Lost in Cottonwood Canyon & How to Train a Cowboy--Lost in Cottonwood Canyon

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “I’m sorry. I know how much you loved that little place. I guess Kate wasn’t hurt or Martin would have told me.”

  What was that odd note in his voice? she wondered, then just assumed it was the unreliable cellular connection. “She wasn’t even in the country. She went to Central America again with that medical team she worked with.”

  “Good.”

  “We’re both doing okay,” she said. “We’re slowly starting to replace our stuff.”

  “Where are you staying?” he asked.

  “Eventually we’ll probably find another place in town but for now we’re staying at your place in the canyon. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Of course. It belongs to you as much as it does me.”

  “It’s been good to air out the house for a while. Belle’s having a great time chasing squirrels.”

  He actually laughed at that—a rare enough sound that it stopped her in her tracks.

  “That dog never met a squirrel she didn’t like. Toss a few sticks to her for me, would you?”

  She had to swallow a couple of times before she trusted her voice. “I will,” she promised.

  When he spoke again, any levity had been erased from his voice as if it never existed. “And promise me you’ll let Martin and his private investigators handle the appeal. It’s hell enough in here, Tay. If something happened to you out there because of my case, I wouldn’t be able to bear it.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said.

  “You know, I can always call Martin and tell him I want to drop any efforts to appeal. If you keep putting yourself in danger, that’s exactly what I’ll do. It’s not worth your life.”

  She heard the emotion in his voice, emotion he rarely showed, and this time even swallowing hard wasn’t enough to keep down her tears. She closed her eyes. No matter how upset it made him, she knew she couldn’t promise him that.

  “I’m fine,” she repeated. “Just take care of yourself.”

  She hung up before he could argue, then sank down on a bench outside the law library, fighting with everything inside her to give in to the urge to bury her head in her arms and weep for her brother and all he had been forced to endure.

  She wouldn’t give in, though. She wouldn’t give in and she wouldn’t give up. They were close, she knew it.

  Because her feelings were so tender and raw, she had avoided talking with Wyatt for four days, since that terrible lunch when he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Kate. He had called her several times, but when she recognized the caller ID she had let his call go to voice mail.

  If she hadn’t been acting like a stupid, hurt little girl, who knew how much progress she and Wyatt could have made in those four days toward figuring out who really killed Dru and Mickie?

  She needed to get over it—or at least hide her feelings deep inside her so they could resume their working relationship, if nothing else.

  She would call him, she decided. She could use the new information about John Randall as a reason and try to set up another meeting with him. Her heart pounding, she dialed his cell phone. This time she was the one sent to voice mail.

  How pathetic was she that her stomach fluttered just hearing his recorded message, saying in that sexy deep voice that he was not currently available?

  She left him a quick message to call her, then sat in the cool sunshine for a few moments more, trying to process all the information they had collected so far.

  If the father of Dru’s baby wasn’t the killer—and she still wasn’t willing to discount that, despite Hunter’s assertion that John Randall was out of town—who was left?

  She ticked off the possibilities in her mind. Dru had been about to break open a police corruption story, so any of the primary targets of that exposé would have had reason to want her dead. They needed to press Mike Thurman for names—see what they could squeeze out.

  And what about Mickie? She hadn’t forgotten her thought the other day that perhaps Mickie had been the target all along. It was worthy of further scrutiny—and the only thing she had to go on right now was Mickie’s obsession with an old case.

  That was as good a place as any to start, she decided. And what better place to look up information on an old case than the law library? She decided the world wouldn’t stop turning if she blew off her class.

  Behind the reference desk, Barbara smiled when she saw Taylor. “Can’t you get enough of this place?”

  “Guess not,” Taylor answered. “I was remembering the other day when you mentioned that old case Mickie was so interested in. I’d like to look at anything you might have on it.”

  Barbara made a wry face. “You could if it was available, but I’m afraid another patron beat you to it.”

  What were the odds that someone else would be interested in the exact same thirty-year-old case? She frowned and was about to ask, when Barbara gestured to the table behind her.

  Everything made sense when she saw Wyatt with books and papers spread out around him. He was wearing those sexy reading glasses he used sometimes and looked so gorgeous she couldn’t breathe.

  Despite the message she’d left for him, she wasn’t sure she was ready to talk to him yet. She needed more time to ready her defenses. She thought about slipping back through the glass doors but he looked up from his books, just then and caught her gaze.

  The delight on his face took her by surprise. Maybe he thought Kate was with her, she thought sourly. No, that wasn’t fair. He had been nothing but kind to her. It wasn’t his fault that she wanted more.

  “I’m afraid Wyatt beat you to the citation by about a half hour,” Barbara said.

  Taylor let out the breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. “Maybe I can talk him into sharing,” she murmured, then forced herself to walk briskly toward his table before she lost her nerve.

  CHAPTER 12

  “I wondered if I might bump into you today,” Wyatt said, trying his level best to tamp down the joy bursting through him like a lit box of Roman candles.

