Betrayal of Trust by J. A. Jance Page B

behind the wheel, I often find it helpful to think about other things. In this case, I thought about Todd Hatcher.
    Call me a hopeless romantic. I love happy endings, or, rather, happy beginnings.
    Todd Hatcher is a very smart guy with a Ph.D. in economics, a couple of books to his credit, and a natural flair for computers. In the olden days, he might have been a prospector out wandering in the wilderness during the California gold rush. These days he’s a geek who specializes in data mining. As I understand it, that’s what his latest book is all about—data mining for fun and profit.
    But Todd is a most unlikely-looking geek, not at all the buttoned-down type. He wears cowboy boots and cowboy hats—not the rhinestone-cowboy variety, but the scuzzy down-at-the-heels boots that have seen years of wear in all kinds of terrain and all kinds of weather. He’s tall, skinny, and bowlegged from too many hours in the saddle. That’s how he supported himself through college—working as a ranch hand in southeastern Arizona.
    When I first met Todd several years ago, it took some time for me to realize that Ross Connors had stumbled on a diamond in the rough. Back then, Todd was barely making ends meet. He lived in a studio apartment, got where he needed to go by using a bus pass, and existed on a diet that consisted mostly of Top Ramen noodles. He was a kid from a small town in the desert stranded in the big-city wet of western Washington where it really does rain, even though tourists who come through the state in the summer are convinced that it never does.
    The work Todd did and still does for Ross Connors helped put him on a more stable financial footing. Getting his doctorate and having his first book published didn’t hurt. Both of those professional accomplishments led to his doing consulting work for other states. Within a matter of months his life had turned around: he was still living in western Washington and it was still raining, but instead of using a bus pass to get around, he was driving a new dual-cab Ford pickup truck. To ward off a bad case of homesickness he started following the local rodeo circuit, sometimes participating, sometimes as a spectator.
    That was what had taken him to the Kitsap County Fairgrounds out on the Kitsap Peninsula the previous summer. Each year during the Kitsap County Fair and Rodeo, one of the rodeo’s evening performances benefits the breast cancer foundation Susan G. Komen for the Cure. At that performance, everyone is supposed to wear pink, and a local organization donates money to the foundation for everyone who wears pink and wins one of that night’s events.
    As Todd told me shortly afterward, “It takes balls for a cowboy to wear pink.”
    On the evening in question, he had screwed his courage to the sticking place, dressed himself in a brand-new pink Western shirt, and showed up. Sometimes the fates are with you and that’s all you have to do—just show up. Sometime during the rodeo he was introduced to Julie Dodge, who was the winner of the evening’s barrel-racing contest and who was also wearing pink.
    As a fund-raiser at the rodeo, people are able to show their support by purchasing pink balloons that are released all at once in a moving ceremony at the end of the evening’s performance. When it came time to let go of his balloon, Todd Hatcher found himself standing next to Julie Dodge, and the rest is history.
    It turned out to be a match made in heaven. Julie had inherited her father’s horse farm, where her divorced father had raised her along with plenty of prizewinning quarter horses. She had grown up helping him run the farm. After his death, she ran it solo, hiring help only as needed. It was also after her father’s death that she managed to reconnect with her mother. Julie’s mom had bailed when she discovered she wasn’t cut out for ranch life or motherhood. She died of breast cancer only a