“She’s my sister.”
“Uh-huh.”
Dakota sighed. “Okay, maybe I’ve suspected she was up to something from the first time I laid eyes on her.”
“You said your father’s name and signature are on her birth certificate. Are you saying you’re questioning that?”
She shrugged. “All I know is that something’s wrong with her story. After what you’ve told me, I’m even more convinced.”
“But not enough to go to the sheriff.”
“I want to do some investigating of my own before I get the sheriff involved,” Dakota said.
He suspected there was more, something she was hiding, but right now he was just glad he wasn’t in jail. “Then you believe me?”
“I’m willing to consider you were set up.” She stepped to the door and opened it. “On the way into town, I think we should see who Courtney’s been calling—and who’s been calling her.”
DAKOTA HADN’T BEEN completely truthful. Not that she didn’t have her reasons for wanting to believe Zane and, if she was being honest with herself, some of them had to do with the crush she’d had on him when she was a girl.
He was even more handsome now. Not that she was the kind of woman who was overcome by good looks. Zane hadn’t made fun of her like the other boys when she’d been the skinny, freckle-faced, buck-toothed, mouth-full-of-braces girl who’d hung around him like a lovesick puppy.
Nor was she that smitten girl anymore. But she also believed that Zane, while no longer the lanky boy she’d known as a girl, was still honorable and decent. She had to trust her instincts. Her instincts told her that Zane was telling the truth.
“I’ll drive,” she said, and Zane didn’t argue. He looked like death warmed over, making her also believe she might be right about him having been drugged.
She could tell that his greatest fear was that something really awful had happened to Courtney last night. Dakota told herself it was more likely, after what the sheriff had said, that Courtney was up to her pretty little neck in this and not as the victim. Another reason Dakota wanted to find her as quickly as possible.
As she drove, she watched Zane out of the corner of her eye as he began to check the numbers on the cell phone through the plastic bag.
“There are no contact numbers,” Zane said. “I get the feeling this is a fairly new phone, since there are so few calls and messages. The last outgoing call was …” He read off the number.
“That’s the number at my ranch from when Courtney called last night. Do you recognize any of the other numbers?”
“As for incoming, there are calls and messages from you and Arlene Evans Monroe. I had asked her to call Courtney and get back to me when she heard from her.” He studied the numbers for a moment. “Otherwise there are two incoming calls from numbers that I don’t recognize. Courtney returned one of those calls, but not the most recent one.”
Dakota realized she hadn’t told Zane about the phone call earlier. “Someone was looking for her. Before the sheriff left your house, Courtney’s cell phone rang. I answered it. I could hear breathing on the other end of the line, but the person didn’t say anything before hanging up.”
“Courtney? If she was the one who called the sheriff about a disturbance at my house,” he said, his brows furrowing.
“Or someone else looking for Courtney.”
“Do you recognize either of these numbers?” He read the numbers off to her.
“Sorry, they don’t sound familiar. There’s a notebook and pen in the glove box,” she told him as they neared town.
Zane jotted down the numbers as Dakota pulled into the back of the hospital.
Whitehorse County Hospital was small. As they walked in the back door, Zane spotted Dr. Buck Carrey. He looked more like a rancher than a doctor. A big man, he had a weathered face wrinkled from the sun and from smiling. His gray hair was uncharacteristically long for Whitehorse and pulled back in a ponytail. Today he was wearing jeans, boots and a Western shirt, with his white Stetson cocked back on his head.
He greeted Zane warmly, then shook hands with Dakota, whom he hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting before, and invited them into his office. “You said this was a confidential matter?” he asked, closing the door.
Dakota listened while Zane gave an abbreviated version of what they needed. Doc raised a brow when Zane showed him the phone. “Let’s start with the blood test. As for the DNA, I need something to compare it to.”
“I’m her sister. Well, half sister. Will that work?”
“Close enough.” Doc left and came back with the items he needed to do both tests. He took blood from Zane, then a swab of Dakota’s mouth and another swab of blood from the phone.
“I’ll have to get back to you on your blood test,” he told Zane. “Same with the blood on the phone.” Doc seemed to study Zane’s scratches for a moment. “You sure you don’t want the sheriff in on this?”
“If we can’t find Courtney, we’ll go to the sheriff,” Dakota promised. Her sister was in trouble, she’d bet on that. But she feared it was Courtney’s own making.
“I’M SORRY ABOUT ALL THIS,” Zane said as they left the hospital. “First your father’s death, then a sister you never knew you had and now this.”
Dakota shrugged as she opened her pickup door and slid behind the wheel. “I think what hurt the most was that I’d always wanted a sister and apparently I’ve had one since I was two—I just didn’t know it.”
“Why do you think your father kept it from you?”
She shook her head. “Guilt maybe. Everyone says he adored my mother, but when she got sick, I don’t think he could handle it.”
“I can’t imagine your father living a double life, not the way he felt about your mother.” He also couldn’t imagine Clay Lansing keeping all of this from his daughter. There had to be more to the story. “So what do you know about Courtney’s mother?”
“Nothing, really,” Dakota said. “Courtney said she died and that she doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“Did she mention where she was raised, at least?”
“Great Falls. She wasn’t even that far away, just a few hours. My father must have seen her when he went there, since she was at the hospital when he died.”
“He died in Great Falls?” Zane asked in surprise.
Dakota nodded and seemed to concentrate on her driving. “All of it has come as such a shock—his death, Courtney, the lie he lived all these years.” He could hear the hurt in her voice. “She had more time with him at the end than I did,” Dakota said, voicing her pain.
“If she’s telling the truth,” Zane said as he looked over at her. “You suspected something about her story was a lie, didn’t you?”
She glanced at him in surprise.
He smiled. “I know you, Dakota. You wouldn’t have believed me so quickly if you didn’t suspect your sister was up to something.” True, they hadn’t seen each other in years, but in so many ways she was that kid he knew from the rodeo grounds. She’d always seemed too smart for her own good.
“If you’re right and you were set up, then Courtney is in on it,” Dakota said. “I can’t imagine any other reason she would sign up for Arlene’s rural dating service.