Yuletide Fugitive Threat. Sandra Robbins

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СКАЧАТЬ Tony.” He paused a moment and then looked at her again. “There are lots of unanswered questions about this whole case.”

      “I know.”

      “One of them is, how did Tony know you had come to see me today? When I answered the phone, he called me by name—he knew you were with me. Did you see a car following you when you drove here? Or did one drive by after you parked in front of my house?”

      She shook her head and yawned. “No. I checked all the way. And when I left the diner, I took a lot of back streets to get here. It was so late, the streets were empty—I’d have noticed if someone was following me. There was no one behind me, and no one drove by after I arrived here.”

      Lucas closed the notebook and reached for her coffee cup. “Would you like a refill?”

      “That would be nice.”

      He laid the notebook on the coffee table and walked from the room. Mia scooted down on the couch, stretched her legs out and snuggled into the soft cushions. The stress of the past few weeks had left her tense and wary, but for some reason she felt safer now than she had in years.

      She’d made the right decision. If anyone could help her, Lucas could, and he’d seemed understanding about her lack of funds at the present time. She had no illusions about how he felt about her. He still hated her. She could see it in his eyes. But he was willing to help her, and that was all she needed. Someone she trusted who could put a stop to the terror in her life.

      With a sigh she closed her eyes and drifted into a deep sleep.

      * * *

      Lucas walked back into the living room and stopped at the door. A soft snore came from Mia’s prone figure sprawled on the couch. She had to be dead on her feet after the night she’d had. He set the cup of coffee down and reached for an afghan draped across a chair next to the sofa.

      As he covered her with the colorful blanket, he thought of his mother and the hours she’d spent crocheting this beautiful afghan and how thrilled she’d been when she saw how he liked it. He spread it over Mia’s body and pulled it up around her shoulders.

      Then he stepped back and stared down at her. He still couldn’t believe she was here. Asleep on his sofa. And just as attractive as she’d been when they were in college.

      He shook his head and took a step back. No use thinking that way. What was between them had died seven years ago when she chose Kyle instead of him. And nothing was going to change that.

      He turned around and strode again to the kitchen, where he began to put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher. As he worked, he recalled all the things Mia had said while they were eating. Some things didn’t make sense.

      Mia had always been vivacious and energetic and enjoyed being with people. How had she ended up with no friends? Less surprising was that she had no family. When they’d been dating, her father was all the family she had, and their relationship had always been tense.

      It hadn’t taken him long when they were in college to find out how her father controlled her life, from what she wore to the friends she had. Her one attempt at rebelling against her father’s authority had been when she’d told him she was going to marry Lucas. But that resolve hadn’t lasted very long. She and Lucas had had a fight over the fact that he wanted to wait until he’d finished his SEAL training before marrying her. Lucas had thought that they’d be able to work things out once he got back from basic training...but by then, she’d already married another man—one who had her father’s stamp of approval.

      Lucas closed the dishwasher, sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out his cell phone. He punched in the number for Scottie Murray, the computer whiz they used at the agency, and waited for him to answer. Lucas had no idea how Scottie could find even the deepest buried items on the internet with little effort. But then again, he didn’t ask. It was better if he didn’t know some of Scottie’s secrets.

      Scottie connected on the third ring. “Hello.”

      “Scottie, Lucas Knight here.”

      “Hey, man. What’s up?”

      “I have a new client. I need you to do some digging for me.”

      “Sure. What do you want?”

      “I want you to find me everything you can on a man named Kyle Lockhart and his wife, Mia. Lockhart was murdered about a month ago, and I need a full background search on him. Let me know the minute you find out anything.”

      “Okay, dude. You got it. I’ll get to work right away.”

      Lucas disconnected the call and sat at the table, thinking for a few minutes. If there was more to Mia’s story than what she was telling him, Scottie would find it. He glanced at the clock on the wall: 8:00 a.m. Scottie might not call back for several hours. That gave him time to take care of other things.

      He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Adam’s number. It went to voice mail right away. Without giving details, he left a short message that he wouldn’t be able to go to Nashville and would explain later. Then he headed to the shower.

      An hour later he walked back into the living room to check on Mia. She still lay there sound asleep but had pulled the cover up around her neck more. He watched her even breathing for a moment, before he turned and walked back to the kitchen.

      He’d just entered the room when his phone rang. He pulled the phone from his pocket and smiled at Scottie’s name on the screen.

      “Hey, Scottie. Did you find something for me?”

      “Yeah, I did. And some of it’s very interesting. This Lockhart guy was quite a character. I have everything in a file that I just emailed to you. There’s probably more, but I thought this would give you something to study while I keep digging into his life.”

      “Thanks, Scottie. Let me know when you have more.”

      As he disconnected the call, Lucas strode toward his office to turn on his computer. Within seconds he had opened his email and found the file Scottie had sent.

      Carefully, he began to read through the pages contained in the report. The first ones dealt with Kyle’s job at the import business. There was a job description, some evaluations filled out by the owner and some letters of commendation from community leaders.

      Those were followed by newspaper articles reporting Kyle’s important acquisitions and pictures of him at events, a wineglass in his hand, and surrounded by beautiful women, smiling for the cameras. As Lucas studied picture after picture, he discovered the same woman was in each one. The captions underneath identified her as Christine Abbott, heiress to her family’s hotel chain.

      Was it coincidence that Christine was in all the photos? He doubted it, but that was something Lucas could pursue later.

      He scrolled to the next page of the file. His eyes grew wide as a police report came into view. Lucas leaned closer to the computer screen and read, his stomach churning as he realized what he was looking at. A report of Kyle Lockhart’s arrest, six months before his death, for domestic abuse.

      Lucas’s fingers shook as he read the account. Teenagers having a party on the shore of the lake near Mia’s house had called the police to report hearing screams. The police had arrived to find Mia Lockhart severely СКАЧАТЬ