by Liz Isaacson
“You okay?” he finally asked.
She leaned her head against the headrest and let it fall in his direction. He was a couple of years older than her, married and divorced, with a thirteen-year-old daughter who lived with his mother in Maple Mountain.
Gray lived there too, making the thirty-minute drive to their offices in Beaverton every day. He sported dark hair that was starting to go gray along his sideburns and though he’d probably shaved that morning, his facial hair was already starting to grow in again. Because he spent so much time outside, he was tan year-round, even after a snowstorm.
“Fine,” she said. Her stomach grumbled, and she couldn’t help wondering what Kyler would be making for lunch. Something like a meatball sub, she supposed, a smile drifting across her face.
“Who was that?” Gray asked, his voice in semi-detective mode. “He looked familiar.” Because Gray didn’t live in Brush Creek, he wasn’t as familiar with all the townspeople as Dahlia.
“Kyler Fuller,” she said. “The Fullers are an original Brush Creek family.”
“Lucky he was up here,” Gray commented.
“I would’ve broken in,” she said. “The hail was really coming down. Where did you take shelter?”
“I’d circled back to the cruiser already,” he said, glancing at her. “I tried you on the radio for an hour.”
She looked at the helpless device in her hands. “Yeah, I tried you too. It must’ve shorted out.”
“I didn’t know what else to do, and the weather was too bad to go looking on foot. Then Stace got ahold of me and said you’d found a cabin. I went home after that.”
“I don’t suppose you’re taking me home right now?” They inched ever so slowly over the snow-covered roads. The sun had warmed everything again, making it soft and heavy with water. The further down the canyon they went, the less snow there was.
“I can, for a few minutes,” he said. “We were so close.”
“So we lost the trail?” They’d split up to follow the tracks of the man they’d been looking for. Every clue had pointed them up the canyon, and when Dahlia had seen Kyler’s cabin alight in the storm, she’d paused against the trunk of a tree. She hadn’t known who would be on the other side of the door, and since they didn’t have an actual identity of the coyote they’d been investigating, it could’ve been him.
“Unless it’s Kyler Fuller.” Gray gave her a look Dahlia recoiled from. She stiffened as she looked away.
“It’s not Kyler Fuller.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.” Sometimes that was true. Dahlia had been born with a detective’s gut, and it was telling her that Kyler wasn’t the one smuggling drugs through this remote corner of Utah. They’d been working with the big wigs in Salt Lake City, Denver, and even as far north as Boise, where the heroin and methamphetamines from Mexico were being found.
And it had all been traced back to a contact in their part of the state. They were working with a sketch artist’s rendition of the man, and he’d been labeled a coyote because law enforcement believed he distributed the drugs using people who had also been smuggled across the border.
Two task forces had been in Beaverton for a pow wow a week ago, and Dahlia was a fool to think she could have more than a few minutes at home to feed her cat and brush her teeth. Even worse, she couldn’t believe she’d hoped to stay at the cabin all day with Kyler.
Gray kept his focus on the road as the cruiser fishtailed a little in the sloppy snow. “It could be him.”
“It’s not him.” Kyler was too clean-cut to be their coyote.
“We should look into his activities for the past few months anyway. I mean, why’s he out here during a hailstorm?” Gray was right to be suspicious—heck, Dahlia had been too. But she’d decided her need to get out of the storm outweighed the possibility of coming face-to-face with the coyote.
“Yeah, we probably should,” she agreed. “But you’re just going to find out how many lawns he’s mowed. He works for his family’s company, A Jack of All Trades.”
“My wife uses them for cleaning.” Gray kept his voice light, but Dahlia had been working with him long enough to know that the gears were turning in his mind. “I’ll get Val on him anyway. Just to be sure.”
