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you mind?” she asked, not sure if she was talking to him or Liz.
    “Not at all,” Liz assured her with a smile that was a teensy bit sly. “I’ll have to fill out forms anyway, which will take some time. I’d rather not make you wait for us.”
    The shift in plans felt wicked, but in a good way. Minutes later, Meg was bundled into her coat, sitting in Linc’s leather-scented pick up truck, bottom warmed by the seat element. The interior of the truck was dark and intimate with the local station playing the latest country tune on low volume. Snow was starting to fall in earnest, flakes flying into the beam of the headlights.
    “Meg, I hope you’re taking this situation at your work seriously. Because I happen to know that chasing environmental regulations is nothing compared to enforcing the safety ones. Too many people think it’s a sign of weakness to take basic precautions. Or a waste of time. It’s not. It’s smart.”
    She smiled across at him in the dark, both irritated and touched by his concern. “I’m being very careful. Honestly.” Overly, really, but she appreciated the station’s abundance of caution. “And I will talk to Blake about it if it will keep you from playing Big Brother.”
    A pause, then, “This one hits close to home for me. There was a guy that went after my mom when I was a kid.”
    “Seriously? What happened? Is that why you asked me if it was sexual harassment?”
    “Yeah. He was really aggressive about it, pressing her with unwanted attention. Don’t be foolish and think that ignoring it will make it go away.”
    “I won’t. I swear. But what happened? How did she make him stop?” She was listening carefully, eager to put an end to her own situation.
    “She didn’t. I did. And got my ass kicked in the process.”
    Meg delivered news on a daily basis. She knew what a beating looked like. Terrible things happened to good people all the time. It was her job to hold herself at a distance, but certain things still had the power to leave a mark if she saw a personal connection. Those were times when her emotions refused to be shoved into neutral and this was one of them.
    “How old were you?” she asked with a kind of morbid dread, wanting to know but not. Her heart felt clutched in a vise.
    “Fourteen. I guess there was a silver lining because a grown man beating the hell out of a teenager gets charged for it, especially when the cause of the dispute is made clear to the officer.”
    “I should hope so,” she muttered, outraged on his behalf. “Did he go to jail?”
    “Probation. And he served in another town, not that we would have seen him if he’d stayed. That’s how we wound up working on a ranch again.”
    “Again?” she repeated curiously.
    “My parents were ranchers, but Mom had to sell when Dad died. I was ten and we moved into town. She worked in the doctor’s office during the week, but went out on Saturdays to clean for Charlie. It was one of his hands who was cornering her up there, coming into the doctor’s office if he was in town. She couldn’t afford to lose either job so she didn’t say anything.” Linc glanced pointedly across to her. “It’s not your fault this is happening to you, Meg.”
    Little did he know. She sighed and linked her gloved fingers in her lap, not trying to explain that she may not have done anything overt to encourage her rabid fan, but she did have a tab to settle with the Universe.
    “Did this Charlie feel bad or something?” she asked.
    “Yeah. After the guy was arrested, Charlie showed up at our apartment. The other hands used to call him Chuckles. Facetiously. He never smiled, didn’t say two words if none would do. I was still moving pretty slow, had a couple of busted ribs. He was grizzled and scary looking, but he was genuinely sorry that his employee had frightened Mom and hurt her son. He was also down a body at the ranch after firing the S.O.B. He looked me over, said I’d do once I healed, then asked Mom