Case File: Canyon Creek, Wyoming

Chapter Nine

Though a cold wind whipped around them, and the rain drenched them to the skin, all Hannah could feel was Riley’s mouth over hers, hard and relentless, drawing out of her a feverish passion she thought she’d buried somewhere so deep inside it could never be found again. She dug her fingers into the muscles of his arms, holding on tightly as he dragged her closer to him, until her breasts pressed flat against the hard wall of his chest, until she could feel his heartbeat galloping wildly alongside her own.

Slowly, he ran his hand over her jaw, down the curve of her neck, his thumb settling on the hollow of her throat. His mouth softened, coaxing her to relax against him. His tongue slid lightly over her bottom lip, seducing her until she opened up to him, letting him deepen the kiss.

Their tongues met briefly, a gentle thrust and parry, and a low moan escaped her throat.

The sound seemed to catch him off guard. He went still, his mouth resting briefly against hers, then letting go. His hand dropped from her neck and away from her body altogether.

Released from his hold, she had to struggle to keep her feet, her breath coming in short, raspy pants.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice tight.

She didn’t know what to say. Was he sorry for kissing her in the first place? Sorry for pulling away and leaving her breathless and stunned?

“You scared me,” he added, immediately wincing as if he knew it was the wrong thing to say.

The sudden tension between them was almost painful. She pressed the heel of her hand against her suddenly aching forehead. “Let’s get back in the car, okay? We’re soaked.”

He gave a brisk nod and guided her back to the car. He opened the door for her, letting her settle in before he shut it and went around to the driver’s side. He cranked the engine and turned up the heat, pulling back out on to the highway.

The next hour passed in near silence, the beat of the windshield wipers and the patter of rain taking up the slack.

They reached Canyon Creek near nightfall, stopping at the used-car lot to switch vehicles. On the short drive back to Riley’s place, he broke the silence only to make a phone call to the office. “He’s not in? Do you know where he went?”

After listening a moment longer, he rang off, gazing ahead at the road with his brow furrowed.

“What is it?” Hannah asked.

“Joe left the office about four hours ago, headed for the Grand Teton National Park. He didn’t leave any message for me.”

“Maybe it’s not related to my case?”

He shook his head. “Grand Teton is way out of our jurisdiction. Why would he be going there?”

Hannah had a sinking feeling they’d find out sooner rather than later.

JACK’S TRUCK WAS NOWHERE in sight when Riley pulled the Silverado up the gravel-packed drive to his house. He frowned, wondering where his brother-in-law was off to in this storm.

As Hannah started to get out of the truck, he put his hand out to hold her in place. “Let me go get an umbrella for you.”

She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I’m already drenched to the bone. I’m not going to melt.” She slid out of the car into the rain.

He hurried to catch up with her, unlocking the door and guiding her to the narrow mudroom just off the kitchen. He took her jacket and shook off the water, hanging it to finish drying on a hook on the wall. He did the same with his own jacket, trying to ignore the tense silence that had fallen between them.

What the hell had gotten into him, grabbing her up like that, kissing her with all the finesse of a cowboy hitting town after weeks on the trail? Jack, for God’s sake, would have handled her with a more gentleness, and he was a damned bull rider and an unrepentant player.

Hannah crossed the kitchen to stand near the wood stove. Inside the chamber, the embers were dying, but it still gave off a soft stream of heat. Riley joined her there, holding his hands out to warm them from the damp chill.

“Hannah, I wanted to say-”

“Do you think Joe might have left a message on your answering machine?” she interrupted, looking up at him with anxious eyes.

That should have been the first thing he thought about, he realized with some chagrin. He went down the hall to his bedroom to check, acutely aware of Hannah’s soft footsteps moving down the hallway behind him.

There was nothing on his answering machine, and when he tried calling Joe’s cell phone, he got no answer.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Hannah’s voice was right behind him. He turned to find her standing quietly, her eyes dark with worry.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, touching her arm, needing that contact to ground him, somehow.

She laid her hand on his chest, right over his heart, her touch gentle and questioning. He put his own hand over hers, pulling her into a gentle, undemanding embrace.

They stood there a long time, wrapped in each other’s arms, her head resting against his shoulder. Outside the house, darkness fell, painting the bedroom with shadows. The only light came from the glowing embers of the wood stove in the corner, yet Riley couldn’t seem to rouse himself to release Hannah and go turn on the overhead light.

“I’m sure he’s okay,” she murmured against his shirt.

“It’s unusual for him not to answer his phone.”