“Of course.” Dahlia closed her eyes to relive that first kiss with Kyler, the way he’d tasted like mint and chocolate, how gentle yet demanding his mouth had been. She didn’t have to tell Gray about anything she’d done at the cabin. It was none of his business. Val would check on Kyler’s activities, see that he wasn’t involved, and Dahlia could go to dinner with him on Monday night, no problem.
“Is my phone in here?” she asked, opening her eyes to glance around the interior of the car.
“Plugged in for you.” Gray indicated her black device in the console between them.
She picked it up. “Thanks, Gray.” It had been silenced, as it always was during their outdoor investigations. She’d left it behind in the car on accident, and as she swiped it open, she found half a dozen calls from Gray, two from Stace at their field office, and a single text from an unknown number.
Dahlia got a variety of texts and calls from unknown numbers—the contacts she’d collected over the years. Maybe one of them had finally come through with information that would crack this coyote case wide open.
But the message read, This is Kyler. Just texting to give you my number.
She smiled at the words, at the thought of him sitting in the cabin, texting her. The grin fell from her face when she felt the weight of Gray’s eyes on her. Quickly, she saved him in her contacts and deleted the text without responding.
They finally made it to a paved, cleared road, and the trip picked up from there. With Gray waiting outside her house, Dahlia ran inside to take care of a few things. She paused just inside the doorway, her house feeling stale and joyless—the exact opposite of how the cabin had felt.
It made no sense, but Kyler’s sudden introduction to her life had opened her eyes to how drab and meaningless it had become. She had functional furniture in the living room, which opened up to the kitchen behind it. Ally sat on the counter, her cat eyes glaring at Dahlia for not returning last night to feed her.
“I know,” Dahlia said, striding past the couch she hardly ever sat on anymore. Since the coyote case had been brought to them six months ago, she’d spent more time at work than she did at home. And when she did come home, it was usually to crash and get as much sleep as possible before she had to face another day of unknowns, questions, theories, and fruitless hiking in circles as they looked for clues.
“We were so close,” she told the cat, her one true confidante. “Evidence that he’d been in those woods within the last three days.” She scooped the white and gray cat into her arms and opened the cupboard where she kept the cat food.
“Then the hail started. I’m sure any trace of the coyote is gone. Washed away. Frozen under snow, which will melt into a muddy mess.” She refilled Ally’s bowl and set it on the counter along with the cat, who started eating immediately.
As she washed out Ally’s water bowl and refilled it, she said, “But I met an amazing man.” The spark that had existed between her and Kyler flared to life, seeping into her voice. “And he kissed me.”
She set the water bowl beside the food and absently reached up to touch her lips, just to make sure the memory was real. Startled at the way Kyler made her go soft, feel things she hadn’t for years, and drift off into a daze, Dahlia blinked and let her hand fall back to her side.
He couldn’t be the coyote. She hated that she even had a decimal of doubt. Val would research him, his family, his business, and then clear him. Dahlia was sure of it. She just needed his name off the table before she allowed herself to kiss him again.
Dahlia pushed into the house and didn’t see either of her parents. “Mom?” Balancing the cake she’d picked up at the bakery with the cat carrier she’d stuffed Ally into at the last minute, unable to ma
ke the poor kitty stay home alone again, she glanced around.
Dahlia had been inside her house long enough to change on Saturday and then to sleep for a few hours before Gray knocked on her door and demanded coffee and that they leave in five minutes so they could go meet someone who’d called in about having seen their coyote.
Couldn’t be a citizen, as nothing about the coyote or the drugs passing through their county had been made public. Not the sketch. Not that there was an investigation going at all.
She’d barely set the coffee when he’d knocked, and he grumbled the whole time while it brewed. Then it had been go, go, go, talk, talk, talk to people who didn’t know anything, hadn’t seen anything or anyone, and Dahlia was tired.
Thus, the chocolate cake she’d picked up at Sweets, the bakery on the edge of Vernal that her father had first introduced her to as a child. Some of her best memories were of her and her father riding their bikes under the clear blue sky to go fishing and stopping at Sweets on the way home for cupcakes or cookies or her personal favorite, baklava.
