The Marshal's Hostage - By Delores Fossen Page 0,25

and duck around Dallas. He backed her against the wall and pinned her in place with his body. Despite all the things going through her head, she still noticed the close contact.

His chest pressed against her breasts.

Dallas obviously noticed it, too, because he glanced down between them and then stepped back a little. “That won’t get you off the hook,” he mumbled.

“That?” she blurted out. Yet another bad idea. She should have just dropped the subject completely.

“You know what I’m talking about.” He didn’t wait for her to confirm that yep, she did know. It was this blasted attraction between them. “It won’t play into this. You’ll tell me all about this secret you’ve been keeping.”

She would. No way around it now. Joelle debated where to start, but before she could figure out a jumping off point, she heard the footsteps, and Declan appeared in the hall.

“The guest room’s ready,” he said, and his gaze slid to the still close contact between Dallas and her. “Looks like old times.” Declan didn’t exactly seemed pleased about that, either.

Dallas cursed. “Mind your own business. And if you remember correctly, those old times weren’t always good.” But he stepped away from her again. “Come on. We’ll have this discussion in private.”

He was right. Kirby had been stressed out enough without having to listen to them argue. And there would be an argument if she didn’t tell all. The trick was to do that without making things worse.

Latching on to her arm again, Dallas scowled at her and then led her down the hall and into what she assumed was the guest room. Her bag sat near the bed.

“Talk,” Dallas ordered.

Joelle gathered her breath first. It wasn’t easy, and even when she managed to do it, it didn’t help. “One of the first things I discovered when I started this inquiry was that neither you, Kirby nor any of your foster brothers have foolproof alibis for the time Webb went missing.”

“Not exactly a secret,” Dallas pointed out.

“No. But my boss was pressing me to name some top suspects, preferably not any state officials or employees with ties to Rocky Creek.”

Dallas stayed quiet a moment. Cursed again. “He wants to pin this on a federal marshal.”

“Only if a marshal is guilty,” she corrected. “This isn’t a witch hunt, Dallas. The governor wants everything aboveboard, but he wants it handled discreetly, too. And that’s why I didn’t interview you or your brothers personally. I didn’t want anyone to think that I’d manipulated or influenced your accounts of that night.”

“So you sent a lackey to talk to us.”

“My assistant,” she corrected. “And I used the info from those interviews and others to come up with a timetable of who was where and when for all sixty-one residents and the staff.”

He stared at her. “You found something.” And it wasn’t a question.

“I found that the time window was short for you to have committed a murder, but it was still possible.” She had to swallow hard and tried not to allow the images of that night into her head. “Webb was last seen at eight in the evening, and you met me by the creek at eight-thirty. I didn’t want to put in my report that you could have murdered Webb and then calmly had sex with me.”

“Calmly?” he questioned. “We never did anything calmly, especially sex.”

Joelle couldn’t help it, she smiled and then had to choke back a laugh. Why, she didn’t know. There was certainly nothing laughable about any of this. Including those memories. But Dallas was right once again—when they’d been together in those days, it’d been anything but calm.

The images came so fast, so hard that Joelle couldn’t push them all away. Sixteen years was a long time, but for some reason her brain and body just wouldn’t let her forget Dallas’s touch. His scent. His taste.

It was always there with her.

“Yeah,” Dallas mumbled, and the corner of his mouth lifted as if he were about to smile. He didn’t. The moment came and went, and the steel returned to his eyes.

With reason.

He was never going to forgive her for leaving him, and part of Joelle would never forgive herself. No use going back down that road because reliving it would only make matters worse.

“The timeline,” she said, hoping to get her own mind back where it belonged—on this investigation. “You aren’t the only one with a short window for an alibi. Eyewitnesses put Harlan and Clayton in their room around eight-fifteen. Slade was