In His Sights

“Oh?”

“It’s done wonders for the kids here. The ones who get in trouble always blame the fact that there’s nothing for them to do, so she gave them something.”

“That’s generous of her.”

“She’s currently mentoring her second student. The first is already off to college.”

“So it’s a success, then.”

“Oh, yes.” Dorothy sighed. “She spends so much of her time on us and everyone else. We worry that she has no life of her own.”

“I have a life, thank you.”

Dorothy nearly jumped as Kate came up behind them. Rand had heard the footsteps on the stone walkway and wasn’t surprised when she appeared.

“My goodness, dear, you startled me!”

“Sorry, Gram.” She looked at Rand. “Well, isn’t this just too sweet. Run out of things to take snapshots of?”

“Kate!” her grandmother exclaimed, in apparent protest at the sarcasm in her tone. “He’s helping me, and it’s very kind of him.”

“Sorry, Gram,” she repeated, but Rand had the feeling she didn’t really mean it this time. “Let me change,” Kate added, “and I’ll join you.”

The glance she gave Rand as she went inside was one of undisguised warning.

Well, he thought, as long as she’s suspicious of you, it won’t be hard to keep her close enough to watch.

Not, he added silently with a wry grimace as she returned more quickly than he would have guessed possible, that it would in any way be hard to watch her. Even in the work clothes she apparently kept here, she was lovely.

He thought again of the glamorous photograph he’d seen in the Redstone file. That shot had been taken, he’d guessed by the date on the back, while she was at the high-power, executive position in Denver she’d left to come back here. Here, there was no trace of the designer clothes and careful makeup. She was still lovely, but it was a different kind of beauty, the kind that fit with this place—natural, unaffected. This was a country beauty, not city slickness, and to his surprise Rand found the change refreshing. Perhaps he’d just seen too much in his work around the Redstone world, but he knew quite well that glamour could be a facade that hid something much darker.

Rand was turning some phrasing over in his mind, wondering just how he should approach Kate with questions about the thefts, when her grandmother did it for him.

“Any more problems at work, honey?”

Kate, in the midst of pulling on a pair of gardening gloves, went still. “Gram,” she said, with a sideways look at Rand.

“Oh, heavens, child, what do you think Rand’s going to do, blab it to the world?”

She looked at him as if she thought that was exactly what he would do. “It’s still nothing I want to discuss in front of a total stranger.”

There was a sharp undertone in her voice that told him she was beyond just edgy about this. So, did she really just not want to talk about this in front of a stranger—or a total stranger as she had emphasized to her grandmother—or was she nervous about something else?

Such as being found out?

Rand stifled a grimace. He really wasn’t liking the idea she might be involved. He already liked Dorothy Crawford a great deal, and didn’t like to think about what it would do to her to discover such a thing about her granddaughter. It would break her heart. And probably that of crusty Walter Crawford as well, although he’d hide it behind another layer of that gruff exterior.

“I can leave, if you two need to talk,” he said neutrally.

Kate had, at least, the grace to blush slightly. “I didn’t mean to be rude,” she said. “I just try not to discuss company business outside.”

“You work for Redstone?”

Her gaze sharpened. “How did you know that?”

He shrugged. “The guy at the gas station mentioned it, when I told him I was staying here.”

Dorothy laughed. “Scott Paxton? I can just imagine what he said. In between complaining about the kids at the skateboard park, the way the grocery store is arranged and the color of the sky this morning.”

Rand laughed. “That sounds about right.”

“He’s the local grump, all right,” Kate said, smiling now. “Has been ever since he moved here. We try to look on him as entertainment.”

It was a lovely smile, Rand noted. And Kate seemed like a good person, a small-town success story of sorts, who had come home to give back to her grandparents and the community. By all Redstone reports she was dedicated and loyal—the sort of person Redstone drew, welcomed and fostered. She was efficient, productive, concerned about the people who worked for her. Exactly the kind of person Josh hunted for.

But she was also used to making a lot more money than she was earning now. Not that Redstone underpaid by any means, the opposite in fact, but she had to have been making very big money in her previous job at that investment firm.

Rand frowned as he dug at the root of what Dorothy had told him was a sprig of Scotch broom, which if left alone would soon overtake the entire garden. What had Kate done with all the money she’d made in that other job? Even if she’d done as many people did and spent it on cars and clothes and a fancy house, there still should have been some left to salvage out of the debris. He’d have to check into that.

The obvious thought hit him then, that her money had gone for another kind of entertainment, the kind that usually went up noses or into veins. He glanced at her now, to where she stood beside her grandmother as they surveyed the garden for the area to tackle next.

Drugs?

He didn’t think so. She was tall and toned, not skinny. Her eyes were clear, her nose was tilted sassily upward and not in the least red. And while he wasn’t naive enough to think you couldn’t find a supply of cocaine even up here in the rural Northwest woods, she didn’t have the look. He was no expert, but he’d seen a lot in his years within Redstone security, and she just didn’t have the look he’d come to associate with that particular problem.

He’d call Draven. He wouldn’t have to mention the possibility, he’d just say he needed to know what her financial situation was, where the big bucks she’d been making had gone. Draven, who said he had been born a cynic and had never found reason to change his mind, would do the rest. He would immediately catch all the possible implications, and if there was anything to be found in Kate Crawford’s big-city past, Draven would find it.

And then Rand would have to deal with it.

Chapter 5

“He’s absolutely charming, and I don’t see why you have such a problem with him.”

Kate smothered a sigh. After all the weeding he’d done yesterday she decided it would be best not to say that the first thing she thought of—a snake—when her grandmother said yet again that Rand Singleton was charming. Of course, she was thinking of the man as the snake as well as the charmer, so that completely muddled that metaphor, and she ended up smiling wryly.

“I just worry about you and Gramps. I always have, so don’t expect me to stop now.”

Dorothy reached across the kitchen table and patted her granddaughter’s hand. “We worry about you, too. You really do spend far too much time with us, and not nearly enough living your own life.”

Kate sighed audibly this time, drawing a sideways look from her grandfather from behind his morning newspaper. “She’s right,” Walter said gruffly, and went back to the sports page, checking, no doubt, for scarce bits of rodeo news. Her grandfather had lived on a ranch in his teens, and had never quite gotten over it.

Kate took a long sip of the coffee her grandmother had poured. In this land of lattes, espresso and more coffee flavors than ice cream flavors, the Crawfords stubbornly stuck to their old, everyday blend. But to Kate it was part of being home.

Her grandmother’s worry was an old refrain she’d been hearing since the day she’d come home. It was even why her grandparents had refused to have her move back into this house with them. They insisted she needed her own space and her own life.

“We don’t need a keeper yet,” Gram had said, and Kate had realized she could easily insult them if she persisted, and that was something she didn’t ever want to do.

So she had her own place a couple of miles away, a two-bedroom cottage she had leased from a retired teacher who had moved into a condominium in Seattle. The large master bedroom looked out on a garden with a small pond, while the second bedroom had already been set up as a home office, which made it even more convenient for Kate.