In His Sights

“This one goes?” He gestured at the next questionable plant he saw. At her nod he began to dig out the offender as he continued the conversation. “You don’t like to travel?”

“Oh, we go to the coast now and then, and we used to go down to California in the winter, and up to Canada in the spring, but we love home the best so we stay here most of the time now.”

He wondered if they had had to curtail their travels for health reasons or financial reasons. He’d brought in the mail for them—their mail box was out at the end of a very long driveway—when he’d returned from his first recon of the area. He had noticed several windowed envelopes that made Dorothy frown when she saw them. But she’d merely put them away with a sigh in a desk cubby that held several more of what appeared to be the same kind of envelopes.

Definitely motive, he thought, yanking out a dandelion rather fiercely at the thought that Kate might have had to resort to stealing to help these sweet people.

Well, Dorothy was sweet, anyway; Walter Crawford was a bit of a curmudgeon. Rand got the sense the silver-haired man with the bushy moustache used the gruffness to hide a too-soft heart, but he was honest enough to realize he might be projecting his memory of his own grandfather onto this man who somewhat resembled Robert Singleton.

“You really don’t have to help me with this chore,” Dorothy said.

Rand tossed the excavated weed into the trash bag they were dragging around with them. “I don’t mind. Unless you’d rather do it all yourself. I can understand that. My mom used to feel like that sometimes. She said the only thing that kept her sane was working in her garden.”

“And what was threatening to drive her insane?” Dorothy asked, with a sly grin that told Rand she was already guessing the answer.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, but he grinned back at her.

He had likely had the most normal family life of any of the Redstone security team, and his choice of careers had made his mother crazy. His father, at least, had understood, but then, he’d been a cop for nearly two decades before Rand’s mother had prevailed upon him to retire—something he hadn’t been that reluctant to do, saying all the good feelings had been driven out of the job anyway by the holes in the system and too many losing battles.

But Rand couldn’t deny what Dorothy had said was true, most of the time it had been he himself who had driven his mother to the brink. If it hadn’t been for Josh, who had, to Rand’s shock, invited his entire family in to tour Redstone headquarters and then have lunch with him while he convinced them that he would look out for their only son, his mother would have made his life unbearable with her worrying.

But Josh had convinced them, and while Rand didn’t tell his mother everything, he’d never been seriously hurt on an assignment for Redstone. Of course, his mother’s opinion of what constituted seriously hurt might differ slightly from his, he admitted silently.

“Are you an only child?” Dorothy asked as they moved on to a shady flower bed full of what she told him were hostas and fuchsias.

“No, I’ve got a little sister. My mom said after my terrible twos she was sure there was never going to be another one. Took her nearly ten years to change her mind and have Lisa.”

“Are you and your sister close?”

“Pretty much,” he said. “I tried to always look out for her as a kid, although it was tough when I was sixteen having a six-year-old trailing after me.”

“I can imagine,” Dorothy said with a laugh. “Your friends must have loved to tease you.”

“That they did,” he agreed, thinking for the first time in years of the one friend who had gone way too far with his teasing.

“Oh, that was an unpleasant thought,” Dorothy said, and Rand realized something must have shown in his face.

“Yeah. I was thinking about one friend of mine, when we were in high school. He got tired of Lisa always tagging along, so one day he locked her in a closet so that she couldn’t follow us.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Yeah. Worst part was he forgot to tell anyone. We didn’t find her for hours.” Rand shook his head. “I’ll never forget the look in my parents’ eyes when they thought she was truly lost or had been taken.”

“What did your friend do?”

“He apologized. My dad somehow kept himself from trouncing the guy, and Lisa said she was okay, she wasn’t really scared at all, but we knew better.”

“What did you do?”

“Me?” The question surprised him, but after thinking about it a moment he answered, “I found some better friends.”

The smile Dorothy gave him then warmed him in the same way his grandmother’s approval had once warmed him.

“You remind me so much of my own grandmother,” he said, and her smile widened even farther.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Do. She was a wonderful lady, and I miss her and my grandfather every day.”

“How long since you lost them?” Dorothy asked, her tone sympathetic.

“Two years ago,” he said. “Grandpa had a heart attack, and she went less than two days later. She hadn’t even been sick, but she didn’t want to go on without him.”

