St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

sense to know that the whole situation was spiraling out of control.
    How can anything so sweet and soft-looking be so bloody stubborn?
    Carly winced as the final hammer blow drove the nail in so far the hammer left a dent in the plywood. “Feel better now?”
    He shot her a jade green glance. Then the corner of his mouth turned up. “Yeah.”
    She let out a long breath of relief and smiled at him. “Thank you.”
    “For what?”
    “Not hammering on me until I gave up.”
    “Would it have worked?”
    Her smile faded. “I’m scared, Dan.”
    He tucked the hammer into the back of his jeans and pulled her close. “That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said in hours.” Before she could argue, he kissed her until she forgot everything, even fear. Slowly he lifted his mouth and leaned his forehead against hers. “We’ll get through this. There might be some mutual yelling from time to time, but I respect your courage too much to want to hammer it out of you. Okay?”
    His eyes were a vivid green blur to her, whether from her tears or being so close she couldn’t focus, she didn’t know and didn’t care. “Okay. But I don’t feel real brave right now. I keep thinking about being alone on that ranch road, no one to pull me back and make me walk and…”
    “I keep thinking about it, too. I don’t want to lose you, Carolina May. I spent too long wondering if I’d ever find someone like you.”
    Her stomach growled as she kissed him. “You see what you do to me,” she said.
    “Starve you?”
    “Make me feel safe enough to be hungry.”
    He smiled slowly and took her hand. “C’mon. I’ve got chili left. I’ll heat it while you check out more of those so-called might-be senatorial offspring.”
    He opened the front door and nudged Carly into the relative warmth of the house.
    “The problem is that a lot of those offspring are dead,” Carly said, frowning, “others have moved away, and all I have to go on is community speculation. The only way to be certain if they’re the Senator’s is DNA testing, and for that to be effective, we have to have a DNA profile of the Senator first. Short of exhuming him, there’s no way to get a sample for testing. Unless he froze his sperm for the ages, or something like that.”
    “I’m sure if he had, it would have been front-page news in town.” The door closed behind Dan, shutting out the wind. “As for exhumation to take a tissue sample, I don’t see that happening short of a court order, and I don’t see us getting a court order.”
    “Not unless the governor agrees, and I figure that will be about the time they hold the Summer Olympics in Siberia. Josh Quintrell really doesn’t like Winifred’s project.”
    “Ya think?” Dan asked sardonically. He lit a match, turned on a burner on the stove, and started heating chili.
    “So why keep on pursuing the maybe offspring?” Carly asked. “It’s a waste of time. We can’t prove anything more than rumor and innuendo, and that’s not the sort of thing I feel happy about putting in a family history.”
    “Why pursue the offspring? Because Winifred told you to and she’s paying the bills?”
    Carly smiled wryly. “Okay. But it doesn’t get us any closer to why somebody wants me to leave.”
    “If we assume that someone doesn’t want the history done—”
    “Good assumption.”
    “—then getting the history done will get us closer to whoever is behind scaring you,” Dan finished.
    It will also get Carly the hell out of Taos.
    But he kept that to himself because she didn’t want to hear it.
    Carly’s expression said that she wasn’t impressed with her assignment. With a shrug, she got a three-ring binder from one of her boxes in the living room and sat at the little card table that served as a dining table.
    “Okay,” she said, flipping the binder open. “Here’s what I have so far. Let me know if any of the names tickle your fancy. Jesús Mendoza—son of Carlota Mendoza, a maid at the Quintrell ranch—went into the army, went to war, got decorated, married a San Diego woman, had four kids, died fifteen years ago. None of the kids have any connection to Taos or the Quintrells that I’ve been able to discover.”
    Dan wrapped some tortillas in tinfoil and tucked them in the oven.
    “María Elena Sandoval, daughter of one of the many Sandovals running through New Mexico in general and the Quintrell ranch in particular. Cousin lovers every one of them.”
    He