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Whitney was still talking as Cassie rolled up her window and eased backward, certain her back tire would roll over the toe of the big galoot’s boot. Well, tough. She kept reversing. At the last second the cameraman moved slightly away, and she kept right on backing up until she could maneuver her car around the bastard. “Idiot,” she muttered under her breath as she tore out of the lot.

She didn’t know if she was talking about Whitney Stone, the man with the shoulder cam, or herself.Advertisement

CHAPTER 14

“I, um . . . I don’t suppose there’s any word. About Allie Kramer, I mean.” Her eyes wide, the girl behind the antique cash register at the hardware store looked up at Trent expectantly. She had layered red hair, a turned up nose spattered with freckles and braces, and she smiled a bit anxiously as she handed him his sack of nails, his receipt, and change.

“I haven’t heard.” He stood on the worn floorboards at the counter in Bart’s Hardware, an iconic Falls Crossing establishment that had sat on Main Street for over a hundred years. Inside, labyrinthine corridors were lined with shelves that climbed to the ceiling, accessed by dusty, rolling ladders and holding containers of just about any hardware known to man in the past century or two. Some of the tools on display were probably older than the gray-haired men who still played checkers, poker, and traded insults around a wood stove in the barnlike building’s basement.

“So, you don’t know if she’s okay? She’s like a local celebrity, y’know?”

He did. Oh, how he did.

“I mean like a really big star. From here! Can you believe it? Falls Crossing?” She sighed. “Nothing ever happens here, but Allie Kramer grew up here, went to the same schools I did. You know, Harrington? I probably, like, sat in the same desk she did. I saw her picture in one of the old yearbooks. It’s soooo awesome.”

The girl was practically swooning, which was ridiculous when considering Allie Kramer’s personality, which, of course, was at odds with any of her on-screen personas. Allie Kramer was not like any of the heroines she portrayed so convincingly on-screen.

“Yeah,” he agreed, scooping up the change she’d laid on the scarred counter. “But really, I don’t know anything about what happened to her.” He folded the ones into his wallet.

“I thought. I mean, I heard from like everybody, that you’re married to . . .” Her eyebrows pulled together in confusion as if maybe her information was faulty. “You were married to her sister, I thought. Casey.”

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“Cassie.”

Her head bobbed in agreement. “Cassie. She was in some movies, too, I think. I never saw any of them.”

Not a lot of people had, he thought.

“I watched Whitney Stone, y’know? She’s reporting on it on TV, but—” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “She didn’t really say anything. So you don’t know what happened to her? Allie, I mean.” Disappointment clouded her big eyes.

How many times did he have to say it? He slid his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans. “That’s right.” He smiled through clenched teeth. The girl at the counter meant no harm—she was just curious—but he was sick to death of questions about Allie’s disappearance, his estranged wife, her mental condition, and the whole damned circus surrounding both of them. For the love of Christ, he’d even gotten calls from the press himself, none of which he’d taken, but they bothered him just the same.

It was like stepping into a field of nettles with no way out . . . you just kept getting stung over and over again.

Worse yet, he’d fought his gut instinct to find Cassie—take the next flight or drive the whole damned sixteen hours straight to LA. He was still fighting it.

Carrying his small sack of roofing staples and nails, he made his way out of the store. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath as the door closed sharply behind him.

The air outside was heavy with the threat of more rain, gray clouds hanging low. Whitecaps churned on the dark water of the Columbia, while the streets of Falls Crossing were still wet and shimmering from an earlier cloudburst. Trent turned his collar to the wind and made his way to his truck, where Hud was waiting. Bouncing on the driver’s seat, his head out the open window, the dog spied Trent and let out an enthusiastic yip. pqdm.com