She couldn’t breathe. Her pulse boomed in her ears louder than thunder. He kissed her harder, his hands moving sensually up over her hips, over her breasts, her neck, to bury his fingers in her hair. He robbed her of her breath. Stole her good sense.

  She melted against him as the rain pounded the rock ledge.

  He pulled back, blew out a breath, his gaze locked with hers. “Tell me this isn’t what you want.”

  She shook her head. She wanted this and more, so much more. She wanted to be naked with him, to make love with him. Crazy or not, she wanted to sleep with the enemy.

  The rain fell harder. He dragged her down and into the cave, his mouth never leaving hers as he drew her to the floor of the cave and lay down beside her.

  Her hand went to his cheek, his beard rough to her touch and she looked into all that sea-green and felt herself sinking deeper and deeper. There would be no coming up for air. Her life would never be the same after this.

  “Do you trust me?” he whispered against her mouth.

  She didn’t want him to stop kissing her. Not now. She tried to draw him closer, but he pulled back to look at her. “Do you trust me?”

  She gazed into his eyes, afraid of her answer. She looked deep and realized with a start that she did. Tears stung her eyes. She trusted him. God help her.

  He smiled then. How had she not thought him handsome? He was glorious when he smiled and he was smiling at her as if he’d never seen anything he wanted more.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and drew him down until his lips were on hers, amazed the way he made her feel. Amazed even more by the words that came out of her mouth. “I want you to make love to me, Ford Lancaster.”

  He seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as he drew her closer and kissed her senseless, his hands roving over her body, sending shafts of heat to her center. He freed the top button of her blouse, his gaze never leaving hers. “If you change your mind, all you have to do is tell me to stop.”

  He slipped another button free. His fingertips brushed her skin, making her quiver inside. “Just say the word.”

  She swallowed hard. Her skin ached. She could feel her nipples, hard and tender against the sheer fabric of her bra. Just say the word. Any word and he would stop. She didn’t utter a word, deathly afraid he would stop.

  She closed her eyes, leaned her head back. She felt her blouse slip from her shoulders, felt his fingertips skim over the thin fabric of her bra and the hardened tips of her nipples beneath. She groaned and pressed against his mouth as it dropped to envelop one nipple, then the other.

  His fingers were at the zipper of her jeans. She opened her eyes, a flash of rational thought. Say the word. Any word. Now. Or never.

  She opened her mouth as his head came up from her breast but his gaze held a kind of wonder as he looked down at her and left her speechless.

  Her heart drummed like the rain beating the rocks just outside the security of the cave as she made love with him.

  Naked and in his arms, he released a well of passion from within her she hadn’t even known existed. No man had ever touched her like that nor had she ever wanted to explore a man’s body the way she did Ford’s. It was as if there was nothing between them, no secrets, no boundaries. It was as if she’d found her way to a home she hadn’t known existed. And when he’d pleasured her beyond her wildest dreams, she lay spent in his arms, tears of joy in her eyes. Whatever tomorrow might bring, she would never have regrets. In her heart, she knew it was meant to be.

  WHEN ROZ opened her eyes, her body still alive with his touch, Ford was gone. She sat up and looked out of the cave, surprised how late it was. The rain had stopped. For a moment, she thought he’d taken off. It wouldn’t have surprised her.

  She pulled on her clothes and slipped out of the cave. Ford was just climbing up over the rim of the cliff about fifty yards away. She walked along the edge of the ledge to meet him.

  Her body already ached for his touch. She was almost to him when she saw his grim expression. “You’re sorry, aren’t you?”

  He seemed surprised by the question. “You mean about you and me?” His eyes seemed more blue than green in the dying light of day. He shook his head. “Never.” He stepped to her and pulled her into his arms, cradling the back of her head in his large hand as he pressed her close.

  Relief made her weak. She rested her cheek against his chest, listened to his beating heart. She knew he hadn’t wanted to feel anything for her—just as she hadn’t for him. What they felt was overwhelming and impossible to explain. And she suspected it scared him as much as it did her.

