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M issy kept trying to resist Trey sending her home. Finally she glared at him and asked, “Why do you want me to leave?”

“I want you to leave so that whoever is after your father will think Silas is alone and unprotected.”

Her jaw dropped. “What?”

He nodded. “I just didn’t want to tell you that.”

“Yeah,… no kidding.” She stared at him. “So, what now? You’re planning on leaving Dad alone and unprotected?”

“Of course not,” he said, shaking his head.

“So you’ll stay here and use him as bait?”

“More or less. I’ll appear to walk you and Schooner out of here, but I’ll double back inside and hide somewhere. I’m not exactly sure of the details yet,” he admitted. “I’ve been thinking about setting it up so that anybody who wants to come in can potentially come in.”

“And attack my father.”

“And try to attack your father,” he corrected her.

She stared at him. “You’re trying to protect me at the same time.”

He gave her a ghost of a smile. “To a certain extent, yes.”

“It sucks,” she announced.

“Maybe so,” he agreed cheerfully, “but you also know that you’re tired, worn out, and would certainly benefit from some good restorative sleep.”

“Yes, and yet my father has just been attacked, so I don’t find myself in any mood to leave him defenseless,” she shared, as she glared at him. “Nor am I prepared to leave you here to get attacked by this guy.”

“What makes you think I’ll get attacked?” he asked, looking at her. “I am setting a trap for him, remember?”

Her jaw worked as she thought about it. Then she sighed. “I would feel much better if Dad had better protection than just us.”

“The trouble is, we don’t know who we can trust, even if someone was available to stand guard,” he pointed out. “So the sooner we solve this, the better.”

“But that means catching them in the act.”

“It does, presuming that whoever is doing this is the same person who wants him dead.”

Confused, she stared at him.

Trey nodded. “See? You’re not thinking straight because you’re so tired, but what if somebody else hired the guy to do this?”

“Oh shit,” she muttered, sagging down onto the cot. “I don’t even want to think about that.”

“No, you may not, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a possibility.”

“It shouldn’t be,” she declared, glaring at him.

He hid a smile, but she saw it anyway, immediately causing her anger to flare, only to die off almost as quickly. She just stared at him again. He continued. “It also means, if he’s attacked again—and I know that sounds absolutely horrible, but—what if you’re here and what if the attacker comes after you?”

“Yeah,” she conceded, throwing up her hands, “and that makes me feel crappy too.”

He shrugged. “You’re not wrong about that, which is another reason I want you to go home.”

“Why?”

“Because we don’t want you attacked either.”

“I don’t want it to happen, but neither do I want somebody to come up here and attack you. This is such a mess. Why is this even happening?” She glared at him. “It shouldn’t be happening at all.”

“No, it shouldn’t, but that hasn’t changed, and we don’t want anything else to go wrong.”

“No, I don’t want anything to go wrong,” she agreed, “but it still feels very much as if it will.”

“And that’s also why we need to put a stop to this.”

She groaned. “I’ll go grab some sleep, but I’m coming back as soon as I wake up. If I can’t sleep, I’m coming back even sooner.”

He smiled at her. “That’s fine, as long as you take Schooner with you.”

She got up, grabbed her purse, motioned for Schooner, then marched to the door and stopped. “What about your brother? Don’t you need to be with them?”

“Why?” he asked, looking at her curiously.

She frowned and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe to maintain family relationships?”

“I don’t think Jackson will be upset if I’m not there from time to time,” he noted with a smile. “He doesn’t know all the details of this, but he isn’t a fool either.”

“But he’ll get the wrong idea if you’re spending all this time with me.”

“What’s the wrong idea?” he asked her.

She flushed and shrugged. “Never mind. I just want all this to go away.” She turned to face him. “Thank you for letting Schooner stay with me. He’s such a source of comfort and security, even if it is far-fetched.”

“It’s not far-fetched at all,” he countered, looking at her. “He’s a trained War Dog, so he’s certainly trained to attack anyone, should you be in trouble.”

