Safety in Numbers. Carla Cassidy

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      “I assume you wanted to talk to me alone?” Meredith said as they crossed the expanse of yard to where Dalton had parked his car.

      “I’ve got a favor to ask you,” Dalton replied. “About the dance on Saturday night. Even though you said you’d be there at the dinner table, I thought you might sneak out early. I know dances aren’t your thing, but could you hang around and entertain Chase and his mother for me?”

      Meredith had already decided to skip the evening festivities despite the fact that she’d said she would save a dance or two for Chase. Her experiences at the occasional town dances had never been pleasant ones.

      “Why do I have to babysit your guests?” she asked, a touch of irritation deepening her tone.

      Dalton grinned, leaned over and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Because you’re the best sister in the whole world and I have a date with Melanie Brooks for the dance.”

      She wanted to decline, she so didn’t want to do this, and yet Dalton had never asked her for anything. She also knew he’d spent the past month working up his nerve to ask pretty Melanie out on a date. “All right. I said I’d go, so I’ll go and make nice to your friend and his mother.”

      “You’re the best.”

      “That’s what you guys always tell me when you’ve managed to talk me into doing something I don’t want to do.”

      Dalton laughed and got into his car. She watched as he drove down the lane, his headlights eventually swallowed up by the darkness of the night.

      She wrapped her arms around herself and remained standing in place for a long moment. She frowned as she thought about the dance and rubbed her hands along the soft flannel of her shirt.

      She didn’t even have anything to wear. Her closet was filled with jeans and shirts, and the only dress she owned was the bridesmaid dress she’d worn to Clay and Libby’s wedding. It was floor length and far too fussy for a town dance.

      Maybe she’d talk to Libby tomorrow about borrowing a dress for the night. The two women were about the same size, and Libby had a closet full of clothes she’d brought with her when she’d moved from California to make a life with Clay.

      A night breeze blew a burst of chilly air through the nearby trees. Dying leaves swished against one another and a chill that had nothing to do with the night air swept up her spine. Once again she felt that creepy feeling, like somebody was watching her, like she wasn’t quite alone in the night.

      She told herself she was being foolish, but turned on her heels and hurried back into the house. She went into the kitchen to see if there was anything she could help Smokey with, but Kathy stood at the sink next to him chatting as she dried the dishes he washed. Smokey wore a long-suffering expression, as if her chatter was about to drive him insane.

      Meredith’s father, Red, was in the living room seated in his favorite chair and Chase was nowhere to be found. She sat on the sofa and smiled at her dad.

      “I love family meals,” he said. “I love having the family all together.”

      “It was nice,” she agreed. As usual when speaking to her father she made her voice louder than usual. Although Red refused to admit any problem, all of his kids knew he was growing deaf. “It won’t be long before the family gets bigger. Anna is pregnant and I have a feeling if Kate has her way she won’t be far behind her.”

      Red’s eyes took on a faraway cast. “Grandchildren are a blessing. I just wish—” He broke off and smiled at Meredith. “Well, you know what I wish.”

      She nodded. He wished Meredith’s mother were here to share it all with him. He wished his wife were by his side in the autumn of their lives. Meredith thought of the file that was in the top drawer of her dresser in her bedroom.

      She couldn’t give her mother back to her father, but maybe after all these years she could finally give him some closure. She could give him the name of Elizabeth’s murderer.

      Minutes later Kathy and Smokey came out of the kitchen and the four of them visited for another half hour or so. Chase came into the living room from his bedroom just about the same time Red decided to retire for the night.

      By ten o’clock everyone had gone to his or her room except Chase and Meredith. “Is now a good time to go through that file?” he asked her.

      “It’s a perfect time. I’ll just go get it.” As she left the living room, she drew deep breaths, wondering what it was about Chase McCall’s presence that made her feel as if she never got quite enough oxygen.

      She retrieved the file from the dresser drawer, then returned to the living room. “Why don’t we go into the kitchen where we can spread it out on the table?” she suggested.

      He nodded and together they went into the kitchen and sat at the round oak table. Meredith placed her hand on the top of the file, for a moment feeling as if she were about to open Pandora’s box.

      Inside the folder was the last evidence of a life interrupted, the pieces of an investigation that had yielded no results, leaving a man and six children to wonder who had committed such outrage and left behind such devastation.

      “You sure you want to do this?” Chase’s voice was soft, but his gaze was sharp and penetrating, as if he were attempting to look directly into her soul.

      “No, I’m not at all sure I want to do this,” she replied honestly. “But, I feel like I have to.” She looked at the folder beneath her hand. “I feel like she wants me to do this, she needs me to do this.” She laughed and looked at him once again. “I know it sounds crazy.”

      “No, it doesn’t,” he replied. “I know all about needing answers, but you realize it’s possible we won’t get the answers you want from that file.”

      “I know. I’m just looking for a lead, something that was perhaps overlooked when the initial investigation took place.”

      He pulled the folder from beneath her hand and opened it. He quickly withdrew three photographs and flipped them face down on the table just out of her reach. “There’s no reason for you to see those,” he said. There was a toughness in his tone that forbade her to argue with him.

      She didn’t want to argue. She didn’t want to see crime-scene photos of her mother’s broken body. She had a faint memory of her mother’s smiling face, and she wanted nothing to displace her single visual memory of the woman who had given her life.

      For the next hour they pored over the papers and while she read lab reports and crime-scene analyses she tried not to notice the evocative scent of Chase, the heat of his body so close to hers.

      It had been a very long time since she’d been so intensely aware of a man and aware of her own desire for a man. She held no illusions about her desirability as a woman. She’d always been a bodyguard first, a woman second, more in touch with her abilities to exist in a man’s world than in her own femininity.

      But as she sat next to Chase, she wished she knew more about womanly wiles, about how to flirt and how to let a man know she was interested in him.

      She instantly chided herself. She knew nothing about Chase McCall, about what kind of man he was, what was important to him. She knew nothing about him except the fact that one glance of his eyes and everything tightened inside her, one brush of his hand against hers and the defenses she kept wrapped around herself threatened to shatter.

      With a sigh of irritation at her own wayward thoughts, she consciously focused on the paper in her hand.

      “Was it your mother’s usual habit to go grocery shopping on a Friday night?” Chase asked.

      “I don’t know. Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot about my mother.”

      His eyes held curiosity. “You never asked your father or any of your brothers about her?”

      She leaned back in