Page 77 of Daybreak

“You don’t have to get out,” she said.

“Oh, but I do. It’s bad manners not to walk your girl safely back inside.”

“Okay then, but if Gene starts turning the porch light on and off, that means no more kissing in his presence. I thought he was going to faint where he sat.”

Gunner’s eyes narrowed. “That was just a male reaction to seeing another man intruding in his territory. He is the only guy in the room, right?”

She laughed. “I never thought of it that way.”

“I’ll get your things for you. He’s already seen the light. He’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

And Gunner was right. Gene was the first to get up to welcome them back. “All went well, I assume.”

Gunner nodded. “Holly knows her business. It was a real lesson in organization just watching her work. I think the only thing she didn’t photograph was me.”

“Oh, I have a couple. You just weren’t looking,” she said.

He shook his head. “I should have known. Be safe going home later, darlin’. We’ll talk tonight, okay?”

“Definitely okay,” Holly said.

He brushed a quick kiss across her lips, then tipped his hat to the women. “Ladies… Mr. Morris… Pleasure to do business with you,” he said, and then he was gone.

Leigh sighed. “I hate you, Holly Dillon.”

Holly wiggled her eyebrows. “Jealousy is so high school, girl.”

“How did you guys meet?” Josie asked.

“We didn’t meet. We grew up in the same little town in West Texas, but with a five-year difference in age. When I was twelve, I was the bat girl for the boys’ high school baseball team. I had such a crush, and he was so sweet about it, tolerating a little girl’s fantasy.”

“Does he have a brother?” Leigh asked.

“He has two. They’re just as hunky as he is, and both married with children,” Holly said.

Leigh sighed. “Drat.”

Holly laughed. “Seriously, Leigh? You’re married.”

“Details, details,” Leigh said and got up to refill her coffee.

Holly was excited to be doing something besides digging through old deeds at courthouses as she sat down at her desk. The first thing she did was call their appraiser and an inspector and give them the address of Gunner’s house.

She told them both the same thing. “This one is kind of a rush. If you can move this appraisal up your agenda, it would be appreciated. The owner is moving back to West Texas to be closer to the elders in his family.” They responded in kind with moving it to the top of their lists.

After that was settled, she stretched the tense muscles in her shoulders, finger-combed the curls out of her face, then reached for the camera, pulled the SIM card, and began uploading the photos into her system.

* * *

Now that the FBI had taken over the evidence from the suicide scene, they were running two connected cases. Rounding up the people on Dixon’s informant list was part of their ongoing connection to the murders of their agents and witness, and re-examining the facts of Burgess Dixon’s death played into it.

It was protocol to verify what they’d been given, and they were in the process of running their own set of labs for the collected evidence. Everything panned out except the video from the security system.

Colin Decker, the tech guru who was viewing the security footage, soon noticed something funky about the last visible images and decided to run it through a data recovery program.

It took him the better part of two days of cleanup, but by the time he was finished, what was revealed blew the suicide theory out of the water.

The hair was standing up on the back of his neck as he picked up the phone and buzzed his boss.