“Then maybe we should leave him here for my father.”

“As long as I’m here with your father, Silas will be fine. I do have an awful lot of training myself, you know?” he reminded her.

She smiled over at him. “Sorry, I forgot about that. No offense intended.”

He laughed. “None taken. You and Schooner go get some rest. I’ll see you both when you come back.”

“Okay, he needs to go outside anyway.”

“He does, indeed.”

When the dog stopped beside her, she clicked on his leash and headed out. Schooner stopped at the doorway and turned to look back at her father. “Do you want to say goodbye?” she asked Schooner.

When she let go of the lead, the dog walked back over to the bed and stretched his nose up to check on her father. It brought tears to her eyes to see how gentle Schooner was. “I really need him to wake up,” she whispered from the doorway.

“Give Silas a chance,” Trey noted. “He’s not down and out yet, so you have to give him a chance.”

“I know,” she whispered, brushing the tears from her eyes. “I’m just so tired.”

“I know you are. Go home and rest, and we’ll see you in the morning.”

“Or you’ll see me in an hour when I can’t sleep at all,” she muttered.

“You might be surprised,” he replied. “An awful lot of stress has been in your system, and it’ll be good for you to get some sleep.”

“Maybe, but just because you say so doesn’t mean it’ll work that way.”

“No, of course not,” he agreed, with a smile.

She nudged Schooner along, and they walked the few blocks to her house. As she got to the house, she stopped, just now remembering how it had been broken into. At that point she realized just how much she didn’t want to be here. She picked up her phone and called Trey.

“Problems?” he asked immediately.

“No, but now that I’m standing outside my home, I just remembered it got broken into.”

“Right,” he replied. “So do you want to go somewhere else?”

“Yeah, back to the hospital.”

“You can’t just stay here the whole time.”

“Why not?” she asked, as she stared up at the house. “I don’t really want to go inside.”

“Then grab yourself a hotel room,” he suggested immediately.

“They won’t take dogs.”

“Some will,” he stated.

“No,” she said stubbornly, “this won’t work.”

“You need sleep.”

“Not as much as I need to know that my father is safe. I’m coming back.” With that, she ended the call and walked back in the direction of the hospital. She was almost there when her phone rang. It was Bill Bedford, from the clinic.

“Any chance you can come in tomorrow and give us a hand?” Bill asked, fatigue in his tone. “I don’t know if it’s because your father’s out of commission for the moment or what, but we’ve just gotten slammed with so much business.”

“Ouch,” she muttered.

“I know you’re probably standing watch over your father, but I just wondered…” Bill added, not sure how to end the sentence. “I’ve called around, trying to see if we could get a temporary helper brought in for a few days, but it’s not looking good.”

“No, I hear you,” she said. “You’re right. I do need to get back to the land of the living.”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t major, and I know that you’re not fully credentialed yet, but, honest to God, I could use some extra hands.”

“Right, I’ll see you tomorrow,” she agreed. She ended the call and stood outside the hospital, wondering what her options were for sleeping now. She turned and looked down at Schooner, ever quiet at her side. “What should we do, buddy?”

Schooner just looked at her, silent.

In all this mess, the indecision was killing her. She wanted to go back in and look after her father, but she was also rather desperately in need of sleep. Trey was right on that point, particularly if she also would go to the clinic and help out there.

She turned as one of the nurses just starting to come off shift called out to her, “Hey, are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Missay muttered. “It’s just life, you know?”

“It absolutely is life,” the nurse Celia agreed in a gentle tone, “but you must look after yourself.”

“How do I do that when everything else is going to pot?”

“Listen. If disaster strikes, and you should lose your father, or even if he has an extended recovery, you still need to pick up the pieces of your life. So making some balanced decisions right now will help you then.”

“And yet—”

“I get it,” Celia interrupted. “You don’t want to even consider such an option, and it likely won’t come to that. All I can say is that, right now, you look exhausted, and you desperately need some sleep.”

