Heading toward the hotel across the street where his car was parked, Jake explained, “I was scared that Glynis might be going up to Vernon and getting herself in trouble.”

“What’s going on with you and Glyn?”

“Nothing,” Jake said. Then he added, “She’s got this notion that Sinclair was murdered and she wants to prove it. I’m trying to stop her from making a fool of herself—or worse.”

Younger looked very unconvinced.

“Look, Tim, I’m not trying to get between you two.”

“You’d better not.”

Jake raised both his hands, palms out. “Believe me, Tim, I’m not.”

But Jake knew he was lying.

*   *   *

Leaving a decidedly suspicious Tim Younger at the town square, Jake hurriedly checked out of the Lignite hotel, dumped his travel bag on the back bench of his Mustang, and peeled out of the parking lot, heading back to the capital and Glynis’s apartment.

It was after eleven o’clock by the time he nosed the convertible into the quiet, tree-lined street where Glynis’s apartment building stood. He found a curbside parking space and hurried across the street to her building.

His insides were quivering. You’re worried about her, he told himself. About her safety. But a voice in his head countered, Who’re you trying to kid? You care about her. You want her.

She’s going with Tim, he told himself as he pushed the buzzer for her apartment. She doesn’t have any interest in me.

But you have an interest in her.

Yeah, he admitted to himself. Fat lot of good it’s doing me.

“Jake?” Glynis’s voice sounded harsh, grating in the intercom’s tiny speaker.

“It’s me,” he said.

The front door buzzed. Jake rushed in and loped up the stairs. Glynis was at her half-open door, a questioning smile on her face.

“Jake, you look as though you’re being chased by the whole Apache nation,” she said, pulling the door wide so he could step into her apartment.

“I…” Jake felt relieved, flustered, yearning, all at the same time. “I was worried about you.”

Glynis closed her door and eyed Jake warily. The same slinky gray cat also stared at Jake briefly, then walked regally into the kitchen. Glynis was wearing a shapeless T-shirt several sizes too big for her and baggy sweat pants. Her hair was pinned up, off her neck. Her feet were bare. She looked beautiful.

“Worried about me?”

“About you running up to Vernon. You’d be heading into a nest of snakes. Poisonous snakes.”

She shook her head. “I don’t care, Jake. They murdered Arlan and I’m going to prove it.”

“You loved him enough to get yourself killed?”

Glynis looked away for a moment, then straightened up and admitted, “Yes. I did.”

“Getting yourself killed isn’t going to help him.”

“They wouldn’t hurt me,” she said. “They can’t afford another dead body on their hands.”