Page 27 of Smokescreen

Her door opened only an inch—just enough for her to peer out.

She halfway expected to see her mom standing there, still guarding her door.

But only darkness greeted her.

At any minute, the person coming up the steps should come into view.

And if it was a stranger . . . Olive would rush from the room and start swinging.

She held her breath as she waited. Waited. Waited.

Her hands and arms trembled with anticipation.

Why was this person walking so slowly? Maybe he really was a psycho, like one of those guys from the scary movies she secretly watched without her parents’ knowledge. Right now, that decision seemed especially bad.

Then a shadow cleared the steps and came into view.

Olive sucked in a quick breath and prepared herself to act.

CHAPTER 12

TODAY

Olive had awoken early for a hearty breakfast consisting of bacon, eggs, and homemade hash browns. Then Reid had one of his guys saddle up two horses so Reid could continue to give her a tour of the ranch.

That was what she and Reid were doing now—riding along beside each other around the western perimeter. She rode a black quarter horse named Bella, and Reid was on his horse, a chestnut-colored steed named Blaze.

A beautiful stream babbled beside them. The air was crisp with a slight chill—but Olive didn’t mind since she had a flannel shirt on. Deer grazed across the pasture, and an eagle swooped overhead.

As a child Olive had begged her mom and dad to let her take horseback riding lessons. They’d never let her. But she’d had dreams of doing things like this.

For one of her assignments with Aegis, she’d gone undercover at an equine therapy center where she’d discovered the owner was funneling money from the nonprofit into her own bank account.

That experience was paying off now. At least she had some experience with horses—despite her parents.

At the thought of her family, she frowned. She thought about them often. Thought about the memories they’d made together—memories of meals around the dinner table, of game nights, of hikes through the mountains.

Then she wondered how many of those memories were real. Especially the hikes. They’d always seemed so out of the blue.

What if her dad had taken them on those out-of-the-way hikes for another reason? To meet someone as part of one of his “assignments”?

And the even bigger question: If her dad could fake so many things, could he fake his love for her? Tom Greer, the FBI agent who’d taken Olive in after her family’s murders, had hinted to Olive a few months ago that her father may have been a professional conman.

The thought caused a jabbing pain in her chest.

If only Olive had one more day with her family, she’d do things so differently.

Her last words to her mom and dad hadn’t been kind, and she’d always regret that. Heaviness settled on her at the memory.

“Olive?”

Reid’s voice snapped her back to reality, and she glanced at him as he rode his horse at a slow gait beside her. “I’m sorry. My mind left my body a moment. Could you repeat that?”

He shot her a look. “You don’t seem like the type whose mind leaves her body.”

“It usually doesn’t, but I guess I was swept away by this serene moment in nature.” She needed to divert his attention from her snafu back to this case. “So what were you saying?”

“I was saying that once a month my neighbors and I get together for a barbecue. It’s my turn to host, so everyone is coming to my place tomorrow afternoon. I intended on mentioning it to you earlier, but I forgot with everything that happened.”