“That bad, huh ?”

“Yeah, that bad,” Celia confirmed, with half a smile. “I would love to see you go home and just crash.”

“I would love to, but my house was broken into,” she shared. “So, as much as I would love to go to my place, it doesn’t really seem to be a good option right now.”

Celia hesitated and then nodded. “We do have some places to sleep in the hospital.” When Missy stared at her, Celia nodded. “It’s for the nurses mostly, but I don’t think anybody would necessarily mind.”

“And yet I have the cot in my father’s room.”

“But, after what you’ve already been through and now the attack on your father, I can see you are not getting any sleep there either.”

She hesitated and then sighed. “You heard about that, huh ?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, with a grimace. “All the staff did, and believe me that it didn’t make us feel very good. Security isn’t something that we’ve ever really had to watch for or to address here, so it’s a very disconcerting concept.”

“Of course,” she agreed and didn’t add anything.

“Come on in and bring the dog with you. Let’s grab you a place to sleep for a few hours. Then you can go back to your dad. Honestly, I’m surprised you’ve left him unattended,” she noted, looking at Missy sideways.

“I didn’t. I left Trey there with him.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” she noted. “That’s a good thing. None of us want to be in the way, and we don’t want anything to go wrong. Yet we don’t have the extra time to look in on Silas, outside of our usual checks.”

“Of course,” Missy said.

In the hospital, Celia took Missy to another area and opened a door, where all three cots inside were empty. “Go ahead and crash. We don’t have that much staff on overnight duty anyway, but I’ll let everybody know that you’re in here, so they won’t come in and disturb you. I doubt that anybody would be welcomed anyway, since you’ve got Schooner with you.”

Missy smiled down at Schooner, who just looked at her. There was no greeting in his gaze, just that checking and looking at her thing. “I don’t know how much of a watchdog he is,” Missy conceded, “but we wouldn’t want anybody to accidentally open the door and surprise him.”

“Right, I can appreciate that,” Celia agreed.

With that, Missy stumbled over to one of the cots and sat down. Schooner was right at her side and stretched out on the floor beside her immediately.

“Good,” Celia noted. “Looks as if he approves. You’ll feel quite a bit better if you can grab even a little sleep.” And, with that, she turned and walked out the door.

With Celia closing the door behind her, Missy now felt she just might sleep. Nobody would know where she was to interrupt her. Then she suddenly realized how that was a problem. She quickly called Trey and told him what had happened.

“Good. I like the idea of your being somewhere safe and sound. Now go to sleep. I’m here, and I’ll keep watch over your father.”

And, with that, she curled up on the cot and closed her eyes.

Trey wondered about a hospital that gave up its sleeping rooms for exhausted family of the patients, then realized that maybe it was just a kindness on the nurse’s part. Anybody coming by Silas’s room would see that Trey was here, and it would make sense that he’d sent Missy home and that he was now standing guard over Silas. Still, this hospital attack made him uncomfortable.

It did help to know that Missy was somewhere on the grounds, and, if he needed to find her, he was sure he could. Plus, he and Missy and Schooner all seemed to get along just fine.

Trey stayed in the room with Silas and updated Jackson and Badger on the case. Badger called and asked him how he was doing personally. Trey smiled and replied, “It’s not exactly what I thought would happen here, but, considering all the issues we’ve been going through, I’m doing fine.”

“Good. What about any evidence of sabotage from the boat? Any more progress on that?”

“I’m out of touch on that,” he admitted. “You need to talk to Rob.” Then he quickly gave him Rob’s number. “I’m on guard duty at the hospital,” he explained, “and, if I can grab some sleep, I will. Otherwise I’m waiting for Missy to come back.”

“How is that going?” Badger asked, a note of amusement in his tone.

“You mean with Missy? It’s going fine. Why?” he asked.

“Oh, just checking.”

“Are you trying to be a matchmaker or what?” Trey asked as he realized what Badger was implying.