  She looked out over the rainforest, then down to the rocks below, and suddenly tensed.

  Ford turned her, trying to shield her from the sight. But it was too late. She’d seen her father’s backpack lying in the dirt a dozen yards below them. “Oh, God, this can’t be from where he fell.”

  “It isn’t,” Ford said, clasping her upper arms to keep her from stepping around him to take another look.

  She struggled to free herself, but Ford’s grip was strong, his will even stronger. He was determined to protect her. Damn him.

  “Don’t lie to me. Not now,” she cried in frustration.

  “Rozalyn, listen to me. Your father was never up here.”

  She stopped struggling and stared at him. “That’s his backpack.”

  “Someone tried to make it look like Liam fell from up here, okay?” Ford said. “But he couldn’t have. He would have landed closer to the cliff if he’d fallen. Or been pushed.”

  “You’ve been down there?”

  He nodded. “There’s blood down there on the rocks. Probably your father’s but it was planted there. Do you understand what I’m staying? I’ve spent my life investigating elaborate hoaxes and exposing the offenders. I know what I’m doing.”

  “You were wrong about my father’s photographs,” she snapped.

  He winced as if she’d slapped him and his eyes grew as dark as the depths of the ocean. “What is it you want me to say? That I’ve been an ass most of my thirty-six years? All right, you’ve got it. You think all my motives are self-seeking, maybe they are. Maybe I’m kidding myself that they’re not anymore. Maybe a person can’t change. Especially me.”

  Afternoon shadows lengthened under the pines below them and the air cooled perceptively. She felt confused, afraid and angry with him. For a while she’d forgotten who he was back there in the cave. Or why he was here with her now. “If you’re looking for sympathy—”

  He laughed. “You’re a tough one. You aren’t going to cut me any slack at all, are you? Okay,” he said holding up a palm to hush her before she could say anything. “I’m up here just for the money and the glory. But your father still didn’t fall from this cliff. Nor was he pushed. All of this,” he said waving his hand through the air, “was staged. Liam wasn’t found up here. Whoever dropped him off at the hospital was the person who put him in the coma. This isn’t about Bigfoot bones. I doubt it ever was.”

  “But the doctor said some Bigfoot hunters dropped him at the hospital,” she said.

  Ford nodded. “I know. That’s why we have to get to the hospital as quickly as possible.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Once off the mountain, Ford followed Rozalyn in his pickup as far as the edge of town where she left her SUV. On the way to the hospital, he told her what he’d found at Lost Creek Falls earlier that morning.

  She turned the piece of painted plastic mannequin face over in her fingers for a long time without saying a word. “I’m not crazy.”

  “No. What I can’t figure out is why someone would do this,” he said. “It was obviously planned specifically for you. Whoever did it anticipated your reaction. They had to have known about your mother’s suicide, had to know you would risk your life to save the person you thought was about to jump.”

  “Drew told me his mother resented me and he was afraid she might have been pulling some tricks on me, trying to keep me away from Timber Falls so my father would let them move somewhere and start over fresh.”

  “What kind of tricks?” He listened while she told him about the phonograph.

  Then he said, “Before I went to the waterfall, I dropped the sample you gave me last night at the lab. The results were positive. It’s a drug used by doctors to help induce hypnosis in patients and has the same symptoms as sleepwalking. The person under the drug is very susceptible to suggestion.”

  She hugged herself, biting down on her lower lip. “Someone talked me up into the attic and out onto the widow’s walk?”

  “It certainly would appear so.”

  “Drew?”

  “I doubt Drew would have left the note if he’d been the one to drug the chocolates,” Ford said.

  Anyone in the house could have known about what time Rozalyn would be coming up the road. He sighed. “If Emily is behind this, she’s doing more than just trying to scare you away. And what bothers me is Liam’s accident. He obviously was attacked somewhere else and his assailant didn’t want anyone to know where.”

