The Marshal's Hostage - By Delores Fossen Page 0,42

was clean?” Joelle pressed. And Dallas knew why. After all, she’d had a knife tested with his prints and Webb’s blood. Now, this knife was clean.

Dallas looked at Owen, waiting for the man to say something, but Owen only gave him one of those smug smiles that made Dallas want to mop the barn floor with him.

“The person who sent me that knife is playing some kind of game,” Owen said, his attention fastened to Joelle and Dallas. “Makes me think he or she might have something else tucked away. Something that will prove who killed Webb.”

Ah, there it was. The carefully veiled threat. Owen had the real knife with Dallas’s prints, and he’d be more than willing to hand it over if Joelle didn’t go through with the wedding.

“A game?” Dallas repeated. He glared at Owen. “Why would this person give the marshals a fake?”

Owen lifted his shoulder. “Maybe the person likes to see you squirm?”

Yeah, Owen would like that, and he was dancing them around like puppets.

Dallas looked at Joelle, and a dozen things passed between them. They didn’t say a word to each other, but he could see in her eyes and body language that it was time to put and an end to this. Well, an end to part of it, anyway.

Owen’s lies.

“I’ll start,” she said in a whisper to Dallas, and she turned to Saul. “During the course of my interviews into Webb’s death, I ran across certain testimony that implicates Owen in various white-collar crimes.”

“Wait a minute!” Owen jumped between Joelle and Saul, or rather he tried, but Dallas yanked him back and put him against the wall.

“If you do this, you’ll regret it,” Owen mumbled so that only Dallas could hear. “Joelle, too.”

Maybe. But at this point, it was better than playing games with the likes of Owen.

“You’d better sit down, Saul,” Dallas warned his boss. “Because when this is done, you’ll need to arrest me.”

“And me,” Joelle volunteered. She yanked off her engagement ring and slapped it into Owen’s hand.

Saul cursed a blue streak and dropped down into the chair. “Tell me,” he ordered.

Chapter Twelve

Joelle felt as if she’d just weathered a fierce storm. But there was another one headed her way.

Maybe several, she amended, when Dallas ushered her inside the ranch house.

Judging from his body language and tone, his latest phone conversation wasn’t going well. Joelle had already had enough bad news for the day without adding more, but it appeared that’s what she was going to get.

“How’d that happen?” Dallas snapped.

Joelle knew the caller was Clayton—she’d seen his name on Dallas’s cell phone screen—which meant this likely had something to do with the investigation.

Maybe Saul Warner had decided to arrest Dallas and her, after all. When the senior marshal had ordered them away from headquarters earlier, he’d said he had to evaluate all the evidence and testimonies before he could make a decision about filing charges.

Saul had taken Dallas’s badge, though.

That hadn’t exactly been a surprise, but Joelle knew that Dallas was upset about it. Since he was thirteen, he’d wanted to be a marshal, and now that might be taken away from him permanently.

Of course, her job was a goner, too. Saul hadn’t called the governor, but eventually he’d have to do it, and that meant Joelle had to bite the bullet and call her boss first. During that conversation, she would have to tender her resignation and wait to see if she was facing jail time.

As bad as that was—and it was bad—it still paled in comparison to the fact that someone had tried to kill Dallas and her. Hard to hunt for a new job with a killer breathing down their backs. That meant they had to find Webb’s killer. Or whoever was after them.

Maybe that was the same person.

Maybe not.

After all, Lindsey had hired the P.I. to follow her, so maybe the woman was responsible for the attacks. Still, it was an overkill approach to stop her marriage to Owen. And if that had been Lindsey’s plan, then she no longer had a reason to wish Joelle dead since the wedding was definitely off.

That was the one good thing to come out of this.

She wouldn’t have to pretend to be engaged to Owen any longer.

Dallas stayed in the entry, finishing his call, but Joelle was so exhausted that she headed for the guest room where she’d slept the night before. When she stepped into the hall, she saw a nurse come out of Kirby’s room. The