B.J. Daniels - Christmas At Cardwell Ranch

“What do you know about Mia?” Lily asked her brother now.

He shrugged. “Not much. She never had much to say, especially about herself. I could check her application, but you know there isn’t a lot on them.”

“But there would be a number to call in case of emergency, right?”

“I think that is more than a little premature,” her brother said. “Anyway, if the marshal thought that was necessary, he would have contacted me for the number, right?”

“Maybe. Unless they have some rule about not looking for a missing adult for twenty-four hours. Still, I’d like to see her job application.”

Ace got to his feet. “I’ve got to open the bar soon anyway. Come on.”

In the Canyon office, her brother pulled out Mia Duncan’s application from the file cabinet and handed it to her.

He was right. There was little on the form other than name, address, social security number, local phone number and an emergency contact number. Most of his employees were temporary hires, usually college students attending Montana State University forty miles down the highway to the north, and only stayed a few weeks at most. Big Sky had a fairly transient population that came and went by the season.

So Lily wasn’t surprised that the number Mia had put down on her application was a local number, probably her parents’ condo here at Big Sky.

“No cell phone number,” she said. “That’s odd since I’ve seen Mia using a cell phone on at least one of her breaks behind the bar.”

Lily didn’t recognize the prefix on the emergency number Mia had put down. She picked up the phone and dialed it, ignoring her brother shaking his head in disapproval. The number rang three times before a voice came on the line to say the phone had been disconnected.

“What?” Ace asked as she hung up.

“The number’s been disconnected. I’ll call the condo association.” A few moments later she hung up, now more upset and worried than before. “That condo doesn’t belong to her parents. It belongs to a retired FBI agent who recently died. The condo association didn’t even know Mia was staying there.”

At a loud knock at the bar’s front door, they both started. Lily glanced out the office window and felt her heart drop at the sight of the marshal’s pickup.

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