Free The Stranger's Sin by Darlene Gardner

rising to cover the birth-mark on one side of her face. Her gaze focused on a spot behind Chase. He turned to see Ryan Whitmore, the doctor who’d given him his physical last week, walk into the bar. An older man waved Ryan over to the booth farthest from where they sat.
    “Do you know that man, Annie?” Kelly asked.
    “Used to,” Annie said, her voice oddly strangled. “He must be visiting.”
    “He’s doing more than visiting,” Chase said. “He’s filling in for his sister. She broke her leg so he’ll be here at least two months, maybe more.”
    “Two months,” Annie repeated, her lips moving but hardly any sound escaping. She got up abruptly from the bar stool, mumbling something about getting back to work before she hurried out the front door.
    “That was odd,” Kelly remarked at the same time the man with the goatee loudly accused his drinking companion of moving in on his girlfriend.
    Jill the bartender was heading their way, but cast a wary glance backward as one man told the other he was imagining things.
    “What can I get you?” Jill asked Chase. It was too early for lunch so he ordered a soda. While Jill poured his drink, he checked on the two men he’d mentally started referring to as Goatee and Chin Strap. Goatee seemed mollified by Chin Strap’s denial, but Chase sensed trouble ahead.
    Jill pushed the soda toward him. “Seems like I’ve seen you in here before.”
    “A few times.” Chase hadn’t had much opportunity to hang out in bars since Toby had entered his life, something that hadn’t stopped Mandy even though at the time she’d been pretending to be pregnant. “I would have been with a redhead. Mandy Smith.”
    “We were just talking about her,” Jill exclaimed as though it was a coincidence. “Mandy used to come in here pretty regularly and sit at the bar, but I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks.”
    Chase waited for Kelly to ask why a pregnant woman had hung out in a bar, but she didn’t. Hell, maybe she thought Mandy had been drinking tonic water.
    “Jill was just telling me how she and Mandy used to talk about vintage costume jewelry,” Kelly supplied.
    “We like the same kind of thing.” The bartender gestured to her necklace. A large round silver pendant set with black onyx dangled from a silver chain interlocked with black onyx stones. Chase would have been hard-pressed to tell it was a reproduction.
    “Did Mandy ever talk about other things, like her out-of-town friends or places she wanted to visit?” Chase asked.
    “Not that I can remember. Aside from the jewelry, she mostly talked about how much she hated Indigo Springs.” Jill tipped her head. “Why do you want to know? Did something happen to her?”
    “Nothing like that,” Chase interjected, wondering how long it would be before it spread through town Mandy was gone. “She left word that she needed to get away for a while. She just didn’t say where she was going.”
    Jill waved a hand. “I wouldn’t worry. Mandy alwaysseemed wound up pretty tight so she probably just wanted some space. She’ll come back in her own time.”
    “Yeah,” Chase said, although it seemed increasingly likely that Mandy truly had abandoned her son.
    “So you really have no idea where she might have gone?” Kelly sounded as desperate for a clue as Chase, causing him another prick of suspicion. “I’m really eager to get the necklace back to her.”
    “It must be some necklace,” Jill commented, telling Chase he wasn’t off base. Kelly’s story didn’t hold weight. “Can I see it?”
    “Sure,” Kelly said, fishing the necklace from her purse.
    A movement at the end of the bar drew his eye. A thin, short woman with straight, coal-black hair had joined the two men. She directed Goatee to move over a bar stool and sat down between him and Chin Strap.
    “I remember Mandy wearing this!” Jill exclaimed.
    The bartender held the ends of Mandy’s necklace in either hand. The afternoon sun streamed through