“I’m not, but Kat is always trying.”

“I’m not against the idea,” Trey admitted. “It’s just definitely not on anybody’s radar right now.”

“Right, and Kat would say that’s the way it should be.” With that, he ended the call.

Trey stared down at his phone in confusion. A few minutes later Jackson called.

“I’m coming up to visit,” he announced, then abruptly ended the call.

Jackson didn’t give Trey a chance to say yay or nay. Regardless it would be good to see his brother, good to talk to him and to catch up. Trey had arrived in town and then had been busy elsewhere ever since. It took about twenty minutes before Jackson appeared, and, when he did show, he had coffee in a travel cup and a brown paper bag for Trey.

Trey smiled and asked, “Did Elizabeth send you?”

“She hardly sent me,” he replied, “but, once I told her where I was going, she packed you some things.”

Trey smiled and thanked him. “I would never say no to that.”

“Who would? She’s one hell of a cook,” Jackson boasted with a smile. “It would be good if you settled down and found yourself a good woman too.”

“That would be nice,” Trey joked, “though it would be pretty tough to find one as great as Elizabeth.”

“Oh, you might be surprised,” Jackson muttered, with a knowing smile. He walked over to stand at the foot of Silas’s hospital bed. “God, it’s terrible to see him like this.”

“I know. He’s always been so vibrant and alive—always just a little bit larger-than-life.”

Jackson shook his head. “He hadn’t calmed down much either, still the bragger when it came to the fishing derby.”

“That is sure a theme around here. Does it bother people enough to be a problem?”

“I don’t know,” he said, turning to face Trey. “What makes you think it’s anything?”

“I don’t know if it is anything,” he stated, “but comments about the fishing derby keep coming up, making me wonder if that’s what’s behind all this.”

“It would blow me away to think that anything to do with fishing would be enough to kill somebody.… Are you sure you’ve checked out all the other avenues?”

“Of course. I’ve checked as many as I can,” Trey replied with a groan. “We’re still waiting on information on a bunch of them.”

“Of course,” Jackson agreed. “It does take time, doesn’t it?”

Trey nodded. “Have you ever known Silas to get upset about anything?”

“Only about his daughter, if anybody would bad-mouth her or would doubt her abilities, anything along the line of somebody saying something crude or disrespectful. As any good father, he wouldn’t tolerate that.”

“We did wonder if she could be part of or even all of the issue here, but we don’t have any way of knowing that. Plus, we haven’t found anything to support it.”

“She was going out with that one doctor here.”

Trey nodded. “Charles. Right. We talked to him, checked him out, but I don’t really see him as being a viable candidate.”

At that, Jackson looked over at him with a note of amusement. “Maybe you should look at it as a jealous boyfriend, and you might see things differently.”

“Meaning?” Trey asked, a challenge in his tone.

“If you look at all the men as just suspects, it’s one thing. However, if you allow yourself to understand what it would be like if Missy were going out with one of those men, you might understand her father’s side of it a little more.”

“I’m not trying to not understand that,” Trey said, frowning at his brother, clearly puzzled.

“Let me just say that everybody seems to think that you two are sweet on each other.”

He stared at his brother and shrugged. “I like her a lot, but it’s not as if I’ve had ten minutes to even consider anything past the chaos right now.”

“Right, and I think that’s probably why people are smiling about the whole thing,” Jackson shared, “because it seems as if you just arrived in town, and already there you are, with the belle of the ball.”

“What do you mean?” Trey asked.

“She’s considered quite a prize around here. Not only is she a vet, but her father is a vet with a busy clinic. I don’t know whether they have any money or not, but people seem to think they do. Apparently Silas also inherited quite a bit from his wife when she died.”

Trey frowned at him. “Do you know that for sure?”

“No, I sure don’t,” he admitted cheerfully. “It’s just… rumors.”

“Rumors can be deadly.”