  “Why, if not because of Bigfoot bones?” she asked.

  All Liam had said was bones. But what other kind of bones were there?

  Human bones.

  Ford sped up the SUV.

  “I just don’t understand why the person who attacked my father would take him to the hospital,” she said.

  “To be able to tell the story about him being found under the cliff and take away any suspicion,” he said. And to make sure he died, Ford thought as he turned down the street toward the hospital, tires screeching.

  Roz had Liam’s backpack in her lap. She’d been going through it and looked worried and scared. “The digital camera isn’t in the pack. But the usual things he always takes on his day trips like his GPS and binoculars are.”

  “Maybe the camera was stolen from the backpack before we got there.”

  “But the thief would leave a GPS and a pair of expensive binoculars.” She shook her head. “I don’t think the digital camera was ever in here.” She turned to stare out the window, looking as scared as he felt.

  “Who told you that your father had gone up into the mountains?”

  “Emily, when I called the house.”

  “Your father has money. Who gets it if something happens to him?” Ford asked.

  She stared at him. “My father insisted Emily sign a prenuptial agreement with me getting the bulk of his estate.”

  He nodded. “And if anything happens to you?”

  “Since I’m not married and have no children it would go to…my father’s wife, I guess,” Rozalyn said.

  Ford nodded as he swung into the hospital parking lot.

  WHEN SHERIFF Mitch Tanner returned to his office, the information he’d been awaiting was on his desk.

  All of Wade Dennison’s and Bud Farnsworth’s financial records from twenty-eight years ago. He sat down in his chair, surprised the express package wasn’t thicker. Then again, twenty-eight years ago, Wade was just starting out, Dennison Ducks had only begun to establish a name for itself in the decoy world and Wade and Daisy had only been married three years. Even though Daisy had spent Wade’s money as if there was no tomorrow back then, there wasn’t the wealth there was now—or the paperwork.

  Mitch’s cell phone rang. He almost didn’t answer it, anxious to see what he’d find in the finances of the two men. “Hello?”

  “Mitch, it’s Charity.”

  As if he didn’t know that. Just the sound of her voice warmed him in a way that could only get him into trouble. He couldn’t believe he’d suggested they move in together. Actually, he’d been just short of suggesting something much more permanent. Thank God, Roz had shown up when she did.

  “I need a huge favor. Would you run the name Lynette Hargrove for me,” she said. “I need it ASAP.”

  “Of course you do,” he said and thought about arguing that his computer wasn’t for the use of nosy reporters but that would have taken more time than just typing in the name. He moved the financial package aside. “Spell it for me.”

  Lynette Hargrove. He curbed his curiosity. Even if Charity told him the real reason she wanted the name run, which was doubtful, it would be a long, involved explanation because it was Charity. He’d just wait and see what came up on the computer screen.

  “It’s going to take a few minutes,” he said glancing toward the package. “Can I get back to you?”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  She hung up before he did. That was odd. Not like Charity at all. He sighed and reached for the package.

  As he tore it open and pulled out the papers, he put Charity’s call out of his mind.

  “You need anything else before I call it a day?” Sissy asked from the doorway.

  He didn’t look up, just shook his head and after a moment, the clerk closed the door. He knew she was dying to know what was in the package from the bank. So was he.

  It didn’t take long to find the first large cash withdrawal made from Wade and Daisy Dennison’s personal joint checking account. Ten thousand dollars.

  Mitch unlocked his desk drawer, pulled out the Angela Dennison file and flipped through it until he found her birth date. May eighth. The first withdrawal was made on August thirtieth the previous year. Like clockwork, there was a withdrawal on the thirtieth of each month. The final withdrawal was made on April thirtieth—just days before the kidnapping and unlike the others, it was for twenty thousand, for a total of one hundred thousand dollars.

  “Hot damn,” Mitch swore as he leaned back in his chair. “One hundred thousand dollars.” He thought about the shopping trips Daisy used to take. The expensive horses Wade bought her. All of that seemed to be accounted for. This hundred thousand wasn’t.

