off his feed, as Jon David put it. We can probably safely assume he was coming down with the same virus as the rest of the Beise kids.”
“But we’re sure Helen wasn’t still alive then?” Jac asked. “Time of death was never actually determined.”
“It rarely is,” Miranda said. That was the kind of data Jac would focus on to the exclusion of everything else. Jac was definitely a detail kind of woman. “But Lesley swore he didn’t see her before they moved. We’ll have to collaborate that with his siblings’ statements.”
“After we get them,” Carrie Lorcan pointed out.
Knight loomed behind her. Well, leaning against the wall, not saying anything, much like Clint, who stood next to him. And Joel. Joel looked practically exhausted, poor guy. He’d had another drug bust in the northern corner of his county at four a.m. the night before. Drugs in Masterson were becoming more of a problem than ever.
It was Knight who concerned her the most.
He’d practically watched her every move since they’d met up in the dining room that morning. It had her…disconcerted. In a way she hadn’t been over a man in a long, long time.
“I suggest we split up.” Miranda studied the names. “Max, you and Jac take Olivia. She’s a teacher at a small school, just over the state lines in Nebraska.” Miranda didn’t miss the way her friend winced at the assignment. Well, they weren’t going to figure things out between them if they weren’t given time alone to do it. A long drive into Nebraska would be a good place to start.
“I think that would be a good idea, but why don’t I take Dr. Appell with me instead?” Max shot her a significant look. One that told Miranda that Max knew what she had been trying to do. Max was a very smart man—maneuvering him and Jac was going to be very tricky. “So she can see the ropes?”
“I’ll take Monica—Diane,” Clint said. “Knight, you want to ride along with me? You and Agent Jac?” Clint liked Jac; Miranda could tell. It didn’t surprise her—Clint had a protective streak three miles wide, and Jac had that look about her that made people want to protect.
“That leaves Carrie and me to talk to Jenny-Kayla and Marcie-Marnie.” She could handle that. Put some distance between herself and Knight.
Miranda needed the drive today, to see the mountains and hills and fields she’d grown up loving. She just needed to put some distance between herself and Knight, too.
Miranda needed time to think. She had to figure that man out. Somehow. He was a bigger puzzle than she ever had imagined.
41
“What do you want from me? This was not why I gave you my number.”
Jim resisted the urge to curse right back. Girl always had been a witch. Just like Helen. “I’m calling to give you the heads-up. So you can warn the rest of your brothers and sisters. There’s trouble here in Masterson.”
Jim hurriedly explained it to her, popping a third top on a beer while he did. Without thinking about it. The woman he talked to always had brought out the urge to drown his troubles in beer. This time was no different.
By the time the call was done, Jim was steaming.
“Handle it. Just handle it. Get rid of that cop if you have to.”
Jim disconnected the call and threw his cell into the passenger-side window. It bounced off and landed in the floorboard. He just left it, starting the engine up again.
Everything burned through him. Gunderson. Weatherby. That ungrateful daughter of Pauline and Luther. All of it.
Jim just wanted to make someone pay.
By the time he made it to Gunderson’s, he’d finished almost the whole six-pack. He hadn’t done that so quick in a long time. At least a few years or so.
It wasn’t sitting so well on him now. He pulled over before Gunderson’s driveway and lost the contents of his stomach.
Jim pulled the rest of the way into Gunderson’s drive and just sat for a while.
No one was home. Gunderson’s truck was gone, of course.
The place had that deserted feel. With all the work Gunderson still needed to do on the place, it looked like it was haunted and about ready to be condemned. Jim sat out there in his squad car, just thinking, parked at angle blocking the driveway.
Drinking. He shouldn’t be. A part of him knew that. He shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be there. If Gunderson came home and saw him there, and smelled the