Pulling the Trigger

by Julie Miller

  Joanna jumped inside her skin at the sound of Ethan’s deep voice from right behind her. How could such a big man move without making a noise?

  Martinez nodded to him over her shoulder. “Good. I’m gonna need you with me, big guy.”

  “Sheriff.” Joanna ignored her erratic pulse and insisted on an explanation.

  “You might as well come, too, Rhodes. Watts isn’t at his trailer. The rat must have gotten wind we wanted to talk to him and skipped town. He’s cleared out his stuff and gone to ground.” His blue eyes shifted back up to Ethan. “I need you to track him for me.”

  “My gear’s in my truck.” A hand at the small of her back guided Joanna into step behind the sheriff as they headed for the exit. “You think we had another info leak?” Ethan asked.

  “Who knows?” Martinez paused just inside the doorway. “He probably knows that once we bring him in and he starts talking about Julie Grainger’s murder, he won’t be going back home for twenty years or so. Maybe his survival instincts kicked in.”

  Joanna took an extra step to move beyond the distracting brush of Ethan’s hand. “You don’t believe that.”

  “No. But I like the idea of having a mole on my team even less than I like the idea of Watts’s dumb luck keeping him one step ahead of us.” The sheriff pulled his hat low on his forehead before pushing open the door. “Makes me think he doesn’t want to answer your questions.”

  Ethan’s growly protest didn’t matter. The rain hitting her face didn’t matter. Joanna hurried out to the Suburban she’d arrived in, purposely choosing the sheriff’s ride over Ethan’s pickup.

  “He’ll answer them,” she vowed.

  Her ability to leave Mesa Ridge once and for all, knowing Sherman Watts and her past no longer had any hold over her, depended on it.

  Chapter Three

  Ethan knelt at the edge of the road to study the two smears of black rubber marking the bump where Sherman Watts’s yard met the asphalt. A quick analysis of the tread pattern in the mud matched the new, all-terrain tires Watts had been sporting on his beat-up black truck the past couple of weeks. Their suspect had been gone for several hours now.

  But Ethan’s thoughts had drifted back several years.

  “So how do you know it’s a buck that left these tracks?” Joanna asked, her knees down in the dirt on Ute Mountain, right beside his. “And not a doe or even a mountain sheep or elk?”

  “The size of the print tells me it’s a deer. The depth of the depression tells me it’s a heavier animal—bigger than a doe or fawn.” Ethan pushed aside her raven-colored ponytail that the wind had tangled and the pine needles from where they had left their earthy scent when they’d stopped for lunch and a rest. He fought off the urge to bury his face in the fragrant silk, and continued the lesson. He reached around her, bringing her back nearly flush against his chest as he pointed to the rounder, softer print in the fine gravel beside the deer tracks. “Can you identify that one?”

  “Is it a mountain lion?”

  “Yeah.”

  Joanna Kuchu was more than a bright, eager student who took to his lessons about nature the way a parched horse took to water. She was the first girl he’d met who seemed to genuinely enjoy the solitude of a day in the wilderness as much as he did. The adorable ass butting against his thigh as she studied the tracks he’d pointed out had a lot to do with the hormones that seemed to rage out of control every time the two of them were alone together like this.

  She turned to face him. “He’s tracking the deer, isn’t he? That deer is going to be lunch.”

  Her crestfallen expression demanded some kind of comfort. “Relax, Nüa-rü.” The wind whipped a loose strand of hair across her cheek. Ethan brushed it aside and tucked it behind her ear. “The deer will be all right.”

  Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, and Ethan’s twenty-one-year-old body lurched with anticipation at the innocent gesture. “How do you know?” she asked.

  “The lion’s prints are older. He came by here two, three days before the deer.”

  A smile slowly blossomed across her lips, and Ethan couldn’t resist. He dipped his head and pressed his mouth to hers, simply warming hers with the touch of his for a moment, allowing her to either accept or reject his desire for something more.

