Blair had given up smoking . . . and drinking to excess . . . and women with great bodies and no interest in him beyond a one-night stand. Not that he’d been anybody’s idea of a catch for most of his adult life, although the way some of the single gals around Prairie Creek were looking at him now said they’d noticed the change.
Or maybe they just knew he was in charge of the Kincaid ranch, and he rattled around the house all by himself now that Hunter, Delilah, and baby Joshua had moved to a house in town. Hunter still worked the ranch, but he still had one foot with the Prairie Creek Fire Department, a job he kept trying to quit and one that kept dragging him back with offers of promotions. He’d actually turned the fire chief’s job down twice, but Blair expected they’d be asking him again.
He stretched and closed his eyes, tamping down a feeling of frustration entirely new to him. Katrina . . . Little Kat . . . She’d gotten into his blood. He’d known it before the whole baby discovery.
A baby . . . his baby . . . He knew it damn well was his. Had to be. No matter what she said.
God.
He opened his eyes, staring at the dissipated dust that still hung in the air in the wake of her leaving. Was that how it was? One day you were just gobsmacked by a woman, one who didn’t act like she even liked you?
The Byrds and Brinkmans returned and called his name from the back porch. He went back to meet them and help shepherd them through his house and to their vehicles. They seemed to have worked things out with Hal Crutchens. Blair suspected money had changed hands because that’s what would be required to get Crutchens to not take the matter to the authorities. Old man Byrd’s face was red with suppressed anger, and the Brinkmans looked worn out and anxious to just leave and put it all behind them.
Blair was glad to be rid of the lot of them, although the incident had brought Kat back to the ranch, the only way it would happen since she didn’t want to have anything to do with him.
Mike had returned to the back porch, nearly finished with his whittling of a tiny dog, which looked like some kind of Lab. “Nice people,” he remarked with faint sarcasm.
Blair snorted.
“Katrina Starr’s a bit of all right,” Mike admitted.
Blair slid him a look, wondering how much he’d overheard. He’d wandered off the porch when the Byrd/Brinkman entourage had headed toward Hal’s place, but he could have wandered right back and maybe overheard when he and Kat were arguing on the front porch. Blair hadn’t shut any doors and windows, and sound traveled . . .
“She the same gal you had over here that night awhile back?” He held up the wooden dog and blew across its back, removing dust.
“What makes you think that?”
He eyed the little dog and gave a grunt of satisfaction. Then he set the figurine near the porch post nearest Blair. “For the baby,” he said, then strolled back toward the barns, whistling tunelessly.
Two days, Blair determined. He would give her two days, and if she hadn’t contacted him, he was going to go find her and have it out with her.
*
“Helicopters scoured a lot of the forest land behind the Donovans and the Tates and beyond,” Ricki said to Kat the next morning, “and haven’t turned anything up. We need more manpower for trekking, and we just don’t have it.”
“You think he’s keeping Addie somewhere around here. Maybe where he kept Courtney. Where he would’ve kept Ruth, if she hadn’t gotten away.”
“Isn’t that your theory?”
Kat nodded. Yes, it was her theory. Her mind was just so full of her own problems that it sometimes helped to reiterate their thoughts on the case precisely. So far, Rhianna Byrd hadn’t shouted Kat’s pregnancy to the rooftops, but then, she’d never admitted to it, either. She could’ve been picking up that kit for someone else. That wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. And Blair hadn’t taken things further, but then it had only been one day . . .
“It’s been a lot of years since Ruth’s rape,” Ricki said. “Could be a different guy, I suppose. I don’t want to assume too much. But if it’s a different guy, then maybe he did take Addie away. Pretty dangerous to keep doing what you’re doing with all this attention.”
“Unless you think you’re smarter than everyone else.”
“There’s that,” Ricki agreed.
Kat not only believed it was the same guy, she also believed it was someone on her father’s list. And Ricki believed it too. She was just making sure they didn’t jump to one conclusion.
“I don’t think it’s Rafe,” she said. “Not because he’s a Dillinger. Like I said, I just don’t think he’s made that way. I know. Totally unscientific and arbitrary. Just a gut feeling.”
“I don’t think it’s Rafe, either.”
“I’ve talked to him and talked to him, and all I’ve done is piss him off, which I don’t care about, but it just doesn’t read right.”
Kat wondered if her father had interviewed him, like he’d said he was going to. “I’m going to talk to Cal Haney. Ruth had a run-in with him, and he scared her.”
“What kind of run-in?”
“Haney lives with his wife near Ruth’s parents’ place, and Ruth felt he was a little too familiar with her daughter and Jessica Calderon. Turns out Haney is Jessica’s newish uncle. He married her mother’s sister. Haney was spraying the girls with a hose, and they were screaming. Ruth ran to where they were, panicked, and apparently Haney acted like she was a crazy woman.”
“Hmm.”
“I know it seems like Ruth overreacts, but Cal Haney is too familiar, as a rule. I don’t know him well, just of him.”
“He is a little smirky,” Ricki agreed. “You going out there today?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Maybe you should take someone with you.”
“You just said we don’t have enough manpower. I’ll be fine,” Kat said. “Reverend McFerron and his wife are right there, and Haney’s wife too, probably. I’ve got my cell. I can always call for backup, if need be.”
“If he’s the guy, he’s dangerous,” Ricki reminded.
“Oh, I know.”
Her mind returned to those moments in the clearing, when the bastard had looked up from raping Ruth and Shiloh had thrown the rock at him. She shivered. If this guy wasn’t Ruth’s rapist, he was just as bad or worse.
*
Kat was getting ready to head home when she got a phone call from Hank Eames that was so blistering it felt like it took the top layer of skin off her ear. “. . . Sneaky little bitch! I’ll get her credentials yanked!” he practically screamed. “I didn’t have anything to do with that girl’s disappearance, and the one that’s dead too. Pearson. And I wouldn’t touch Ruth McFerron if you paid me a million dollars a year! Not then, not now, not ever! You tell your dad to stay away from me!”
“Ruth didn’t say anything about you, Mr. Eames,” Kat assured him. “We’re interviewing lots of people.”
“I didn’t hurt nobody. I told her that. It was all consensual!”
“Mr. Eames—”