One Night Standoff - By Delores Fossen Page 0,18
“But what’ll help more is to find the person responsible for these attacks.”
She had to agree with that, but so far they had zero leads. Well, except the most obvious one—Clayton and her.
“There’s only one motive I can think of as to why we’ve been attacked twice. Someone wants to eliminate us as witnesses to Jill’s murder. Without us, maybe Riggs’s lawyers might feel they can manipulate the evidence to get the charges reduced or dismissed.”
He made a sound of agreement. “So, Riggs maybe hired someone, but he would have needed help to orchestrate an attack like this. And I don’t mean just money kind of help. He’d need someone he could trust on the outside to do the legwork.”
Clayton took another turn onto an even narrower road, and she saw the sign for the Blue Creek Ranch. Clayton’s home.
Lenora shifted the wet tissues a little, and her fingers grazed the back of his neck. Clayton didn’t move, but he made another sound that might have been a grunt of pain.
But she rethought that.
Even though she couldn’t see his eyes behind those shades, the breath that left his mouth wasn’t of pain, but of discomfort.
Maybe it was this blasted attraction that still seemed to be between them. He probably wasn’t any more comfortable with it than she was. However, that didn’t make it go away.
“Any ideas who Riggs could have hired?” she asked, forcing her thoughts back on the only subject that she should be thinking about—this investigation.
“No one immediately comes to mind. What about you? Any ideas?”
“Yes,” she had to answer. “The task-force leader, James Britt. I told you that his behavior after your shooting was suspicious.”
“You didn’t talk to him about it?” Clayton immediately wanted to know. The concern was in his voice now, probably because he was worried that she’d tipped her hand and let James think she believed he was doing something illegal.
“No. In fact, I haven’t spoken to him since your shooting. He thinks I left the justice department because I was shaken by Jill’s murder. I was,” she added in a mumble.
“Yeah.” That’s all he said, but it was obvious from his expression he was thinking about it. She’d also slept with Clayton because she’d been shaken.
Lenora quickly moved on to something else that didn’t involve memories of sex with Clayton. “What about Corey Dayton, the gunman I shot at the diner? Did anything turn up on who might have hired him?” Because that could lead them back to Riggs.
“Nothing so far, but I need to take a harder look at everything. That includes a chat with the prison officials where Riggs is being held. I want to know who he’s had communications with. I need to check out his lawyers, too.”
Yes, a lot of work ahead, but first she had to deal with what else lay ahead. Literally. She looked out at the sprawling pastures and equally sprawling ranch house at the end of the road. In addition to hundreds of Angus cows, there were also about a half dozen ranch hands milling around and doing various chores.
“My foster father came from money,” Clayton offered, maybe because she seemed so shocked by the sheer size of the place. “But he was first and foremost a lawman.”
A marshal, she recalled from the background check she’d read on Clayton. Now retired, Kirby Granger had rescued not only Clayton but five other boys from the Rocky Creek Children’s Facility.
Clayton tipped his head to an older wood frame house near the front of the pasture. “My brother Harlan lives there. You remember meeting him.”
Yes, he’d given her the third degree about why she was visiting Clayton while they rode in the ambulance to the hospital. Lenora was pretty sure that Harlan didn’t like her much.
He pointed to another place, not nearly as large as the main ranch house. A one-story that looked to be recently built. “My brother Dallas and his fiancée, Joelle, live there. You probably won’t see much of Joelle while you’re here. She’s finishing up her job in Austin, but she’ll move here for good in a month or two and work for the D.A.”
A big family and it was getting bigger. The baby would add to that, and it was a reminder that all the marshals on the Blue Creek Ranch might want to be part of not just the baby’s life but her own.
Not exactly a settling thought.
She’d spent years being private. Secretive. An out-and-out liar on occasion. Now she was about