Читать книгу Bodyguard Under the Mistletoe - Cassie Miles, Cassie Miles - Страница 11

Sunset painted the December skies in streaks of pink and gold above distant, snowy peaks. For a moment, Jesse watched and marveled. He’d almost died. This might count as the first sunset of the rest of his life. Inborn wisdom told him to take a moment to appreciate this miracle of light.

He sat on the one-step covered porch outside Fiona’s front door. Beside him was Sheriff Trainer from Delta. His deputies had removed the body and dusted for prints. They were still combing the area—looking for evidence and finding nothing of importance.

The sheriff took a drag on his cigarette. “I’ve been around a long time. Never been tangled up in anything this complicated, but I’ve dealt with my share of lawbreakers. And it seems to me that when people get in trouble, they’re usually asking for it.”

“Not in my line of work,” Jesse said. “Most of the people I’m hired to protect are victims of circumstance. Like the Carlisles. Like Nicole.”

“Miss Nicole was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the sheriff conceded. “Those boys from the SOF didn’t set out to kidnap anybody. But you’ve got to admit that they wouldn’t have kept Nicole if she hadn’t been Dylan’s wife. They knew he’d pay any price to get her back.”

“Are you saying that it’s Nicole’s fault that she got kidnapped?”

“Hell, no. I’m not blaming her.” His long, narrow face grew even longer when he frowned. “I might be a rural county sheriff, but I’m not an idiot.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

But he’d thought it. Before the kidnapping and murder, Sheriff Trainer might have been a good-natured, easygoing guy. Now he was as nervous as a squirrel guarding his winter cache of pinecones.

“I’m trying to make a point,” Trainer said. “There’s got to be a reason why the kidnappers are searching here.”

Jesse knew where the sheriff’s logic was headed. They’d all been asking the same question: why here? Logic pointed toward Fiona. She must have done something to bring trouble upon herself.

He also knew that those assumptions were dead wrong. His instincts told him that Fiona was completely, entirely innocent.

The sheriff looked down at the growing ash on his cigarette and asked, “How well do you know Fiona Grant?”

“I met her for the first time today,” he said. “But I knew her husband. A good man who died too young.”

The sheriff shot a glance toward Jesse. “Do you think she’s got something to hide?”

“Hell, no.”

Not Fiona. Not that sweet, gentle woman with the appealing gray eyes. When they found the opened boxes in her pottery studio, she was genuinely surprised. Until he mentioned the ransom, the thought hadn’t occurred to her. When they discovered the body of Butch Thurgood, he’d seen her terror.

“It doesn’t make sense, Sheriff. If she knew where the ransom was stashed, why wouldn’t she grab it and run?”