It Had to Be Him by Tamra Baumann Read Free Book Online

it had become clear she hadn’t had any clue about her father’s activities, so they could pursue a relationship? Hopefully she’d be able to understand that even though he lied about his identity for his job, he hadn’t lied about loving her.
    He’d turned in his badge yesterday and now he was ready to do whatever it took to get Meg and Haley back. But when all the facts were finally revealed, would Meg be able to get past the betrayal of being spied on and lied to?
    Josh studied the locked gate again, debating if he should wait some more or just jump the damn wall. Meg surely knew he was in town by now. What if she tried to run during the night? Now was the best time to make his move.
    He pulled himself up, swung his legs over the stucco wall, and landed softly on the other side. He’d stick to the trees on the side of the gravel drive.
    The cop had said his grandmother lived here. Would an older woman really shoot him? They were probably just trying to warn him off.
    He hoped.
    After a few feet, a break in the pine trees revealed a huge, stunning lake. The lowering sun sent long streaks across the water’s smooth surface, producing prisms of color. A few Jet Skis and a speedboat bobbed serenely alongside a long dock.
    Why hadn’t Meg ever mentioned how great her hometown was? Such a contrast to where he’d spent his childhood after he became an orphan at six. That damned boys’ ranch in New Mexico. To think he and Meg had been living only a few hours away from each other all that time when they were kids. It was probably a karma thing that his case had caused their paths to cross . . . if he could shake off the cynic he’d become and convince himself to believe in that kind of stuff.
    The FBI had recruited him out of college, promoting the organization as a pseudo-family of men and women all focused on doing good for the world. And it could be at times. It didn’t hurt that orphans made the best agents—no one to miss them if they didn’t come back from a mission.
    To live somewhere like Anderson Butte might have made all the crappy things he’d had to do for his job worth it if he’d been able to come home after an assignment to someplace as beautiful as this. And to someone as beautiful as Meg.
    What had made her leave? If he’d grown up here, he’d have put down deep roots. Never joined the FBI to move past his unfortunate childhood.
    Hopefully he’d be able to stay.
    As he moved closer to the lake, a house with a big wraparound porch and a short, yellow picket fence surrounding a garden came into view, but the glint of sunshine off mostly rusty metal made Josh change course. Megan’s car stood beside a shed not too far from a smaller building with its own little front porch.
    She was still driving that piece of junk? That would be the first thing he’d do. Buy them a safer car.
    Glancing around to be sure the coast was clear, he jogged behind the little house and cupped his hands against a window. There were couches, a couple of stuffed chairs, and a pile ofbrightly colored books scattered on the floor. A cell phone lay on the coffee table. But no Meg and Haley.
    Just as he pulled away to try the front door, a deafening explosion assaulted his eardrums. Hot, searing pain made him clutch the outside of his left arm. He spun around to find a tall, older woman pointing a rifle at him.
    “Get off my land. Now!”
    He hated getting shot, dammit. That made three times now.
    Lifting the hand on his wounded arm to show he didn’t have any weapons, he said, “I don’t mean you any harm. I was just looking for Megan.”
    “I’d say now you best be looking for a doctor to take care of that. Get!”
    The pain made him grit his teeth. “I just want to have a conversation with her.”
    “Do you have a learning difficulty of some sort?” The old woman raised the rifle higher. “Because I’d hate to shoot a disabled person. If so, tell me now or start running.”
    It was like being in the freakin’