Page 12 of Cowboy Mountain Man

Hope exhales. “So the key was mostly decorative.”

“I’ll have the owner replace it,” I say.

Ellis looks at me. “I’m going to check the logging road. There’s another way out beyond the barn.”

“Let me know what you find.”

He nods and goes to his SUV. Hope watches him leave. Then turns toward the house. “Tablet. Measuring kit. Five minutes.”

“Stay beside me.”

“I was planning to.”

I open the front door. Clouds have moved across the sun, and the house feels cool, the entryway dim enough to squint in.

Hope stops just inside.

“What?”

She points down the hall. “The study door.”

It’s closed.

“You left it open?”

“Yes.”

I listen. Nothing.

I move ahead of her.

“Harlan—”

“Right here.”

She stays where she is.

I open the study door and check behind it, beneath the desk, and the small closet beside the shelves. Empty. “Come in.”

She goes straight to the desk.

“My tablet was here.”

I look at the clean rectangle in the dust. It’s empty now. “Could you have put it somewhere else?”

“No.”

She checks beneath the desk anyway, then opens her camera bag.

I scan the shelves. The desk drawers. The window. “Hope.”

She looks up.

I point. Her tablet sits on the windowsill, propped upright against the glass.

She goes still. “That’s not where I left it.”

“Figured that.”