today, but Jessica didn’t dare bring Samantha into town when it was overrun with media. “No school. You have work to do here instead, young lady. You have to pick up all the toys in your room.”
“There’re not that many, Mama,” Samantha said, wriggling down from her arms.
Jessica’s heart clutched with sadness that it was true. She wasn’t able to afford everything her little girl deserved. “You still have to pick them up.”
Samantha, feet dragging, headed up the back stairwell in the kitchen. The house was a foursquare, two-story farmhouse. It had a large foyer with a grand staircase as well as the back stairwell. It also had more bedrooms than they needed. Now. But the ranch owner had plans to someday turn her home into a women’s shelter. She’d put her plan in motion when she’d offered Jessica shelter more than four years ago.
Helen narrowed her eyes and focused on Jessica. “What’s going on? You never lie to her.”
“I have,” Jessica regretfully admitted. Every time the little girl asked about her father.
With understanding Helen nodded. “Why won’t you bring her to school?”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“School is too dangerous?”
“It’s too dangerous for us to go to town right now.” The prince’s press conference had whipped the media into a frenzy, and they’d already been doing too much filming around Wind River County and the town of Dumont.
If she’d been caught on camera…
Helen sighed. “Crazy stuff going on since those damn royals came to Dumont. That explosion. Gunfire. And poor Clay…” His family had been among the most vocal protestors of the COIN summit. Now his youngest boy sat in jail.
“Mr. McGuire will be okay,” Jessica assured her friend. “He has you.”
Helen shrugged as if she wasn’t so worried that Jessica usually found her staring at the TV into the early hours of the morning instead of sleeping. “He’s busy. I’m busy. We just see each other occasionally, you know. Nothing serious.”
Was that really because they were too busy or because they both had their reasons for avoiding involvement? Jessica understood their reasons; she had her own. But then the prince’s face filled the television screen again as the station replayed the earlier live broadcast. His deep blue gaze implored the witness to come forward, to ease some of his anxiety over his missing friend.
“Can you watch Samantha for me for a little while?” she asked the older woman.
Helen nodded. “Of course I can. And I don’t blame you. That’s a lot of money.”
“I’m not claiming the reward.”
“But, Jess—”
“I need to pick up my last check from the Wind River Ranch and Resort.” She’d worked part-time as a dishwasher there because she had thought she would be safe hiding away in the hotel kitchen. She’d been wrong. About everything. “Then I’m packing up Samantha’s and my things and leaving the Double J.”
Helen gasped in surprise.
“You probably thought that you’d never get rid of us—”
“Never wanted to, honey, you know that,” her friend assured her. “I don’t want you to go now.”
“I have to,” Jessica insisted. “It’s getting too dangerous here. I should have left earlier—right after it happened. Hell, I should have left before the royals even arrived. I knew their meeting would bring the media down on Dumont.”
But she hadn’t expected the rest of it: the explosion, the murder…
“PRINCE SEBASTIAN, I wish you wouldn’t have done that,” Sheriff Jake Wolf said with a long-suffering sigh.
The younger man had had his hands full since they’d come to his county for their summit meeting. According to what the royals had learned, Wolf had already had enough to deal with since getting elected the year before, like corruption within his department and perhaps within the police department of Dumont. That was why Sebastian had chosen the sheriff’s office in which to announce the reward for information.
“You agreed to the press conference,” he reminded him.
“The amount of the reward you offered is the problem.” Wolf groaned. “Danny Harold was right. It’ll draw out every kook. Hell, it already is drawing ’em out.” He gestured toward his deputies and office staff, all of whom were on a phone.
“It’s been a couple of weeks since the explosion, but this witness has yet to come forward,” Sebastian pointed out, frustration gnawing at his tense stomach. “Apparently this person needs more incentive than the satisfaction of doing the right thing.”
“Or he or she is too scared to come forward,” the sheriff replied.
With good cause, too, given the evidence that had recently come to light. The royals had only just learned about the witness when Sheik Efraim Aziz discovered a posting on a special internet bulletin board that had promised to “take care” of the witness.
“The proper incentive has been known to make a person overcome his deepest fears,” Sebastian said. But how would the witness know he was in danger unless someone had acted upon the “hit” put out on him?
“Maybe this person isn’t able to come forward anymore.” The sheriff voiced Sebastian’s deepest fear.
If the witness had already been disposed of, then he and his friends may never discover what had happened to Amir. They wouldn’t know if he, too, had already been disposed of.
One of the deputies stood up and gestured wildly for the sheriff’s attention. When Wolf headed toward the young man’s desk, Sebastian followed, his pulse quickening in anticipation. “What is it?” the sheriff asked.
“The prince is actually right here,” the deputy replied—but to the caller, not his superior. He pressed his palm over the receiver and held it out. “She’ll speak to only you, Your Highness.”
Despite the trepidation clutching his heart, Sebastian reached for the phone with a steady hand. He had learned long ago to control his physical reactions because he’d had to have a steady finger on the trigger. But he couldn’t control the curse from slipping through his lips when he heard only a dial tone.
“She’s gone?” the deputy asked.
Sebastian jerked his head in a rough nod. “Did you get the number from the caller ID?”
“It was blocked,” the young man replied.
“Can you trace it?”
The deputy’s face flushed. “I don’t think the call lasted long enough.”
“Then maybe she is coming here—to talk to me. Maybe she only wanted to know if I was here.” That had to be it. To collect the money for her eyewitness account, or her cockamamy story if the persistent reporter and the sheriff were correct, she needed to
