“Taking a walk. I know.” He wasn't dismissing it, just setting it aside. “Something tells me we have the same questions.”
She looked at him. “Of what interest is it to you?”
“I grew up here,” he said. “And dead bodies with no answers don’t sit well with me. Why wereyouthere?”
She crossed her arms. “Because that’s my job.”
“In Philadelphia. Not Pine Ridge.”
Well, he had her there. “What do you do besides renovate old houses and skulk in the woods?”
Rather than be offended, he grinned. “At the moment, I run a local moving company and tend at my family’s pub. But here’s the thing, Morgan,” he said, his voice dropping and growing quieter. “I know the area. The history. The people. And I’m very good at finding answers to questions that aren’t easily answered. Just like you.”
Morgan said nothing but she was even more intrigued. The bait he’d just dangled in front of her was impossible to resist.
She had no professional standing here. She was a guest in her grandfather's house, and her job was in jeopardy. The last thing she needed was to get further involved in something she had no business getting involved in.
She was also standing on a porch in Pine Ridge, Pennsylvania, seriously considering a collaboration with a man who had tracked a notebook back to her in less time than it should have taken, and was suggesting they work together to find answers.
At least, she thought that was what he was suggesting.
“I'll think about it,” she said.
“Fair enough.” Patrick nodded, satisfied, and continued to his black SUV. With his hand on the handle, he turned to look back at her. “You can find me at the pub,” he said. “If you decide you want to. Your grandfather can tell you where it is.”
Morgan remained on the porch until the SUV was out of sight and the crunch of tires on gravel was no longer audible.
Frank was in the kitchen, paper open. “Kid’s a Callaghan, all right,” he said without looking up, a ring of approval in his tone.
Which said something, because her grandfather didn’t approve of many.
Morgan refilled her coffee, sat down at the table, and looked at the notebook in her hand.
She was going to think about it.
She was absolutely going to think about it.
And then… she was going to take him up on it.
10
LIFE… SHIFTED
PATRICK
Patrick’s mindwas whirring as he drove back toward town.
He'd been in that house for less than an hour. Not long, in the grand scheme of things. On the surface, he’d done nothing particularly notable. He'd returned a notebook, drunk a cup of coffee, and had a perfectly pleasant conversation with a man who knew his grandfather.
So why did he feel as if his life had…shifted, for lack of a better word?
Morgan Sullivan, that was why.
He tried to reconcile the woman in oversized flannel with the coffee spiller in the café, the French-fry munching book reader in the diner, and the medicolegal death investigator who’d left her notes at a crime scene.
And the way she'd crossed her arms and lifted her chin and stood her ground?
He'd liked that.