She took a seat where he indicated and looked at what lay inside the folder. There were photos, obviously pulled from the Internet and printed on a color printer. Belt buckles, in a variety of snake shapes.
“Jane was a busy woman this evening,” he murmured. “Do any of these look familiar?”
Hannah took the folder from him and started leafing through the printouts. None of the belt buckles jumped out at her. So much about the attack on her that day remained fuzzy, whether from the aftereffects of her concussion or the sheer trauma of the ambush. The more she tried to force herself to remember, the more confused the effort seemed to leave her. “I’m not sure,” she said honestly.
“Can you eliminate any of them?”
She looked again. There were a couple of designs where the snake itself was the belt buckle. She was sure that hadn’t been the case with her assailant. “Not these,” she said, setting those pictures aside. “And not these two, either,” she added, culling out a couple that were a dark, weathered pewter rather than a soft, shiny silver.
“That helps,” he said, although she heard a faint strain of frustration in his voice.
She stood up and began laying the other printouts on the bed, placing them in a grid. When she was finished, she stepped back and closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind so she could go back to the day of the attack.
She’d been driving down the highway, hoping to make Jackson before nightfall. But she hadn’t been speeding- she’d checked her speedometer when she saw the blue light behind her.
“I pulled over,” she said aloud. “I reached for my purse and got my driver’s license. I turned back to the window, and I saw only his midsection. He had jeans on, and he was wearing a silver belt buckle-” The image in her mind came into sharp focus suddenly. It was oval-shaped, fashioned of silver with black detailing. The snake was coiled, its diamond-shaped head in the center of the buckle as if ready to strike.
She opened her eyes and looked at Riley. He was looking at the images, a deep furrow in his brow.
She looked down at the images, scanning them to see if any matched the belt buckle she remembered. She spotted it, third from the left, middle row. As she reached for it, Riley moved forward at the same time. Their hands met over the image.
Electric tingles rippled up her arm. She looked up, surprised, to find him staring at her, a strange intensity shining in his blue eyes.
“Is that the one?” His fingers tightened over hers.
She nodded, suddenly breathless.
A triumphant grin spread slowly over his face.
“How did you know?” she asked, looking down at his hand still covering hers on top of the color print.
He let go of her hand and stood, crossing to the desk near the window. He pulled a thick file folder from the bottom drawer and brought it over to the bed. “Can you put away all of the other prints?” he asked, already thumbing through the file in his lap.
She replaced all the useless printouts in the manila folder from which they’d come and held on to the one she’d identified, looking at it more closely. It was definitely the one she’d seen that day. But if it was a popular style-
“Here.” Riley held out a piece of paper.
She took it from him, wincing as she realized it was an autopsy photo. The photo showed a close-up image of a woman’s abdomen, from the bottom of the breasts to the pelvic bone. A dark bruise marred the skin of the upper belly, just below the ribcage.
Riley pointed to the bruise. “Can you see that?”
She looked closer. Suddenly, the bruise started to take a recognizable shape. “Oh, my God. It’s the belt buckle.”
She looked up at him, surprised to find him laughing softly. He dropped the file folder on the bed and reached for her hand, pulling her up and into his arms. His laughter vibrating against her chest, he swirled her around and around until her head swam.
He set her down, finally, still laughing softly as he kept her close. “You don’t know how long I’ve been puzzling over that bruise,” he murmured against her hair, his grip tightening.
Tentatively, she moved her hands up his sides, tracing the whipcord muscles lining his ribcage. Deep in her belly, heat pooled, setting off tiny tremors that rippled up her spine. Her breathing sped up as her heart began to pound like a hammer against her ribcage.
Oh, God, it was happening again.
Riley pulled back slowly, his gaze meeting hers. His eyes went midnight dark, and she realized he’d felt the traitorous response of her body to his. His eyes darkened, but not with anger or surprise. Where her hand rested against his chest, she felt the racing of his heart. Resistance fell away, leaving only hard, ravening need.
She nearly collapsed to the floor when he let her go.
Chapter Seven
Riley crossed to the window and gazed out, as if he could see the mountains instead of his own traitorous reflection there. His whole body was humming with awareness. He could even hear Hannah’s soft, quick respirations behind him.
“This is a break in the case, isn’t it?” she asked.
He took a deep, steadying breath. He could control himself, damn it. He’d become very good at self-discipline over the last few years.
He turned to look at her. “Her name was Cara Sandifer. A rancher found her body in an irrigation pond a few hours after she was killed.” He crossed to the bed, keeping his distance from her, and added the printout of the belt buckle to Cara’s file. “Because her body was found so quickly, the evidence in her case is probably the best we have at the moment.”
“We should tell someone. Joe. You should call Joe.”
Riley nodded. “He can fax a notice over to other law-enforcement agencies in the area. We’ll also track down the manufacturer and see how many belt buckles we’re looking at, what stores in Wyoming carry them, that kind of thing.”
He glanced at Hannah and found her sitting in the middle of the bed, her knees tucked up against her body protectively, the same way she’d sat in the hospital watching the crime-scene investigators go over her bed. Compassion trumped his uneasiness, and he crossed to her side, reaching out to squeeze her arm. “This is good news. You really came through for us.”
She lifted her chin, unfolding out of her self-protective tuck until she sat cross-legged. When she spoke, her voice was stronger. “I hope it helps you find him. That’s all I want, you know. To find this guy and go back home in one piece.”
Her tone didn’t change, but Riley couldn’t miss the warning in her words. She may have felt the same charge of electricity between them that he’d experienced, but she was no more interested in pursuing it than he was.
That should make things between them considerably less complicated, he thought with relief.
He should have known better.
“THERE ARE 450 STORES in 36 states that carry the Cal Reno brand buckles. Most of those have, at one time or another, carried the Rattler design. At least thirty of those stores are located in Wyoming, and God knows how many there are in the surrounding states.” Joe Garrison’s expression was grim.
Hannah stared at the police chief, her heart sinking. “That many?”
“We’ve put out a request to track the purchases, but if someone made the purchase with cash, there’s really no way to identify him. We can hope he paid with a credit card.” Joe looked apologetic.
“Well, maybe we’ll get lucky,” Hannah said, not ready to let go of optimism. She glanced at Riley. His expression was shuttered, but she was beginning to figure out how to read him. It was all in his eyes. He couldn’t hide his feelings in those expressive blue eyes.
Right now, he was feeling wary. Afraid to hope but, like her, not ready to give up yet. She felt an odd sense of camaraderie with him, as if the two of them were pitted against the rest of the doubting world.
Unfortunately, camaraderie with Riley Patterson wasn’t really what she wanted to feel. If last night’s restless attempt at slumber had proved anything, it was that all her good intentions, and all the hard lessons of her past,