“They sure can,” he agreed, pointing at Trey. “You need to keep an open mind.”

“Do you really think that Silas would say or do something that would upset somebody enough to do this?”

“I don’t know,” Jackson replied, “but, should Silas die, who stands to inherit all the money that everyone thinks he has? Think about it. Odds are, Missy does, and, if Silas is gone, and if she’s got the practice to take on, she also gets not only the house but the clinic and also the inheritance from her mother, plus the inheritance from her father on top of that.”

Trey stared at his brother. “I wonder if that could be what’s behind all this,” he murmured.

Jackson shrugged. “I don’t know, but you may have to dig a little deeper. Just ensure you really find out what’s going on because, whenever money is involved,… we both know it can get ugly really fast.”

“I understand,” Trey muttered, turning to stare at Silas. “And often in a very devious way.”

“I prefer that greed concept to the idea of a fishing derby gone wrong,” Jackson noted cheerfully.

Trey rolled his eyes at that. “I would really hate to think it had anything to do with a fishing derby too. Yet this is all so criminal at this point in time that there could be multiple layers of crimes. And the inheritance theory doesn’t quite work, since, if Silas has no business partner, and he dies, Missy inherits.”

“It does clear the road though, doesn’t it? There would be an awful lot of people knocking on her door, and, if you’re sitting there, waiting in the wings—”

“People will just look at me suspiciously,” he pointed out.

“I’m not so sure that they aren’t already,” Jackson murmured. “You weren’t even here when they turned up missing, so that’s in your favor. Yet you somehow miraculously found them,” he pointed out, his tone thick with irony. When Trey sat back and stared at him in shock, Jackson shrugged. “No, I’m not saying that’s what people are saying,” he clarified, “but you also know what people in this town are like.”

“Christ,” he muttered, as he stared at Jackson. “I hadn’t expected that comment.”

“Nope, and I’m only bringing it up because, while you’re looking at all kinds of options here, I want to ensure my brother isn’t the one getting skewered at the end of the day.”

“Jesus,” Trey muttered, “no way anybody could think I’m behind all this. I just arrived in town.”

“And you have that alibi, which is a good thing,” Jackson noted, with a shrug. “But still, the fact is, after all the days and days of searching, suddenly you turned up and went out one day and brought them home, as if you knew exactly where to go.… Anyway, I just wanted to keep you informed as to what’s been playing on the local jungle drums.”

“Keep me informed? Don’t you mean, me keeping you informed?” he teased, with a headshake. “Although it does sound as if the gossip mill is working overtime.”

“The gossip mill is always working overtime around here. Small town, remember?”

“And, in this case, a prominent figure, missing people who suddenly get found, and now another attempt on Silas’s life,” Trey recapped.

“I just don’t want anything to happen to you. I would love it if you would consider moving back home again,” Jackson shared, “and I don’t want this mess to tank your view of our town. I don’t know who’s doing this shit, and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s complete BS. Still, I do want you to feel comfortable enough to come home and to stay home. Especially now with Elizabeth pregnant, there isn’t anything quite like family. Ours has had some issues to deal with, and it sure would be nice if we could pull it together and be a close-knit family for a change.” With that said, Jackson turned and walked out.

Trey thought about his brother’s words. It’s not that they didn’t have a close-knit family, but Trey had been gone a lot. It was hard to be very close if you were never in town, missing the big milestones in other people’s lives. At the same time, they’d missed out on the milestones in his life too.

He would potentially consider staying here, and, with that, he returned his gaze to Silas, his eyelids still closed. “You would be one of the reasons for me coming home again,” he muttered, “but, for that, you have to get your ass out of that damn bed.” It almost seemed as if Silas had shifted at his words. Trey smiled and walked over to the edge of the hospital bed, then stared down at Silas and asked, “What the hell happened, man?”

“What are you doing so close to him?” a nurse snapped, glaring at him from the open doorway.

Trey crossed his arms over his chest and glared right back at her. “What are you doing here?” he asked in a snappish tone.

