"Bye." Carrie shifted her toolbox to the other hand and went back into the house, deciding to check the heat pump later. When she looked out a front window just a few minutes afterward, it was to see Sam trudging down the driveway toward the road.
Carrie watched, frowning, until she could no longer see the other woman.
Every ounce of her common sense told Carrie to shrug off the "warning" and go about her business normally. She was rather on the fence when it came to believing in psychic abilities but was definitely skeptical of carnival fortune-tellers and was not at all inclined to believe this one.
But.
It wouldn't hurt, she thought, to take a few sensible precautions. Lock her doors, be wary. Because Mitch Callahan had, after all, been kidnapped and murdered, and she would never have picked him to be a target for something like that.
So Carrie locked her doors and went on to other things, thinking about the warning for a good hour or two before it faded from her memory.
"I guess you guys see a lot of rooms like this one," Detective Lindsay Graham said to the two federal agents.
Lucas Jordan glanced around at the functional if uninspiring conference room of the Clayton County Sheriff's Department, exchanged glances with his partner, then said, "A few, yeah. They always seem to look the same; only the view outside the windows changes. If there is a view."
This room had no view, since it was central in the building, but it was well-lit and spacious and seemed to contain all the necessary furniture, equipment, and supplies.
"We haven't generated a whole lot of paperwork on the Callahan investigation so far," Detective Graham said, indicating the file folders on the big table. "And all of it after the fact, since Mrs. Callahan only called us in when the kidnapper got his ransom and her husband never showed. Statements from her, his coworkers, the hiker who found the body; the medical examiner's report; our forensics unit's report."
"Since you only got word he was missing on Saturday, and the body was found Sunday morning, I'd say you had accomplished quite a bit," Jaylene Avery said. "I'm Jay, by the way."
"Thanks, I'm Lindsay." She barely hesitated. "We don't have a clue who the kidnapper is, dammit. The boss says you guys believe it could be a serial deal?"
"Could be," Jordan told her.
"And you've been tracking him for a year and a half?"
"Don't rub it in, please," Jay requested humorously. "We've been one step behind him all the way, and Luke is taking it personally."
Eyeing the fair and decidedly good-looking Jordan, Lindsay took note of that very intense gaze and said, "Yeah, he looks the type to take it personally. Does he make lists? The sheriff makes lists, and I hate it."
"He swears he doesn't, but I don't believe him."
"I'm still in the room, ladies," Jordan said, sitting down at the conference table and selecting a file folder.
"He's also a workaholic," Jay confided, ignoring his comment. "In the four years I've been his partner, not one vacation. Not one."
"I went to Canada last year," Jordan objected mildly.
"That was a law-enforcement seminar, Luke. And you ended up spending nearly a week helping the RCMP locate a missing teenager."
"They asked for my help. I could hardly say no. And I came back rested, didn't I?"
"You came back with a broken arm."
"But rested."
Jay sighed. "An arguable point."
Lindsay shook her head. "Does anybody ever ask if you two are an old married couple?"
"Occasionally," Jay said. "But I always tell them I wouldn't have him on a platter. In addition to his very irritating perfectionism and workaholic nature, he's got one of those dark and stormy pasts that would frighten any sensible woman out of her wits."
Jordan lifted an eyebrow and was clearly about to speak when they all heard Sheriff Metcalf's voice approaching. He sounded a bit like a bear somebody was poking with a sharp and annoying stick.
"I don't know why the hell you've got the nerve to be surprised I'd want to talk to you again. You came to me last week, remember?"
"For all the good it did." The woman's voice wasn't exactly bitter, but it had an edge to it.
Lindsay happened to be looking at Lucas Jordan's face, and as the unseen woman spoke, she saw it change. He seemed almost to flinch, a momentary surprise and something much stronger tightening his features. And then he was utterly expressionless.
Interested, Lindsay turned her gaze to the door in time to see Sheriff Metcalf come in, followed by a slender woman of medium height with extremely dark eyes and black hair in a short, no-fuss hairstyle.
She stopped in the doorway, her unreadable dark gaze going immediately to Jordan. As though, Lindsay thought, she was not only not surprised, as he had been, but had fully expected him to be there.
He, however, got in the first jab.
"I see the circus is in town," he drawled, leaning back in his chair as he looked across the room at her.
Perhaps oddly, she smiled, and her voice was dry when she said, "It's a carnival, as you well know. Hey, Luke. Long time no see."
"Samantha."
Metcalf was the one who was surprised. "You two know each other?"
"Once upon a time," she replied, her gaze still locked with Jordan's. "Obviously, he was… slumming… when we met."
Jordan was the first to look away, his mouth twisting slightly.
It was his partner who said casually, "Hey, Samantha."
"Jay."
"You been in town long?"
"Couple weeks. We're at the fairgrounds for another two." Her dark gaze fixed on Lindsay, and she inclined her head politely. "Detective Graham."
Lindsay nodded but remained silent. She had been with the sheriff when Samantha Burke had shown up here at the station early last week, and her disbelief-like Metcalf's-had been just this side of hostile. She felt her face heating up now as she remembered that scorn.
Misplaced scorn, as it turned out.
Because the carnival "mystic" had tried to warn them, and they hadn't listened.
And Mitchell Callahan had died.
CHAPTER 2
Metcalf was frowning as he looked from the federal agent to the carnival fortune-teller, and he didn't try to hide his unhappiness, uncertainty, and frustration with the situation.
She didn't let it show, but Samantha could sympathize.
To Jordan, his tone not quite questioning, Metcalf said, "She came to us last week and said a man was going to be kidnapped. Didn't know his name, but gave us a damned good physical description of Mitchell Callahan."
"Naturally," Samantha said, "they didn't believe me. Until his wife called in to report it late Saturday. Then they came straight back to me, of course. Filled with questions and suspicions."
The sheriff's frown deepened to a scowl as he stared at her. "And I would have had your ass behind bars if so many of your fellow carnies-who also all had alibis-hadn't sworn by all they supposedly hold dear that you'd been there and in full view virtually all day on Thursday when Callahan disappeared."
"Miles away and with my car being worked on here in town by your own mechanic," Samantha reminded him. "I think somebody might have noticed if I'd ridden one of the ponies down Main Street, don't you think?"
"You're not the only one of that bunch with a car."
"Nobody else loaned me a car or found theirs missing," she reminded him coolly. "I was at the carnival every day until after midnight, from Tuesday afternoon after I left here until you guys showed up there on Saturday to… talk… to me."
Obviously trying to be fair and impartial-at least now- Lindsay said, "Golden isn't a regular stop for the carnival, and we couldn 't find a single connection between any of them and anyone in town. Plus, none of them had been in the area long enough to know Callahan's habits well enough to pinpoint the best time to grab him, and there wasn't a sign of the ransom money anywhere near the carnival. There was absolutely no evidence to indicate that either she or any of the other carnies could have been involved."