floor for the night, just in case.”
“Thank you.”
Anson turned to look at her after the security guard closed the door behind him. “I don’t think they’ll try anything again tonight.”
“I hope you’re right.”
He pushed to his feet. “I’m going to head on out and leave you and your brother alone. Is there anything I can do for you before I go?”
She shook her head. “I’m good.”
He looked at Danny. “He might want some clothes for tomorrow. A change of underwear or something. You may want some clean clothes, too. Is there someone I can call to get some things for y’all?”
She hated to admit there was no one, but it was the truth. She worked all the time, and Danny’s drinking had made it hard for them to do any sort of socializing with their neighbors. “No. Maybe I can run home sometime tomorrow and grab a few things—”
“No car,” he reminded her.
Her heart sank. “Right.”
“I can do it for you. If you trust me.”
She stared at him for a moment, suddenly uncertain. He had been a lifesaver for her that night—literally. But what did she really know about Anson Daughtry? If the people she worked with at The Gates were telling the truth, Anson was a free spirit who looked like a redneck and thought like a tech genius. But he was also on administrative leave from the company, the prime suspect in a case of industrial espionage.
Nobody at The Gates seemed to believe he was guilty, though—
“Forget I suggested it.” Anson turned to go.
She caught his hand, holding him in place. “Wait.”
He looked down at her fingers closed around his. His hand was warm and rougher than she expected, more like a workman’s hand than that of a man who worked on computers all day long.
His gaze swept up to meet hers, dark and soft. “Yes?”
“I would really appreciate it if you would get a few things for Danny and me,” she said, releasing his hand. Her fingers still tingled a little where their skin had touched.
Shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans, he nodded. “Okay.”
She grabbed her purse from the floor and pulled out her keys to remove the house key from the ring. “Here’s the key to the house. The driveway circles around to the back—you can park there. The back door opens to the kitchen. Just go through there to the hall. My room is on the right. Danny’s is on the left.”
“You want me to pick out some things for you, too?” he asked with a slow smile that made her own lips curve in response. “Go through your unmentionables? You’re a brave woman, Ginny Coltrane.”
“Or crazy,” she murmured. “Clean jeans and a T-shirt for me. A change of underwear. Think you can handle that?”
“I think I’ll manage. What about your brother? He have any jogging shorts, something like that?”
“I think he does. That sounds perfect. Thank you.” She told him her address and he jotted it down on his phone. “I really appreciate this.”
“Give me your phone number and I’ll call if I have trouble finding anything.”
She told him her cell-phone number and he typed that into his phone, as well. “Are you going tonight or in the morning?”
“I was thinking maybe tonight,” he answered. “You’re probably going to be awake for a little while longer, right?”
She nodded. “I’m not sure how easy it’ll be to fall asleep tonight.”
“I’ll go now, then. And if I need your help finding anything, I’ll call you. Sound like a deal?”
“Sounds like a deal,” she agreed.
He left the room with a little wave of one large hand, closing the door behind him.
Ginny looked around the quiet hospital room, feeling as scared and alone as she’d felt in a long, long time.
* * *
GINNY COLTRANE’S SMALL bungalow sat in the heart of Two Souls Hollow, a small valley cut through the mountains north of Purgatory. The homes in this part of the hollow were spaced far enough apart that Anson couldn’t see either of the neighbors’ homes from the car park behind the house.
It wasn’t the kind of house paid for by corporate espionage, he thought with a frown. Not that he’d been thinking of her as a suspect for the past few hours, not since she turned those big blue eyes on him and transformed him into a love-struck adolescent.
Where was Danny’s car? he wondered as he parked in the empty drive behind the house. If it had been parked at the Whiskey Road Tavern, surely Ginny would have taken it to the hospital rather than depending on him for a ride. If there was something he was beginning to realize about her, it was that she liked to handle things on her own whenever possible.
She lived in a small town, but there were no neighbors she trusted to pick up a few things for her stay. She had no family to speak of, besides her alcoholic brother. He’d never seen her socializing with anyone at the office, either—she had a work ethic that would put most CEOs to shame.
What did she do for fun?
Did she ever get to have any fun?
“Now I’m depressing myself,” he muttered as he pulled out the house key Ginny had lent him and unlocked the back door.
The light switch was just inside the door. He flicked it on and took a quick look around the small, neat kitchen. The house wasn’t new, and neither were the appliances, but everything seemed to be clean and well maintained. There were dishes drying on the rack by the sink and a neatly folded dish towel on the counter, the only sign that the kitchen had been used that day.
He went through the door into the hallway and took a left into Danny’s bedroom. It wasn’t nearly as neat as the kitchen, though he wouldn’t show up on any reality show about hoarders or anything. His bed was unmade, the pillows lying haphazardly across the mattress. There was an empty glass on the nightstand, as well. Anson took a sniff, surprised that he couldn’t smell any alcohol. Maybe he didn’t do any drinking around the house?
Yeah, no. Alcoholics always had a stash. Always.
Anson found Danny’s in the sock drawer of his chest of drawers, tucked near the back of the drawer. Two bottles of Jack Daniel’s, only one full. The other was half-gone.
He left them there, though he would tell Ginny the next time he talked to her so she could get rid of it before Danny returned home.
But his next discovery caught him off guard. In the underwear drawer, wrapped up in a pair of boxer shorts, he found a bag of white powder. Short of dipping his finger into the bag and tasting it—which sounded like a really stupid idea—he could only assume it was some sort of illicit substance. Or why would Danny have bothered to hide it in his underwear drawer?
Hating to do it, he pulled out his phone and dialed Ginny’s cell phone.
She answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Ginny, it’s Anson Daughtry. I’m at your place, picking up the change of clothes and I found something in one of Danny’s drawers.”
“He has a stash of booze there, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, but that’s not the only thing.” He told her about the plastic bag containing the white powder.
She was silent for so long he wondered if the call had been cut off. Just before he spoke, she said, “Can you tell what it is?”
“Probably coke or heroin,” he said. “Meth usually comes in crystalized form. Have you ever known him to do