Big Sky Country. Linda Miller Lael

must have been strange.” There was a pause. “Hold on. I’m scrolling for Hutch’s contact information.”

      “Holding,” Joslyn confirmed, thrumming her fingers on the top of the steering wheel.

      “555-6298,” Kendra finally said.

      Joslyn wrote the number in the dust on the dashboard of her car, using her fingertip for a pen. “Thanks,” she said. “By the way, I checked the office before I left home. Nobody there.”

      “That figures,” Kendra said, sounding tired all of a sudden.

      Since Kendra was usually annoyingly optimistic, Joslyn picked up on the contrast right away, subtle though it was. “Are you okay?” she asked.

      “My feet hurt,” Kendra said, “and still no offer on the chicken farm.”

      Joslyn chuckled. “You didn’t change out of those high heels?” she chided. “It’s the law of cause and effect, my friend. And maybe the eighteenth showing will be the charm, and the next great chicken farmer will sign on the dotted line.”

      The smile was back in Kendra’s voice. “Right,” she said, with wistful good humor. “Do you happen to have any wine on hand?”

      “I beg your pardon? I just moved in, Kendra. I barely have staples.”

      “Wine is a staple,” Kendra retorted. “The last client dinner party wiped out what was left of my supply, so I’ll stop for some later, on my way home. We can raise a glass to old times. Red or white?”

      Jasper leaned over the back of Joslyn’s seat and ran his tongue along the length of her right cheek. It was a companionable gesture.

      She laughed, making a face. “Red, I guess, since it doesn’t have to be chilled. I’m about to cook up a storm, so plan on arriving hungry.”

      They set a time—six o’clock—said their goodbyes and hung up.

      Joslyn immediately dialed the number etched into her dashboard dust.

      Another recording. If the words hadn’t been different, the effect would have been downright eerie.

      Hutch sounded almost exactly like his father.

      “Leave a message,” he said tersely. “I might call you back and, then again, I might not. It all depends on what you want.”

      “I have your father’s dog,” Joslyn said after the beep and then realized the statement sounded like the preamble to a ransom demand. “I mean, it’s Joslyn Kirk calling. You remember, from high school? I’m living in Kendra Shepherd’s guesthouse now, and—well—I found Jasper and I’m sure you’ve been looking for him so—” She paused, blurted out her cell number and snapped the phone shut.

      “What a charmer,” she told Jasper wryly.

      The lab gave a little whine of commiseration.

      “Guess you’ll just have to come home with me for the time being,” she told him with a surge of gladness that surprised her. If there was one thing she didn’t need with her life in suspended animation, it was a dog.

      Still, it wouldn’t hurt to enjoy Jasper’s company for a few hours. Would it?

      After looking carefully in both directions, Joslyn pulled out onto the highway and pointed herself, Jasper and the groceries in the direction of Rodeo Road. It was time to push up her sleeves and get cooking.

      * * *

      THE REST OF THAT DAY was slow, which was good, Slade supposed, considering the business he was in. He clocked out at five o’clock sharp, something he rarely did, and headed for home.

      Letting himself into the one-bedroom duplex he’d rented after his marriage went to hell two weeks after he’d been elected sheriff, he looked around at the minimal furnishings, the bare walls and the scruffy carpet in a color his mother had dubbed “baby poop green.”

      The place had never been a home, just a place to wait out a transition—a campsite with walls and windows and a roof.

      He hung up his hat, unhooked his badge from his belt and set it aside. He carried a service revolver, but that was locked up in a gun safe under the driver’s seat of his truck.

      From the front door, it was a straight shot to the open, one-counter kitchen, a hike of about a dozen feet, give or take.

      Slade zeroed in on the refrigerator, which was the same uninspired color as the carpet, opened the door and assessed the contents. Two cans of beer, half a stick of butter and a shriveled slice of pizza from a couple of days back. He should have bought more than a bottle of water back there at Mulligan’s Grocery, he reflected, taking a beer and shutting the fridge door on the dismal selection.

      The truth was, he’d been too distracted to think straight ever since the meeting at Maggie Landers’s office that morning, and running into Joslyn Kirk at the grocery store hadn’t helped matters.

      He popped the top on the beer, opened the sliding glass door next to the card table that served as a dining area and stepped out onto his miniscule brick patio. The grass needed mowing, and weeds were springing up everywhere.

      On the other side of the low concrete-block wall loomed the old Rossiter mansion.

      Slade sighed and sank into a beat-up lawn chair to sip his beer. A chuckle rumbled up into his throat as he sat there, watching the dandelions take over what passed for a lawn, and he shook his head.

      Damned if he hadn’t gone from solvent to out-and-out rich in the space of a single day. And then there was Joslyn.

      A spoiled teenager with a bristly attitude when he’d last seen her, she’d rounded out into a warm-curved woman.

      He’d barely squared that thought away in his mind when the familiar yellow dog sprang over the back wall and trotted right up to him.

       CHAPTER THREE

      JOSLYN WATCHED, TAKEN ABACK, as Jasper, docile since she’d made his acquaintance at Mulligan’s Grocery, suddenly transformed into a bionic robo-dog, streaking through the rose garden and the beds of nodding zinnias to take the rear wall in a single bound and launch himself into the neighboring yard like a missile.

      Hutch, having just pulled up in an old pickup truck with mud drying on its sides, stepped down from behind the wheel, took off his hat, tossed it into the vehicle before shutting the door of the rig and grinned, resting his hands on lean hips.

      “You reckon this means old Jasper isn’t glad to see me?” he joked.

      Joslyn smiled and started toward her old friend. “I don’t know what’s gotten into that dog,” she said. “He’s been on his best behavior since we met up in the parking lot—at first, I even thought he might be a little lame. So much for that theory.”

      She started off in pursuit of Jasper then, and Hutch fell into step beside her.

      “It’s good to see you again, old buddy,” she told him.

      “And you,” Hutch responded gruffly.

      Taking a sidelong glance at Hutch’s ruggedly handsome face as they walked, Joslyn was surprised to see that he looked solemn. He was gazing in the direction Jasper had gone, and his mouth had hardened a little.

      The grin was definitely a thing of the past.

      He shoved a hand through his dishwater-blond hair and came back to himself, as if from some vast distance, just as they reached the gate between Kendra’s property and the rental beyond.

      Hutch opened the tall wooden gate with a jerk that made the partially rusted hinges squeal in protest and shouldered his way through.

      Joslyn was right behind him. She felt responsible for Jasper—after all, he’d made his great escape on her watch.