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Probably nothing. Don’t make a big deal of it. Free country and all that. He can cruise down any damned street he wants to.
But...
Santana started the engine, his thoughts still spinning out.
Manny Douglas, a reporter for the local paper, had already written a column about Garrett Mays and his claim to the Long estate, a person everyone assumed was a con artist trying to get his hands on some of the Long fortune. Then there was Lucky Pescoli, always ready for a quick scam and now perusing the old Long property. Were the two events linked?
Unlikely.
But worth noting.
Maybe it was time to have a chat with the kid who claimed to be Brady Long’s unknown son. As the manager of the Long estate, Santana figured he had the right to talk to the would-be heir, to question him. And even if it wasn’t any of his business, he was going to make it so.
As Santana pulled away from the curb, he told himself he was borrowing trouble.
Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was about to go down.
* * *
After feeding, bathing, and changing the baby, Pescoli decided she’d waited long enough for Ivy to appear. Though they still had a couple of hours until it was time to pick up Sarina, she knew how long it sometimes took for a teenaged girl to get ready and Pescoli wanted her niece with her when she picked up Sarina at the Missoula airport. From there, they’d grab a quick lunch if there was time, and if not, head directly to the sheriff’s office. It was too bad they’d have to take the baby with them, as Santana wasn’t yet back.
Pescoli set her empty coffee cup in the sink before hauling Tucker up the stairs where she knocked softly on the door to the guest room. Funny, she’d started thinking of the bedroom as “Ivy’s.”
“Hey, time to get up,” she announced as she opened the door to the darkened interior. “Ivy?” Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and the mess of blankets and pillows, some of which had slid off the bed to pool on the floor.
The bed was empty.
No Ivy.
She drew a sharp breath.
Had the girl taken off in the middle of the night?
“Shit.” She ran her gaze around the room quickly as she said to the child on her hip, “Don’t listen to that,” before tearing through the upstairs, room after room, and calling Ivy’s name as she opened doors to the bedrooms, bathrooms, and closets.
Where was she?
Down the stairs she raced. “Ivy?” she called as the dogs came to life, stretching as they rose from their beds. “Ivy?” She swept through the rooms on the first floor with the efficiency she’d learned at the academy regarding how to clear a house of suspects.
As she passed through each room, starting in the living and dining rooms, then down the hallway through the kitchen and family room, checking the laundry area and closets and finding no one, she began to panic. “Ivy,” she yelled again, and under her breath, “Where the hell are you?” She ended up in the garage where her Jeep sat unattended, ladders hanging on the walls, dog food stacked in plastic bins, no sign of life.
Frantic, thinking the worst, remembering that the girl had been attacked after her parents had been killed, Pescoli returned to the kitchen, where, looking through the window near the back door, she spied Jeremy’s truck.
Where he’d parked it the night before.
The cab was covered in a white blanket from the night’s snowfall.
She paused, glanced at the calendar she kept near a built-in desk, and frowned, carrying Tucker nearer to read the notes. Wasn’t he supposed to be in class this morning? Didn’t he have Intro to Psychology at eight? A quick check of the clock on the mantel suggested he was running more than a little late. The class, at the junior college forty-five minutes away, had started half an hour ago.
“Oh, shi—” She caught herself this time as realization dawned.
Jeremy had evolved in the past couple of years to a good student. His grades had bottomed out in high school, but since that rocky time in his life, he’d turned around, caring about his future, talking law enforcement, which worried her but, in general, finally becoming responsible.
Only one thing could derail him.
Sex.
Quickly she bundled Tucker into his snowsuit and threw on her down jacket, then headed outside to the exterior staircase that led to the apartment over the garage.
