It was just-Hannah. Hannah made him feel things. Not just physical attraction. That was biological. He hadn’t stopped being a man when Emily died. But those kinds of urges were no different than his stomach growling when he was hungry or yawning when he was sleepy.
Hannah made him laugh. She made him want to know more about her. She had the same sort of vibrancy, the same curiosity, the same enjoyment of the simple pleasures of life that had drawn him to Emily.
She was dangerous to him in the way that a simple biological response to a beautiful woman could never be.
Maybe that was as good an excuse as any to stop worrying and just enjoy what she was making him feel. Like a limb coming back to life after being asleep for a while, the worst of the painful tingles had begun to pass, and he was starting to feel a hum of energy that reminded him he wasn’t dead after all.
He was thirty-four years old, in excellent health, with years of life ahead of him. It was time to start living again, wasn’t it?
He knew what Emily would tell him.
“I got gas at that station,” Hannah said, pointing to a Lassiter Oil station coming up on her left. Behind the station, a small herd of Appaloosas grazed on a dwindling patch of pastureland. “I’d forgotten about that. I filled up about fifteen minutes before I was pulled over.”
“Are you sure this is the station?”
She nodded. “I remember the Appaloosas.”
“Then we should stop here, too.”
Hannah slowed and turned into the gas station, parking near the front. She shut off the engine. “I know I didn’t go in. I paid at the pump. I think I got a couple of bottles of water out of one of those vending machines.” She pointed to a pair of machines standing against the wall of the station’s food mart.
Riley glanced at his watch. It was after three. According to the case report, she’d wrecked her car at Big Mike’s Truck Stop, which was about ten miles down the highway.
“It takes about three or four minutes to fill up a tank. Did you talk to anyone?”
Her brow wrinkled as she considered the question. “I’m not sure-I don’t really remember much about stopping here, except the horses. If there was someone else here filling up, I might have made small talk, but-”
He sighed. Her memory was still spotty from the concussion. Her doctor had admitted that she might never remember some of what happened that day.
“Let’s get back on the road,” he said after three minutes had passed.
She started the car, but paused a moment before putting it into drive. “I think there was someone at the pumps. I kind of remember asking about the roads to Yellowstone-whether there’d been any closings yet. I don’t remember the answer.”
“It’s okay,” he assured her. “It probably doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to you.”
Still, he made a note to mention it to Joe. They could check the station’s receipts from that day, maybe find out who else bought gas around the time she had.
They drove a little farther west. Riley tried to pay particular attention to the surroundings, as they should be coming up on wherever the attack had taken place any time now.
“Hmm,” she murmured.
He looked up to find her brow furrowed. “What is it?”
“That road we just passed on the right. I think that may be where he was waiting.”
Riley looked back toward the small dirt road they’d just passed. “You think he was waiting?”
“I check my mirrors regularly. Old habit my father drummed into me when he was teaching me to drive.” She glanced at the mirror just then. “I think it was right about here when I looked into the rearview mirror and saw the blue lights.”
He looked around them. There was no shoulder on the right to speak of; where the road top ended, the ground rose steeply up a craggy hillside.
“I couldn’t pull over here,” she said softly, her eyes narrowed as she followed the curve of the road. He noticed her breath was coming in short, fast little clips, even though her chin was up, her jaw squared with determination.
It was getting to her, being here.
“I was looking for-there.” She pointed toward a turn-off ahead, where the shoulder widened enough to accommodate a vehicle. “That’s where I pulled over. It happened there.”
She slowed suddenly, whipping the Ford off the highway on to the side road. Braking at the road’s edge, she jammed the Ford into Park and bent her head forward, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps.
He reached across and unbelted her. “Just breathe,” he coaxed, rubbing her back. “Take a big breath and hold it for a count of ten.”
She squeezed the steering wheel hard, breathing in and holding it while she counted to ten under her breath. She exhaled, then repeated the deep breath. Twice. Three times. One more deep breath and she looked at him, her eyes dark with humiliation. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be.” He slid his hand up to her neck, gently kneading the tight muscles bunched beneath his fingers. He kept his voice calm and comforting. “Just take a minute to breathe.”
After another minute, she was visibly calmer. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to look him in the eye when she next spoke. “Any chance we could find tire tracks on the shoulder where he pulled me over?”
“I’ll take a quick look, but we should probably call the Teton County Sheriff’s Department. It’s their case, officially. They’ll want to call in the crime-scene investigators.” He pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his jacket as he got out of the Ford and crossed to the highway to take a closer look at the shoulder.
What he found there made his heart sink.
There weren’t any tire tracks at all. In fact, the sandy shoulder looked as if it had been raked clean of any marks either car might have made upon pulling over.
Son of a bitch was always a step ahead.
HANNAH RESTED HER HEAD against the back of the seat and watched the crime-scene investigators at work in her rearview mirror. They seemed to be taking soil samples, despite Riley’s grim pronouncement earlier that someone had already tampered with the scene to remove any sort of tread marks that the police might have been able to preserve from the scene.
He’d sat with her awhile as they waited for the Teton County deputies to arrive but jumped from the car as soon as they drove up, no doubt as horrified by her humiliating bout of hysterics as she’d been.
She saw Riley moving away from the detectives overseeing the evidence collection. He opened the driver’s door and held out his hand. “I’ll drive home.”
She took his hand and let him help her out of the car, her skin burning with embarrassment. He probably wasn’t holding her weakness against her, she knew, but that didn’t ease her own sense of shame. She was a Cooper, for God’s sake. Coopers were made of tough stuff, and just because she was the only girl didn’t mean it was okay to go all weak-kneed and neurotic.
“I’m not a wuss,” she muttered aloud as she buckled herself into the passenger seat.
Riley turned to look at her. “I know that.”
She slanted a look at him. He seemed to be sincere. “We don’t have to leave now if you don’t want to. I know you’d probably rather be back there with the other detectives.”
“They’re not going to find anything,” Riley said with a brisk shake of his head. “They haven’t found anything at the turn off down the road where you thought he might have lain in waiting, either. I think he covered his tracks.” He gave a nod toward the western sky, where gunmetal rain clouds had started to gather. “Rain’s coming. Let’s not get stuck driving home in it.” He took off his jacket, tossed it in the backseat of the borrowed car, and slid behind the wheel.
She settled back against the seat, willing herself to relax. Now that her brief panic attack had passed fully, the ebb of adrenaline had begun draining her body of energy. All she wanted to do at the moment was close her eyes and let the last of the tension melt away.
Riley fiddled with the radio dial until he found something soft and slow playing on a country station out of Jackson. The quiet music blended with the hum of the Ford’s motor until the vibrations seemed to take over her
