Around her supposed due date, he’d called her once to check up on her. Asked her about the baby, and she’d denied everything—accused him of getting her confused with some otherwoman.
I was never pregnant.You must have dreamed it up. I never threatened to sue you. You’re nuts, Grady. It wasn’t me you knockedup.
And that was that. Except for the telltale quaver in her voice, she’d played her innocent rolewell.
So, why was itnowso important for him to stay away from the Mountain DogRescue?
She wasn’t hiding a baby there, wasshe?
He groaned as the pieces snappedtogether.
Big brother Todd turning overprotective meant there might have beensmoke.
Where there was smoke, there was fire—the possibility she’d actually been pregnant and her family believed it washis.
Heck, she must have believed the baby was his, because otherwise, why all the drama? There was no baby now. No lawsuit. No threat of harassment, especially since he was no longer on a fire crew thisseason.
He sat up too fast, hitting his head on the canopy abovehim.
Damn. That was the only thing that madesense.
If she was pregnant, then she’d gotten rid of the baby—a late term abortion. His baby.Killed.
Unless she hid him or her at the dog rescuecenter.
With the noise of dogs barking, no one would hear a babycry.
Crap. Was he dumb? His kid would be almost six by now. It wasn’t a baby he should look for, but a little boy orgirl.
Grady flicked on the flashlight he kept near his bed and pulled on his clothes. He couldn’t sleep anyway, so he got dressed and got into histruck.
As his truck bumped its way down the dark, rutted dirt road, Grady couldn’t help the guilt swarming through hisgut.
If he’d listened to her and came home, if he’d gone with her to the doctor and verified her pregnancy, then waited for a DNA test, she wouldn’t have killed the baby—or hopefully, hiddenit.
His eyes blurred, and he yanked his steering wheel hard, barely avoiding atree.
And if it had all been a fake, he would have known also and been able to rest easy. Why hadn’t he followedup?
Dawn broke over the eastern sky as Grady pulled into town. The little town of Colson’s Corner was nestled in a small river valley between two parallel ridges of granite. A river ran through the center of the town, forded by a steelbridge.
Grady pulled out his cell phone and stared at Linx’s last textmessage.
We need totalk.
Four words from Linx that could mean everything andnothing.
His heart thudded like the thunder following dry lightning strikes—the kind that ignited forest fires. Was Linx going to finally fess up, and if she did, would he believeher?
His gut twisted and he wondered if he’d been too hard on her. She had been a nineteen-year-old who acted a whole lot older. She’d worked her way up the fire crews until she nabbed a smokejumping trainingspot.
The woman was fearless and wild, and she carried her load without complaint. She’d wielded the saw, swung her Pulaski, and did her fair share of mop-up duty. Other than her bad temper, “Short Fuse” was an asset to the team, and she never cut corners—unlike Salem who was careless with her equipment and depended on her jump partners to double-check her chute andrigging.
Grady turned the corner and barreled up the dirt road leading to the Mountain Dog Rescue Center. The only reason Linx wouldn’t allow him inside her cabin, despite being so turned on she could have combusted on the spot, was because she was hiding something—most likely hischild.
This time, he wasn’t leaving until he got what he camefor.
He slid to a stop in front of the cabin, and his heart threaded into histhroat.
Linx’s SUV wasgone.
