Spurred by an urgency that, though perhaps not valid, wasn’t letting go of him, Paul did the job Haley was paying him to do. He got into the files, sent them to his private cloud, got lucky to find a folder of tax documents in which the man filed all of his electronic statements, and, for good measure, sent over the folder of pictures, too.

  He glanced through them as they were sending, and lost himself in them for a moment. They were almost exclusively Charles and Sandra. In various forms of dress from elegant to sweats, with all different backdrops. Dating as recently as six weeks before—a head shot with a red background—and as far back as digital pictures went, from what he could tell.

  For the job, assuming he had time to go through them all, the photos could be a gold mine. A chronicle of all the places Charles had been where he could have met someone, or someone could have seen him. Like the lawyer, Grainger.

  Or Kelsey Carmichael.

  Second only to the photos of him and his wife were ones with him and his horses. He had a stable of them. Quarter horses.

  And from some of the stunts he glimpsed, the man could have been a circus act, standing on the back of a horse presumably in motion based on the raised right hoof and mixed placement of the other hooves in the photo.

  Most definitely not a man one would peg for falling off a horse at a cliff’s edge.

  Unless the horse was spooked, ran for the cliff, stopped suddenly upon reaching it and sent his rider flying off him.

  It could happen.

  Paul could picture it.

  And in the Nevada mountains, a spooked horse wasn’t all that hard to imagine. In May, it could easily have been a rattlesnake.

  Question was...did the snake slither there on its own? Or had it been helped?

  More to the point, was the horse spooked naturally? Or had Charles Downy’s penchant for horseback riding given rise to his killer’s plan to end his life? Had someone known Charles would be out riding and purposely caused his horse to unsaddle him at the edge of a cliff?

  Just as that same person had caused a one-person fiery crash that left little but tissue evidence of Kelsey’s existence?

  And made a dry-and-sober addict appear to have fallen back into old ways with a fatal overdose?

  Whoever was behind the deaths—and he was fairly certain it was the Gladstones, maybe even father and son together—had the money to pay a professional who knew how to do much more than shoot a gun. They were dealing with a killer who had patience. And creativity.

  Someone who, like himself, knew how to dig deep on his subjects, find a weakness. A person who could then make their deaths look completely natural.

  Someone who, even at that moment, could be on the grounds, with a plan in place for Haley to have an accident...

  Paul was up and out of his chair before he could finish the thought.

  * * *

  Sandra had a lovely garden of trailing bougainvillea and rambling Lantana, the boldness of the colors giving the area a vibrancy that reached inside Haley, as though to tell her that all would be well. Beauty could survive even in a world where bad things happened, and in a dark time. With their cups of tea in hand, the women walked on engraved cement stepping stones to a gate that led to a beautifully landscaped diving pool with built-in kitchen, grill, fireplace and changing house.

  Haley had never yearned for riches as her mother and sister had, didn’t need to live in a mansion. But she could see how wonderful it would be to have a haven such as the one the Downys had built to escape to when times got tough.

  Understanding exactly why Sandra had brought them out to that place, she sat in a fully padded wrought iron high-backed rocker chair on one side of the little floral-painted glass and wrought iron table where Sandra set down the tray of cookies she’d taken along.

  The whole time they’d been together, the woman had been talking about the things she and Charles had done as a couple. To the home. In their travels. And the classes they took.

  Most recently a series of cooking seminars after which they’d take turns making dinner.

  By all appearances their marriage had been a match made in heaven.

  So where did Kelsey fit in?

  Had her sister known about Sandra?

  Had she ever met her?

  “And with the baby coming...”

  Wait. What now? Haley stared.

  “Baby?” she asked, managing, she thought, to sound normal through the ringing in her ears.

  “We tried for twenty years to get pregnant,” Sandra was saying, her lips quivering a bit again. “There was no apparent reason why we couldn’t conceive—it just didn’t happen. And then...ten months ago, it happened.”

  Ten months? About the same time Kelsey would have conceived?

  Shock didn’t begin to describe the sensation covering her in a thick bubble of frozen time. What was she hearing? What did it mean?

  “I was forty years old,” Sandra said, her smile soft and Madonna-like. “And so worried that I wouldn’t be able to carry the baby to term.”

  They’d hired Kelsey to carry their baby.

  Oh, God. The baby her sister had been carrying hadn’t been her own.

  But it all made sense. The house. The guy watching her. A wealthy couple could do that—afford to pay someone to keep an eye on their surrogate.

  Thoughts rushed. Haley had to work hard not to cry.

  There was no member of her family—no part of Kelsey still needing Haley.

  And...

  “But the doctor said I was healthy and showed no signs of an inability to go full-term. She said she’d watch me closely, but that we should be fine. I was still worried, though, and so checked myself into a spa for the first three months, doing nothing but eating healthy and taking care of myself, no stress... Charles said he wanted me to go...he called every day...”

