Free The Second Lie by Tara Taylor Quinn

Ohio.
    Logging on to a secure site, she found what she was looking for. A listing of all purchases of anhydrous ammonia in Ohio over the past year. The list was long. Mostly farms. Or farmers. Some names she recognized. Quantities were all in line with farm acreages, which were listed. Except...
    Sam stopped. Blinked. She was certain she'd transposed numbers for one particular name that was making her see red at the moment. Kyle Evans.
    She refocused. The numbers didn't change.
    She moved on to other chemicals--to methanol. She saw the name again. And dropped her head onto the breakfast bar.
    But she couldn't stay there.
    Uh-uh.
    Not now.
    Not when she was finding it hard to believe anything about the man.
    She was too furious at the coincidence and the lies and deceit to think straight about the link between Kyle and a woman who'd just been arrested for possessing large quantities of methamphetamine.
    Sam grabbed her car keys and slammed out the door.
     
    Thank goodness she'd showered. Pulled on jeans and a clean blouse with her police-issue black walking boots. At least Kyle wasn't getting the old sweats she'd worn to the station that morning.
    "What in the hell has happened to this world?" she asked the Mustang--partially because it didn't talk back to her. Was this what happened when you left your twenties behind? Nothing made sense anymore?
    She'd thought that as she grew older, she'd get smarter. So why had she had things all figured out in her twenties, but couldn't understand life anymore?
    She was not going to cry.
    Crying was for sissies.
    And women who'd just found out a man had betrayed them. Sam had broken up with Kyle more than a decade ago.
    Still...she'd trusted him. Would have bet her life that he had her back.
    But did he really? He hated her career. Hated her uniform.
    Yet those things pretty much summed up Samantha. Her career was her life.
    How could you say you were there for someone when you didn't even like what the person did? She thought he was her best friend, but a friend would never lie that way.
    "Sorry," she muttered to her car as she settled both hands on the wheel and pushed her foot to the ground. The old Mustang gave her its all and roared up the long drive to Kyle's house. In another week or two, he'd be out harvesting, but this morning he should still be in the house, seeing that Grandpa was back asleep in bed if it was a bad day, or comfortably settled with blankets and pillows propping him in front of a movie on the TV. Or maybe Kyle was out in the barn with Radiance and Lillie. The colt was more than a month old and already showing promise that a second generation of Evans family horse breeding had begun.
    Kyle came walking out of the barn to meet her. Good. Meeting him in the kitchen where she'd spent so much time as a kid, eating his grandpa's homemade chocolate-chip cookies and feeling more at home than she had in her own house, would have made what she had to say too difficult.
    How could Kyle have done this to them? How could he have gone off and forgotten everything he was about, forgotten his morals and his...whatever...and fucked a prostitute? And if he had to screw around on Sam, how could he have done it without protection?
    "Sam?" His frown marred an otherwise gorgeous face. "It's eight in the morning. What's wrong?"
    She'd always thought Kyle's willingness to look her straight in the eye spoke of the absolute honesty between them. She'd cherished that.
    Had his father known about Sherry Mahon? Did Grandpa know? Not that the dear old man would likely remember now.
    "In the past six months you purchased large quantities of anhydrous ammonia...." She stood, hands down at her sides, keeping her open car door between them.
    Right. The ammonia. In an alarming amount. And an ex-lover in jail for possession...
    Part of Sam knew she might be overreacting. Part of her didn't care.
    And some small portion of her heart was trying not to cry, needing to hear what Kyle had to say for