No Luke.
She would give him just a little longer and then—
He surfaced in a shower of dirty water and swam hard toward the side, his back to her. As he climbed out, his jeans running water, she saw something in the set of his shoulders. And felt herself sag under the knowledge.
“It’s down there, isn’t it?” she asked as he climbed up to the dam and picked up his shirt.
LUKE SHRUGGED INTO his shirt, the thin fabric sticking to his wet skin and fought off the chill of the water—and what he’d found.
“There’s a pickup down there,” he said. “And it’s been there for a while. That’s all I can tell you.”
The radio in her patrol pickup squawked. She leaned down to pull on her boots, picked up her belt and jacket and headed toward her patrol SUV without a word.
Luke swore under his breath as she called back after a moment, “I have to go. Can I trust you not to disturb the site?”
Luke picked up his boots and walked over to her, fighting his temper. When was the woman going to start trusting him?
“What do you think I’m going to do? Drain the pond? Or drag the pickup out before you get back?” he asked between clenched teeth.
Her look said that’s exactly what had crossed her mind.
He shook his head, his anger suddenly spent. “McCall, why would I do that?”
“I just want to do this the legal way,” she said, and he realized she wasn’t wearing her badge and her gun. Why was that? “Do I need to get a warrant before I come back with a wrecker to pull out the pickup?”
“No, it’s all yours.”
He watched her drive away, swearing to himself. That damned woman. When he’d first seen her drive into the place he’d thought—Oh, hell, it didn’t matter what he’d thought or worse, what he’d hoped. She hadn’t come to see him. She was just being a cop—even if she wasn’t wearing her gun or badge.
As he stomped over to the small trailer he lived in until he got his house built, he wished he’d let her go in that ice-cold pond. Would have served her right, he thought, his stiff jeans so cold against his skin they felt as if they were starting to freeze.
He stripped out of his clothes on his front step since he had all the privacy in the world way out here. Stark naked, he went inside and turned on the shower. As he stepped under the warm spray, he waited for it to take away some of the chill.
With McCall gone, his mind began to clear.
Trace Winchester’s pickup was in his stock pond?
What had made McCall even suspect there might be a truck down there?
He told himself it had nothing to do with him. The place had been vacant since his parents’ deaths. Luke turned off the shower and reached for a towel, finally getting why McCall had thought he might interfere with her crime scene. If that’s what it was.
Buzz. McCall had been investigating him in regard to her father, and now apparently she thought the pickup in the Crawford stock pond was Trace Winchester’s.
And if it was her father’s truck, what the hell did that mean? Luke didn’t like the implications.
Trace could have dumped the pickup before he took off for parts unknown. Or he could be inside the cab at the bottom of that pond. If so, there was little chance he’d driven himself in there by accident.
As Luke glanced out at the pond, he felt sick. A breeze riffled the surface of the water. Walleye chop, Buzz would have called it.
Buzz. Did this have something to do with his uncle? McCall apparently thought so. Luke hoped not as he reached for his cell phone and punched in Buzz’s number.
Giving his uncle a heads-up wasn’t interfering with the deputy or her possible crime scene. He owed Buzz at least that.
And he wanted to be the one to tell his uncle. Or maybe he wanted to judge for himself what Buzz’s involvement might be based on the tone of his voice when he heard about the pickup being found in the pond.
“YOU WHAT?” SHERIFF GRANT SHERIDAN looked pale under the fluorescent lighting in his office.
“I believe I’ve found my father’s pickup, the black Chevy missing since his disappearance,” McCall said.
“Where the hell—”
“It was dumped in a stock pond not far from where his remains were found,” she said.
Grant had been standing, but now he lowered himself into his office chair and motioned for her to sit down. “I thought I told you to stay away from this investigation?”
McCall stared at the sheriff. His color had returned but he still looked upset. Because she’d interfered with the investigation? Or because she’d found the pickup when he’d thought no one ever would? She realized that she was looking at everyone as a suspect.
“Aren’t you going to ask where the stock pond is located?” she asked him.
His eyes narrowed. “I was getting to that. You realize I can have you arrested after I told you specifically to stay clear of this investigation?”
“Are you sure you want that kind of publicity given that it’s my father who was murdered and that I’m the one who found his grave and his pickup?”
“You’re treading on thin ice, McCall. If you don’t want to lose your job—”
“The stock pond is on the old Crawford place,” she said, in case there was any doubt that she didn’t give a damn about her job at this point. “The ranch was vacant twenty-seven years ago. Buzz Crawford had sold it, but the new out-of-state owners never took possession.” Had Buzz known that might be the case?
Grant leaned back, worry creasing his forehead as he studied her. “Have you told your mother or your grandmother about the truck?”
“No. I came straight to you. I think it would be best if neither of them was notified until there is no doubt it is his pickup. Right now