  Her chin was trembling at that point, and Haley did the math.

  With horror.

  “That’s when he had the affair,” she guessed. Jumping into another place.

  Back to having a baby in wrong hands.

  And hurting this woman who’d seemingly had everything and then lost so much. She wished to God that she and Paul hadn’t told the woman about the affair. That she hadn’t had to suffer so...

  With tears falling down her cheeks again, Sandra nodded.

  But then sniffed, sat back, dried her eyes. “But I have my little Jason,” she said. “He’s the spitting image of his father. If you look at their baby pictures side by side, you’d swear it was the same child.”

  “Jason?” Haley asked, looking around them. Other than the tall gate that had been closed when they’d approached the pool, nothing that she’d seen of the house, which was admittedly little, had given evidence of a baby around.

  Sandra nodded. “He’s with his nanny up at the clubhouse this afternoon. Once a week the neighborhood nannies do a baby-and-me playtime and then sit and visit while the little ones nap. It gives us mommies time to ourselves at home...” She stopped abruptly as the tears came again. “I’d planned to take a hot bath,” she said.

  And instead, she’d answered her door to two strangers who were about to break her heart. And tear her life apart even more than it already had been.

  Wishing she could take away Sandra’s pain, wishing she could do anything to help, she was spared the chance as the woman’s cell rang. Sandra spoke as gently to her caller as she had to Haley and Paul. Trying not to eavesdrop, Haley stood, took a bit of a walk around the pool. And a peek in the cracked-open door of the pool house.

  There was definite sign of baby in there. From the infant-sized thick foam life vest hanging on a rack, to the baby float. And there...not far from the door, on the sidewalk, just to the side of the little changing area, was a pacifier.

  Bending, Haley picked it up. Started to tear up, as she noticed how tiny it was. And thought about the vulnerable lips that would hold it close.

  The tiny human being who only knew how to suckle and fill a diaper.

  Shoving the pacifier into the tip of the pocket of her shorts, to give to Sandra when she made it back around the pool, she worked on gathering her composure. The visit had been far harder on her than she’d expected.

  But she wasn’t going to let it get in the way of finding the answers they sought. If anything, the hour she’d spent with Sandra Downy had strengthened her resolve.

  Kelsey had been at least seven months pregnant. There had to have been a birth.

  And she had to face the fact that chances were good that Kelsey’s little one wasn’t in nearly as nice a place as Charles Downy’s home.

  She just hoped to God the baby was still alive.

  And that they found the infant in time.

  Hearing a noise at the gate, she blinked away tears, and turned around to see Paul coming into the pool area.

  The strange look on his face was hard to decipher, but she figured he’d found something. That he had news for her that would most likely have to be shared in private. And that it was extremely important.

  So she wasn’t surprised when, as soon as Sandra ended her call, he thanked her for her time and excused them—giving the woman one of his business cards with instructions to call him, anytime day or night, if she remembered anything, or felt like something wasn’t right.

  And he advised her to get some security around her house, too.

  Just until the police had more answers.

  Haley would have liked to have hugged Sandra goodbye, to have made an overture to see her again, but Paul’s energy gave her an urgency far more compelling than her own need to give or receive comfort.

  Telling herself she’d call the woman—at the very least Sandra should know, at some point, that her son had a half sibling.

  If indeed it turned out that he did.

  That the baby was still alive.

  And then, as she and Paul climbed into the SUV and he started the engine, she could think of nothing but what he had to tell her.

  And frowned at his “Nothing yet” report.

  Nothing?

  But the way he’d come barreling into the pool area, the tight expression, the focus as his gaze sought her out...

  “I just moved everything to my cloud,” he said. “I didn’t know how much time I’d have.”

  Which made perfect sense. But...

  She stared at him...trying to figure out what she was missing.

  “If you must know, I got it in my head that you and Sandra were sitting ducks in danger, on the property all alone, and made a mad dash to rescue you.”

  Oh.

  Ohhhhh.

  She nodded. Turned her attention back to the road.

  Smiled.

  And was glad he was her very special friend.

  * * *

  He might not have vetted anything solid yet from their visit to the Downy home, but Haley had. As she told him what she’d found out from Sandra—the baby on the way, a long-awaited one, at the time that Kelsey turned up pregnant with his child—the idea that Downy had been responsible for Kelsey’s death grew...but the theory that Gladstone had had them both taken out still made more sense. If Downy had had Kelsey killed, who’d killed Charles Downy? And why.

  Endives called before he got very far down that path.

  “A little twist here,” the detective’s voice boomed loudly over the car’s audio system. “I thought you’d want to know. According to death records, Charles Downy died a couple of days before Kelsey Carmichael.”

  Downy went first?

  Could that mean...

  A quick glance at Haley showed him a frown, an expression filled with question, just as Endives asked, “Is it possible the Carmichael woman took out her lover and then killed herself?”

