Page 32 of Lone Star Hostage

“They look like rich snobs,” he concluded.

“They were. And after reading about them, I totally believe there’s no way they would have approved of their teenage daughter getting pregnant.”

“Yeah, especially getting pregnant by someone not in their social circle.” He looked at Billie. “I don’t suppose you found any photos of Victoria with a boyfriend or a date.”

She shook her head. “But part of the data mining program is connected to the genealogy sites. I could dig around in those. If you find your bio-dad, he might be willing to give you answers that Victoria won’t.”

He considered it and then said, “No. This feels like a let sleeping dogs lie situation.” Presley paused. “Besides, it doesn’t matter why I was left at the fire station.”

“Maybe.” Billie paused, too. “But the kidnappers requested us for a reason, and your bio-parents might have played into that.”

Hell.He hadn’t even considered that angle. That was even more reason to try to clear his head and get off this blastedhamster wheel. He’d been trained to look at things objectively, and that’s what he had to start doing.

“We’ll need to talk to Victoria again,” Presley said. “An actual interview. And we need all the pieces to this puzzle.”

Billie nodded again. “I’ll put in a search through the genealogy sites and let it run since it could take a while. I can also call someone at SAPD and get them to lean on Jesep and Ari for DNA samples. Olivia’s sample from the water bottle is at the lab, and we should be getting something back on that soon.”

Good. That might not give them any useful info, but Presley wouldn’t know that for sure until they had the results. Not just from Olivia but from the clothes Victoria had been wearing while she was kidnapped. In one of the reports that Presley had read, the lab had said the findings on that would be back no later than tomorrow morning.

He reached out, his gaze connecting with Billie’s. Both of them sighed at the same time, and that caused Presley to smile. Why, he didn’t know. There wasn’t a hell of a lot to smile about.

“Thanks,” he said.

Her eyebrow rose. “For what?”

“For thinking straight when I can’t,” he settled for saying. “And for not telling me that kiss at the hospital was a big-assed mistake.”

“It could have been a mistake,” she countered but then shrugged. “But it wasn’t. If we didn’t have this investigation hanging over us, then we might be able to do more of it and see where it takes us.”

No way could he blow that off. Presley stood, and in the same motion, he slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him.

And he kissed her.

He instantly felt the rush of heat. The rush of pleasure, too, and there were much better things to feel than the worry aboutthe case. Billie must have thought so, too, because she sure as heck didn’t put a stop to it. Just the opposite. She wrapped her arms around him, dragging him even closer.

In a blink, they deepened the kiss, and even though Presley had tried to steel himself up for the punch he got from tasting her, he failed big time. The punch came. A welcoming flood of sensations that went right along with the heat.

Of course, her taste and kiss created the urgency that came with the lust. His body instantly wanted more, and he took that more by sliding his hand over the front of her shirt to her breasts. He kept his touch gentle there, aware of the bruise she had to be sporting.

He could have kept touching, kept kissing, too, if there hadn’t been another blasted ding. This one from his phone, and it was a text.

Billie slipped out of his grip, easing her arms and her body away from his, and Presley was muttering a bunch of profanity when he checked his phone.

“It’s Ruby,” he relayed to her, and while the heat was still pressing for themorewith Billie, he knew it was going to have to wait.

“Hattie went to school with one of the dead kidnappers. Craig Dumfries,” Presley summarized. “They even dated for a while, and according to social media, they’ve stayed in touch over the years despite Craig’s criminal history.”

Billie nodded. “That might be the connection we’re looking for, and it would explain a lot of things.”

Yeah, it would.Hattie could have known that Victoria was his bio-mom, and along with Craig and Ellis, she could have orchestrated the kidnapping. Possibly to make Presley suffer if he had been unable to save the woman who’d given birth to him. Maybe to set up a scenario where Billie and he would be killedby the Dumfries brothers. That way, she wouldn’t come under suspicion for the murders.

But if that was true, Hattie had left a very sloppy thread with her association with Craig.

“Sheriff Bonetti has already had a phone interview with Hattie,” Presley continued to summarize. “Or rather he tried, but Hattie lawyered up in the middle of it so he had to schedule her to come into the Outlaw Ridge police station. Bonetti thinks we should call the woman as well, that she might say something to us in anger that she wouldn’t say to him.”

“Agreed,” Billie was quick to say.

Presley was on the same page, but before he made that call, he fired off a text to Ruby. “Does Hattie know we’re aware of her connection to Craig?”

---