  When her hand settled on his chest and her lips pushed against his, he licked the seam of her mouth, tasting salt and shyness and wonder. With a heavy sigh, her lips parted. Ethan thrust his tongue between them and Frenched her. She laughed against his mouth, played the same teasing trick on him. Soon, she wound her fingers into the long fall of hair at his shoulder and pulled him a little closer, inviting him to deepen the kiss.

  It didn’t take him long to be ready for more—for all—of her. His jeans were already tight at the prospect of being with her. But they’d just started these kissing lessons a few days ago and he didn’t want to rush her. He wanted Joanna to be as ready and eager for him as he was for her. He just had to be patient. His time with Joanna would come one day, sooner or later. He could be a man and wait.

  Maybe sensing the carnal turn of his thoughts, Joanna dropped her chin and ended the kiss. Her lips were pink, swollen, yet still smiling. She trailed her fingers down through his hair as she pulled away. “You can tell all that by looking at the prints?”

  “I can tell a lot just by taking my time to look and listen to what’s important.”

  Squinting against the steady drumbeat of rain, Ethan looked up into the blank sky. The low canopy of clouds was bringing night on early. The flashes of lightning in the distant squall line indicated it was only going to get worse.

  Bad enough to drive an average man indoors. Bad enough that a skilled outdoorsman like Sherman Watts could use it to mask his escape.

  But Watts had never had Ethan Bia on his trail.

  As an army ranger, he’d recovered casualities under gunfire in the mountains of Afghanistan. As a search-and-rescue team leader, he’d tracked down a deaf boy who’d gotten separated from the rest of his troop on a winter camping trip here in Colorado, and had led countless other lost, injured or stranded hikers to safety. He’d spent half his childhood and teen years hiking the desert hills and arroyos and the peaks of the Ute Mountains that dominated the southern horizon.

  Rain or shine, he could damn well find the fugitive witness Joanna was so desperate to face. Watts had gotten away with rape fifteen years ago. Whatever crimes he was guilty of now, he wouldn’t get away again.

  Ethan glanced up and down the road, tuning out past and present conversations as federal agents, the sheriff’s department and crime-scene investigators worked the scene around him. He listened to the sounds of the earth, smelled whatever scents hadn’t yet been washed from the air. Somewhere there was a disturbance that could give him an indication of their fugitive’s flight path. Birds taking wing. The odor of fresh oil. The hum of new tires on the pavement. He listened to his intuition, sorted through the knowledge in his head. He nodded as a possible scenario for Watts’s escape route formed.

  Of course, Martinez and the others would expect a few facts to back up what his instincts were already telling him.

  The tire tracks led from just outside the trailer’s front door all the way to the black marks on the road. Though the rain was already beating the pattern down into the mud and distorting it, the tread marks could still give him some information. He dipped his first two fingers into the pool of water gathering there, until he touched the gravelly muck at the bottom. Only up to his middle knuckles—a sign that Watts had been traveling fast and light to leave such a shallow impression.

  “Hey, you. Hold this.”

  “I beg your—”

  “Right here.”

  Ethan glanced across the yard at the sharp order from Miguel Acevedo. The evidence technician grabbed Joanna and pushed an umbrella into her hands. She stiffened up like a possum caught in the headlights the instant he snagged her wrist. Ethan pushed to his feet, every muscle in him tensed to…
rescue her? Sheesh. From what? A good friend who was simply conveying a sense of urgency? There was no slight, no danger there. Still, he didn’t exhale the tension until she relaxed against Miguel’s grip and let him pull her into position beside him.

  “Just like that,” Miguel coached, squatting back down to press a ring mold around whatever he’d found on the ground. “I need to preserve this evidence before the rain washes it away.”

  Joanna stood in place, dutifully holding the umbrella over his work. “It’s Agent Rhodes. Or Joanna. I don’t answer to ‘Hey, you.’”

  “Give me the etiquette lesson later and just hold the thing. Please.” Miguel pulled a bag of gypsum mix from his kit and started prepping it to cast a mold of the track he’d found in the mud. “Dylan? Patrick? Ben? He’s had company.”

  As Miguel’s brother, Ben Parrish and the sheriff gathered around, Ethan decided to head on over to report his findings, as well—and to provide Joanna with some friendly support she hadn’t asked for, probably didn’t need and certainly wouldn’t admit she might want.

