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“Yes,” she said tightly, trying to hang on to her rage. But seeing Chase in the moonlight, his shirt fluttering open, his straw-blond hair mussed in the night breeze did strange things to her.

“Didn’t last night mean anything?” he asked softly.

She had to remind herself that she was outraged. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Nothing’s changed.”

“Except that you snuck over here again, without my knowledge, and started digging in my creek. It’s not that I really care if you’re on my land anymore,” she admitted, “it’s all this sneaking around and mystery that I don’t understand. From the first time I saw you, you haven’t been straight with me.”

“I have.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here?”

“Looking for proof.”

“Of what?”

He stared straight into her eyes. “That Caleb knowingly contaminated your water.”

“What!”

“Look, Dani. Just go home and go to bed. I’ll contact you when I know more,” he promised, as he climbed the short rise of the bank to stand next to her.

“But . . . wait a minute. What are you saying? Caleb contaminated my water.”

“The creek.”

“With what?”

“Dioxin.”

“Dioxin?” she repeated, incredulous. “ls . . . is that why you were asking me about herbicides earlier today?”

“Yes.”

“You thought I’d done it?”

“No, I just wanted to be sure.”

The weight of what he’d said to her made her lean against the trunk of a tree. “But . . . how?”

“The other day—the day you destroyed my first samples—I found an old five-gallon drum of something buried in the creekbed, just on the other side of the fence. I had it checked. It was dioxin, but what I don’t know yet is why the drum was buried, who buried it, and whether it was done for malicious intent.”

“But you think so,” she whispered, shivering with dread.

“Didn’t you say some of your cattle died last year?”

“Yes, but—”

“Did they drink from the creek?”

“Of course.”

“And the rest of the herd?”

“Wasn’t affected. A few got sick, but they recovered. You know, I had this feeling, I guess you’d call it, that Johnson was behind the poisoning, but I wasn’t sure. Oh, God,” she whispered, not really wanting to believe that Caleb Johnson was so desperate he would stoop to killing her livestock.

“I’m still not sure that Caleb was involved. But I’m working on it.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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