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“I know that I have a job to do here,” he said. “I’m going to make sure that you come out of this okay. I promise you, Alli. I’m going to do right here.”

“I’m not sure you can promise that. There are going to be people who will talk.”

“There will be people who talk no matter what happens. I’ll make it work. Please just be a little patient while I figure out what to do. This matters to me. You matter to me.”

Her expression softened, and she smiled at him, making his heart pound a little faster and his breathing a bit more ragged.

He noticed, for about the tenth time this morning, how incredibly gorgeous she looked.

“That reminds me. Would you be okay with me maybe taking a little longer lunch? I have…something I need to do.”

“It sounds very mysterious,” Sam said. “Dentist?”

“Not the dentist. I don’t want to say too much and jinx it. But wishing me good luck would be good.”

“Then good luck,” he replied, leaning over and dropping a quick kiss on her lips. “It’s fine if you need some extra time. Take whatever you need.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

He heard the outer door to the office open, and he stood before whoever walked in could get the wrong idea.

Or the right one.

Alli quickly went out into her office to see who it was. When she returned moments later, Sheriff Finn was with her.

“You got my message,” Sam said. “I would have been happy to come to your office.”

“I was in the area, so I thought I’d stop by,” Finn replied. “Do you have time now?”

Sam gave Alli a quick glance, but she was already nodding. He had a full day of meetings, but it appeared that she was going to run interference for him while he talked with the sheriff.

“I’ll contact your nine o’clock,” she said. “I can move a few things around.”

Alli ducked out of the office, closing the door softly behind her.

“I have a feeling you had something else scheduled,” Finn said with a grin. “We can do this another time.”

“No, let’s do it now. Later today won’t be any better, to be honest. I don’t think this will take much time, but a few things happened while I was in Boston that you should be aware of.”

Sam filled Finn in on what he’d learned without revealing that Leigh’s daughter had been adopted by her own family. While Cooper might think that Walter Powell was a suspect, Sam wasn’t so sure. The older man had seemed truly broken up by his sister-in-law’s death.

“Your theory is that the father of the baby might be who killed Leigh Gabler?” Finn asked, his brows pinched tightly together. “After all of these years? You don’t think that’s a little far-fetched?”

“I think that there might be more to this than a robbery gone wrong,” Sam replied. “I’m just asking you to keep an open mind.”

“I am open to new theories and evidence,” Finn remarked. “I’m more interested in the purchase orders you found she was holding on to. Now, that’s a theory that sounds plausible. She knew something that someone else didn’t want anyone to know. People kill over things like that.”

“I agree that it’s a stronger motivation,” Sam said. “I’m looking into it now, and I’m hoping to find out who is behind these shell corporations.”

“You said that a couple of your employees were signing off on them. Have you talked to them?”

“If I could get them into my office, I would,” Sam said, not bothering to hide his frustration and irritation. “Right now, they’re ignoring me.”

“Maybe I’ll have better luck talking to them,” Finn said. “It’s a lot harder to avoid law enforcement.”

“Honestly, Rick and Henry aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. I could see them being the idiot dupe for someone else who was pulling the strings. I’m quietly looking at all of my executives, but it may not even go that high. With the lousy controls and auditing before I took over, an accounting clerk could have created those payees in the master database, mocked up purchase orders, and got Henry or Rick to sign off on them without breaking a sweat.”

“You’re basically saying we have dozens or even hundreds of suspects.”