Official Duty. Doreen Roberts

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      “Not yet.” His mouth tightened in a grim line. “But I will.” For a long moment he kept his gaze on his hands then slowly, he raised his chin.

      Her twinge of awareness took her by surprise. She felt as she had that first time, the little kid in awe of the big, bold cowboy. She hadn’t expected to be still affected by him like this. If she had, she would have refused his invitation. She made herself look into his eyes and saw nothing there but concern.

      “Look,” he said softly, “I know all this is a shock to you and that you’ll need some time to deal with it. But I could use your help. You probably remember better than I do what the Corbetts had in their home. I need you to take a look and see if you can figure out if there’s anything missing. It might help catch the bastard who did this.”

      Still dazed, she muttered, “I don’t understand how anyone could hurt Mabel and Jim.”

      “I know,” Cully said grimly. “I have a bad feeling about this. A feeling somehow that this isn’t the end of it.”

      His words made the back of her neck prickle. At that precise moment, a shadow appeared at the window behind him. She hadn’t been directly looking in that direction and by the time she did, whoever it was had disappeared. It was more an impression than anything but something about that fleeting silhouette disturbed her.

      She shook her head, impatient with her erratic mind. Cully’s words had put her on edge, making her imagine things that weren’t there. The very idea of someone killing Jim and Mabel shocked and sickened her. No wonder she was feeling jittery. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to harm such generous, giving people as the Corbetts, people who just about everyone in Gold Peak had known and loved.

      The steaks arrived, brought to the table by a young man with a scruffy stubble darkening his jaw and a plaited gold ring in his right ear. He stared hard at Ginny as he set down the plates.

      “This is Luke Sorensen.” Cully waved his hand at the frankly curious man. “He helps out on Sally’s night off. He lived with the Corbetts for a while, right Luke? Meet another one of the Corbetts’ foster kids. Ginny Matthews.”

      “My name’s not…” she began, then shrugged her tired shoulders. It didn’t matter anymore. Brandon was dead. It didn’t matter what people called her now.

      She shook the reluctant hand Luke held out. “I was so sad to hear about the Corbetts’ deaths. I wish I could have been at the funeral.”

      “Yeah, it was bad news,” Luke muttered. He dropped his hand and slunk back to the bar.

      Ginny frowned at Cully. “You said something about Sally. You don’t mean Sally Irwin, do you?”

      Cully picked up his steak knife. “Yeah, that’s our Sally. Oh, right, I forgot. You two used to be pretty good buddies.”

      “Best friends.” She stared at the thick steak on her plate, wondering how on earth she was going to eat anything at all. “We lost touch over the years.”

      “Yeah, city life will do that to you.”

      Deciding to ignore the sarcasm in his voice, she tackled the steak, realizing all of a sudden that she was starving.

      Across the table, Cully watched her out of the corner of his eye. She’d changed. It shocked him how much she’d changed. It wasn’t so much the hair, cut short and lighter than he remembered. It wasn’t even that she was older. She didn’t look that much older than the day she’d left town to move to Phoenix. The Arizona sun had given her a few faint lines here and there but she still had that fresh, clear skin. In the tight jeans and T-shirt she wore her body looked just as firm and as slender as the night he’d covered her with his naked body and taken them both to another world.

      Angry about his obsession with the past, he concentrated on the present. She’d become citified. Even the jeans couldn’t hide that air of sophistication that set them worlds apart. She looked out of place, like a tourist trying to blend in somewhere she didn’t belong.

      It was more than that, though. There was something else. It was in her eyes. That unforgettable blend of green and gold still reminded him of cool forests and sunlit waterfalls but there was a look in them that worried him.

      He’d seen that look before, in the eyes of a bruised and battered woman he’d pulled out of busted-up trailer after arresting her raging, drunken husband. The look of the hunted. The terrified. The victim.

      He swallowed a bite of steak then asked abruptly, “How come your husband didn’t come with you?”

      He saw the expression he dreaded in her face—the flicker of fear, the tightening of her jaw. Then she said something he hadn’t expected.

      Her words were flat, as if she were making a conscious effort to erase all emotion from her voice. “My husband’s dead. He was killed in a plane crash three months ago.”

      He choked, grabbed his beer and took a huge gulp. “I’m sorry. Thank God you weren’t with him.”

      She sawed at her steak, her face a cold, hard mask. “Yes,” she said deliberately. “Thank God.”

      Something about the way she said it put a chill right through his bones. “That must have been real tough,” he said awkwardly.

      Carefully, she lifted a small, neat square of meat to her mouth, chewed it and swallowed. “I’m sorry I missed Sally. I would have enjoyed talking to her.”

      His mouth twisted. So she didn’t want to talk about it. Well, okay. It was none of his business anyway.

      He shouldn’t feel so damn pleased about it. It wasn’t right to feel glad a man had died. Maybe he wouldn’t if he didn’t have a gut feeling that her marriage hadn’t exactly been made in paradise. Then again, if he were really honest with himself, the news that she was no longer married wasn’t going to upset him too much, no matter how happy or miserable she’d been.

      Still feeling guilty about his lack of sympathy for the dead man, he accepted her switch in the conversation. For the next half hour or so he caught her up to date on various people she’d known when she’d lived in Gold Peak.

      She was sipping at a steaming cup of coffee when she brought up the subject of the Corbetts’ deaths again. “I assume you’ve searched the house,” she said, placing her mug carefully on the table.

      “Yep. Judging by the way the place was messed up, Jim put up a pretty good fight. He didn’t go down easy.” He swallowed hard. “We think Mabel was killed in the hallway. Looks like she was trying to make a run for it when he caught up with her.”

      She shuddered, her face pale. “Didn’t you find anything that might help find out who killed them?”

      “So far we’ve got nothing to go on. Without a motive it’s hard to know where to start.” He thought about getting another beer, then decided against it. “The worst part is knowing that maniac is still running around out there. I need to stop him before he gets his hands bloody again.”

      She seemed to think about it for a long moment or two, then said quietly, “You’re right. He has to pay for what he did. I’m not sure how much help I can be but I’ll take a look СКАЧАТЬ