Page 47 of High Country Escape
“Yes. Apparently, she’s determined to keep track of me. I asked her why she was stalking me, but she took it as a joke. She said she had information about Ledger I needed to know and I guess she was right, though I don’t know what to do with what she told me.”
“Does she know where he is?” Dalton asked. “Is he here in Eagle Mountain?”
“Nothing like that. Come sit down.”
He followed her to the sofa and they sat side by side. He took her hand. “Whatever she said, it’s upset you. I can tell.”
She drew in a deep breath. “Yes, well, this whole situation is upsetting, isn’t it? But I’m okay. Apparently, Ledger has a girlfriend. Or at least, a woman who visited him regularly while he was in prison. Debra thinks this woman is probably still helping him now that he’s free. She could know where he’s hiding and what his plans are.”
“I didn’t see any mention of a girlfriend when I was digging online for information about Ledger,” Dalton said.
She explained about Debra befriending the prison guard. “You’ve got to admire her single-mindedness,” she said.
“The guard could have made up the story to keep her interested,” Dalton said. “Or Debra could have made it up to reel you in.”
“Maybe.” She knew firsthand how manipulative people could be. “But what if it’s true? Can you find out? She says the woman’s name is Betty Josephs and she thinks she lived in Texas.”
“Isn’t Betty her sister’s name?”
“Bettina. But she says this woman is too young to be her sister. The guard said she was twenty-eight when she was visiting Ledger, at least according to her ID. And she had bleached blond hair.”
“I’ll see what I can find out.” He pulled out his phone and made a note of the name. “I want to look for more information about Alice, too.”
“Why Alice?”
“Maybe we can put Debra on to her and she’ll stop bothering you.”
She laughed. “She doesn’t bother me that much. I feel sorry for her, really. I think her whole life is wrapped up in this quest to find out what happened to her sister.”
“Maybe you aren’t the only person Ledger has come after,” Dalton said. “One reason Alice may be so hard to find is that she’s hiding from him, too.”
“I know she was a victim of Ledger just as much as I was,” Roxanne said. “But the way she pretended to be my friend, then betrayed me, hurt as much as anything he did to me. I’ve never been able to forgive her.”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m not judging you,” he said.
He never did, which made him so easy to be with. She pulled him close in a kiss. Forget Ledger and Debra and Betty and Bettina. She wanted to focus on the feel of his lips on hers, the way his five-o’clock shadow scraped at her cheek, the spearmint taste of him and the tremor that shook her as he traced his thumb along the curve of her breast.
She was thinking of climbing into his lap and straddling him when the rattle of the key in the front door sent them flying apart. Diane and George Ames stood grinning at them. “Don’t let us interrupt,” Diane said. She took her husband by the hand and pulled him from the room.
Roxanne put both hands to her heated face. “That was embarrassing,” she said. “I feel like a teenager who got caught making out.”
“We’re not teenagers.” He slid over and kissed her again. A thorough kiss that banished embarrassment and had her wanting to pull him up the stairs to her room. Maybe he felt a little of the same, because he groaned when he pulled away from her, a sound that had her arching toward him even as he slipped away. “I’d better go,” he said. “I have a search and rescue meeting.”
“Let me know if you find out anything about Ledger.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
Only after he was gone did she remember that she hadn’t asked him about talking to the sheriff or Aaron. Maybe she would do that on her own.
But even if Ledger did have someone helping him, what was his purpose in being here, near Eagle Mountain? She didn’t buy Debra’s reasoning that he wanted to see her again. William Ledger liked little girls. He had no use for a woman like her.
Saturday night, Dalton washunched over the computer, music turned up in the background. He would rather have been with Roxanne, but she was attending a lingerie shower for Bethany. He was trying to distract himself from images of Roxanne in various lacy and diaphanous nightgowns when the door to his apartment opened and Carter walked in. “Ever thought about knocking?” Dalton asked.
“Why knock when I still have my key?” Carter held up the small brass key. “Have you seen my guitar tuner? I can’t find it anywhere. Thought maybe I’d left it here when I moved in with Mira.”
Dalton turned back to the computer. “I thought you stopped playing guitar.” As he recalled, Carter had taken lessons just long enough to discover playing well was much harder than it looked.
“I’m thinking of taking it up again. Are you sure you haven’t seen the tuner? It’s red plastic.”