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“I’m still here in the room,” she said aloud, making the other men look at her as well. “Since I’m pretty sure you’re talking about me, why don’t y’all tell me what’s on your minds?”
Riley walked toward her slowly. “We were discussing what you do and don’t remember about the attack.”
“Not much,” she admitted, her voice apologetic. “I’d hoped that I’d remember more once the symptoms of the concussion passed, but I come back to the same thing. I didn’t get a good look at him when he pulled me over. I remember jeans and a silver belt buckle. He seemed fit—muscular, or at least that’s the impression I got before he sprayed me in the face with pepper spray. It happened so fast.”
Riley touched her shoulder again. “You told us he posed as a cop. That’s something we didn’t know before, and I think it could be important.” If nothing else, it suggested the man might have some law-enforcement experience, or at least more understanding of police work than the average citizen.
“What if it’s not enough?” Hannah asked. “What if I fly out of here tomorrow and nothing changes? What if he goes on killing people?”
Riley frowned, not following. “We keep looking for him anyway.”
She looked up at him suddenly, her green eyes bright with an emotion he couldn’t identify. “I’m the only living witness. If I leave—”
She didn’t finish the sentence, but Riley finally understood what she was getting at. “If you leave, it could hamper the investigation,” he admitted aloud.
Her head lowered, her back slumping as if it suddenly bore a terrible weight. Riley felt a rush of pity for her, for he had some idea of what she was feeling. It was a horrible thing, carrying the burden of six unsolved murders, knowing that it fell on you to bring them justice and closure.
“I can’t leave Wyoming, can I?” she asked softly.
He didn’t answer, knowing it was a question she had to answer herself.
Her tongue ran lightly over her lips and he saw her throat bob as she swallowed. When she looked up at him again, her gaze was solemn but direct. “I have five more days left of my vacation. I can’t stay forever, but I can give you those five days. Maybe it’ll be enough.”
“We can put you in protective custody,” Jim Tanner offered.
“She needs to go somewhere the killer doesn’t expect her to be.” Riley glanced at Joe.
“Somewhere small and off the beaten path?” Joe asked, his voice faintly dry.
Riley shrugged and turned back to Hannah. “Canyon Creek is about an hour and a half from here, in ranching country. I have a place there. Plenty of room. Great view.”
Hannah’s brow creased. “You want me to stay alone with you? I don’t even know you.”
“You don’t have to know me. You just have to trust me.”
The room fell silent as Hannah considered his words. The walls seemed to close in around them, every molecule, every atom focused on her words.
He wasn’t sure what he wanted her answer to be, now that he’d made the offer. He’d lived alone for three years, his home both a refuge and a prison since Emily’s death. He’d found a certain familiar comfort in his loneliness, Emily’s absence so powerful it became a tangible thing he could hold on to when the nights were dark and long. He hadn’t let anyone intrude on his solitude in a long time.
Hannah would change that. How could she not?
Hannah released a long, deep breath and looked up at them. “Okay.”
Riley felt as if the ground was crumbling beneath his feet.
“Let’s do it,” she said, her chin high. “Let’s go to Canyon Creek.”
Chapter Four
“Joe shouldn’t have dragged you out of bed to do this.” Hannah took the blanket Jane Garrison handed her, feeling terrible about putting a stranger—a pregnant stranger—through so much trouble.
“I wasn’t asleep. I’m not used to my husband being called to Jackson in the middle of the night.” Jane’s expression was a mixture of ruefulness and besottedness. Clearly, she was madly in love with Canyon Creek’s Chief of Police.
“I guess it’s usually quiet around here, huh?” Hannah had dozed a bit on the drive from Jackson, drained from the last eventful hours, but she’d awakened long enough to see that Riley Patterson’s small ranch house was located smack dab in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming. He had assured her there was a town a few miles to the east, with stoplights and everything, but they were clearly in ranch country, where the closest neighbors—the Garrisons, as it turned out—were six miles down a narrow one-lane road.
“Quiet?” Jane’s lips quirked. “Mostly, yes. But we do have our moments, now and then.” She crossed to the corner, where an old-fashioned wood stove sat silent and cold, and started to pick up pieces of firewood from a nearby bin.
“Let me do that.” Hannah quickly intervened.
“You have a concussion,” Jane protested.
“And you’re pregnant,” Hannah countered firmly.
Jane gave her an exasperated look. “It’s not a disease.”
Hannah laughed. Jane’s lips curved and she finally gave into laughter as well.
“Joe treats me like I’m suddenly made of glass when he knows damned well I’m tough as old leather,” Jane complained as she opened the door to the stove so Hannah could throw some wood inside. “I’ve lived through the Wyoming winter for two years now. Having a baby’s nothing compared to that.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s nothing.” Hannah put the last piece of wood on the fire and stepped back. “How does this thing work? We’re more into air-conditioning where I live.”
