COLLATERAL CASUALTIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series) by Kassandra Lamb

chicken, a green salad and a covered dish of wild rice. “You feel up to eating something?” he asked.
                “Yeah, I’m okay. I just needed to catch up on some sleep.” She knew this was as good an opening as she was likely to get... But he’d fixed this nice dinner. It wouldn’t be right to let it get cold.
                They ate in silence for several minutes.
                “Darlin’–”
                “Sweetheart–”
                “What?” Skip asked.
                “No, you go first. What were you going to say?”
                He told her what Janice had found out and that she’d decided to divorce Richard.
                “I figured it was only a matter of time.” Kate shook her head. “Why do people even get married if they care so little about the other person’s feelings or goals?”
                “I offered to let her stay here for a few days, but she said she was going to a friend’s in Arizona for a long weekend.”
                “I take it that means the party is off.”
                “Oh yeah.”
                As they finished their food, Kate worked on screwing up her courage again. She put her fork down and took a deep breath.
                But before she could say anything, Skip took her hand. Tilting it to kiss the tender skin on the inside of her wrist, he whispered, “I love you.”
                She sucked in her breath. And lost her nerve.
    ~~~~~~~
                Thursday afternoon, Kate’s last client canceled on her. She headed home, vowing she would tell Skip what was going on before dinner.
                She arrived just as Maria and the children were returning from Edie’s riding lesson. Maria whispered to her that the little girl had been upset because the teacher had let another child ride Fiddlesticks, the pony Edie normally rode. “Teacher give her yellow horse to ride instead. She seem okay by end of de lesson.”
                Kate went into the living room. Edie had settled on the floor and was drawing yet another picture of a horse.
                “Mommy, when I get my own horse, I want a pal’mino.”
                Kate hid a smile. “ If you get your own horse, its personality will be more important than the color of its coat.” When she saw the stubborn look on her daughter’s face, she added, “But we can look for a palomino, if and when the time comes.”
                Edie vigorously nodded her head, making the dark curls that matched her mother’s bounce up and down. She apparently considered herself victorious in that exchange.
                Her mother stifled a sigh. They were trying to put off the purchase of a horse until Edie was a few years older, but the little girl was a very persistent lobbyist.
                Kate was too nervous to sit still. She started tidying the living room. She picked up the State and Local section of the morning paper from the end table and headed for the recycle bin in the kitchen.
                She was halfway there before the headline registered, Arson Suspected in Sykesville House Fire . With a sick sense of foreboding, Kate skimmed the article under the picture of a raging fire. Arson is suspected in the early morning fire that claimed this Sykesville home while the family was away. The family wasn’t named and the specific address wasn’t given, but her eyes froze on the last paragraph. The owner of the house has had more than her share of tragedy lately. She recently lost her husband in an accident in Patapsco State Park.
                The burning house in the picture was the Dawsons’ home.
     

CHAPTER SIX
                Kate raced to the phone in the kitchen and punched in Mac’s cell number. “I need to talk to you,” she said when he picked