Midnight Kiss (Men of Midnight #7) - Lisa Marie Rice Page 0,43

top railing made of sun-blasted wood of a fence that formed a sort of perimeter around a small collection of six trailer houses.

Luke winced as she ran her hand along the railing, wanting to tell her to watch out for splinters. But there was no getting through to her.

He pulled out his cell, doing research on Happy Trails while glancing up every couple of seconds to keep an eye on her. He did a quick threat assessment each time he did, but so far there weren’t any threats unless there was a sniper up on the branches of an old oak. But there were no branches that would have borne the weight of a sniper and a sniper rifle. The biggest threat was the mangy dog, barking and growling like crazy, but it was in a cage.

He bent down again to his cell screen. He wasn’t a computer genius like Hope or Felicity, who were the techie equivalent of Navy SEALs and Army Rangers, but he was ok with tech. And at any rate he was consulting public records. No breaking and entering necessary.

Happy Trails was incorporated in 1980. For many years it was a thriving trailer park, making a tidy profit. After 1991 it started going downhill and was in the red for a couple of years after that. At the last tax report, it had made a profit of $10,546. Barely enough to keep going. There had been a fire in 1997 when Hope would have been six years old. But when she was six years old, she’d been living in Boston. With the Ellises.

Who might be the Sandersons.

Coming to Happy Trails trailer park was a long shot, but it had panned out because Hope’s reactions showed that she’d been here before, as a little girl. The path from Happy Trails to Boston was murky and unclear but there definitely was one.

He was scrolling through death notices in 1996 when Hope stopped. She stood there, shoulders stooped, looking exhausted. That was understandable. He suspected she’d taken more than a trip around a semi-abandoned trailer park. She’d taken a trip back through time.

She looked pale, shaky and he took her arm, telling himself it was not an excuse to touch her. Not, not, not.

It was costing her a lot and he wanted to get her somewhere where she could regroup. Let her do what she did best — do research online. And while she did that, he could feed her, make her some tea, let her recover from what were traumatic memories. They’d been right to come here but whatever was here to be found, they’d found it. It had given them the certainty that they were on the right path, but it had eaten her up alive. She looked dead on her feet.

Whatever concrete clues there might have been here were long gone.

He turned them around to get back to the SUV parked at the entrance. To get there they crossed a big path he hadn’t noticed before. Hope stiffened and pulled away from him, immediately swerving into the new path. Ohhhh-kay. Luke gave a sigh and followed her. Whatever she was doing, she was compelled to do it and he didn’t want to stifle her.

Hope walked straight as an arrow down this path, moving in and out of the sunlight, as high trees overhead provided the occasional shady canopy. It had the effect of making her look as if she were walking through spotlights. It made her look like a star on the stage. Luke was beginning to realize she was a star, in every sense there was. He was seeing her down, at her worst. Hunted, in danger. Realizing that her entire life was a lie.

But that didn’t diminish her. Her sense of purpose, her deep intelligence just shone, like the sun beaming down on her. It was amazing. She glowed in the sunlight.

Unless … Luke sighed. Unless that was how he saw her. Like a superstar. She sure had superpowers. Beautiful and wicked smart and sexy. That was it. He was attracted to her in a way he’d never been attracted before, which was scary because she was a job and you don’t mess with jobs. It was also exciting because she was, yes, a job but she wouldn’t be a job forever. And afterwards …

Gah. While he was slobbering over her cute backside and planning for when he could ask her out, she’d rushed ahead down the path. He lengthened his stride and caught