“Good. We’ve got time to grab lunch and a car and still get to your starting point by two.”
“A car?”
“You were driving a Pontiac G6. I can probably talk Lewis at the used-car place into letting us borrow something similar.”
They reached town within ten minutes. Other than a distinctive western feel to the town’s buildings, and the sprawling blue Wyoming sky spreading out for miles beyond the town’s small cluster of business and in-town residences, Canyon Creek, Wyoming, was not that different from her own hometown of Gossamer Ridge, Alabama. The friendly waves from pedestrians and drivers alike as they drove down Main Street were something she encountered daily at home. Everybody knew everybody else in a small town.
Which meant, of course, that she attracted plenty of curious looks as people realized that Riley Patterson wasn’t alone in his Chevy Silverado.
“Same story as we’re telling Jack?” she asked aloud as he pulled into the parking lot of a small used-car lot.
He looked at her, his brow furrowed. “Same story?”
“People will want to know who I am.”
His brow creased further. “Ah, damn. You’re right.”
“We can pretend I’m a cousin or something-”
“No, it’s okay. Now that Jack knows you’re here, it’s not like he’s going to keep quiet about it. People will probably be so thrilled to see me out with a woman, they’ll bend over backwards to leave us be.” There was a bitter edge to his voice that made Hannah’s stomach hurt.
Yet she understood what he was feeling, more than he knew. “Everyone keeps waiting for my brother, J.D., to fall in love again,” she said. “And it’s been almost eight years for him.”
He stopped with his hand on the door handle. “Eight years since what?”
“Since his wife was murdered.”
THE WORKSHOP in his mother’s root cellar was small but private, just as he required. She’d become too arthritic to handle the rough wooden stairs a few years before she died, making the cellar solely his domain for almost a decade now. Besides the house access, the cellar also had an outside entrance built into the ground. Its wide double doors accommodated easy loading and unloading from the Crown Vic parked in the side yard, and the extra insulation he’d added a few years back made the room virtually soundproof.
He sat on the work stool, polishing his tools and reviewing the last two days in his mind, determined to fix what had gone wrong not once but twice in the past forty-eight hours. There was no way to candy-coat the truth. The girl had caught him by surprise. She’d kept her head, despite the pepper-spray ambush, and managed to get away. She’d almost drawn blood, he thought, looking down at the light scrape on his pinky finger where the ring had been the day before.
Worse, she’d thwarted his careful plan to mop up his mess. He should’ve known she was awake. He should have heard her breath quicken, seen her furtive movements to undo the IV cannula. He’d gotten sloppy, and things were now worse than before. The cops were putting the pieces together, after all he’d done to spread out his kills in different jurisdictions and different years. He’d overheard the cops talking about the kills at the hospital. Three years of murders, they’d said.
He smiled with the first real satisfaction he’d felt in two days. Three years wasn’t even close.
His first kill had been almost ten years ago. A neighbor girl, not a half mile down the highway. She’d been seventeen. He’d been twenty.
It had been sweet. So very sweet.
He laid down his knife and reached across the worktable for the folder that he’d compiled after his earlier visit to the Teton County Sheriff’s Department. It had been so easy-stop by to see an old friend from his prison-guard days who’d made the move to real police work. He’d just kept his eyes open, grabbed the file when his friend wasn’t looking and stuck the folder under his coat. So easy. A quick trip to the copy shop down the street and a return trip to the sheriff’s station on pretense of leaving his cell phone behind, and he’d had everything he needed.
Nobody had suspected a thing. And now he had his own file on Hannah Jean Cooper of Gossamer Ridge, Alabama.
It didn’t do much to tell him where she was at the moment, but quick phone calls to her home number and work number had, at least, given him hope that she had not yet left Wyoming. He still had time to tie up that loose end.
Meanwhile, he thought, turning to look at the woman lying gagged and bound on the worktable, he had work to do.
“YOUR BROTHER’S WIFE WAS murdered?” Riley’s stomach muscles clenched.
She nodded, her expression grim. “Eight years ago next February. She was abducted from the trucking company where she worked-she’d worked late and her car battery had died, stranding her alone. By the time anyone realized she was missing, it was already too late.”
“I’m sorry.” The words seemed inadequate.
“My brother was devastated. In some ways, he still is.” Moisture sparkled on her eyelashes. She sniffed back the tears. “So, you see, I know it’s hard to deal with people who think you can just get over it and move on. I’ve watched my brother deal with it for years.”
“Did the police ever find out who killed her?” As soon as he asked the question, Riley realized he didn’t want to know the answer. Three years without answers had been a living horror. The idea of eight years of not knowing who’d upended his whole world was almost more than he could stand.
“J.D. hasn’t stopped searching, either,” Hannah said, her voice small and strangled.
“Then you understand,” he said grimly.
She nodded, sniffing again. She took a deep breath, squared her jaw and turned to look at him. “You do whatever makes you comfortable. Tell people whatever you want. I’ll go along with it.”
He wished it were that simple. But Jack’s arrival had complicated everything. Once Riley blurted the first thing that had come to his mind to explain Hannah’s presence, the die had been cast. He’d have to go on with the charade.
“We could tell Jack the truth,” Hannah said, as if reading his mind.
He shook his head. “No, we can’t.”
“Don’t you trust him?”
He rubbed his jaw, wishing he could say yes without hesitation. “Jack’s a good guy. He wouldn’t hurt you or me on purpose for the world. But he’s also the kind of guy who thinks Saturday nights are made for drinking himself under the table, and I know from experience that he can’t keep his tongue when he’s drinking.”
Her brow furrowed. “I see.”
“We have to go on with what we’ve started.” He began to open the truck’s driver-side door, but Hannah stayed him with a hand on his arm.
She tightened her grip on his forearm. “I’ll wait here in the truck.”
“That’s only delaying the questions. It won’t make them go away,” he warned.
“I know. But look at it this way-when I’m finally out of here, you can just pretend things between us didn’t work out, and then you’ll get a reprieve while you get over our failed romance.” She smiled at him, her eyes sparkling with amusement at figuring out a way to turn their uncomfortable charade into a plus.
Her humor was infectious. He felt his own lips starting to curve with a smile. “You’re devious. I like that.”
She laughed at that. “Six older brothers will do that for you.”
He smiled again, surprised how much he enjoyed having someone to conspire with again. It had been one of the things he’d enjoyed most about his marriage to Emily-someone to keep secrets with, to cocoon himself with against the often cold and indifferent world outside.
But as he entered the used-car lot’s office and answered the greetings of the staff, it occurred to him that getting comfortable around Hannah Cooper could turn out to be a very dangerous proposition.
Chapter Eight