When her mother didn’t answer, Dahlia tried, “Dad?” She always came for lunch on Sunday, and it was odd they weren’t waiting for her in their favorite armchairs in the living room.
If they’d gone downstairs again, Dahlia wasn’t going to be as nice as she had been last time. With her mother crossing the seventy threshold earlier in the year, Dahlia had insisted they stay on the main level of the house. The last thing she needed to deal with was a broken hip on either of her aging parents.
Their cat came around the corner, so they couldn’t be too far away. Dahlia could see from the front of the house to the back, and her eyes searched the backyard through the windows as she set the cake on the kitchen counter.
Movement caught her eye, and she stepped past the dining room table and slid open the glass door that led into the yard. “Mom, there you are.” Her mother sat in a lawn chair while her father stood too close to a fiery grill for Dahlia’s comfort. “Hey, Dad.”
He lifted a hot dog in a pair of tongs, his weather-spotted hands quaking with the force of an earthquake. “Hey, sweetheart.” The hot dog fell from the tongs when her father didn’t have the strength to keep them clenched.
“Can you believe it snowed only a day ago?” Her mother fanned herself like the temperature had reached triple digits. The snow had barely melted completely that morning.
“Let me, Dad.” Dahlia took the tongs from her father before he dropped all the hot dogs on the ground. “How was your week? Looks like Asher came and did the lawn.” She’d barely glanced at it, but it was a starting place for their conversations. From there, her mother would tell her all about her friends, their little dogs, and the new neighbors down the street.
Dahlia had perfected the art of asking others about themselves, get them talking about something they were passionate about, all in the process of doing very little speaking of her own. She’d learned the skill from her father, who was exceptional with people—or at least he had been in his younger years.
A breeze kicked up as she got the last of the meat off the grill. Dahlia switched off the flame, and said, “Let’s go eat,” in between her mother’s story about something her sister had done at church, and herded her parents inside.
She made it through dinner without her phone sounding, but when it went off, it was Gray’s ringtone—which meant serious business. Not serious business came through a text. But a phone call?
“I have to take this,” she told her parents. She took a few steps away before she said, “Gray?”
“Live sighting of the coyote.”
“When? Where?” She swiped her keys from the kitchen counter, a mournful glance at the chocolate cake she wouldn’t be able to eat.
“This morning. A cabin up the canyon.”
Chapter Seven
Kyler found his reset button about eight o’clock on Sunday morning, when he woke to the soft silence in the cabin. It had bothered him for most of the day yesterday, after Dahlia had left, but somehow in the night, everything had come into focus.
Maybe it was his prayers. Maybe it was the fact that she’d responded to his text with enthusiasm about their date the following night. It could’ve been anything, and Kyler didn’t much care what. He was just glad he felt like himself again.
He got up, showered, and had just dipped the first sausage roll in pancake batter when someone knocked on his door. Foolishly, his heart did a little hop, skip, and jump at the thought of it being Dahlia again.
Would he react that way every time someone knocked on this cabin door?
Grinning, he set the breakfast corndog back in the pancake batter as BB barked. He glanced at the corgi and found him skittering around the kitchen, like he knew something Kyler didn’t.
“It’s fine, BB,” he told the little dog and went to answer the door. Instead of a gorgeous, drenched woman on the other side, a man stood there. Several inches shorter than Kyler, but with an angry, pinched look about his face that set Kyler’s defenses on high. And BB behind him barking every few seconds didn’t help.
He kept the door halfway closed and filled the rest of the space with his body so the man couldn’t see inside and BB wouldn’t rush out. The man had a whole lot of dark hair that curled at the ends, with endless black eyes that seemed to see more than Kyler wanted them to.
“What can I help you with?” Kyler noticed the scar running from behind the man’s right ear, and he suddenly felt less safe out here in the wilderness. His stomach tightened, and Kyler disliked the idea that his woods weren’t safe anymore.