“I hope Walter and I go together,” Dorothy said, in a matter-of-fact tone that told Rand she’d thought about this before. He couldn’t imagine ever loving someone that much, but he envied those who had achieved that state.

“How long have you been married?”

“We had our fiftieth last year. Kate threw us a wonderful party. It seemed like the whole town showed up.”

“That was nice of her.”

“Yes, that’s our girl. Always doing things for people. And not just her family, either. Do you know she started a mentor program here in Summer Harbor?”

“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.

The house sat amid a private stand of tall fir trees and gave her a glimpse of the sound below. She’d put a porch swing in the corner where the view was best, and sat there often regardless of the weather. In fact, one of her favorite things was to be wrapped up in a warm throw in the cold air, listening to the rain on the porch roof and feeling the moisture in the air.

She’d had very little time to do that lately, however. She’d been so distracted by what was happening at Redstone that she’d rarely gotten home before dark. She spent her time trying to solve a mystery, and was missing most of what was turning out to be an incredibly summerlike fall here in the Northwest. They’d barreled through September in the mid-seventies, and October was starting out the same way. She had the feeling they were going to go straight from summer to winter, probably overnight.

She should probably be glad, she thought glumly, that she had the mess at work as a diversion. Otherwise she’d be dwelling on the mess of her life. Obsessing about how badly she’d misjudged the man she’d married. Wondering if she’d ever trust a man again.

And most of all, missing her baby girl.

“Do I smell coffee? Can I beg some?”

Kate went still at the sound of the sleepy, masculine voice behind her. But her grandmother smiled and said a cheery “Good morning, Rand,” while her grandfather gestured to the pot and said “Help yourself.”

“Thanks.”

She didn’t turn to look at him. She didn’t have to; she could see him perfectly well, reflected in the black, glassy front of the refrigerator. He stretched, expansively, the movement lifting his T-shirt to expose a strip of flat, muscular abdomen above the waistband of his jeans. He ran a hand through his tousled blond hair, yawned, then finally set off toward the coffeemaker.

Kate noticed he knew right where to go for a mug, and for some reason that bothered her. But her feeling of probably selfish perturbation evaporated when he politely brought the carafe over and, when they nodded, refilled both her grandparents’ mugs. He then gestured at her with the still half-full pot, but she shook her head and he put it back on the heating plate.

She waited for him to open the fridge for milk, just to further show how at home he’d made himself. But apparently he drank his coffee black because he came back to the table, pulled out a chair and sat. And managed to accomplish it anyway—he did look completely at home.

Not only that, but her grandfather actually put his paper down. Folded it up and set it aside, something she couldn’t remember ever seeing while there were parts still unread. She glanced at her grandmother to see how she felt about the fact that this interloper could apparently accomplish with ease what she’d been trying to do for decades. Her grandmother was smiling, so obviously it didn’t bother her. Which made it bother Kate all the more.

“Why don’t I give you a hand with that gate before I head out, Walt?” the fair-haired boy said.

“I don’t want to hold you up,” her grandfather protested.

“No problem. I’m not on a set schedule.”

“Must be nice,” Kate muttered, goaded by his easy familiarity.

“I imagine you always have a set schedule,” he said. She tried not to flush; she hadn’t really meant to say that loudly enough for him to hear.

“Yes,” she said.

“Redstone keeps you busy?”

She gave him a wary, sideways look. “Yes.”

“You hear a lot about that company,” he said. “What do you think of them?”

“I work in a very small part of Redstone,” she said. “But if you mean are they as good to work for as you’ve heard, yes, they are.”

“What exactly is it you do?”

“Distribution.”

And that was enough Q and A for her. Her grandparents may have opened their life books for this man, but she wasn’t about to.

“Don’t you have pictures to take?” she asked abruptly.

He shifted his gaze to her. He looked at her for a moment, in a steady, assessing way that gave her the awful feeling he thought she was acting like a child. As perhaps she was, jealous of the way he’d beguiled the two people she loved most in the world.

“Eventually,” he said easily. “At the moment I’m still looking around.”

“Try going out to the lighthouse,” her grandfather suggested. “Some good views from there, if you can catch a clear enough day.”

“That’s the trick,” her grandmother put in. “But a clear day here is worth ten days anywhere else, so it’s worth waiting for.”

