Page 42 of Operation: Integrity

“Huh, that so? It snowed pretty hard earlier. So hard that there weren’t many people on the road at all. Were you out in that?”

She snorted because she had been, but couldn’t tell him that. Especially because, other than below her knees, she was dry now. “Nope, we pulled over when it started to snow but when it cleared, he asked me to get out.” She was a terrible liar. This wasn’t going to get her anywhere. The less she said, the better off she’d be.

“That was pretty terrible of him. Glad you’re okay. If you’d managed to find Wayside while you were walking, you would’ve found a good place to start over. They’re good folks. Want me to bring you back there? You did say you wanted a fresh start.”

She shook her head while trying to keep her cool. “No, that’s okay. It would be pretty hard for me to find a job way out here and they might not take my dog.” She scratched Zeus behind the ears as he looked back and forth between the two like he was following the conversation.

The older man’s brow rose. “Your dog looks familiar, but I’ll grant you that a lot of dogs look similar.”

Zeus whined at her feet and laid his head on her knee.Don’t you dare give me away. We’re supposed to be a team.She hoped her thoughts were conveyed through her eyes, since she couldn’t say them aloud. Maybe bringing him along had been a bad idea.

“You are headed to Cheyenne though, right?” She risked looking at him.

“That was my plan. My daughter lives there and she got her little car stuck in the driveway. I’ve got no time for these little housing developments where they do everything for you, but they do it on their time. They called and threatened to have her car towed if she didn’t move it by 4 A.M. She called me, so upset. Who is going to come out this late after a storm and pull her out of her driveway?”

“Her dad?” Kelly said, reminded of her own father. Her parents had loved her, but they’d let her be just who she wanted to be, mostly avoiding giving her much in the way of instruction. ‘Feral’ is what one teacher had called her. Maybe they were right.

The man snorted. “Yup, even if I’m an hour away, she can still count on her dad.”

Tears clogged Kelly’s throat and she wished her dad was still there to help her now.

Chapter Nineteen

Banging on Sam’s door roused him much earlier than he’d expected. Sleeping hadn’t come easy for him since Kelly had blown away all forms of thought with her kiss the night before. He wasn’t usually one to let things go to his head, but he’d forgotten what kissing her was like.

He whipped his tee-shirt over his head and tugged it down his torso as he went for the front door. Connor waited outside, his breath puffing in huge clouds in the overhead lights. “Sam, get dressed. We’ve got some tracking to do.”

Sam scrubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Tracking? What . . . or who?” A dense rock took shape in his stomach. Had Kelly kissed him to distract him? Had she planned all along to go with Nathan, anyway? She’d tried to convince him last night that she wasn’t worth the effort. Hadn’t he gotten through to her?

“Kelly disappeared. Cole went to her cabin about twenty minutes ago to shovel and noticed the lights were still on. He assumed she was awake, so he wanted to warnher that he’d be making noise right outside. When he knocked, there was no answer. He took a chance and used his key to get in, since Zeus was supposed to be with her, and he couldn’t even hear the dog when he knocked.”

How had she gotten past the cameras? “She took Zeus, right?” At least if she’d left, Zeus would protect her as best he could.

“Yes. It appears that she packed a light bag, took the dog, and headed off through the pasture. Without my dad here and after the snow, Dominic set the camera to alert him if there were more than two images taken in the span of five seconds. She was moving fast enough that she didn’t trip any one camera more than once, but we can see exactly where she went.”

He didn’t need the cameras to know. “She went toward the new fence, didn’t she?” Sam wanted to punch the wall, but that wasn’t how he ever dealt with anger. He always kept his feelings completely under control. Losing his temper wouldn’t solve the problem.

“She did. She didn’t even try to hide her tracks.” Connor gestured back inside. “Unless you’re planning to go in that, you’d best get dressed.”

Sam headed back inside and Connor followed, closing the door behind him. “Was Zeus our best tracker?”

Sam flinched inwardly. Honestly, Zeuswasthe best tracker, but they had other options. Max had been a bomb sniffer, but he could pick up other scents too. Max had tried to follow the scent of the glove Zeus had found the night before and had come up empty. There had been too much snow covering everything. That didn’t stop him from assuming it was Nathen or whoever Nathen had stationed near Wayside to fly those drones.

“Let’s not worry about dogs yet. She left us a trail. Ifshe got into a car with someone, that’ll be the trouble. Where in the world could she go?” He didn’t even want to speak his fears out loud.

Connor saved him the trouble. “Nathan was texting her for days, asking her to go right there. The only way I’ll believe that he has nothing to do with this is if we make it to that fence and there’s only her prints and Zeus’s. Otherwise, I’m going to assume she found some way to contact Nathan. She was convinced that he was going to pay her, according to Brendon. She was convinced that if she finished what she promised, he’d do as he said.”

Sam buttoned a thick flannel shirt over his tee, then shrugged on a wool vest. He had some thick bibs he used for hunting that would keep him dry and warm if they were outside for a while, which was a definite possibility.

“Maybe I was wrong to lighten up on the rules. I should’ve left them in place and kept Edwyn as her wrangler even though she wasn’t happy with him.”

Sam whipped around. “Are you saying this is my fault? I didn’t do anything. I was trying to get through to her just last night to convince her how important she was as a human being. You know, the things we do for all of our clients.”

Though letting a guest kiss him had never happened. None had ever wanted to that he knew about. With the possible exception of Rebecca who’d admitted to him that she’d had a crush on him, but she’d known it wasn’t reciprocated. That was one of the reasons he hadn’t fought when Connor had suggested Junior take over as Rebecca’s wrangler. Helping her without noticing Rebecca’s attraction had become difficult, and he didn’t want to hurt her.

“Sam, I’m just trying to make sense of why she would do this. The rules have always protected our guests.”

Yet Brendon had always disagreed with them. “I don’t think this has anything to do with the rules, and I’m beginning to agree with Brendon. They’ve become a crutch for you. Or maybe blinders. Even the Ten Commandments don’t mean anything if you haven’t got Jesus. They’re just rules without a true guide if you don’t have the One True God.”

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