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.