  More possible than Endives knew, considering what Haley had just told him about the legitimate Downy heir.

  If you could see Kelsey Carmichael as a killer.

  Or Maya Ambrose as one.

  No one really knew what had happened to Kelsey over the past year and a half. Or how it could have changed her. Maybe even starting as far back as the rape three years before.

  But with Haley sitting there, he said, “No way that I can see. I knew her for years. Kelsey was a character, but not a killer. She was far too sensitive to take a life. And too optimistic to take her own. She’d have called her sister, first.”

  “Unless she was in some kind of trouble she didn’t want her sister to know about.”

  He shook his head emphatically on that one. And then, realizing the detective couldn’t see him, said, “The young woman spent her whole life bringing her screwups and hurt feelings to her sister. Trust me—if Kelsey thought she was in deep trouble she’d have called Haley.”

  And just like that he had one answer. Something Haley had known all along. And had tried to tell him. Kelsey hadn’t called because she’d thought she’d finally found that which she’d spent her life searching for. Her ship had come in.

  Had it not, had she feared for her life, been hurt or betrayed, most particularly betrayed, she’d have, at the very least, called Haley with the histrionics of it all.

  Which left the question...who’d take Downy out first, and then Kelsey?

  And the obvious answer was the same. Gladstone. It would have been harder to get to Kels if Downy were still around, watching over her, hiring people to watch over her. And if she’d been killed, Downy had the resources to move hell to find out what had happened to her. But with Downy out of the way, Kelsey’s death would have been much easier to carry off. A simple phone call to get her in her car would have been all it would have taken...and who’d miss her when she was gone?

  Or look into her death?

  Haley had accepted what she’d been told—that Kelsey had died in a fiery crash—until Noah had left his cryptic messages.

  Ending his call with Endives, he headed the SUV back toward the casinos closest to the California border.

  “I need time to go through Downy’s files,” he told Haley, taking a second and third glance her way as he drove.

  She was watching her mirror, though not being obvious about it. He was watching all of his. Could be that the days of living in danger, getting close to truths, but finding no solid answers to the questions she’d hired him to find, was wearing on her.

  Could be, but he didn’t think so.

  “You okay?” he asked after giving her a few minutes just to sit and chill. To be with herself, she used to call it. Haley needed time to think her thoughts.

  He’d known that eight years before, he just hadn’t really understood.

  It was her way of holding on to herself in the midst of storm. A talent Kelsey and Gloria had not had. So one that would understandably be vitally important to the woman who’d pretty much raised them. Funny to think of it that way, a daughter raising her mother as well as her younger sibling, but in many ways that’s how it had been...

  She hadn’t answered.

  “What’s up?”

  He knew not to push. But asked anyway.

  If there was something to do with the case on her mind—and how could it be anything else—he had to know about it.

  “I just...feel this tension building in me, you know? Like I’m about to do something I’d never in a million years choose to do, but I won’t be able to stop myself.”

  “Kind of like tearing through a house with my hand resting under my shirt on my gun only to find you strolling casually around a pool while our hostess was on the phone?” The question might have come off better with a smile.

  He didn’t have one to go with it.

  “Kind of,” she said, glancing in his direction as he glanced in hers. Almost as though they’d both known they needed the connect. The look only lasted a second. They both had other things upon which to focus. But he’d felt it.

  Like, in the beginning of knowing her, he’d felt every single look she’d given him.

  “Remind you of anything?” he asked, still talking about actions that were more reaction than conscious choice.

  “Yeah. Two years of marriage,” she told him, the droll note in her voice bringing his smile to life.

  “Me, too.”

  “I like it much better when things aren’t so intense.” Which they always were when the two of them were together for too long. The current situation, with their lives in danger and on the hunt for a baby, was understandably charged.

  But the emotional reactions...ones he didn’t normally experience on a job...were a mirror of what had been in their home during normal daily life, and on a regular basis, during the two years they’d lived together.

  “Me, too,” he admitted. Knowing they’d just kiboshed any hope of them ever being more than friends.

  Chapter 20

  They checked into yet another hotel, using a Sierra’s Web credit card, at Hudson Warner’s urging. Paul had called Hud shortly after he’d hung up from Endives, to report in. In addition to offering any file help Paul might need, Hudson had expressed real concern about their safety, agreeing with Paul’s plan to remain checked in at the resort they’d spent half an hour in, while going elsewhere, but insisted that, for added safety, he not check in as himself. Hudson had called, rented the room and put Paul and Haley down as occupants.

  Paul hadn’t needed the reminder to be careful.

  He appreciated the firm having his back, however. Choosing to work through Sierra’s Web, as opposed to going it on his own, had been the best career choice he’d ever made.

  Not far from town, in a busy area, with scattered casino resorts, they had just one room with two queen beds and a sitting/work area. Hud had offered a suite. Paul wanted Haley closer than that. Just until they knew who was after them.