Page 73 of Ambush

“Let’s check the office.” Blake hurried down the hall to the office door that stood open. “Was this locked when you left?”

“I locked it myself.” She reached past him and flipped on the light.

The breeze intensified, and he spotted a side window open. The screen that should have been in it lay damaged on the floor. “Someone knocked it in.” He turned in a half circle around the room and spotted the safe standing open. “We’ve been robbed. What was in here?”

“Just a little money for miscellaneous supplies we buy in town. Some research Lacey was working on. Some of the more dangerous anesthetics we use. That’s all I can think of.”

“See what’s missing, and I’ll check with Lacey too.”

Paradise nodded and went to kneel by the safe. She pulled everything out and began to go through it. “None of the drugs are missing, which seems strange. I would have guessed the burglar was searching for drugs. I’ll check the drug cabinet.”

He followed her to the locked metal cabinet where she consulted a page that listed the contents. “It’s still locked.” She unlocked the cabinet and ticked off quantities of drugs. “Nothing missing here either.”

“So what was the intruder searching for, and did they find it?” He launched the camera app on his phone and called up the playback for the lens outside the vet building. Frame after frame was black. “Someone erased the video feed or managed to turn the camera off.” He showed her the screen. “There’s nothing on it.”

“There was the break-in at the house too. The guy is searching for something, but what?”

He put the screen back in place, then closed and locked the window. “I think I’ll put up a couple of secret cameras. I need to get to the bottom of this. But first, let’s try that reverse search.”

***

Paradise opened her laptop. Blake sat close beside her with his arm on the top of the sofa behind her. It would be difficult to concentrate on the reverse search when she wanted to lean against him and talk about the future he’d been ready to discuss beforeHez called. Maybe it had been a blessing in disguise though. They should stay focused on the problem at hand.

She found a reverse photo search and uploaded the picture from her phone. They watched the progress circle and several photos appeared. “There she is. We have to pay to unlock the app and view the details, but wow, that was fast.”

He whipped out a credit card and handed it to her to type in the number. Minutes later they had her real name: Nicole Iverson. He leaned closer. “She’s thirty and is a private investigator.”

“What on earth? Who would have hired her—and why?”

“Whoever is trying to drive us off. And I have a strong feeling it’s all about the oil or gas deposits under the land. I need to find out what’s there and what it’s worth. It could be the key to everything.”

A murder, an arson, shots fired at them, break-ins, possible deposits underground—how did it all tie together? They’d missed something, but she struggled to think what it was. Something tickled the back of Paradise’s mind. “What about Hank’s death? We have left it out of everything we’ve examined. Who had reason to want Hank dead? Someone who thought your mom would be an easy mark to get her to sell? Or could it be some personal reason?”

“I don’t know of any enemies Hank had.”

Paradise shifted and tried to keep her excitement in check. “So let’s find out. Let’s start at the beginning, before things went wrong. Let’s examine the history of how he and your mom bought this place. How long were they married?”

“They were married a year before Levi was born. And Hank died six months ago, so seven and a half years before his death.”

She launched a page in the word-processing program and notated Blake’s answers. “He was always interested in exoticanimals, and working for him a few days a week is what got me interested in veterinary work. When I left here, I knew I wanted to be a vet. What happened to his first wife? I can’t remember her name.”

“Susannah. She had a brain aneurysm and died during childbirth. The baby died too. I think you’d been gone about two years when that happened.”

Paradise put her hand to her mouth. “That’s terrible.”

His blue eyes went somber. “She ran the office, and he hired Mom after Susannah died. She’d worked for him for about three years when he asked her to go to dinner.” A smile slipped out. “I was home on leave, and she was like a schoolgirl trying to figure out what to wear. She wasn’t sure she should accept—she was ten years older. But by then she knew she cared about him. Before that, he’d hinted around that he’d like to date her, but she managed to fend him off. He finally caught her with her defenses down.”

Paradise’s heart ached for the pain in his face. She took his hand and laced her fingers with his. “You loved seeing your mom settled and content.”

He nodded. “I’d never seen her so happy. They dated two years just to make sure, but I knew the first time I saw them together that it was meant to be. She married him and moved into his big farmhouse that abutted this place. The next thing I knew, she was pregnant with Levi, and they were both so thrilled. Hank was a great dad. He loved those boys with everything in him.” Blake’s voice thickened.

“And when he died you flew home to help your mom and the boys.” She leaned her face against his, and his breath mingled with hers.

Talking about this kind of loss scared her. What if she openedher heart fully and lost Blake again? She didn’t know if she could take it. She released his hand and ran her hands across the rough stubble on his face.

His fingers grazed her chin and lifted her gaze to his. “Don’t be so scared. We can’t borrow trouble, like my grandma always used to say. One day at a time is the only way to live life. Mom doesn’t regret a moment of that life with Hank even though it ended with such heartache. She wouldn’t have the boys or the memories.”

His head came down, and she welcomed his kiss. The tenderness in his lips reverberated all the way to her toes. He was right. What did anyone achieve by being afraid to live? Loneliness was hard no matter how it happened.

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