  “What do you have?” Patrick asked.

  Miguel pointed to an odd shoe print inside the plastic ring. “This is too big to be Watts’s. And the pattern’s unique enough for me to think we’ve seen this before. I want to compare it to those footprints we took out at Griffin Vaughn’s estate during the blizzard we had earlier this year—when we believe Perkins murdered Vincent Del Gardo while he was hiding out there. If they match up, then we can reasonably assume that Perkins is back in the area.”

  Ben nodded. “And that Watts is working with him.”

  “These prints don’t tell you that.” Joanna’s shoulders squared off even straighter at the scoffs and shaking heads from the men in the cirle with her.

  “I’d bet my next paycheck this belongs to Perkins,” Miguel groused. “See the unusual pattern of the sole? It’s from a pair of pricey designer hikers. They’re not standard-issue oxfords or the cowboy boots most guys around here favor.”

  “I’m not saying it’s not Perkins’s print,” she argued. “I’m saying the two men aren’t together. At least, they weren’t when they left.”

  Ethan opened his mouth to explain the task force’s theory about Watts working as a front man for Perkins and the mob, but there was no need to speak.

  This newer, more mature Joanna was perfectly capable of defending her own point of view. “If Boyd Perkins was prowling around here, he never got inside the trailer. He might not even know that Watts has disappeared.”

  “How do you figure?” Martinez asked.

  “There’s no mud inside. Whoever belongs to these shoes was here after Watts left.” Joanna pointed to the tire marks Ethan had been checking. “Watts left before the rain started and Perkins got here. There are no other footprints. His truck was the only thing heavy enough to leave an impression in the dirt before it turned to mud. This footprint was left after it started raining.”

  Brava, Joanna. The corner of Ethan’s mouth tightened with the hint of a smile. All those months of tagging along with him and his brother, Kyle, and then just the two of them together, analyzing which animal had left what trail, and how to tell which direction their quarry was heading, had stuck with her.

  Patrick nodded. “So we can assume the two men were here at different times. It’s possible that we’re not the only ones Watts is running from. If Perkins got wind Watts was going to talk…”

  No one needed to finish that sentence. They’d all seen what Boyd Perkins was capable of. They had a trail of dead bodies and scarred survivors to prove what could happen when the wrong person crossed his path.

  Dylan Acevedo seemed to think Joanna’s idea had merit, as well. “So do we still concentrate on Watts? Or use this opportunity to bring in Perkins, instead? If we track one, we’re tracking both, right?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” his brother, Miguel, pointed out. “I haven’t even proved that this is Perkins’s shoe print yet.”

  “Yeah, but you’re ninety-nine percent sure. I can tell, hermano.”

  Patrick Martinez steered the discussion back into focus. “We concentrate on what we do know. I want Sherman Watts in my interview room ASAP. Someone tipped him off about Agent Rhodes and the interrogation, and now he’s running. We find him, and he’ll lead us to Perkins. And I definitely want to catch him before Perkins can kill my most promising witness.” His icy blue eyes slid over to Ethan, looking for answers. “How do we do that?”

  Ethan simply nodded, accepting the lead on this particular mission. “What do we know for certain on the timeline?”

  Ben answered that one. He nodded to the neat, white trailer across the road. “The neighbor said Watts’s pickup was parked out front when he left for work this morning. That was eight hours ago.”

  “Pretty significant head start,” Ethan conceded. But not insurmountable.

  Dylan offered his two cents. “I checked his bank account. There were no big withdrawals in the past twenty-four hours. In fact, the guy’s practically broke. Though he had upwards of ten grand just a couple of months ago.”

  “The file says Watts never held a job for more than a few months at a time,” Joanna commented. “Sounds like a payoff to me. Unless he’s hoarding the cash, what’s he spending it on?”

  Dylan answered. “New trailer. Tricking out his truck. Jack Daniel’s. The casino. He’s not hoarding anything.”

