelled a breath through his nostrils. “Why would I come back? I had to do something about the house.”

She raised a brow. “You can do better than that.”

“There was nothing for me in Detroit.”

“After ten years? No little woman to keep the home fires burning?”

He snorted now. “Yeah, right. What about you, Lindsey? Nobody for you?”

“The rumor is I came home with a broken heart, remember?” She forced the levity. “Really?”

She almost believed he wanted to know. She shrugged. “You know the gossip in this town, only about half of it’s ever true. I may be bruised, but I’m not broken.”

Half his mouth lifted into a sexy smile. “Lindsey. Why are you home?”

“Nothing for me in Chicago. And maybe home is where the heart is, or the heart ache.” She sighed and dropped her gaze to the long shadow Dylan Matthews cast. He’d been there, a shadow across her heart, for the last ten years.

“I figured you had probably hot-wired my car and taken off. You were steamed in there, just a few minutes ago,” he reminded her.

If she was smart, she would have. But she’d never been smart where Dylan was concerned. He would more than bruise her; he’d break her.

She nodded. “Yeah, I should have. But then you’d have to arrest me, and with my record…”

“You have a record now?”

She laughed over his shock. “Well, parking tickets. Didn’t you expect that, after all those tickets you gave me?”

“I let you get away with warnings quite a few times.”

“Yeah, I should have listened.” To straighten away from the bumper, she held out a hand to him. He closed his long fingers over hers and pulled her up. He was too close, too tempting.

“Now I’m going to make you listen,” she vowed.

“Hmm?” He pulled her closer.

Lindsey’s foolish heart raced away from her. “Yeah, you’re going to listen to me. My mother is not a suspect. That’s ridiculous.”

He dropped her hand and stepped around to the passenger’s door, which he held open for her. “Murder is pretty ridiculous when you think about it, not an act of a rational person.”

She agreed. She’d seen too many sense less deaths. “But not my mother’s act. Someone else did this, and I’m going to prove it to you.” She stepped close again, her face to his throat.

“Great.” His breath stirred her bangs.

“Great?”

He gently pushed her into the seat. “Murder isn’t my field. I was in the Narcotics division.”

“Narcotics?” She’d known some Narcotics officers, tough, cynical people who lived life on the edge. She’d attended a couple of their funerals. She shuddered.

He closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side. “There’re just a couple things about this, Lindsey.”

“Yeah?”

“You stay safe, all right? I don’t want you running around stirring up a murderer.”

She glared. “I’m careful.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, right. You are going to be careful this time. I don’t want you hurt.”

Her heart softened. “And the other thing?”

“It stays out of the paper.”

“What? I’m a reporter. That’s—”

“You’ll have the story after we have the murderer. You will not speculate in the paper.”

She smiled. “If I did that, I’d have to print an article with my mother as a suspect. No, any speculating I do will go no further than your ears. Can I trust you, Dylan?”

HE NEVER ANSWERED HER. Lindsey found that oddly reassuring. If he’d adamantly maintained his trust worthiness, she would have doubted him. If he’d warned her against trusting him, she would have argued. As it was, he’d dropped her back at her Jeep, and they’d parted ways three days ago.

She’d been busy. And by staying busy, she’d kept her mind from straying into some painful areas. Stinging pride could not compare to the pain of her parents’ betrayal. She had a brother, or so her mother claimed. And she’d never known.

She jerked the Jeep to a stop in Dylan’s driveway and with it her runaway thoughts. It was early for some people, late for night owls. The sun was just a hint in a still-dark sky. Of course, it was autumn in northern Michigan. The sun took its time rising in autumn and rarely showed at all for winter.

Dylan was an early riser. She had missed him yesterday. She hadn’t gone to the police station because she didn’t want anyone overhearing and spreading rumors about her mother. The town gossiped about her mother too much as it was.

Lindsey threw open her door and inhaled a huge gulp of crisp morning air. Last night someone had burned leaves. Lindsey could taste the acrid smoke that drifted like fog just above the ground. Before her mother had tried to burn down the house, Lindsey had loved the aromatic smell of burning leaves. Now it left her with stinging eyes.

Kind of like the thought of having a brother. She, who had been so alone in her youth, had a brother. No, it wasn’t possible. She shook off the crazy notion.

She grabbed her backpack from the passenger’s seat and slung it over her shoulder. Her rubber soles were silent on the gravel drive as she strode to his door. But a metallic hammering sound reached her ears. She paused, her hand mid-reach, at the screen door.