Met Her Match Read online

  “Nate,” Terri whispered. “We can—”

  “Yeah,” he answered as he rolled on top of her. “We can do anything. Do it all.”

  As he entered her, she felt the freest she’d felt in her lifetime. With Nate’s slow, long, deep strokes, she felt something else rise in her: hope. It was not an emotion she was familiar with. Her life had always seemed to be preordained. She had to always be good to atone for her mother’s sins. She’d had to...

  She bent her leg and pushed on Nate so he rolled onto his back, taking her with him.

  When he looked up at her face and saw the beginning of a smile, he understood. For all the tragedy of the situation, it meant he and Terri could be together. With the infidelity of the past removed from Terri’s life, all that was wrong was a broken engagement. Not a reenactment of the past, just a normal thing.

  They knew that the future belonged to them. They were conjoined beings who no longer had to face the world separately.

  They made love for an hour, until exhaustion and hunger made them stop. Nate would have to go back to the crime scene, but he needed a shower. Terri joined him. “You know I can’t resist water,” she said.

  By the time they got out, it was midmorning and Nate finally checked his phone. He had thirty-two messages—none of which he read. “I have to go,” he muttered.

  “Oh?” Terri dropped the towel to the floor. “Sure?”

  Nate stepped back to look at her nude body, rosy pink from the hot water. He remembered her long, long legs around him, her ankles on his shoulder. “I’m the sheriff now so I have to—”

  “You’re what?”

  “Jamie gave Frank a tranq and put him in the hospital, so Frank temporarily gave me his badge. I need to—”

  Terri threw open a closet door, pulled out a blue robe, put it on and headed for the kitchen. “I’ll make you a sandwich and you can eat it in the car. What’s Rowan doing to find out who...who did it?”

  Nate hastily pulled on his jeans and T-shirt. He picked up his shoes and socks and followed her to the kitchen. “Why the change of heart?”

  “I thought you were just a bystander, getting in the way of the FBI, but as sheriff they’ll have to let you in on this. You’re clever. You can figure out things.”

  Nate took a handful of corn chips. “When you thought I was a civilian, you wanted to spend the day in bed with me. But now you want me gone?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Jamie will probably release Frank today and I’ll give his badge back.”

  Terri stopped putting mayonnaise on bread and stared at him. “I retract the clever part. If you think Frank Cannon will ever take that badge back, you are dreaming. And as for getting out of the hospital, I’ll bet you twenty grand—which I don’t have—that he’s on his way to his fishing cabin—and no one, not even Dad, knows where that is. Since I won’t lose, I’ll add five to the bet that he left his phone behind so no one can reach him.”

  Nate was staring at her.

  She piled the bread high with cold cuts, tomatoes, pickles and lettuce. “You have the badge with you?”

  Silently, Nate pulled it out of his pocket and pinned it to his shirt.

  “Looks good, and you’d better get used to it.”

  “Terri,” Nate said with great patience, “I am not into law enforcement.”

  “What about your years with Kit?”

  “That was a fluke and Kit was there overseeing it all. I’m good with numbers. My degree is in business.”

  “Isn’t that what you ran away from to go with Kit? But your degree will help you organize that mess Uncle Frank has in his office. He hires secretaries but they quit because he won’t tell them anything and because he’s an all-round pain to work for.” She held out the sandwich with the bottom half wrapped in a paper towel, and a can of lemon-lime soda. “No beer on the job.” She was smiling happily.

  Nate hesitated.

  “You meet your deputies yet? Nice boys, aren’t they? Uncle Frank could never stand anyone challenging him so he tends to hire boys with no spirit. Don’t yell at them or they’ll cry.” She shoved the sandwich and drink into his hands, then got behind him and pushed him toward the door. “Go help Rowan and hire a secretary who does some work. Uncle Frank tended to hire them by how good they look in a bikini.”

  Nate stopped by his car, opened the door and started to get in. Terri was smiling at him in a way that said she was quite pleased by it all. “Actually, I did hire a secretary,” he said.

  “If it’s some beach bunny, I’ll fire her.”

  “No, she’s a friend of yours.” He got into the car and smiled back at her. “I hired Della Kissel.” When Terri’s face changed to shock, Nate closed the door and backed out of the driveway.

  The first thing Nate did when he was out of sight of the house was call Jamie and ask how Frank was doing.

  “I have no idea. The hospital said he woke up about 2:00 a.m., put his clothes on and left. Brody said Frank probably went to his fishing cabin. I left you two messages asking if you knew where he went. Where have you been all morning?”

  Nate gave a deep sigh. “Talking to someone who appears to be smarter than I am.”

  “That would be Terri. My dad said that if we men keep marrying women who are smarter than we are, how come the next generation of males isn’t any brighter?”

  Nate wanted to laugh but the way he was feeling, it seemed to be a valid question. Sheriff? He did not want to be a sheriff! “If you hear from Frank, tell him to get his butt back to Summer Hill.”

  “I will, but the rumor around town is that his cabin is in Wyoming. Rowan said he’s driving and he left his phone behind.”

  “I owe Terri twenty-five grand.” Nate’s voice was heavy.

  “Should I ask what that means?”

  “No. Definitely not. Talk to you later.” He clicked off.

  Nate hadn’t actually hired Della. He’d just entrusted her with one simple task. She was to work with Brody’s secretary, Anna, to try to find out who rented cabin twenty-six in the year Leslie Rayburn disappeared. He didn’t have any belief that the two women would be able to do it since the records kept at the lake didn’t go back that far. But maybe they could find out enough that Rowan could use the US government files to fill in the rest.

  Anna wasn’t in the office, but Brody’s door was half-open. Nate pushed it wide. Inside, the room was in chaos. File drawers had been opened and emptied, with all the contents on the floor. Hundreds of papers were taped to the walls. Sitting on a rug in the middle of the mess, her usually tidy hair tangled, her clothes rumpled, was Della.

  Nate’s first reaction was to yell. But his years with the foreign service had taught him to stamp the anger down and think before letting go.

  As he calmed himself and looked about, he saw order in the chaos. Each of the many piles of folders had a piece of paper on top and a character description. Troublemakers. Suspiciously Nice. Sneaks. Adulterers. Flirts. Teenage Misfits. Hiding secrets. Former Big Shots. Spies. Good People.

  There were about twenty piles, each with multiple files under them. He noted that the Good People stack contained only three folders.

  Della looked up at Nate standing in the doorway. “Brody may be as beautiful as a Greek god, but he can’t organize anything.”

  Nate sat down on a wooden chair, one of the few empty surfaces in the room. “I think most people put files in order by numbers. Dates or account numbers, something like that.”

  “What use is that?”

  Nate could see that she was genuinely asking a question. He wanted to answer it but damned if he could think of an answer. “Did you find the man?”

  “Oh sure. I found him two hours after you asked me to. Six phone calls, a computer search with a bit of a hack, three more calls, and I got him. He—” She looked around her, searching for s