Jane took over lighting the wood stove. “You’re from Alabama?”
Hannah sat on the end of the bed, watching Jane’s deft hands strike a match to the kindling she’d piled atop the stack of wood inside the iron stove’s belly. “Yeah. It’s a little town called Gossamer Ridge, up in northeast Alabama. It’s pretty small. My family owns a few hundred acres on Gossamer Lake. We run a marina and fishing camp there. Most of my brothers and I work there in some capacity.”
“You have a lot of brothers?” Jane stepped back from the stove, holding her hands out to warm them from the radiant heat.
“Six. I’m the youngest and the only girl.”
“Wow. Six brothers.” Jane settled carefully in a rocker next to the bed, rubbing her hand over her round belly. “I’m an only child. Joe had a brother, but he died.” For a second, Jane’s expression grew bleak, her eyes dark with pain. She took a deep breath and seemed to physically shake off the sadness. “Riley’s an only child, too. It can be lonely.”
“He seems lonely.” Hannah kicked herself mentally the second the words spilled from her lips. The last thing she should be doing was psychoanalyzing the man who’d made himself her guardian angel. She should just accept his offer of protection for what it was and try not to get any more involved.
She’d already made the mistake of falling for a guy who was hung up on another woman and lived to regret it. She had no intention of making the same mistake again.
But Jane wasn’t ready to drop the subject, apparently. “He’s a complicated guy.”
“I know about his wife’s death.” And understood his thirst for justice better than he might have imagined. Her own brother, J.D., whose wife had been murdered several years ago, was still waiting for justice as well.
She wondered if either man would get what they wanted.
Jane gave her a sidelong look. “I didn’t know Emily. She had died about a year before I met Joe. He tells me Riley used to be very different. Clowning around, always the one to crack a joke—” She stopped herself. “Like I said, complicated.”
Hannah resisted the temptation to push for more information. She was here for only a few more days, and her focus needed to be on remembering the lost details of her ordeal with the fake cop, not on Riley Patterson’s tragic past.
She quickly changed the subject. “Is this your first child?”
“Yeah.” Jane rubbed her belly. “Joe keeps talking about lots of kids. I told him he can carry the rest of them.”
Hannah grinned, deciding she liked Jane Garrison. She wasn’t what you’d call pretty, exactly, with her freckle-spotted face and unruly brown curls, but her emerald eyes were full of life and laughter, and when she smiled, Hannah couldn’t help smiling back.
“I missed my mother’s pregnancies, being the youngest. But my brothers tell me stories that would curl your hair.”
Jane chuckled. “Scooter here has been pretty good for most of the pregnancy, but now that I’m nearing the goal line, he’s started kicking up a storm—”
“And you love it.”
Riley’s deep voice from the doorway drew Hannah’s gaze. She felt suddenly, intensely aware of him as he entered the room, his boots thumping against the hardwood floor with each step. He’d shed the leather jacket and dress shirt for a dark-blue T-shirt. A sizzle of pure attraction shot through Hannah’s body, settling low in her belly. It simmered there, spreading warmth through her veins.
She tamped it down ruthlessly. The last time she’d let her heart and hormones lead her head, she’d ended up heartbroken and humiliated.
“Joe’s on the phone with Jim Tanner,” Riley told Jane, holding out his hand to her. “He said to round you up and head you in the direction of the front door. You’re supposed to be resting like a good mama-to-be.”
Jane rolled her eyes. “See what I have to put up with?” But she let Riley help her from the rocking chair, and the look of affection she gave him when he ruffled her curls made Hannah smile. Jane waggled her fingers at Hannah. “Call if you need anything. Riley has our number.”
“I will,” Hannah agreed, though she didn’t plan on imposing on the Garrisons or Riley if she could avoid it.
While Riley walked to the front of the house with Jane, Hannah pulled her suitcase onto the bed and started unpacking. The closet across from the bed was empty, save for a couple of extra blankets piled atop a high shelf. Hannah filled several of the bare clothes hangers with her sparse collection of blouses and sweaters. Jeans, T-shirts and underwear went into the small chest of drawers by the door.
Her toiletries she kept in the bag she’d packed them in, since she’d be sharing the house’s only bathroom with Riley. She couldn’t quite bring herself to store her deodorant next to his on the sink counter.
Riley tapped on the open door, making her jump. “Do you have everything you need?”
She looked up to find him leaning against the door frame, his arms folded over his chest. His direct gaze made the skin on the back of her neck prickle, but she refused to look away. If they were going to be sharing this house for the next few days, she was going to have to control her rattled nerves. Now was as good a time to start as any.