So, everybody’s delighted with this guy except me, Kate thought as he waved a cheerful goodbye and headed out. Perhaps if she hadn’t spent so much time in big cities, she’d be more trusting.

Or gullible, she amended silently.

Not that Gram or Gramps were stupid, not by any stretch. But they were trusting, like many small-town folks. Too trusting, she thought, remembering the boarder who had listened with every evidence of genuine interest and appreciation to her grandparents’ suggestions about photos and locations.

He was too good to be real, she thought. And didn’t it just figure that the most attractive man she’d seen in ages wasn’t just far too young, he was far too charming?

What’s she hiding?

Rand had lost count of how many times that question had popped into his mind yesterday in her grandmother’s garden. And again now, as he followed Kate Crawford. There was no doubting she was hiding something. Every time the subject of her work came up while he was around, she either dodged it or changed it immediately. And she did it with that edge that always seemed to appear in her voice and manner on those occasions.

If she was involved, he thought, she needed to work on her poker face.

Maybe that was it. She just acted guilty. But would somebody who had managed to pull off these rather clever thefts really be so awkward about hiding it?

He slowed the rental vehicle as she slowed her nondescript, mud-spattered coupe up ahead. If she was making any sudden and large sums of money, it hadn’t turned up in her lifestyle yet. At least, not in her transportation.

It was difficult, in this small town with minimal traffic, to maintain a proper tail. There weren’t lanes full of cars to hide among, and there were countless unmarked gravel roads that could be streets or simply driveways for a car you were trying to surreptitiously follow to turn down. And on the often curving roads lined with tall trees, it would be the easiest thing in the world to lose a pursuer, if that were the intent.

But it apparently wasn’t Kate’s intent, at least not today. Or else she didn’t even realize he was behind her. He wasn’t sure if that meant she was innocent, or just never expected to be followed. Just how much protection did she think this remote piece of country provided?

He had to swerve wide to avoid three bike riders who insisted on riding side by side, and who in fact cheerfully waved and smiled at him as he went around them, making his irritation seem a bit petty.

When he was safely back in his lane, he had barely enough time to glance down the Redstone driveway and assure himself that she had really made the left turn and gone to work. When he was past it he pulled over, let the bikes he’d just passed go by him again, then made a U-turn. The camera bag on the seat beside him shifted, and he pulled it back as he parked in a turnout behind some large trees a few yards back from the road to Redstone.

It was a spot he’d found in his initial exploration of the area. It didn’t seem to belong to anybody, or at least anybody who cared enough to fence it off, so he figured the car would be safe enough. And more important, out of sight.

He opened the camera bag, dug out the camera body and the smaller zoom lens he’d brought. He often used a digital for work, and he’d brought that too, but for this he wanted film. It looked more like the real thing to most people, especially if it was to appear in print as he’d hinted. Besides, he might need the more powerful lens.

When the camera was loaded and ready, he got out and locked the car; no matter how safe this place was, he didn’t want to have to deal with the hassle of a burglary with the gun inside or having the rental car stolen. Then he slipped on his small backpack, slung the camera over his shoulder by the contoured strap, grabbed the camera bag and started through the woods. He didn’t worry much about encountering anyone; he’d always been amazed at what he could get away with by the simple device of carrying a professional-looking camera. People seemed to expect photographers to be a bit eccentric, and to blithely trek into strange places looking for the perfect shot.

As he was about to blithely trespass onto Redstone property. At least, his undercover persona was about to; as a member of Redstone security, he had open access to any Redstone facility, but as Rand Singleton, photographer, he could have some explaining to do to keep his cover intact if he was caught.

He made his way through the trees carefully. The ground was already partially obscured by fallen leaves, and on unfamiliar turf it made it difficult to be sure you were stepping down on solid ground. When he was into the woods several yards, he turned to his left and started up the rise. When he’d scouted this place out yesterday, he’d found a perfect spot to set up a surveillance. There was a small break in the trees, giving a view of the towering, rugged Olympic Mountains, a vista well worth photographing.

That the spot also looked straight down on the Redstone plant was, he would insist to anyone who asked, purely coincidence.

Slipping off his pack and setting it and the camera bag down, he stood for a moment, marveling at the view. Those were some very serious mountains, he thought. He’d spent a rough few days in the Andes once, and hiked a long stretch through the Rockies, and these mountains were just as impressive in their own way.