Page 21 of The Secrets She Keeps

Daniel had called her the next day to tell her he had changed his mind—it would be paid leave.Three weeks of no work and it had beenpaid.She’d been happyto be suspended after that. She had thanked him, after all. She had made plans for her unexpected little vacation—including spending time with her sisters and her little girls and her nieces and nephews.

Until that asshole had shown up with neworders. Ruining her plans once again. Damn that man.

Heather wasn’t exactly stupid.

He was trying to get her far from home. To make her more vulnerable, maybe? Her stomach tightened when she looked at the three girls with her now.

She definitely didn’t trust Daniel McKellen one bit.

She should have been left alone with her family to stew over her actions that had gotten her into trouble in the first place. To hover over Hope when her baby sister finally got out of the hospital, to come up with a plan for her family going forward to help them all deal with the inevitable publicity that had followed Hope getting shot. Publicity—and trauma.

Didn’t they already haveenoughtrauma after what Eastman had done? Now they had to add this, as well? How much more could her family take?

She was being punished, damn it. Heather had intended to enjoy it.

But when the chief of the TSP showed up on your doorstep, your commander next to him, and told you that you’d drawn the short straw on flying stealthily to Wyoming—you did what you had to do. They hadn’t liked it when she’d pointed out she was on suspension, had no babysitter, and was a nursing mother who couldn’t just go to Wyoming for four days to meet with some sheriff up there over some drug case she wasn’t even assigned to, and since the men involved had shot her baby sister, never would be assigned to…ever. She couldn’t even put her nameon any evidence or report they found up there.

What was she supposed to do,pumpbreastmilkin the middle of this little meeting in Wyoming and express mail it back to Texas?

She’d asked those two gentlemen that very question—as sweetly as she could. She’d had the breast pump in her hand when she’d answered the damned door.

Heather hadn’t been able to resist waving it lightly under McKellen’s nose.

As she’d waited.

The men in her living room had just stared at her for the longest time after she’d asked that. Once McKellen had realizedjust what she had been holding, his entire face had turned so red that it still made her want to laugh when she remembered it.

Apparently, she’d stumped them on that one.

Then they had told her they’d handle everything after that.

Daniel McKellen and his pals were up to something. And it involved her.

Then the chief had arranged things with his good old buddy, the billionaire, so she could take the private jet since she refused to leave her little girls behind. The chief and McKellen wanted her up there to talk to the Wyoming sheriff specifically.

Heather still wasn’t entirely certain why.

Why had it mattered that it was her? Why not Charlie Fields—who was alreadyinWyoming? Or Gunnar Erickson, who was the head of the OPJ case in the first place?

Nothing that damned McKellen did made sense.

Heather didn’t even have a coat heavy enough for Wyoming. There were blankets on her baby, and her three-year-old had a jacket on over her hoodie and was wrapped in another blanket, for heaven’s sake.

Talk about mother of the year.

And her niece was about to shiver right apart.

“I’ll need to find a secondhand store. See if I can find us some cheap coats,” Heather told her niece. Cara just stood there, shivering and shivering. She had an overwhelmed look in her big brown eyes. Cara blinked at her and waited.

She looked so much like her mama right there.

Heather utterly adored her. Cara hadn’t had to come with her, but she hadn’t protested at all when Summer had pointed out that Cara was the only one on the schedule who could. Cara had come—because Heather had needed her. And that was all that had mattered.

Cara had never flown before. And had never seen snow this deep either. Or mountains everywhere. Cara had neverbeen anywhere at all, really.Colesonsweren’t exactly made for traveling by private jet.

Especially Cara Joelle Coleson.

“The inn is really pretty, Aunt Heather,” Cara said. Cara was right about that. It looked like a Christmas card or something. It wasn’t someplace Heather would have ever chosen to go herself if she had had a choice, but she was up there for at least the next four days. Just her, her girls, police business, and one of her nieces that she adored.

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