  Ben thumbed over his shoulder toward the trailer. “There’s no booze in there, and I’ve never seen Watts without a flask or bottle. A gun that’s registered to him is missing, too. Looks like he’s planning to be gone for a while. You got an idea how to run this search, Ethan? This guy doesn’t want to be found.” He rolled his eyes skyward. “And we all know damn well the rain is working against us.”

  Pulling back the front of his jacket, Ethan propped his hands at his hips. He wasn’t dressed or armed the way he suspected he’d need to be for this pursuit, but his brain was already on the hunt. “We’ll have to wait until daybreak to track him. This storm will get worse before it gets better.”

  Patrick swore. “He’ll be in the wind by then. We don’t even know what direction he headed.” He narrowed his eyes, reading Ethan’s expression more carefully. “Tell me you’ve got something, big guy.”

  Ethan tilted his head toward the blacktop. “He went down the road.”

  “Wiseass.” Patrick shook his head and the others grumbled. “There’s a highway intersection a mile from here. Did he head east toward Durango? West into the desert? South to the mountains? Hell, he could be in Denver, catching a flight out of the country already.” He pulled his cell phone off his belt and punched in a number. “I’ll have Elizabeth check the regional airports.”

  Joanna’s dark eyes narrowed in reprimand. “This is no time to joke, Ethan.”

  Who was joking?

  She must be out of practice, recognizing the difference between dead serious and his dry sense of humor. But the sheriff could read him better. He lowered his phone. “What?”

  Ethan pointed to the north. “He went to see his uncle Elmer at the retirement center in Mesa Ridge. Probably to scam money or maybe a credit card off the old man so that he could buy supplies. He might even be buying a new ride so he’s harder to trace.”

  The fine line of a frown formed between Joanna’s sleek, dark brows. “You got all that from looking at a tire track?”

  Perhaps she’d forgotten more than she remembered about life on the rez. No doubt she’d made a point of forgetting. But one of the pleasures—and perils—of Ethan’s life was that he never could.

  Not the land. Not the war. Not her. Not what had once been so perfect between them. Not the way it had ended. Like her, he could move on. But Ethan could never forget.

  “I know the people here—their habits,” he explained, as if he were once again teaching her some lesson about nature and life. “Watts left a kitchen full of food, his suitcase and a canteen here. Yet he took his backpack,
a bedroll and fishing gear. The man’s going into the wild. I can’t tell you where exactly yet, but he’ll need gas to get there, maybe a different vehicle to mask his trail. Food. Whiskey.”

  Patrick grinned. “That’s why we pay you the money. Elmer Watts’s nursing home is our next stop. Ben? You and Dylan start running down the local outdoorsman shops and convenience stores. See if anyone has seen our buddy Watts today.”

  “We’re on it.”

  Ethan turned with Patrick as the two federal agents headed toward Dylan’s SUV.

  “Wait a minute. What do you need me to do? Here. Thanks.” Joanna pushed the umbrella into the hands of a uniformed police officer’s hands and circled behind Miguel Acevedo, carefully avoiding any contamination of the shoe print as she hurried to catch up and fall into step between them. “I’m coming with you.”

  Ethan glanced at Patrick over the top of her head and silently asked the sheriff to give them a minute. Seeing the sheriff move on without her seemed to unsettle her almost as much as the touch of Ethan’s hand on her arm. She turned to face him, though if it was out of simple courtesy or a subtle way to evade his touch, he couldn’t tell. Patience, ta’wa-chi, he reminded himself. This woman had always required patience. “You’ve already lost a couple of time zones today. You haven’t eaten dinner or checked into your hotel room yet. Why don’t you let us do the searching and bring Watts to you at the station house? Face him fresh tomorrow.”

  “I’m not on vacation, Ethan. I’m here to work.” She scanned the area around them, then leaned in slightly, dropping her voice to a whisper. “You, more than anybody here, should understand how important it is for me to see this assignment all the way through to the end.”

  Before or after the rape, he’d never known Joanna to back down once she set her mind on something. Somehow, she must have it in her head that as long as she projected strength, she was strong. But unlike the sweet young woman he’d once loved, this mature version of Joanna had forgotten that revealing a vulnerability required far more courage and strength than toughing her way through every difficult situation.