Lakeside Peril

She didn’t ask any questions after he’d given her the lowdown, telling her only what he wanted her to know.

Motioning to a planked picnic table, he walked her over to the wooden Adirondack chairs the guys had built last summer. The table and chairs were hidden behind a thick row of bamboo stalks, but it gave him a good view of the road and the shell-covered lane leading up to the house. They could use the table as cover if they had to. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Satisfied with their surroundings, he stared at Chloe. “I need you to level with me.”

“I told you, I need a private investigator,” she said, stepping near before she sat down, her brown boots tight against her jeans, her perfume more exotic than the lilies Preacher had planted down by the shore. “And I’m willing to pay whatever price you name.”

She smelled of money. Her family had a lot of it. He needed money, but he wondered what taking on her case would cost him. He didn’t want any Conrad blood money.

She must have sensed his dilemma. “You saw those men. They won’t stop until I’m dead.”

“I kind of got that part after the fun we had back at the Hog Wash,” he said. “You need to tell me everything, starting with why you came all this way for me when there’s plenty of PIs in Oklahoma.”

She looked out at the water glistening in a rich yellow-orange beneath the bronze sky, a second’s worth of hesitation holding her still. “Because I heard that you lived here now and that you’re licensed in both Oklahoma and Florida.” Glancing over at him, she added, “I also heard you were the best.”

“Who told you about me?”

Another evasive silence. “What does it matter? I’m here now. I thought I’d covered my tracks, but they followed me. I need someone I can trust.”

He let out a sigh. “Be honest. I like honesty.”

Her beautiful, defiant gaze hit him square in the face. “So do I. And that’s why I’m here.” She hesitated one more time before she sent him a worried stare and then plunged ahead. “Gerald Howard said you’d done some work for him.”

Hunter grabbed the hair falling over his forehead and grunted. How had this nice October day gone from bad to worse in the span of a few minutes?

“I don’t like Gerald Howard,” he said, irrational feelings closing in on him from all sides. “He’s a slick lawyer with his own agenda and he’s your father’s right-hand man. I parted ways with Howard a long time ago. I don’t get him recommending me for anything.”

“I know you don’t like Mr. Howard,” she retorted, her words rushing together as swiftly as the bay’s choppy current. “But he respects you and he says you deliver on the job.”

“Yeah, I do my job,” Hunter replied. Ignoring the irritating sensations she’d dredged up, he added, “Even when I don’t like my clients.”

“You don’t have to like me,” she retorted. “You just need to believe me when I say they are all involved.”

“Who are they?” Hunter asked, figuring that was a loaded question. “Who doesn’t believe you?”

“The sheriff in Conrad Corner, for starters.” She glanced out at the water, a dark sadness that Hunter recognized coloring her eyes. “And just about everyone else there, too. Possibly including my father.”

Conrad Corner, Oklahoma. Hunter didn’t want to think about that dingy little town thirty miles west of Oklahoma City. He’d been running from that place since he’d returned stateside.

But he did believe one thing Chloe Conrad had said.

The sheriff in Conrad Corner was corrupt, so if the sheriff had refused to help her, there had to be a reason. And not a good one. Her father owned as many people as he did acreage.

“Keep talking,” he said.

She had just become his client.

* * *

Chloe let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, tears of relief burning through her eyes. No one, not even her distraught family, wanted to delve into what might have happened on that deserted airstrip this past spring. But she’d found some details that made her believe finding Hunter Lawson was her only hope. Now she had to convince him to help without sharing all those details with him. Yet.

Knowing Hunter might actually believe her helped her to go on. “Over the last few months I’ve gone from mourning my sister’s plane crash and death to promising myself to find out who killed Laura. Because besides knowing that Laura was an expert pilot, I found something else that disturbed me.”

He drummed his fingers on the weathered table. “What?”

“Her apartment had been ransacked. Everything had been tossed around and knocked over. It happened a few days after her funeral.”

“Did you report it?”

“Yes, but...nothing of value was missing. I don’t think they found what they were looking for, since I’d already taken out a box of personal papers and files earlier in the week.”

“So what happened after that?”

“I went through the files and papers I found at her apartment when I went to clean it out a day or so after the crash. My mother asked me to do it.” She tugged at her jacket, took another breath. The anguish of going into that apartment tormented Chloe even now. “My sister was a social reporter. She did human interest stories for a humanitarian website and worked as a beat reporter at the Conrad Chronicle. She wasn’t into hard news. Laura had such a good heart she always looked for the best in people.”

“What did you find in the files?” Hunter asked, his tone quiet but his eyes cutting like gunmetal.

He wanted to be done with her. Discomfort and impatience radiated all around him like a mantle. Chloe decided now wasn’t the right time to give him all the details. She had to gain his trust bit by bit.

“Some reports and notes regarding several parcels of land near Conrad. Land that my family secretly owns.”

“Your family owns half of Oklahoma.”

“But this is land that my father somehow bought up in bits. I think he’s been quietly sitting on it for years. It looks as if someone bought it up under another name, even though the sales are public record. I couldn’t understand why Laura would be interested in that until I studied these reports.”

“What did the reports say?”

“From what I could gather, the land has been in a holding pattern with a company called Wind Drift Pass. Laura’s notes indicated it was some sort of shell company. No one knows that Conrad Oil is involved with the transactions. But I think Laura found out something regarding this land, something that caused her death. She’d made notes indicating that Conrad Oil owned the land. I believe she was gathering information to confront someone. Or expose someone.”

He sat back in his chair. “Big corporations use shell companies a lot to avoid paying taxes.”

“Yes, but why would Conrad Oil use one for land that hasn’t been developed yet? What are they trying to hide?”

“Why don’t you ask your father that question?”

She sat silent for only a second, but Hunter’s eyes turned a deep gray. So he answered the question for her. “Because you don’t trust him.”

Chloe hated to admit it, but it was the truth. And Hunter had asked for the truth. She gave him as much of it as she felt necessary for now. “I don’t trust anyone.”

He nodded. “Ah, so that explains it.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. Had he already figured it all out?

He leaned up in his chair, his gaze pinning her. “Why you came to me.”

THREE (#ulink_97ac4dce-aa53-50fc-ba78-3b7f22dbbeda)

Chloe slid around so she could face the water, sweat beading on her upper lip in spite of the cool air. This was a peaceful, secluded spot, but she felt anything but peaceful.