  Only when he saw her standing there by the reference desk did he admit to himself that he had been spending half the afternoon watching for her, anticipating just this kind of encounter.

  He shouldn’t be this ecstatic to see her, shouldn’t want to pull her close and kiss that perpetual worry from her forehead.

  He had missed her these past few days. He hadn’t realized exactly how much—how dry and empty his life suddenly seemed without her—until right this moment, when this sweet sense of rightness filled him.

  He had almost called her a dozen times in the past few days. The night before, he had even driven up Little Cottonwood Canyon to talk to her, but had turned around before he reached her family’s cabin.

  Not yet. He didn’t want to run the risk of Kate Spencer answering the door or picking up the phone. When he saw her again, Wyatt wasn’t sure he would be able to hold back the avalanche of questions waiting to break free.

  Until he could obtain the results of the DNA tests he and Gage had arranged, he thought it would be better if he avoided Kate altogether, which he had discovered had the unfortunate side effect of also forcing him to avoid Taylor.

  It didn’t keep her from consuming his thoughts, though. Partly to distract him from the two women he suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about—though for entirely different reasons—he had spent the weekend at hard physical labor, working with his foreman to ready the ranch for the heavy winter snows he knew were on the horizon. The work had the desired effect of tiring his body enough that he could sleep. If not for that, he knew he would have burned all night for Taylor.

  As it was, he woke up hard and hungry from dreaming of her.

  Right now, she wore khaki pants, a crisp white shirt and a soft sweater the color of the sagebrush that dotted the foot-hills—and his mouth watered just looking at her.

  He wondered what all these eager young law students working so feverishly at carrels all around them would do if he slipped off that soft sweater, work
ed a few buttons of her blouse free and started nibbling on the delectable hollows at her throat.

  With an internal groan, he forced himself to get control of his unruly desire. No sense torturing himself when he couldn’t do anything about it—especially when he wouldn’t do anything, even if he could.

  “Hello,” she murmured, and to his surprise, her voice was as cool and remote as the Klondike and her eyes were just as chilly.

  He racked his brain to think what might have set her off but couldn’t think of anything.

  “How have you been?” he finally asked. “Have you found another place to live yet?”

  She shook her head. “We’re still staying at the cabin. As soon as the snow flies I’m sure Kate and I will both want something a little closer to town, but for now it’s working out.”

  “Good. I’ve been worrying about you.”

  “Well, cut it out.” She shoved her bag onto the table with jerky movements. “I don’t need you or anyone else worrying about me.”

  Something was up. Everything about her screamed tension, from her stiff shoulders to the tightly pursed mouth and those cool, remote eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  She paused as if she didn’t want to answer him—or if she had so many things wrong she didn’t know where to start—then she shrugged. “I just had an angry call from my dear brother who found out about the house fire. Now he wants me to hide away somewhere and give up. If I don’t stop trying to find out who really killed Dru and Mickie, he threatened to drop any efforts to appeal. He’s just going to let them kill him because he thinks I can’t take care of myself.”

  “Are you going to stop?”

  The tension in her lovely, fine-boned features turned to resolution. “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re a stubborn woman, Taylor Bradshaw.”

  “Not stubborn. Determined. I’m close. I can feel it, Wyatt. So can you. We’re heading in the right direction. It’s just a matter of figuring out what route will get us there.”

  She sat in the chair next to him and he cursed himself for reacting to the sweet smell of wildflowers.

  “I did learn something during my conversation with Hunter. He knows who fathered Dru’s baby. Get this—Dru was having an affair with Hunter’s partner, John Randall.”

  “No kidding?” How did this new information fit into this most puzzling of cases? Wyatt wondered.

  “Hunter claims he has an alibi and was hiking in the backcountry at the time of the murder, but I want to talk to Martin about having his private investigator look into it. See how good his alibi really is.”

  “And if you find out it was airtight?”

  “Then I’ll try another road. What else can I do?” She scanned the books he had been studying. “Barbara says you’re looking at the appeal in the Valencia case. Anything interesting?”

  He shrugged. “It’s an interesting case. I went to the courthouse last week and made a copy of the court transcript of the original trial, and finally read through it last night. This morning I looked up press coverage from the time, and now I’m looking for the appeal briefs—but so far I’m coming up empty as to what might have interested Mickie about it. It seems like a pretty cut-and-dried case. I can’t find anything out of the ordinary.”

  “What can you tell me about it?” Taylor slipped off her sweater and hung it on the back of her chair, then sat so she could get down to business.

  Wyatt was fascinated by the way she seemed to neatly store away her emotions and concentrate on the matter at hand.

  “It’s a murder trial,” he answered. “A fairly grisly one involving the kidnapping, rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl.”

  She made an instinctive exclamation of revulsion.

  “Yeah. Not exactly the kind of pleasant reading you might expect for someone in her last days of life.”

  “What are the details?” she asked.