“Maybe it’s out of cell-tower range or something.”

That was certainly possible. There were plenty of places in the Wyoming hills and valleys where cell-phone towers didn’t reach. And had Joe left Riley a message, telling him he might be out of pocket for the afternoon, he probably wouldn’t give it a second thought.

“Should I call Jane and see if she knows where he is?”

“No,” Hannah said quickly, pulling her head back to look at him. “You’d just worry her without really knowing anything. Give Joe time to get home and try him again later.” She let go of him, backing out of the embrace, though this time she didn’t seem uncomfortable to be around him. “Let’s get out of these wet clothes and then see what we can rustle up for dinner. I bet you’ll hear from Joe by the time we’re finished.”

She was almost right. Riley had just walked into the kitchen, dressed in a dry pair of jeans and a warm sweatshirt when a knock sounded on the back door. A second later, Joe stuck his head through the door. “Riley?”

“Come on in,” he answered, turning as Hannah came into the kitchen from the hallway. She’d dressed in a loose-fitting pair of yoga pants and an oversized T-shirt, and still he found himself wanting to pin her up against the kitchen wall and finish what he’d started out on that rain-washed highway.

He dragged his gaze away as Joe let himself into the kitchen, rain dripping from his Stetson to the floor of the entryway. He gave them both an odd look as he ducked into the mudroom briefly to hang up his wet coat, then returned to the kitchen where they waited.

“I heard you went to Grand Teton,” Riley said, trying not to sound impatient.

Joe nodded. “I got a call from Jim Tanner. A hiker found a body up there.”

Next to Riley, Hannah moved sideways, dropping into one of the nearby kitchen chairs. Riley slanted a look at her to make sure she was okay. She looked a little pale, but her gaze was steady as she waited for Joe to elaborate.

“They found pepper spray on her skin. She was wrapped in a plastic sheet and dumped in a creek just inside the park east of Moran. She’s been dead less than a day. Maybe as little as a couple of hours. M.E. thinks the hikers found her within minutes of her being dumped.”

Riley shook his head. “Our guy’s not that sloppy.”

“Who else could it be?” Hannah asked. “It can’t be a copycat, since none of that stuff is common knowledge, right?”

Riley looked at her, then back at Joe, not yet sure what to think. Their guy wasn’t the sloppy type, so if this was him, something in his MO had changed.

“He could be escalating, beyond his normal control,” Joe suggested. “Maybe he couldn’t handle the failure of letting Hannah slip through his fingers not once but twice in the last two days.”

It was possible, Riley supposed, but something about that theory just didn’t feel right. The guy had been able not only to escape capture for the last three years but escape detection as well. Riley had been the first law-enforcement officer in Wyoming to connect the dots, and even he’d had doubts at first. Was a guy as wily as that really going to lose control and start getting sloppy because one of his targets got away?

“Maybe it’s not escalation,” Hannah said. Riley looked at her and found her gazing back at him, her green eyes dark with horror. “Maybe it was a message. To me. What he’d have done to me if I hadn’t gotten away.”

Riley pulled out the chair beside Hannah and sat down, reaching across to close his hand over hers where it lay on the table. “Don’t you start blaming yourself for this.”

Joe sat across from them. “Riley’s right. Whatever this bastard does, it’s his own doing. You haven’t done a damned thing wrong.”

Riley squeezed her hand. “What were you supposed to have done differently-let him kill you?”

“No, of course not,” she said, releasing a deep sigh. “I just think he’s trying to tell us we can’t stop him. I mean-he killed her and dumped her in a national park where hikers found her probably within minutes. That’s bold.”

“And risky, too,” Joe pointed out. “If he starts thinking he’s invincible, that’s good for us. He’ll start making mistakes, and we’ll have him.”

“Are we going to be in the loop on this investigation?” Riley asked Joe. “I need to see the reports.”

“They’re faxing everything they get. As soon as they know something, we’ll know something. I’ll bring by copies when they’re ready.” Joe shot a comforting smile at Hannah. “Don’t let this get to you, Hannah. You just stay safe here with Riley and do what you can to remember more about the attack. That’s all you can do.”

Riley walked him to the door when he rose to leave. “Do you think she’s right? Is it a message?”

“I think you and Hannah need to keep working on her memory lapses,” Joe responded. “If she knows anything at all about the attack she hasn’t yet remembered, it could be the break we need. If this guy is willing to kill someone just to let us know he can, nobody’s safe.”

