Page 84 of The Murder Club

“Bailey.” Zac lifted the phone receiver as he glared at his cousin. “I don’t know what’s up with the stranger at the lodge, but let me deal with him, okay?”

Bailey smiled, waving her hand as they headed out of the office. “Tell Rachel I said hi.”

They were silent as they headed out of the courthouse, both aware that they were being monitored by the security cameras that fed directly into Zac’s office. It wasn’t until they were in the Land Rover and pulling away from the curb that Bailey glanced toward him with a grim expression.

“We’re going to the lodge, aren’t we?”

“Immediately,” Dom assured her. “I don’t want to piss off Zac, but there’s got to be a reason for someone to use a fake name. I intend to find out who he is and what he’s up to.”

“Don’t worry about Zac,” Bailey assured him. “He knows what we’re doing.”

Dom drove down Main Street, not bothering to ask if there was a shortcut to reach the lodge. At the moment the temptation to beat the truth out of Ford Smithson pounded through him with a savage force. He needed a few minutes to gather his composure. The man had lied to them, but that didn’t make him a killer. And even if he did turn out to be guilty, they needed proof. Something he wasn’t going to get if he went charging over there like a lunatic.

With an effort, he sucked in a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate on Bailey’s claim.

“Why do you think Zac knows what we’re doing?” he demanded.

Bailey shrugged. “My cousin loves to give the impression he’s just a good ol’ boy, bumbling along as the local sheriff, but he’s a master chess player who is always three steps ahead of everyone else. Including me. And when he’s on duty, he never does anything that doesn’t have a purpose.”

Dom had never been fooled by Zac’s laid-back manner. He’d sensed there was a ruthless determination beneath the charming smile. It didn’t seem unreasonable to suspect he’d invited them to his office with the intention of manipulating them into doing what he wanted.

“Are you suggesting that he deliberately told us about Ford Smithson so we would confront the man?”

“Zac admitted his hands were tied,” Bailey reminded him. “And that it would be weeks before he could go out to talk to the mystery man.”

“True.”

“And he knows me well enough to realize I would rush out to the lodge the second I realized the guy had lied to us,” she said wryly. “If he didn’t want us to figure out what was going on with Ford Smithson, he wouldn’t have asked us to come to his office and tell us that he’s an imposter. We would never have gotten the information on our own.”

Dom nodded. The explanation fit his own suspicions. Zac obviously couldn’t ask them to confront a man who hadn’t broken any laws. At least none they’d discovered. But he could give them enough information to send them on their way.

“Intelligence obviously runs in the family,” he said, sending Bailey a smile.

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure about that.”

He was. But beyond the obvious book smarts needed to study and graduate from nursing school, she also had a rare empathy. She could read the feelings of others and offer them what they needed. Comfort, peace, joy, love . . .

“Were the two of you close growing up?” he asked, keeping her distracted as they reached the outskirts of Pike.

“Yes, which was kind of odd.”

“Why was it odd?”

“Our fathers were brothers, but our families weren’t that close. Probably because they were complete opposites.”

“In what way?” Dom was genuinely interested. His grandparents had kicked Remy out of the house when he turned eighteen and his mother was an orphan. He’d never experienced an extended family.

“Zac’s parents were smothering,” she explained. “They controlled everything about his life, and even after he married and moved away they pressured him into returning to help on their dairy farm. It didn’t matter to them that he wanted to be a cop.” She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “My dad barely recalled he had a daughter, especially after my mother died.”

Dom reached out to grasp her hand, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze. “And yet you both thrived.”

She lifted his hand to press her lips against his knuckles before releasing it. “Like you.”

Dazzled by the lingering warmth of her kiss, Dom turned onto the narrow dirt path that led to the lodge.

“I’m hoping we can make life easier for our own kids,” he murmured, allowing the words to leave his lips without thinking.

Always a mistake.