The Marshal's Hostage - By Delores Fossen Page 0,48

why. Webb was just a missing person, and the local sheriff then checked for any signs of foul play, but he missed the spatter on the frame.”

Easy to miss. The sunlight had been just right for Joelle to see it and then point it out to him.

“Without the luminol, you can’t see the blood on the floor, either,” his brother continued. “Plus, it looks as if someone tried to clean it up. There are swipes and smears. The CSIs might be able to determine if Webb was dragged from his office after he was stabbed and how his body was taken from the building. And that could give us more clues about the killer.”

“Yeah,” Dallas agreed.

“I know what you’re thinking. This new evidence could point to Kirby, but I don’t believe it will. Kirby’s well over six feet tall, and from the CSIs’ initial observations, they’re thinking the killer was someone shorter.”

Someone shorter would still implicate a lot of people. Including Declan and Joelle. But it would also point the finger at Sarah, Rudy and a dozen other kids who were living there at the time.

“I haven’t gotten to the best part of what they found,” Clayton went on. “When they were looking at the blood on the floor, they found a loose board, and one of them lifted it. There was a makeshift safe.”

Now that grabbed his attention. “What’s in it?”

“Don’t know yet. It’s locked, and it’s too heavy and big to lift out of the floor. Plus, they want to make sure it’s not booby trapped.”

Good point. Webb would have done something like that, but what was so important that he would want to seal it off in a secret safe?

Clayton huffed. “What the hell’s the matter with you? This is good news, Dallas. Or it could be, anyway. This is the first break we’ve had in the investigation.”

“I know. I, uh, just have, well, something else going on.”

“Not a good time for that,” Clayton countered. “I’ll call you back as soon as I hear anything else.”

Dallas mumbled a thanks, ended the call and tried to get to a place in his head where he could deal with the news about his daughter and everything else. He looked at Joelle, who was clearly waiting for him to say something.

Maybe that he could forgive her.

But Dallas wasn’t anywhere near that just yet. He groaned and turned to go back inside. However, he made it only a step before his phone buzzed.

“Owen,” he grumbled when he saw the name on the screen.

“I’ll talk to him,” Joelle insisted, and her teary voice was replaced with a huge amount of anger. Anger she’d no doubt aim at the man who’d sent that birth certificate.

Dallas was furious with Owen, too, but he had to accept that if Owen hadn’t delivered the bombshell, then he might have never learned about his and Joelle’s child.

He didn’t give the phone to Joelle even though she was motioning for it. Dallas pressed the button to take the call, and like Clayton’s, he put it on speaker.

“Did you like my little present, Joelle?” Owen immediately asked.

“You bastard.” She moved closer to the phone. “You’ve done a lot of slimy low-life things in your life, but this takes the prize. How did you know? How did you find out?”

“You can thank Lindsey for it,” Owen happily volunteered. “She hired a P.I. to dig into your past. Looking for dirt, I’d imagine, so she could use it to break us up. Little did she know she’d find this.”

And this was tearing at Dallas’s heart.

Yes, Joelle should have told him. Kirby, too. But he wasn’t pleased that Owen had used something like his baby’s birth certificate as a way to get back at Joelle.

“If I were you, I’d watch your back,” Dallas said to Owen. “Lindsey’s unhinged, if you ask me, and now that Joelle’s called off the wedding, Lindsey will probably think that’s her invitation to go after you. How far do you think she’ll go when you reject her?”

Owen didn’t respond to that. Yeah, it was a small victory, but Dallas was glad to get in that dig. Besides, he really believed that Lindsey could be dangerous, and with Joelle out of the picture, maybe she’d aim some of her efforts and venom at Owen.

“Stay out of my life,” Dallas warned the man, and he jabbed the button to end the call.

He’d barely had time to put his phone in his pocket when it buzzed yet again. No profanity