Read Online The Stranger's Sin by Darlene Gardner - Free Book Online Page B

trailhead, turned around and headed back toward Indigo Springs.
    He’d planned to spend the rest of today patrolling his territory for illegal hunting and fishing activity, but that would have to wait.
    Kelly Delaney was reportedly questioning people in Indigo Springs who knew Mandy, which spelled trouble. Plenty of people were aware Mandy had left town, but precious few realized Chase had no idea where she’d gone. Once word spread that her whereabouts were unknown, he’d no longer be able to justify withholding news of Toby’s abandonment to DPW.
    He could hardly defend his actions now, even though dread filled him at the prospect of losing Toby and his father kept insisting it was too soon to alert the authorities.
    This morning when he’d said goodbye to Kelly, he’d given up hope she had any information that could helphim find Mandy. After a phone call from Sara Brenneman, who’d recently become engaged to Chase’s friend Michael Donahue, he wasn’t so sure.
    “Something’s not right with her,” Sara told him after reporting Kelly had paid her a visit. “Why would she go to such lengths to return a necklace?”
    That question had raised Chase’s initial suspicions, which he’d let fade when Kelly took over during his father’s crisis. She’d been clearheaded, caring and competent, the perfect antidote to Chase’s panic.
    He’d discovered something else about Kelly the morning after the wild ride to the hospital emergency room—he enjoyed being around her. She had an understated sense of humor that he found attractive and a nurturing quality that Mandy lacked.
    She’d proven he could trust her with Toby, so he’d allowed himself to believe she was who she said she was: A woman doing a good deed after a chance encounter with Mandy.
    Sara’s phone call had resurrected his doubts—and his questions. For the life of him, Chase still couldn’t come up with a reason for Kelly to lie.
    After he found a coveted parking spot on Main Street, he placed a quick call to one of his buddies in the police department, asking him to find out what he could about a Kelly Delaney from Schenectady, New York.
    Then he went in search of Kelly. He found her on a bar stool at the Blue Haven Pub, which Sara had tipped him off as her destination. She looked like an all-American girl in a blue-jean skirt and gauzy yellow top, her thick brown hair loose around her shoulders. Shewas chatting with Annie Sublinski, who ran an outfit down by the river that offered whitewater, biking and hiking excursions.
    The booths and tables were filling up, a sign that the owners of the pub had made a good decision to open the bar for lunch during tourist season. Only Kelly, Annie and two men holding a loud, not entirely friendly conversation had opted to sit at the bar. The men looked to be in their twenties with identical shaved heads. The thinner of the two sported a goatee while his buddy had a chin-strap beard.
    Chase slipped onto the stool next to the women. “Hi, ladies.”
    “Hi, Chase,” Annie said easily.
    Kelly shifted her attention from Annie, her mouth and eyes rounding. Was that guilt he glimpsed in her expression?
    “Chase,” she said. “I thought you were working.”
    “Just taking a short break.” He looked around her to Annie. “How about you, Annie? Isn’t this high season? How can you tear yourself away from business in the middle of the afternoon?”
    “Desperation. I’m short guides this weekend so stopped by to rope Jill into doing a run for me.” She nodded to the bartender, a young woman with short, curly black hair who was delivering another round of drinks to the two men at the opposite end of the bar. “I’ve been short-handed since Kenny Grieb went back to being an auto mechanic.”
    “Annie’s so desperate she even asked if I was the outdoors type,” Kelly supplied.
    “You never know when you’re going to find another—” Annie stopped talking in midsentence, her face growing pale, her hand