  He picked up Bud Farnsworth’s bank records telling himself Bud wouldn’t be stupid enough to put the money in the bank.

  Wrong. There it was, deposited each month just a couple of days after the money left the Dennison’s private account.

  “Oh man, Charity was right.” Wouldn’t she love to know that? She’d said all along that Bud Farnsworth never would have come up with the kidnapping idea by himself. Still, it was circumstantial evidence and Mitch was sure Wade would try to explain it away. But there was little doubt that Bud Farnsworth had been paid to kidnap Angela Dennison.

  The bad feeling hit him like a brick almost doubling him over. All this information had been there twenty-eight years ago. It would have been even easier for Mitch’s predecessor, his mentor, the man he’d spent his life trying to emulate. One of the first things Sheriff “Hud” Hudson would have done was check the bank records.

  Mitch swore, sick at even the thought that Hud could have been bought off. It wasn’t possible. So why hadn’t this come out all those years ago? Why not until now?

  Was it possible that Wade had accounted for the money? Is that why nothing had ever come of it?

  He glanced up at the computer screen, having forgotten his promise to Charity. The information on half a dozen Lynette Hargroves had come through.

  Frowning, he clicked on a link to a newspaper article about a Lynette Hargrove who’d been a nurse in Timber Falls ten years ago. That caught his attention. She was wanted for questioning in the disappearance of the doctor she’d been employed by at the time—Dr. James Morrow, a doctor who specialized in hypnosis.

  He clicked on another link. Lynette Hargrove had been killed, her body burned beyond recognition after her car left the highway and rolled near Portland. The article said she had been wanted for questioning in a missing person’s case. He looked for newspaper articles on Dr. Morrow. As far as Mitch could tell, Dr. Morrow had never been found.

  This had to be the Lynette Hargrove that Charity was interested in. He wondered what Charity’s interest was. It was better than thinking about Sheriff Hudson. Could Mitch have been that wrong about the man?

  Why was Lynette’s name coming up now after all these years? After Ford Lancaster had asked him to check Anna Sawyer’s case file? After Mitch had seen that Lynette Hargrove had been questioned by the former sheriff about Dr. Morrow’s visit to Anna Sawyer just before her suicide? Lynette had said she knew nothing about the visit, that she hadn’t even been in town.

  His phone rang. He flipped it on without looking to see who was calling, expecting it was Charity. “I hadn’t forgotten to call you.” A lie.

  “Sheriff, it’s dispatch. I have an urgent call from Daisy Dennison.”

  He sat up, surprised as Daisy was connected and he heard fear in her voice.

  “Wade just phoned me. He sounded as if he’d been drinking. He said he was on his way up here. He…he threatened to kill me and I’m afraid—”

  “Lock your doors, I’m on my way,” Mitch said, as he dumped everything into the drawer, locked it and took off for the Dennison house.

  FORD THREW OPEN his car door and ran toward the emergency room entrance, Rozalyn at his heels. Let me be wrong. Please, let this be one of those times I’m wrong.

  But he couldn’t shake the bad feeling that twisted his insides.

  Rain pounded the pavement. A breeze stirred the nearby trees emitting a low moan. Chilled, Ford pushed open the door, hoping to see that nice older nurse at her station.

  The nurse’s station was empty. No lights had been turned on yet, making the hallway dark. An eerie quiet moved ghostlike through the place.

  Ford broke into a run again. As he burst through the door to Liam’s hospital room, the first thing he saw was a water glass on its side on a dinner tray at Jesse’s feet—the food on the tray floated in a sea of pink as a blob of red gelatin slowly melted.

  Jesse was in his chair, slumped, chin to chest, his feet at an odd angle.

  Ford’s gaze shot past him to Liam lying on the bed. A startled Dr. Harris turned in surprise from where he stood over his patient, the pillow he’d just lifted off Liam’s face still in his hands.