Page 78 of Dead Girl Running

She shot Max a disgusted glance.

Without her saying a word, he caught her drift. “Yes, he’s annoying. Say the word, and I’ll send him away.”

“I already did. Now, will he do as he’s told?”

“Not unless he leaves quickly. Snow is predicted for tonight.”

“I suppose we should keep him here.” She walked across the lobby, toward the stairway to Annie’s office.

“Why?” Max answered his own question. “Because you’re suspicious of him. For murder? Or smuggling?” He followed, not too closely, and he moved quietly.

But she knew he was there. He had a presence, and she wanted to put her desk between them. She took the stairs. “Leo and Annie filled you in on all the details?”

“What there are of them. I suspect we’re looking at the tip of an iceberg.”

“I hate being on theTitanic,” she muttered.

“Full speed ahead,” he said, proving he had good hearing. “And no way to make a sharp turn away from the peril. You don’t mind ifIplay the Kate Winslet role, do you? I don’t even like towalkin the rain.”

She couldn’t help it. She turned and laughed at him. “You’re our new security man!”

He was two steps down, smiling faintly, looking fine in the suit, the white shirt, the blue tie. One didn’t see many suits in casual Washington State. “A good security man knows when to duck and run. I was a linebacker. I’m very good at running.”

“So…you’re fast?” She winced. That sounded faintly sexual.

He sobered, and suddenly he was no longer big and handsome, but rather sad and lonely. “Not always fast enough.”

The transformation made her vaguely uneasy. Not only Carson Lennex wore a mask. Everyone at the resort wore a mask of some kind, and trying to peel them away to see the face underneath was more dangerous than she could have imagined.

As soon as they entered the office, he went to the window. “Such a view. I don’t know how Annie gets any work done.”

“It is amazing, isn’t it?” Kellen seated herself and looked at him across the room, silhouetted against a pale blue winter sky and a murky sun that skipped behind the dark gray clouds. Of all the people in the resort, Max Di Luca was the only one she fully trusted. He wasn’t the Librarian, he wasn’t a smuggler, he was the man Annie and Leo had sent to help her. But where to start, what to say about security? How to explain, to warn, without betraying the information Nils Brooks had given her? For she didn’t know how Max would react, whether he would use those big feet to stomp all over Nils Brooks’s plan. He might say, and rightly, that his concern wasn’t solving a crime, but protecting the resort. At last, she began, “Max…”

He faced her. “Kellen.”

“If you would shut the door, we need to talk.”

“Indeed we do.” He moved toward the door.

Kellen wondered if she’d made a mistake.

Her phone chirped. “Hold on,” she said.

Russell texted.

The sheriff is here.

29

Sheriff Kateri Kwinault was in no way what Kellen expected. She was female, tall, Native American and beautiful, regal in the way of a New World princess, and yet she looked and moved as if she had been broken and put back together. Later, Kellen discovered that was true, but for the moment, she concentrated not on the tracery of scars on Sheriff Kwinault’s hands or the walking stick she carried, but on the information she imparted.

The sheriff thanked Russell for bringing her to the office. She shook hands with Kellen and exchanged grins with Max.

Kellen blinked at the two of them. They knew each other. She supposed that made sense. After all, Max was a Di Luca and had visited before.

He offered coffee and described Annie’s superautomatic coffee maker in a worshipful tone.

Sheriff Kwinault requested anespresso con panna, then leaned her stick against the coatrack and sat across the desk from Kellen. As she accepted the tiny cup from Max, she said, “We found Lloyd Magnuson. His car was hidden in the foliage at one of the pocket parks along the highway. Wethinkfrom the way it was positioned he pulled into the lot, tried to park, hit the gas instead of the brake and slammed out of the paved area and into the underbrush. Damage done by the last storm, by the winds and the rain, hid the evidence, and it was only this morning that one of my officers found him.”