The man didn’t speak for several long seconds, and Kyler’s scalp prickled. Had he gotten lost up here? Was he hurt?
Kyler scanned the man from the top of his head to his booted feet, noticing the wear and tear on the man’s dirty jeans, the traces of red dust along the top edges of his bulky work boots, and the flap of his blue flannel shirt that was torn as if it had been caught on a piece of barbed wire.
He edged back six inches, his mind running through possible things he could use to defend himself. Fireplace poker, his hands, the empty vase on the dining room table. BB had quieted, and Kyler knew he was no guard dog.
He wasn’t sure why exactly—maybe the scar, maybe the silence, maybe the shirt—but this man screamed dangerous.
“Do you have a phone?” The man spoke in perfect English—almost too perfect given his olive skin and his rough appearance.
“Sure.” Kyler made no move to retrieve it from where he’d left it on the kitchen counter, playing his favorite station from the Internet radio app he loved.
“May I borrow it for a few minutes?” A greasy smile slid across the man’s face. “No more than five minutes, I promise.”
Not wanting to turn his back on the man, or invite him in, Kyler stepped back into the house, said, “Just a sec,” and closed the door behind him.
Something told him to send off a quick text to Milton before letting this man use his phone, so he did. Someone here to borrow my phone. A man. Looks rough. Call me in ten?
Kyler sent the message and stared at the closed front door, BB cowering in the corner of the kitchen, his eyes begging Kyler not to open the door again. Kyler stepped into the dining room so he could see out the window that flanked the door, and at just the right angle, he could see the dark-haired man still standing at the door. He hadn’t moved at all. Didn’t glance around.
Kyler’s phone chirped, and he jumped with the sound and the vibration in his palm.
Get his name, Milton had said. I’ll call you in eight.
Kyler erased the message and stepped past the dining room table where he’d eaten with Dahlia just as another knock came on the door. He whipped it open. “Sorry.” He laughed, the sound obviously made of nerves and air. “Couldn’t find it.” He extended the phone to the man. “What’s your name? I’ve never seen you up here.”
The man’s fingers—complete with something dark under the nails—curled around the e
nd of the phone. “My buddies and I were camping at the bluff and I got separated from them.”
Kyler didn’t release the device. “What’s your name?”
“Jose Garces.”
Obviously a lie, and not only because the man didn’t blink, didn’t put any inflection in his voice, and didn’t let go of the phone.
“Okay, Jose,” Kyler said, a sliver of irony at how that statement rhymed snaking through him. He released the phone, and Jose backed up. He turned at the edge of the porch and went down the stairs, his head bent.
Kyler kept his eye on the man, first noticing more tears along the back of the man’s shirt, one of the edges obviously stained with blood. He gripped the door and wished he had his phone so he could take a picture, call Milton—or better yet, the police. Why, he had no idea.
Jose wasn’t trespassing; he’d come right to the front door. He hadn’t done anything that Kyler knew of, other than look like he had no soul. He trailed his fingers along the seat of Kyler’s motorcycle, his back still the only view Kyler had. He froze, wondering if this man would throw his leg over the bike and take off with the two most essential things Kyler needed to survive up here.
Then his head lifted and the hand holding the phone dropped. He turned back and approached again, his stride sure and every step intimidating. At the top of the stairs, he extended the phone. “Thank you.”
Kyler took it and shoved it in his back pocket. “Sure. Do you need help?”
“No, I am fine.” He flashed a smile that contained no assurance, no happiness. “Do you come to this cabin often?”
“Yes,” Kyler said, though he and his family really didn’t use it all that often now that they were older and a lot of them were married. “My family owns it and we come all the time.”
The man cocked his head as if he too could tell a lie when he heard one, nodded once, and turned away. He walked down the steps, down the driveway, and on down the road, never once looking back.