She frowned at him in astonishment. “I am one of the nurses.”

“Sure, and what is it that you think you’re coming here to do?”

“What? You’ll stop me from doing my job now?” she asked in a testy voice.

“Maybe. I’m not sure where that attitude of yours is coming from, but you can bet I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like yours either,” she stated, glaring at him. “This used to be a nice quiet hospital.”

“Until when?” he asked, puzzled at her hostility. “All I’m seeing from you is a whole lot of anger.”

“Sure, I don’t like dogs. I don’t like anything about this scenario.” Her face softened as she looked at Silas.

Then he realized that was the problem. She had feelings for him and didn’t like to see him this way, but nobody likely knew all that. “If you’re so sweet on Silas, why are you being so ugly about it?” he asked, bringing it right out into the open. When she immediately glared at him, he shrugged. “It’s obvious from the look on your face that you don’t like seeing him this way.”

“Of course I don’t like it. He’s a good man. He deserves more than being struck down like this.”

“I agree,” Trey noted, “but that still doesn’t match your anger.”

She stiffened and shrugged. “It’s none of your damn business either.”

“Maybe, but I won’t let you have anything to do with him if I think you’ll hurt him.”

She stared at him in astonishment. “You think I’ll hurt him?”

“I don’t understand why you come in here with that chip on your shoulder. After two attacks on Silas already, you can bet that I won’t let another one happen.”

“What do you mean, another attack?” she asked, the fear in her gaze obvious, as she turned to look at the man in the hospital bed. “What do you mean? What do you mean by attack?”

“An attack,” he repeated calmly, studying her and wondering at her reaction. She backed up several steps. “Maybe you know something about it, considering the expression on your face.”

She gave him a terrified look, then turned and raced from the room. Curious, he stepped into the hallway to see where she went, and, sure enough, she headed to the nearest staircase, the same one the attacker had used. So, was she a nurse or not?

Just as he weighed his options to stay or to go after her, another nurse walked toward him. “Did you see her?” he asked.

The nurse frowned at him, surprised. “Who? Mildred? Yeah, I sure did. She looked upset. What happened?” she asked, turning to eye him suspiciously.

He groaned. “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “Mildred looked pretty upset at seeing Silas here on the bed, and I mentioned the attack that happened recently.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. She’s pretty sweet on Silas and always has been. I’m Celia, by the way.”

“Trey.”

“ Aah , the one everyone’s been talking about.”

Trey rolled his eyes, as he steered the discussion back on topic. “So, back to Mildred, that’s interesting.” He turned to face Celia. “She bolted out of here, as if she would be accused of the attack. What’s up with that?”

“Chances are she’s thinking about her damn son,” Celia shared. “ Keith . That guy’s a piece of work.”

“In what way?”

“He’s got a record longer than my arm,” she shared, as she walked into the room with Trey.

“And, if you’re here now to check on Silas, why would Mildred come here just a couple minutes ago?”

Celia shook her head. “I don’t know. Did she come in?”

He nodded. “She did and was instantly mad because I was here.”

“Honestly, I have no idea. I’m here doing rounds. I don’t know why she would be in here, especially since she was off shift.” She frowned, then checked her watch and shrugged. “I think she was off shift about an hour ago, but she’s been sweet on him for quite a while. Maybe she just popped in for a visit, saw you were here, and wasn’t sure what to do.”

“I wonder if she’s popped in before.”

“Oh, she has been here often because I’ve come in, found her sitting at his side—only if his daughter wasn’t here, though Missy could very well have been sleeping at the time. We’re used to moving through the night in a stealthy way, so we don’t wake up people,” she explained, with a bright smile in his direction.

He filed away that information because that made sense, and it wasn’t their intention to wake up every sleeping family member who might be here. Still, it was definitely not something he had really considered. When Celia was about to leave, he asked casually, “What do you know about her son?”

