The Marshal's Hostage - By Delores Fossen Page 0,22
if she were trying to work out her anger with the motion.
It wouldn’t help.
Joelle probably felt violated. And had been. Now the question was—who was responsible? His money was still on Owen using Lindsey as a lackey, but proving Owen’s guilt was the next step.
“What about the other woman who was at the church with Lindsey?” Dallas asked Clayton. “Has she been brought in yet?”
“Amanda Mathis,” Joelle interjected.
“She’s on her way,” Clayton answered. “I’ll try to hang around to hear what she has to say, but Saul is already trying to boot me out the door. Harlan, too. And he’s already sent Slade and Wyatt to prisoner transport duty.”
Again, not unexpected but a damn inconvenience. Working from the inside out would be a heck of a lot easier than the reverse. Of course, both of those scenarios involved working with Joelle. Not his first choice of investigative partners. Too much old blood between them. Old wounds, too.
And apparently remnants of the attraction.
Nothing would come of it. Dallas was sure of that. He needed his head on this case and not clouded with memories of kisses and sex.
“You still there, Dallas?” Clayton asked.
Dallas snapped his attention back to the conversation and cursed the clouded head he already had.
“Hang in there as long as you can,” Dallas instructed Clayton, and he ended the call.
“Amanda wouldn’t have done this,” Joelle volunteered right away. “She also works for Owen, but unlike Lindsey, she’s a mouse. If he gave the order to one of them, it would have been Lindsey.”
Dallas thought about that while he pulled to a stop in front of the sprawling ranch house. However, he didn’t get out, and Joelle didn’t seem so anxious to do that, either.
“Would Lindsey have done this on her own, without Owen’s order?” Dallas asked.
She paused. “Maybe. Probably,” Joelle amended a moment later. “I believe she’s in love with Owen so who knows—this might have been her way of stopping the ceremony.”
“Does Lindsey know that Owen forced you into this engagement?”
Joelle shook her head. “I doubt Owen shared that with anyone. He would want everyone to believe that I’m marrying him for love.”
Good point. Yeah, Owen’s ego would have insisted on that. “Could Lindsey have been the one to hire those men in the woods?”
Joelle blinked. “Why wouldn’t you believe Owen did that?”
“I do think it was him, but I have to look at this the way my boss will. And Saul will want to know if there was someone other than Owen with means, motive and opportunity to drug you and send out those gunmen.”
She made a sound of agreement, then groaned. “Lindsey fits the bill on all counts. She comes from a wealthy family so she’d have the funds to hire gunmen. She’s also in love with Owen. And hates me. She could have called the goons as soon as you took me out of the church.” But then, Joelle shook her head. “Still, it all goes back to Owen. I mean, why would Lindsey want those men to force me back to the church?”
Unfortunately, Dallas could think of a reason. “Maybe they weren’t instructed to take you to the church. Maybe they were hired to make sure you never married Owen.”
And if so, perhaps they really had orders to kill her.
Of course, there was that part about a dirty little secret. Dallas wanted to ask Joelle if Lindsey would have known anything about that. Or had Owen known? But Joelle had made it pretty clear that particular subject wasn’t up for discussion.
Not now, anyway.
But soon, very soon, Dallas would need to hear it in case it was somehow connected to this mess of an investigation.
“Owen certainly had the means to hire those men,” Joelle continued. “And more.”
Yeah. Dallas was aware of that. Right after he’d finished college, Owen had married the only daughter of one of the richest ranchers in Texas, and both father and daughter had died in a car accident less than a year later. As the sole heir, Owen had inherited the successful ranch along with about twenty million dollars.
That could buy a lot of gunmen.
“You’ve stayed in touch with Owen all these years?” he asked.
“No.” A quick answer, and she made a face as if the idea was an unpleasant one. “He’s called a time or two and dropped by my office once, but I was never interested in seeing or hearing from Owen.”
“Yet he found a way to tangle you in his life.” And tangle in a bad way.