Settling an Old Score - Delores Fossen Page 0,14

there?”

“We’ll take precautions.” Eli’s gaze held for several moments on Cora. “Lots of them. Trust me, keeping your daughter safe is my top priority.”

Ashlyn heard the unspoken part of that. He wanted her to put aside their pasts and declare a truce. For Cora. That was probably the only thing that could have caused her to nod.

“Thank you,” she managed to tell Eli.

Obviously, he wasn’t comfortable with that because his mouth tightened again. “Are you okay with Ashlyn giving her statement tomorrow?” Eli asked Kellan, and he checked the time. “It’s late, and I’m sure we could all use some rest.”

“Tomorrow’s fine,” Kellan agreed, and he looked up at Gunnar. “Stay there with them tonight at Jack’s. I’ll get someone out there to relieve you first thing in the morning.”

Ashlyn stood to get ready to leave, but she stopped when Eli’s phone dinged with a text message. He frowned, then scowled when he read it and then immediately made a call. She hadn’t been able to see what was on his phone screen, but Ashlyn held her breath, praying this wasn’t the start of another attack.

“What the hell do you mean by a glitch?” Eli snapped to the person that he’d called.

The next part of the conversation was all one-sided so Ashlyn looked at Kellan to see if he knew what was going on. He shook his head, lifted his shoulder.

“Find them now,” Eli growled a couple of seconds later, and he stabbed the End Call button as if he’d declared war on it. There was an angry fire in stormy eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Kellan and she asked in unison.

A tight muscle flickered in Eli’s jaw. “Marta’s funeral home and hospital records are missing. Both the hard copies and the digital files. It looks as if someone stole them.”

Chapter Five

Eli’s fun meter was already at zero, and hearing about Marta’s missing files sure as hell didn’t give his mood a boost. He wanted answers, damn it, and this certainly wasn’t helping.

Neither were his sleeping arrangements for the night.

Of course, Eli seriously doubted that he’d be getting much sleep, but he was going to need at least a nap if he wanted his brain to continue to function. And that nap would need to happen at his brother’s house. With Ashlyn and her baby daughter under the same roof.

Ashlyn didn’t look any more pleased than he did about the sleeping arrangements when Eli ushered her into the wood-and-stone house, and Eli knew her disapproval wasn’t because of the place itself. She was no doubt troubled by that “being under the same roof” part, too.

He stepped in, glanced around, trying to see it from a lawman’s eyes rather than a visitor’s. It definitely wasn’t sprawling like the main house where Kellan lived and helped run the family ranch. This one only had a combined living and kitchen area, two bedrooms, an office, two baths and was, well, laid-back. Which was a fairly apt description of his brother Jack. This was a place where you could flop on the sofa, drink a beer and watch the game on the big-screen TV mounted on the wall above the fireplace.

Now it was going to be a place where Eli would keep Ashlyn and Cora safe. He started that by arming the security system, which he knew was top-notch. It was a precaution that Eli and all his brothers had taken after their father was murdered.

“I’ll put these in the guest room,” Gunnar said, holding up the bags of baby supplies. “I’ll also close the curtains and make sure all the doors and windows are locked,” the deputy added, and he went into the hall.

“You really believe Marta’s missing records are a glitch?” Ashlyn came and asked Eli. It was just a rephrasing of what she’d already pressed him on, and during one of his responses, Eli had indeed used the word glitch.

His word choice, though, was because the alternative just pissed him off. There was no good reason for someone to steal the files. That’s why he’d demanded a full investigation on it. However, there was a bad reason for a person to do this.

“I don’t believe Marta’s alive,” he said. “But someone could have stolen and wiped the files to muddy the waters.” If he had to run down leads on who’d do something like that, then he wasn’t focusing on the actual person who’d sent those armed idiots after them.

She nodded, swallowed hard and then glanced around as if to give herself a distraction.