“Not a whole lot, just that he’s got a rap sheet that’s supposedly pretty long. My boyfriend is a deputy in town here, so I get tidbits of information, but not much,” she shared. “I don’t really want to know much. I live on the healing side of life and don’t want to hear the details of all the shit people do to each other. I see the results day in and day out.”

“I can understand the need to distance yourself.”

“It’s one of the reasons I moved here,” she said with a smile. “It was a small town, a lot easier pace, and a whole lot less violence. I used to live in Chicago, and I don’t want to go back there.” And, with that, she was gone, leaving him with something else to think about.

Not long afterward, he heard a woof from the door and turned to see Schooner racing toward him. Schooner jumped up on him and gave him a hero’s welcome. Trey laughed and tucked him up close, but it was impossible to hold the wiggling mass. Trey turned to see Missy standing there, holding what could be food. He smiled at her. “I’m not sure whether you look better or not.”

“Right, and I appreciate the fact that you didn’t lie about it,” she noted, with a grimace. “I know I look like shit.”

“No, you don’t look like shit, but you do look as if you’ve had a difficult few days. You could use some more sleep and some real rest.”

“Yeah, that’s code for I look like shit ,” she declared.

He just gave her a frown and shook his head. “You’re always beautiful, so don’t even go there.”

She laughed. “I’m not fishing for compliments, and I tried to sleep. I did get a few hours, but then I was awake again, and that was it. My mind was up, wondering if everything here was okay.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I did have one question that escaped my mind before, but did your father have any relationships, any girlfriends, past girlfriends, anything like that?”

She shrugged. “Not now. He did at one time, but it didn’t work out.”

“Who was it?”

Missy stared at him curiously. “You can’t think she had anything to do with this.”

“I don’t know who may have had anything to do with this, but, if you say Mildred, we need to talk a little more.”

Her eyebrows shot up, and she nodded. “It was Mildred. Why?” He explained about the visit and the woman taking off in a rush. “Well,… I know my dad was pretty upset about it, but I don’t know all the details. I just know that they did break up and that he was the one who initiated it.”

“Sounds as if she still may be in love with him.”

“He’s a good man,” she said, her gaze turning to her cot, even as her feet carried her in that direction.

“So, maybe we’re not looking in the right direction,” he began. “Is there any chance that Mildred might have had something to do with this?”

Missy immediately shook her head. “Mildred can’t stand water and doesn’t know anything about boats. However, if you are talking about her son, Keith, that might be a different story.”

Trey stared at her and asked, “What about her son?”

“I just know that he has a criminal record of some sort,” she replied. “Yet I can’t imagine that he would have anything to do with this.”

“Why not? Why do you say that?”

Missy frowned at him and then sighed. “I guess I don’t have an answer for that. Feel free to talk to him.”

“I will talk to him, so thanks.” He got up and took a lazy stretch. “The nurses were just here, both of them,” he noted, with a laugh. “Are you okay if I go out and do a little bit of reconnaissance?”

She checked her watch. “It is seven in the morning. So you are good to go.”

“My brother’s been here, not to mention a bunch of other people.”

“Sure, go ahead, but I brought some food, if you want something first.”

“Maybe.” He stared at the bag. “What did you bring?” he asked, with a cheeky grin.

She laughed, opened it up, and said, “Muffins and coffee.”

“I’ll take both,” he replied immediately. Smiling, he accepted the goodies.

“You don’t really think this has something to do with my dad’s love life, do you? It feels as if we’re just fishing now.”

He swallowed the muffin in two bites. “That’s exactly what we’re doing,” he admitted, “because, somewhere along the line, something happened, and it’s something that none of us know about. So, whoever is doing this isn’t even worried about getting caught because, as far as they’re concerned, they’re completely under the radar. We need to shine a light on it and figure out just who is doing this and what it’s about.”

“If you can figure it out,” Missy replied, with a shrug, “more power to you. I’ve racked my brain until I gave myself a massive headache, and I still have no clue.”