Healing the Bear by Vanessa Devereaux

closed the door. He sat without being asked while she as she always
did. She leaned against the wall and folded her arms. He made her nervous every
single time he’d stopped by.
    “I
think we might have to move you someplace else,” he said.
    She
squeezed her eyes shut. No, this couldn’t be happening. That meant they thought
someone was on to her identity and location. Dane. She’d never see him again.
    “Why?”
she asked.
    “Someone
at the police department and sheriff’s office have been digging around in your
files and looking for information about you.”
    “You’re
sure?”
    He
nodded. “Anyone in particular spoken to you, anyone new in
your life?”
    Dane. The photos. No, it
couldn’t be him.
    She
swallowed. “I’ve been seeing a man I met here. He was a guest at a wedding.”
    “I’ve
told you to keep me informed and give me their name so I can run a check on
them.”
    “I
know but this being the first time I’ve actually dated anyone I didn’t want to
scare him off.”
    “Scare
him off. Even if he was hired to pretend to be a guest and
get to know you?”
    “He
was a guest. The bride and groom can vouch for him. All the other guests have
known him for years.”
    “So
how did the two of you get together?”
    “He
came into the kitchen because the ceremony had upset him. He’d lost his wife
and I knew exactly how he felt. We got talking and we’ve been dating since
then. He’s a really nice man and he just got a new job at the local elementary
school. I don’t believe for one minute he has been sent by anyone to check me
out or kill me or whatever.”
    “Well,
I was told that a Trent Burgress was digging around and has now asked a buddy
to do some more background searches on you.”
    “Trent
Burgress, that’s Dane’s friend.”
    She
lifted up her necklace and began sliding it back and forth. The
photos. He’d probably seen those photos of her and Mike.
    “I
think I can explain this.”
    Shit,
she was going to have to come clean about those photos and the bear. “I know
you told me I shouldn’t, but I kept some photos. A wedding
photo, a photo of me with my parents, me with the kids at school. I hid
them in Uggy…that’s my teddy bear and when I left the bedroom, he must have
found them.”
    “Fuck,
are you stupid or what? And I take it the relationship has gotten to the
sleeping together part already?”
    Melanie
nodded, feeling like a teenager who’d just been busted by her parents. She had
to sit now because she was sick and tired of running and being someone else.
Maybe it was better that they did catch up with her. If it was Dane then at
least he’d made her happy again before she died.
    He
pulled out his notebook. “I’ll run a check on this Dane character. He happen to have a last name?”
    “It’s
Reynolds.”
    He
wrote something down. “You and he have any plans to see one another again?”
    “Yes,
tomorrow, we’re going sailing on Flathead Lake and then heading to a concert in
the park.”
    “Perfect place to kill you and drop your
body overboard.”
    She
couldn’t believe that Dane would do that. Her instinct about people had never
been wrong.   He wasn’t a hitman or anything bad.
    “I
assume you’re going to tell me not to go.”
    “That
would be my first inclination, but I think it’s the perfect way to finish this
once and for all.”
    “Using
me as bait?”
    He
nodded. “I’ll have a team of men keeping watch and once he makes his move we’ll
be there. Maybe we’ll finally have someone who will want to make a deal to
testify against Sam Farfield.”
    He
was wrong and it was going to be a waste of time. Dane had no connection to
that monster. She knew it.
    “In
the meantime, I’m going to run his name through the database. Don’t suppose you
have anything he’s touched where I can run fingerprints too?”
    She
hated doing this but maybe when Dane’s name cleared, they’d leave the two of
them alone.
    “Sure,
some glasses in my