“I’m taking the rest of the week off from work,” he told her, pushing away from the door and walking farther into the room. His broad shoulders and muscle-corded frame seemed to crowd the room, leaving Hannah feeling small and vulnerable. She stood up, thinking it would put them on more equal footing, but rising only brought her closer to him. Up close, he seemed bigger than she’d thought, solid, hard and masculine. He smelled good, a tangy combination of pine needles and sweet hay. He’d gone with Joe to check on the horses in the stable, she remembered, while Jane helped her settle in.
Taking a step backwards, she forced her thoughts back to what he’d just said. “Don’t take time off on my account.”
His lips quirked. “I have to. Since I’m supposed to be protecting you.”
“I should be safe enough here by myself. The guy who attacked me doesn’t know where to find you, does he?”
“I wouldn’t think so. But I don’t think we should take chances. I’m not really going to be off. This is police business.” To her relief, he backed away, settling in the rocker where Jane had sat earlier, his long legs stretched in front of him. “Joe’s going to tell everyone he forced me to take vacation. They’ll believe it. I haven’t been off in a couple of years.”
She arched her eyebrows. “Workaholic?”
His expression closed. “I just like to work.”
She knew a warning flag when she saw one. She shifted the subject. “The doctor told me before I left that I could get back some of the memory that’s hazy right now. About the day of the attack, I mean. Maybe I’ll remember more about what the man was wearing—the belt buckle, what kind of shirt he had on.”
“It’s possible,” he conceded. “Meanwhile, Jim Tanner is looking into the backgrounds of the hospital personnel.”
“I don’t know that just anyone would know how to tamper with a security camera.” Hannah sat down cross-legged on the end of the bed, tucking her feet under the blanket Jane had given her. A cold wind had picked up during the night, blasting the valley with a bitter autumn chill that the little wood stove couldn’t quite combat.
“There are a few ways it could have been done. The tech guys in Cheyenne will be able to tell us more.” Riley shifted in his chair and pulled a cell phone from his pocket. “I want you using this to make all your calls. It’s my personal cell phone. I can use my work phone. I don’t want you to use your own phone while you’re here in Wyoming.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“We don’t know how much this guy knows about you now. If he’s a hospital employee, he could have accessed your hospital records, which would give him a hell of a lot of personal information at his fingertips. If he has your cell phone number, he could possibly have a way to trace its use.”
Hannah’s stomach gave a little flip as she took the phone from him. “Are you trying to scare me or something? Believe me, it’s not necessary.”
“I just want you to be on guard every moment. Think about the things you do and say, who you talk to. I assume you’ll want to call your family to let them know where you are?”
Hannah rubbed her head. She hadn’t even thought about what she was going to tell her parents about what she’d decided to do. “I don’t know what to tell them.”
“It’s up to you. Tell them as much or as little as you think they need to know.”
“If I tell them too much, there’ll be eight Coopers on the next flight to Wyoming.”
“Tell them you met a nice doctor at the hospital and he’s taking you skiing in Jackson Hole.” Riley’s lips quirked. “A nice rich doctor. Don’t mothers love to hear stuff like that?”
“My mother can sniff out a lie faster than a bloodhound on a ’possum.”
He grinned at that. “So tell her you met a nice cop who took you home and has you locked in his spare bedroom.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s so much better.”
His soft laugh caught her by surprise. It was a great laugh, musical and fluid, though it sounded a bit rusty, as if he hadn’t used it in a while.
Maybe he hadn’t.
“Just tell her the truth,” he suggested, his laughter dying. “But don’t make it sound too scary. I’m pretty sure the guy who attacked you hasn’t yet connected you to me, so that should keep you safe while we see if we can put together all the pieces to our puzzle.”
Hannah glanced at the clock sitting on the bedside table. It read 5:30 a.m. “Is that clock right?”
Riley checked his watch. “Yes.”
It was an hour later in Alabama. Her parents would be up by now. She flipped open the cell phone he’d handed her and dialed her parents’ number.
Her mother answered, sounding sleepy. “Hello?”
“Hey, Mom, it’s me.”
“What’s wrong?”
Hannah smiled at her mother’s immediate leap to the worst possible conclusion. “Everything’s okay. I just wanted to let you know what’s happening.”
She caught her mother up to date on all that had happened, pausing now and then to allow her mother to catch her father up on all that she was saying. Feeling Riley’s gaze on her, she looked up to find him studying her with slightly narrowed eyes. His hands rested on the arms of the rocker, his fingers drumming softly on the polished wood, but it seemed more a nervous twitch than a sign of impatience.
“You need to be on the next plane instead of holed up under police protection,” her mother said firmly.
“I have almost a week left of my vacation, Mom. If I stick around, maybe something will trigger my memory—”
“You can trigger your memory in the safety of your own home,” Beth Cooper insisted. “Mike, talk to your daughter.”
“Mom—don’t…Hi, Dad.”
