My name is Bailey Madison. I’m a private investigator and I’ve been hired to find you.”
He ignored her outstretched hand and pulled the yearbook away instead, flipping it open to the place she’d marked. It was the senior class photos, and right in the middle of the right page was his. Logan James Marshall. He looked so young in the picture but, at the same time, decades older than the kids around him. Life hadn’t been kind to the Marshall boys growing up, and it showed.
Dropping the yearbook on the nearby dresser, he circled around her. She resisted the urge to turn with him, to avoid turning her back to him for even an instant, but she did watch, first over one shoulder, then the other. She knew he was checking her out, knew what he would see—that her jeans and T-shirt fitted too snugly to provide cover for a weapon of any sort, that nothing of any consequence could be tucked inside her pockets, that her cell phone was clipped to her waistband. She had a couple weapons—one in the purse she’d left downstairs, another in the car—but at the moment she was unarmed…except for her favorite boots, with pointed toes and three-inch heels, and the moves her self-defense instructor had drilled into her.
Completing the circuit, he stopped at the door again, then held out his hand. “Can I see your cell phone?”
She unhooked it from her jeans and was in the process of offering it when abruptly she drew back. “Why?”
“Because I need to call the sheriff and report a burglar.”
She hid the phone behind her back with both hands as if that could somehow stop him from taking it. Her face growing warm with a blush, she swallowed hard again. “I haven’t taken anything.” It was a weak excuse, and sounded it.
“But you did break in.”
The crimson in her cheeks deepened. “I, uh, yeah, I did…manipulate the lock just a little.”
“Why?”
Because there was no way she could excuse the fact that she had broken in, she chose instead to fall back on what they called Charlie’s Rule back at the agency: the ends justify the means. It was so much bull, and she’d argued it with him repeatedly, but her opinions didn’t carry much weight when Charlie was the one who always got the big cases while she spent most of her time doing research on the computer. “Because you’re a hard man to find.”
“Maybe that’s because I don’t want to be found.”
She acknowledged that with a shrug. “A lot of people don’t want to be found. That’s why private investigations is a thriving industry.”
“Why are you looking for me?”
Back in Memphis, when she was spending long, long hours on the computer and the telephone, tracking down every Logan Marshall in the country, she’d figured she would be straightforward with him when she found him: Your niece hired me to locate you, she wants to meet you, let’s head to Oklahoma. She’d known he had run away from home when he was fifteen, that he’d had no contact with any of his family since then, but she’d thought, as she usually did, that honesty was the best policy. After all, his problems had been with his parents, not his brother, and nineteen years gave a kid a chance to grow up, to forgive and forget.
Then she’d begun getting leads on him and had given up the phone and the keyboard for face-to-face interviews with people who knew him, and discovered that to this day he denied the existence of a family, including his brother. He wasn’t likely to welcome the opportunity to reconnect with Brady or to meet his nieces with open arms, so she’d looked for leverage…and found it.
“It’s not a difficult question.” His sarcasm drew her from her thoughts. “Why are you looking for me?”
“I want to talk to you about your family.”
“I don’t have any family.” The dismissal was delivered with the perfect timing, the perfect level of disinterest to suggest that he was telling the truth.
“Denying them doesn’t make them cease to exist. Your parents, Jim and Rita Marshall, are still the powers-that-be in Marshall City, Texas. Your brother, Brady, is living in Buffalo Plains, Oklahoma, with his wife and daughters—Lexy, who’s almost sixteen, and Brynn, who’s almost one.”
“Damn,” he said, his tone so mild it robbed the word of any meaning. “And here I’d been hoping they were all rotting in the ground someplace.”
Bailey stiffened, her shoulders going back, her nerves tightening. She couldn’t care less what he thought of his parents—based on what little she knew of them, she would also wish they were dead—but Brady and the girls were her family, and no one messed with her family without taking her on, too.
“Which of ’em are you working for?”
“Lexy.” She bit off the name, silently daring him to say anything about the niece she adored more than anything. She would see just how disdainful he could be with her size-nine, pointed-toe, three-inch-heeled boot in his throat…after she’d eliminated the possibility of his ever having children himself.
“You must be some P.I.,” he jeered. “Working for a kid.”
She gave him a smug, ugly smile. “I found you, didn’t I?”
Ten seconds ago she would have said he couldn’t have gotten any unfriendlier. But in the blink of an eye, his demeanor turned so cold, so dangerous, that a chill danced down her spine. Though he didn’t move closer, the intensity radiating from him invaded her space, raising goose bumps on her arms, and made her want desperately to take refuge far, far away. “Like I said, I don’t have any family. I left that bunch nineteen years ago and I’ve thanked God for every day they weren’t in my life. I don’t want you in my life either. Tell them you couldn’t find me. Tell them I didn’t give a damn. Tell them I’m dead. Just get the hell out of here, leave me alone and forget you ever heard my name, or you’ll be sorrier than you can imagine. Understand?”
She did. She believed he could make her damn sorry. There was such anger in his eyes, such rage in his soft voice. If she didn’t know at least part of the reason, she’d be quaking in her boots. But she did know. And she’d made a promise to Lexy. She always kept her promises.
Confident that he’d scared her off, Logan turned to leave the bedroom. She let him get a step or two outside the door before she spoke. “I can’t do that.” She was proud—and relieved—that her voice was strong.
He went motionless in the hallway, and once again the intensity came off him in waves. Slowly he turned to fix that icy blue gaze on her.
She’d read somewhere that the most dangerous people were those with nothing to lose. Looking into his eyes, she believed Logan Marshall thought he had nothing to lose.
“I promised Lexy I would bring you to Oklahoma to meet her.”
“She’s better off not knowing me.”
“Probably. But she’s fifteen. Family’s very important to her because she never really had any until this last year. And you can behave like a civilized person for one weekend.”
“And how do you intend to get me there for a weekend?”
“Threats. Coercion. Handcuffs. At gunpoint.” Then she smiled tightly. “Or maybe I intend to make a deal with you.”
The
