Free It Had to Be You by Jill Shalvis Page A

on time, golfed, and had a fantasy football team that did pretty well. He’d been pulled over three years ago in Kent with a hooker in his car, but the story had later been amended to describe the woman as being an “exotic dancer.” Marshall sat on several charitable committees in Lucky Harbor, and as the town clerk, no one had a single negative thing to say about him. He was well known and well liked.
    Luke was experiencing bad flashbacks from the whole senator nightmare. Not that Marshall was a secret stalker and murderer. No, Luke suspected he was exactly as he appeared—a guy for whom things either came easy or not at all, because he was just on the wrong side of lazy.
    Which also told Luke something else. Marshall wasn’t the thief either. He didn’t have it in him.
    So the question was, did Marshall really believe Ali had taken the money? This was a tough one because there’d been something in the man’s eyes, something in his tone, that hadn’t rung true to Luke.
    He’d been lying.
    But about what exactly?
    Luke made a call to Sheriff Sawyer Thompson. Sawyer had run wild in his youth, only a few years ahead of Luke. Their paths had crossed professionally on several occasions, most notably when Luke had helped Sawyer track down one of his perps in San Francisco not too long ago.
    They bullshitted back and forth for a few minutes, and then Luke asked about Ali.
    She was still being questioned. Having the bill wrapper in her possession looked bad, real bad, Sawyer said, but it wasn’t enough evidence for an arrest. He said that a toe ring had been found in Marshall’s office couch, and it didn’t seem to belong to anyone who had business being in Marshall’s office.
    Or to Melissa Mann.
    Luke hung up and chewed on that for a few minutes. Not your problem , he told himself. But he was still mulling it all over when his cell rang.
    “How’s the brooding going?” Sara asked.
    He frowned at his sister through the phone. “I’m not brooding.”
    “Of course you are. You’re a professional brooder.”
    Luke pinched the bridge of his nose. “Did you call for something in particular or just to piss me off?”
    “Well, fun as it is to piss you off, I did call for a reason.” But then she hesitated.
    Shit. “What?” he asked. Sara had come out of prison determined to fix her life. Luke had done whatever he could, paying for rehab—twice—sending her to school—also twice—and finally sitting in the crowd with pride and relief when she’d eventually graduated with her teaching credentials. She now worked with troubled kids in an alternative high school in the Bay Area, and he couldn’t be more proud of her.
    But she was still a colossal pain in his ass. “You okay?” he asked.
    “Yes. I just…”
    “Whatever you need, Sara. You know that.”
    She sighed, sounding exasperated. “Okay, stop expecting me to be in trouble every time I call.”
    He felt a twinge of guilt, but there’d been years when that had been true. Not that he wanted to remind her. “I don’t do that.”
    “Yes, you do,” she said. “But this time, you’re the one in trouble.”
    “Me? I’m fine.”
    “Really? Is that why you took off for Lucky Harbor— Lucky Harbor , Luke, where you never go anymore? You ran away from the press. What was that?”
    “I needed a vacation,” he said.
    “Is that it? Really?”
    “Yes,” he said, trying to assuage the worry he heard in her voice. “I told you, I had three weeks of leave that I was going to lose if I didn’t use.”
    There was a beat of silence, as if she was trying to assess the truth from two hundred miles away. “Don’t make me come up there,” she finally said. “Because I totally will.”
    “I’m fine,” he said, relieved she’d backed down. “I’m just…relaxing. Hanging out.”
    “Good. Then you can also give grandpa a hug for me.”
    “Sara—”
    “He’s old, Luke. And getting older. Do it for me.”
    The doorbell rang. Saved by the bell.