Chapter Three

      While he waited on hold for Dade to come back on the line, Landon glanced around the thin blue curtain to check on Tessa again. Something he’d been doing since they arrived at the Silver Creek Hospital. She was still sitting on the examining table, feeding the baby a bottle of formula that the hospital staff had given her.

      Tessa was also still eyeing Landon as if he were the enemy.

      That probably had plenty to do with the message that’d been scrawled on the boulder back at the barn. This is for you, Landon.

      The same words as in the message that’d been left on Emmett’s body. Except this time, there was a little more. Tessa’s dead now because of you.

      Reading that obviously hadn’t helped lessen the fear he’d seen in Tessa’s eyes. Hadn’t helped this knot in Landon’s stomach, either. He had to find out what was going on, and that started with Tessa.

      She’d insisted on the baby staying with her, so they had both been placed in the same room, where the doctor was checking them now. Maybe the doc would be able to give her something to counteract whatever drug Tessa had been given.

      Or taken.

      But Landon had to shake his head at that thought. Tessa wasn’t a drug user, so someone had likely given it to her. He needed to know why.

      This is for you, Landon.

      Someone clearly had it out for him. And that someone had murdered Emmett and had maybe now tried to do the same thing to Tessa and that innocent baby.

      The baby had to be cleared up for him, too. If she was his child... Well, Landon didn’t want to go there just yet. He already had enough to juggle without having to deal with that. The only thing that mattered now was that the baby got whatever medical attention she needed, and Landon could go from there.

      “There were no prints on the boulder,” Dade said when he finally came back on the line.

      Landon groaned, but he really hadn’t expected they would get that lucky. The person who’d set all of this up wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave prints behind. But he or she had left a witness.

      One whose memory was a mess.

      “The crime scene folks will do a more thorough check, of course,” Dade went on. “Something might turn up. Anything from Tessa yet?”

      “Nothing. The nurse drew her and the baby’s blood when they got here. Once we have the results of the tox screen, we’ll know what drug she was given. And if that’s what is affecting her memory.”

      Of course, there was still that lump on her head.

      The doctor had examined it, too, right after checking the baby, but like the paramedic, the doc said it was an injury that Tessa had gotten several days ago. In the doctor’s opinion, it was the result of blunt-force trauma.

      Landon figured the timing wasn’t a coincidence.

      “I don’t think she’s faking this memory loss,” Landon added to Dade.

      Tessa must have heard that, because her gaze slashed to his. Of course, her attention hadn’t stayed too far away from him since this whole ordeal started. And after seeing that message on the rock, he knew why.

      “All of this is definitely connected to me,” Landon said to Dade. “The second message proves it.”

      Or at least, that was what someone wanted him to believe—that both Emmett’s murder and this attack were because of something Landon had done.

      “Did you find anything else in the old arrest records you’ve been going through?” Dade asked.

      Landon had found plenty. Too much, in fact. It was hard to narrow down a pool of suspects when Landon could name several dozen criminals that he’d had run-ins with over the years. But there was one that kept turning up like a bad penny.

      “Quincy Nagel,” Landon answered. The name wouldn’t surprise his cousin, because Landon had discussed Quincy with Grayson, Dade and the other deputies in Silver Creek.

      Landon had put Quincy behind bars four years ago for breaking and entering. Quincy had sworn to get even, and he was out on probation now. That made him a prime suspect. Except for one thing.

      Quincy was in a wheelchair.

      The man had been paralyzed from the waist down in a prison fight. It would have taken some strength to overpower Emmett and to club Tessa on the head. Strength or a hired thug. But while Quincy had plenty of money from his trust fund to hire a thug, there was no money trail to indicate Quincy had done that.

      “I’ll keep looking,” Landon said to Dade. Though the looking would have to wait for now, because the doctor stepped away from Tessa, and that was Landon’s cue to go in the room.

      Landon knew the doctor. Doug Michelson. He’d been a fixture in Silver Creek for years, and while Landon had moved away when he was a kid, he still remembered the doc giving him checkups and tending to him on the various emergency room trips that he’d had to make.

      “The baby’s fine,” Dr. Michelson said right off. “But I want to get a pediatrician in here to verify that. I’m guessing she’s less than a week old since she still has her umbilical cord.”

      Since Landon didn’t have a clue what to say about that, he just nodded.

      “Is she yours?” Dr. Michelson asked.

      Landon didn’t know what to say about that, either, so he lifted his shoulder. “I’m hoping Tessa can tell me.”

      The doctor scratched his head. “Probably not at the moment but maybe soon she can do that. I can use the baby’s blood test to run her DNA if you give me the go-ahead.”

      “You’ve definitely got the go-ahead for that. And put a rush on it just in case Tessa’s memory doesn’t come back.”

      “Will do. I did manage to get Tessa to let a nurse hold the baby so I could get an X-ray of her neck,” the doctor continued, but he stopped, obviously noticing the renewed surprise on Landon’s face.

      “What’s wrong with Tessa’s neck?” Landon asked.

      “She’s got a small lesion.” The doctor pointed to the area where his neck and shoulders met. “It’s too big for it to be an injection site for the drugs she was given. Besides, I found the needle mark for that. Or rather the needle marks. There are two of them on her arm. One is at least a couple of days old, and there was bruising involved.”

      “Bruising that probably happened around the same time she was hit on the head?” Landon asked.

      “Yes. The other is more recent. I’d say an injection given