Riley closed the door behind Joe and looked back at Hannah, who still sat at the table, gazing at him with wide, worried eyes. “Why don’t we rustle up some dinner?” he suggested.

“I’m not hungry.”

He sighed. He wasn’t, either, even though lunch had been a long time ago. He wished he knew where Jack was. It had been a real help to have him around for the past day, especially since the horses didn’t just feed themselves every day. He should have asked Joe to take over stable duties that night, but Joe had a very pregnant wife at home, and with a murderous bastard out there killing women-

“I should call Jack,” he said aloud, reaching into his pocket for his phone. “I’m not sure whether he fed the horses or not.”

“We could do that, couldn’t we?” Hannah stood, flexing her arms over her head. “I wouldn’t mind the exercise.”

Or the distraction, he suspected. “You sure? It’s cold and wet out there.”

“I go fishing in December in the rain all the time,” she said firmly, her square little chin lifting. “I’m not fragile.”

He didn’t remind her of how she’d damned near fallen apart earlier that afternoon. Post-traumatic stress could fell big, tough, well-trained men. Then again, considering what she’d been through, she was holding up pretty well.

“Okay,” he agreed. He grabbed their coats from the mudroom and led her out to the truck.

THE HARD RAIN HADN’T SEEMED to affect the hard-pressed dirt track to the stable, Hannah noticed. Perhaps the ground had been too dry for the rain to have made much impact, or maybe it was mostly rocky soil to begin with. There was a lot about Wyoming that seemed almost as alien to her as a foreign country, from the craggy mountains to the thin, dry air.

Amazing, then, how familiar Riley seemed to her after such a short time. Though she knew so little about him, beyond the handful of facts she’d gleaned over the past two days, she was more convinced than ever that she’d made the right choice that night in the hospital when she’d made the leap of faith and put herself under his protection.

He put her to work, showing no signs of trying to coddle her. She was grateful for the show of confidence. After the way she’d acted during their trip west that day, he’d have been justified in thinking she was weak and unreliable.

She brushed the mud off the chestnut mare’s coat and held her bridle while Riley picked the dirt out of her hooves. “What’s her name?” she asked.

“This is Bella. She was Emily’s.” Riley stood up and patted the mare’s flank. “The black gelding is Jazz. And those two-” he pointed to the paint gelding and the buckskin mare they’d already settled for the night “-are Lucky and Lady. Joe bought them last year after he and Jane married. He doesn’t have a stable on his land, so we share feed costs and vet bills, and he pays me for boarding them. He and Jane used to come daily to ride, too, before Jane got pregnant.”

“I mentioned we’ve been thinking about building a stable on our land back home, to offer trail riding up the mountain as part of our services, didn’t I?” Hannah put the brush back on the tack table and turned to look at Riley. “We all know how to ride well, and I think my brother Luke might consider coming back home to run the stable if we ever got around to doing it. He’s the best horseman among us.”

“I thought all your family was together back home in Alabama.” Riley put Bella in her stall and added food to her feed bowl.

“We mostly are. Sam and his little girl Maddy live in the Washington, D.C. area-he’s a prosecutor-but he’s been talking about moving back to Alabama so Maddy can grow up around her grandparents and her cousins. If he comes back, the only one missing will be Luke. He retired from the Marines last year, but so far, he’s still hanging around San Diego.” She couldn’t hide a little frown.

Riley picked up on it immediately. “That worries you?”

“A little,” she admitted. She turned to look at Bella over the stall door. The mare was crunching her feed contentedly, her dark eyes soft and calm. “Luke has always been a bit of a loner, which is hard to do in a family as big as ours, but after his last tour of duty, it’s-worse, somehow. He hardly ever calls, and when we call, he keeps it short.”

“Is he married? Or maybe has a girlfriend keeping him busy?”

She smiled. “I wish. I think I’d relax more if that’s what I thought it was. There’s just-I don’t know. It almost feels like he’s brooding about something.”

“Do you think something happened to him that he’s not telling you?”

She wasn’t sure. She knew he’d done a tour of duty in Kaziristan right before he returned stateside, but that had been nothing but peacekeeping. Kaziristan’s civil war had been over for a couple of years now, and the small Central Asian republic was mostly stable. Compared to some of his previous tours of duty, the one in Kaziristan should have been a cakewalk.

“I just want him back home where I can keep an eye on him,” she answered finally.

Riley smiled. “All your ducks in a row.”

“Exactly.” She laughed self-consciously. “I can’t believe I just told you all that about Luke. I haven’t even talked to my parents about it.”

