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CHAPTER FOUR
“Ninny!” Katie glared at her reflection in the steamy bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth. What had she been thinking, kissing Luke Gates?
The answer was that she had never let rational thought enter the equation. She’d sensed he was about to kiss her in the pickup, had felt the darkened cab seem to shrink, but she hadn’t had the guts, the nerve or whatever-you-wanted-to-call-it to open the damned door and slide out of the truck before his lips had touched hers and the world had changed forever.
Worse yet, she’d spent all night thinking about her reaction, remembering the feel of his hands as he’d taken her face between his palms and gazed into her eyes while his lips had pressed so passionately against hers. Oh, Lord, here she was, thinking about it all over again, feeling tingly inside and stupidly wondering if he’d ever kiss her again. She grasped the sides of the sink for support and mentally counted to ten before letting out her breath.
“Get a grip, Kinkaid,” she said to the woman staring back at her in the mirror. “You don’t know a thing about this guy.” She leaned under the faucet and rinsed her mouth.
Steadfastly she told herself that she wasn’t going to be swayed by one intimate gesture. She had too much to think about today, the first being her son.
Josh was still sleeping—the result of watching television until the wee hours of the morning. She’d checked on him, seen that his leg was still elevated, and changed the bag of ice that had long since melted. Blue whined to go outside, and Katie obliged, filling his water dish and pouring dog food into his bowl on the back porch. Butterflies and bees flitted through the flowers that grew along the edge of the garage, and two wrens flitted to a stop on a sagging bit of her gutter. She smiled to herself and told herself it was only sane that she should move.
Buying this little house had been difficult, a real stretch for her. She’d borrowed the down payment from her mother and convinced the previous owner, an old man who had been moving to California to be with his eldest daughter, to accept a contract with her. No sane banker would have loaned her a dime at the time.
But she’d proven herself by paying promptly each month, and this little cottage had been her home ever since. She sighed. Now she and Josh were going to move. She supposed it was long overdue, and the repairs that she’d put off—painting the interior, replacing windowpanes, cleaning the gutters and shoring up the sagging garage—would have to be done for the next tenant.
Leaning against a post that supported the overhang of the porch, she smiled as her old dog nosed around the backyard, and she thought of Luke Gates—elusive cowboy with the killer kiss. Her whole body tingled at the thought, and she pushed herself upright, slapping the post and telling herself that it was time to forget about one stupid act of intimacy. Inside the house, she phoned Len’s Service Station and was told that her car was in the process of being checked out by the mechanic. Len would call her back as soon as he figured out what the problem was. “Wonderful,” she said with more than a trace of sarcasm as she hung up and imagined she heard the sound of a cash register dinging each time one of the mechanics fiddled with the wires and hoses attached to the engine. For the fiftieth time she promised herself that she would sign up for an auto-mechanic’s class offered by the local community college.
But not right now. She picked up the receiver again and quickly punched out the number of her office. Winding the cord around her finger, she stared out the window and waited as the phone ran.
“Rogue River Review,” Becky, the gum-chewing receptionist, answered in her typically bored voice.
“Hi, it’s Katie. I’ll be a little late because Josh had an accident. Nothing serious, but it’s gonna keep me home this morning.” After explaining to Becky what had happened, she was connected with the editor and repeated herself, telling him about her car and Josh’s injury. “I’ll work here until I get the word on the car, then I’ll be in,” she promised.
She’d had a second phone line installed months ago so that she could, over the summer months, work from the house while Josh was home for vacation and was grateful that the powers-that-be at the newspaper understood.
She hung up, feeling a little better, grabbed a soda from the refrigerator and settled in at her desk. Hidden in the top drawer was the letter. Was it a fake or the real thing? She reread the typed words she’d memorized since receiving it in yesterday’s post.
Dear Ms. Kinkaid,
I’ve read your accounts of my disappearance with some degree of fascination. Though others have written similar stories, your columns have been the most insightful.
Therefore I decided that you were the person to trust.
I would have come forward earlier, but circumstances have prevented me from doing so. I will contact you again soon.
Sincerely,
Isaac Wells
Katie’s heart beat a little faster each time she read the short note. When she’d opened the hand-scrawled envelope yesterday, she’d been stunned. Was it a prank, or had Isaac Wells really reached out to her? And why? Why not go to the police or just come home? What “circumstances” had prevented him from returning? If he’d been kidnapped, he surely wouldn’t have been allowed to write the missive. Was he running from
the law? Or an old enemy? She pulled out a thick file and skimmed its contents—copies of police reports, the columns she’d dedicated to the Isaac Wells mystery, notes from interviews with what little there was of his family and friends.
What had happened to the old guy? Had there been foul play involved? Leaning back in her chair she tapped the eraser end of a pencil to her front teeth as she scanned her own articles for the millionth time.
Wells, who owned the ranch so close to Luke Gates’s property, had been a loner. Mason Lafferty and his sister, Patti, were his only relatives living in the vicinity.
He had resided in the area for over sixty years, but had kept to himself, wasn’t very friendly. Some people in town thought he was a miser, even a cheat. There was talk of him being involved in some kind of crime, but, as far as Katie could learn, it was all just gossip.
He’d never married, never fathered any children and had lived alone for most of his life. He’d gotten by meagerly, and had struggled for years to keep his scrap of a ranch afloat. But he’d had a passion for old cars and had owned a collection of classic and antique cars that he’d restored himself. He’d hunted once in a while, usually deer or elk. He hadn’t been a churchgoer, and had been a solitary man who didn’t talk much—a man whom no one, including the few members of his family, really knew. Despite local conjecture, he’d never been in serious trouble with the law.
Why would he take off?
Had be been coerced?
Had he been getting senile and just wandered away?