  He scanned the neatly organized documents in front of him. “In 1974, a handyman by the name of Paul Valencia was arrested and charged with capital homicide after a massive manhunt. From the newspaper accounts, I gather there was a huge public outcry to find the person responsible. Valencia had already done a stint in prison for robbery and his fingerprints were linked to evidence at the murder scene. Other than that, the case against him seems largely circumstantial.”

  “But he was convicted, obviously.”

  Wyatt nodded. “It all seems fairly routine, as far as I can tell. One interesting note—there are some familiar names involved in the case. Big ones. Your father was on the bench.”

  He was interested to see her reaction to that bit of information, but his mention of her father only earned him an impassive look.

  “Anyone else I would recognize?” she asked.

  “Denny Sullivan and Kyle Dougherty.”

  Though she hadn’t responded to learning her father had been involved in the case, her eyes widened at the names of the current police chief and the state attorney general. “A couple of big guns.”

  “Sullivan was the lead detective and the one who arrested Valencia, and Dougherty was the prosecuting attorney. I get the feeling this was a watershed case for everybody involved. One of those career-makers.”

  Though the court proceedings looked routine, Wyatt had to admit he found the case fascinating. This was the part of his job he loved, digging into the past and fleshing out the bare bones of cases. Maybe he could file this one away for a future project—except that he didn’t like writing about cases with child victims.

  That was one area where he and Gage differed. Wyatt avoided writing about cases involving kids. He didn’t know if he had the mental fortitude necessary to dig so deeply into the psyche of someone who would hurt a child. Gage, on the other hand, had spent much of his career in the FBI’s Crimes Against Children unit.

  Wyatt pushed away the reflection and focused on Taylor once more. “You’ll also be interested to know our friend Martin James was the man’s defense attorney.”

  “Thirty years ago.” She processed the information. “That must have been early in his career too.”

  “Right. I don’t think there was much he could have done to help Valencia, though. The jury took less than an hour to come back with a guilty verdict. His appeal was denied and Valencia was executed by firing squad three years later.”

  She visibly shuddered, her fingers tightening on the edge of the table, and he knew she must be thinking of Hunter.

  “Did you find any connection to Mickie in anything you’ve read?” she asked after a moment.

  “No. Her name isn’t mentioned anywhere in the briefs. But she worked in the prosecutor’s office so maybe she assisted the state’s case. Or maybe she was just interested in it.”

  “Why?”

  “We may never know the answer to that.”

  * * *

  They lapsed into silence, both trying to figure out where they should go from here.

  Wyatt wasn’t very good for her concentration, Taylor decided. She was intensely aware of him and hated it. They sat close enough that his subtle aftershave drifted to her, an erotic combination of leather and sage, and despite the seriousness of their task, she had a hard time focusing on anything but the memory of their heated kiss the other night at his soothing creek-side retreat.

  She did her best to push the memory away. “Maybe I need to ask Martin if he remembers the case,” she said. “I hounded his secretary into carving out a quick appointment for me to talk about the briefs he’s readying for Hunter’s appeal. He was in court all day today, so tomorrow is the earliest I can meet with him. I’ll bring this up too.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t ask you to drive down to the city from Liberty two days in a row.”

  “I’m staying at my apartment for a while. I’ve got a couple of projects in the works and thought it would be better to stay close to town in case something breaks.”

  He avoided her gaze when he spo
ke, and she couldn’t help wondering at his evasiveness. What was he keeping from her? Probably nothing at all to do with Hunter’s case, she chastised herself. The man had a life away from her and her troubles. She shouldn’t be narcissistic enough to think his world revolved around her.

  “Look, I think I’m done here. I know it’s early but why don’t we go grab a bite to eat and we can talk strategy before you meet with Martin?” Wyatt suggested. “I didn’t take time for lunch and I’m starving.”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to share a meal with him again, not after their last disaster. Of course, Kate was working a double shift at the hospital and wouldn’t be anywhere around. Still, she knew spending more time with him wasn’t the greatest idea.

  “You have to eat,” Wyatt pressed. “Come on, I’ll treat you to a sandwich.”

  She was so weak when it came to Wyatt McKinnon, Taylor thought as she heard herself agreeing. “Let me put my books in my carrel so I don’t have to lug them with me.”

  “I made copies of everything I need on the Valencia case. Do you want to take what I have and read through it? You’re the law student, so maybe you can see something in there I missed.”

  “Sure,” she said, trying to figure out how she could fit in any more reading.

  Wyatt followed her to the second floor of the library where her carrel was tucked away on the inside wall behind the tax alcove. She unlocked her cabinet and shoved her bag in, then noticed a paper facedown on the desk. Sometimes the library staff or law faculty left notes to students about routine maintenance or special events. Assuming it was something like that, she turned it over.

  She frowned in confusion. Why would someone send her a story from a Nevada newspaper?

  She read the headline and her blood turned to ice.

  The story was about a death-row inmate in Nevada who killed another inmate with a homemade shiv in what authorities believed was a hit ordered from outside the prison walls.

  In a typewritten note at the bottom of the photocopied article was a message for her:

  EASY ENOUGH TO ARRANGE WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE.