Especially not until he found Ralph’s grandson or granddaughter. If there was one. Just because Dave had mentioned ten years after the fact that he thought he might have fathered a kid, didn’t necessarily mean it was true. Luke could be chasing after the gossamer fabric of an old man’s dreams—nothing more.

He clucked to the horse and nudged her sides. They started down the south slope.

A glint of metal flashed in the distance.

“Whoa.”

From his vantage spot on the hill, he had a full view of the Isaac Wells place. It had been unoccupied since the old guy had disappeared but it had attracted its share of curiosity seekers despite the lengths of yellow police tape that had been strung across the main gate. According to Max Renfro, the sheriff’s department was always having to run someone off the place.

Sure enough, there was a car in the drive—a convertible, he realized—and Luke felt an uneasy sensation stir in his gut. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a pair of binoculars.

Lifting the glasses to his eyes, he spied Katie Kinkaid, as big as life, climbing over the fence and ignoring not only the police tape but the No Trespassing sign posted on the gate.

Luke’s jaw grew hard as he watched her shade her eyes and peer into the windows of the dilapidated old house. Luke had never met Isaac Wells, but his mysterious disappearance a while back was well-known. So what was Katie Kinkaid doing, nosing around the neglected spread?

“She’s a snoopy thing,” he remarked to the horse, then remembered that she was a reporter of some kind or other. She leaned over to look through one window as if she were trying to see beneath a half-lowered shade, and Luke’s gaze settled on her rear end, round and firm beneath her shorts. His mouth turned to sand and he suddenly felt like a schoolboy for staring at her. Who cared if she was wandering around the abandoned farm? It wasn’t any of his business.

But the rumors he’d been hearing in the taverns and coffee shops—talk of possible kidnapping, burglary and murder—cut through his mind. What if Isaac Wells had been the victim of foul play? What if he’d been killed and the murderer was still on the loose?