“Maybe it’s easier to tell things like that to a stranger.”

Except he didn’t feel like a stranger, she thought. She looked up at him, realizing just how much she was going to miss him when she had to go home.

And every day took her closer to that moment.

“What if I don’t remember more about who attacked me?” she asked aloud.

The sound of boots on the hard-packed barn floor made them both turn in surprise. Jack Drummond stood in the doorway, his hat and jacket glistening with rain. He looked from Hannah to Riley, his expression dark and suspicious.

“Someone attacked you?” he asked.

Hannah and Riley exchanged looks. He gave a little shake of his head, clearly not ready to let Jack in on their secret.

“We were wondering where you’d gotten off to,” Hannah said quickly, ignoring Jack’s question. “Did you have fun in town?”

Riley stepped up behind her and slipped his arms around her, clasping his hands in front of her stomach and resting his cheek against her head. “You were wondering, baby,” he said in a low growl that seemed to make her bones liquefy.

“Don’t try to distract me.” Jack strode into the stable, his eyes darkening. “You said something about an attack, Hannah.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a folded section of newspaper. “Funny-I read something about an attack in the newspaper just this afternoon.”

Riley’s arms tightened around Hannah’s waist. His tension radiated through her where their bodies touched, making her stomach clench painfully.

“Seems a woman was attacked on the road to Moran the other day. No identity given, but police sources say the assailant got away, and other sources mentioned a possible second attack in a Jackson hospital.” Jack handed the paper to Hannah. “Page three.”

She opened the paper to the page he mentioned. There it was: Tourist attacked on highway; hospital security breach?

“What makes you think that’s me?”

“The timing. Your injuries. The complete impossibility of Riley meeting someone online, much less someone he’d invite to stay with him after just one meeting.”

Riley dropped his hands away from Hannah, backing away. Cool air replaced the heat of his body, and she shivered.

“Nobody can know Hannah’s connected to that story. Nobody, Jack. Understand?”

Jack’s lips tightened to a thin, angry line. “You lied to me. Me, Riley. I didn’t deserve that.”

“You drink too much, Jack. You party too much. You don’t keep your tongue when you’re drinking.”

Real pain etched lines in Jack’s face. “That’s what you think of me?”

“Tell me it’s not true.”

“It’s not true,” Jack said angrily. Then he lowered his voice. “Not anymore.”

Riley’s expression grew thoughtful. “When did that happen?”

“Last year. I got drunk in Amarillo and lost the best thing that ever happened to me.” Jack removed his hat and ran his fingers briskly through his thick black hair. “I guess you wouldn’t have known about that.”

“And why’s that, Jack? Because you haven’t been back here since Emily died?”

“I couldn’t.”

Hannah felt like a voyeur, watching the two men deal with their private pain. She eased away from them, retreating to the horse box near the back, where Lucky quietly chewed what was left of the night’s feed. She ran her hand down his brown spotted neck. He rewarded her with a soft nicker of pleasure.

“Why did you bring her here to stay with you?” Jack asked, apparently not caring that she was right there in the stable with them. “She could have stayed with Joe and his wife, or, hell, the Teton County Sheriff’s Department could’ve found her a safe place to stay. Why was the first lie you came up with about sleeping with her? Have you given that any thought?”

“Stop it, Jack! This is all about Emily,” Riley said, his voice rising with emotion. “Everything I’ve done since the day she died is about making sure the son of a bitch who murdered her gets what’s coming to him. Don’t you dare question that.”

Hannah felt a sick, hot pain in the center of her chest. She turned her back to them, pressing her face against the gelding’s warm, silky neck.

What’s the matter, Hannah? You knew what was what. You knew it all along.

“Okay, so nobody can know why she’s here,” Jack said. “What’s next?”

Hannah looked over her shoulder at Riley, wondering what he’d answer. He paused, as if at a loss for an answer, and slowly turned to look at her, his expression impossible to read.

“A lot of people have already seen us together,” he said, his gaze remaining locked with hers. “The few who’ve asked, I told the same story I told you, Jack. It’s probably all over town by now. We can’t shift gears now.”

“I can move back to the guest room,” she suggested, pleased that her voice came out calm and pragmatic, considering how much she wanted to go find a quiet corner and cry.

“Then I guess I should go,” Jack said.

“No,” Hannah said quickly, moving toward him. The last thing she could bear was driving Jack away from what was apparently the only home-and family-he had.

And the last thing she needed was to spend the next few nights alone in the house with Riley.