Ruther pulled close behind, making Nathan’s blood pressure shoot high.

When his phone rang, he jumped.

He answered without looking at the number. “Yeah?”

“Nathan?” The voice was that of a woman.

“Yeah?”

Ruther flashed his lights and Nathan picked up speed.

“It’s Sheriff Ward. We’d like to ask you to come into the station and answer a few questions.”

“Screw you, bitch.”

“We can do this the hard way, Nathan.”

He took his eyes off the road as he ended the call and tossed the phone aside.

When he looked up, he felt the back end of his car lurch and the wheel jerk to the left.

And then, as they often say in basketball . . . it was nothing but air, but there was no net to catch him as his car tumbled off the cliff.

“He hung up.” Jo pressed End and smiled at Agent Burton.

“Not surprising.”

“I’ll have a warrant and court orders by tomorrow afternoon.”

Burton had driven back through town after watching the interaction between Melanie and Nathan from across the street. When she saw Nathan speed out of the parking lot, she ran to the back of the restaurant to retrieve her car, only to find one of her tires flat. By the time she had it changed, Nathan was long gone and Jo had already called her.

“I’m going to go ahead and drive to Eugene tonight and get this going. We don’t want any delays.”

“I don’t want Nathan getting away. He’s bound to find a flight to Mexico tonight if in fact he hired Mr. Lewis to kill his own daughter.” The thought made her sick to her stomach.

Burton left the station with the promise of calling the next day.

An hour later a call came in to the station about a car off the side of the road. It took thirty more minutes for her to reach the scene. When she did, Jo realized she was the last one to talk to Nathan before he died.

Poor Agent Burton didn’t even have a chance to check into the standard hotel room before Jo was calling the woman back. The point on the road where Nathan’s car had gone off was on a curve, making it more dangerous to get a team down to retrieve his body.

“You think he drove off on purpose?” Burton stood on the muddy road looking down at the wreckage.

Jo looked down. “I think he was too much of a pansy to end his own life. This guy hired people to do his dirty work.”

Burton walked over the road, an umbrella covering her head. “No skid marks.”

“He could have hydroplaned.”

“The gravel on the side of the road is barely kicked up. If he was on his brakes, we would see it there,” Burton said.

“No obvious evidence he was trying to stop.”

“Kinda suggests suicide.”

“If the man knew the area, I’d agree. But unless he knew this road clipped off like this . . . there aren’t any other places the road narrows this much all the way to the main highway.”

“If he didn’t do it on purpose, and there are no marks on the road to suggest he was swerving to avoid hitting something . . . then what, brake failure?”

Jo turned to look at the landscape. “If your brakes failed, wouldn’t you aim for the other side?” There was a good five yards of a sloping face of the hill off to the right. “I’d take my chances with a wall. Air bags being what they are.”

“What does that leave . . . homicide?” Burton asked. “Sadly, the main suspects I see all live in River Bend.”

Jo nodded. “And all were present and accounted for at Miss Gina’s. Which leaves . . .”

“An accomplice?”

“Someone cleaning up loose ends.”

“Yeah, someone worth dying for.”

Jo did not like where her thoughts led. Could their tattooed Mr. Lewis have returned? “How often do assailants return to the scene of the crime?”

“C’mon, Jo . . . you’re a smart cop. You’re jumpy because you know the victims in all this.”

The rain was dripping off the slicker Jo had over her uniform—without a gutter on her hat—it dripped over all sides.

“I’m saying . . . Nathan didn’t commit suicide. He is a wimp . . . was a wimp. He didn’t have the stomach to start his own bar fight, so he hires a couple guys. Then he hires someone else to drive up and down this very road.” Jo pointed to the pavement. “You only have to drive it a few times before you know this curve and cliff are here. This guy acts as some kind of salesman, and stays at the inn. We know all that was a lie. We know Mr. Lewis rented a car using the same ID he had at the inn and then disappeared from there. The man didn’t even have a destination on the other side. He simply drove through for the purpose of what? I don’t think for a minute he stumbled upon Miss Gina’s inn, do you?”

Agent Burton shook her head.

“And who is Mr. Lewis? We have one match on the tattoo. That match has some connections that could link him to Nathan. I think you were the one who suggested that our guy could be a child molester who is trying to avoid his crime of choice. Didn’t the profile of our only possible suspect have an affluent, aristocratic family?”

Agent Burton nodded. “Yeah. Big money.”

Jo wiped rain from her face. “If our dead dirtbag here did hire Mr. Lewis and knew he had priors . . . then he could claim his daughter was in danger of all sorts of ugly people who walked into the inn and booked a room.”

It was Burton who spoke next. “So Nathan hires Ty and Buddy, my guess is we’d find one or both of them on a list of clients Nathan represented at one point or another. Has Mr. Lewis showing up randomly. Mr. Lewis might have only been hired to be inside eyes at the inn . . . someone trying to find dirt. Only Mr. Lewis is a hired con man. He wipes down the inside of the room.” Burton was pacing, her sensible blue heels splashing in the puddles. “He sees an opportunity. Maybe he means to hurt Hope, or maybe he just wants to blackmail this one for more.”