by Lisa Childs
He hadn’t had to be so curt with her, though. Sure, she’d known he had a limp from an injury in the line of duty. But he still worked with the Cowboy Heroes, so she hadn’t thought he was really disabled. He could have held her and just swayed from side to side. It wasn’t as if she’d asked him to two-step or line dance with her. But she shouldn’t have asked at all. The only reason she had was because of how alone he’d looked...even among all of his family.
And that loneliness had called to hers. Because even with her son and her good friends, she sometimes felt alone like that, too. That was better, though, than falling for someone only to have him leave.
“I didn’t think Forrest was going to stick around much longer,” she said. “Won’t he move on to the next natural disaster, with the rest of the Cowboy Heroes?”
“Whisperwood needs them for more than rescue-and-recovery efforts right now,” Maggie said. She shuddered again. “There’s a killer on the loose.”
“That’s why we should postpone our honeymoon,” Bellamy said.
“No,” Rae and Maggie said again, their voices soft this time, though.
Bellamy sighed. “Okay, but you both need to promise me that you’ll be extra careful.”
“Of course,” they agreed, again in unison.
“I know Jonah won’t let anything happen to you,” Bellamy told her sister. “But you...”
Rae smiled. “I can take care of myself.” She’d done it for most of her life.
Bellamy took the sleeping baby from her arms and snuggled him against her. “But you have Connor to worry about, too, and your classes. I’m really concerned about you living out there in the country, alone.”
“I’m not alone,” Rae reminded her.
Bellamy pressed another kiss to the soft hair on Connor’s head. “He’s not going to be much protection against a bad guy—at least not for a few more years.”
“Like twenty,” Maggie added with a chuckle.
“I don’t need a man to protect me,” Rae said. She’d never had one. Her father had been more likely to put her and her mother in danger—at least financially—than to protect them. “I don’t need a man at all.”
“You proved that by having this little guy on your own,” Maggie said. “I admire you.”
“Me, too,” Bellamy added. “Although I think I had more fun conceiving mine the way we did.”
Rae stared at her friend. “What?”
“I’m pregnant,” the new bride announced, her face glowing with happiness and love.
Tears rushed to Rae’s eyes. “That’s wonderful.”
“So wonderful,” Maggie agreed as her eyes filled with tears, too. “I’m thrilled for you.”
“Me, too,” Rae said. “You and Donovan are going to be amazing parents.”
“I’m going to drive you crazy,” Bellamy warned her, “with all the questions I’ll be asking you.” Bellamy’s mom was gone, like Rae’s was.
Rae missed her mom every day. They’d been so close; Georgia had been more of a friend than a mother to her. Now that she was a mother herself, she’d never needed her more.
“You won’t drive me crazy at all,” Rae assured her. “I’m not sure I’ll have all the answers, though.” Mostly she felt as if she was stumbling around in the dark, blindly finding her way as a parent and as a student again at thirty-five.
“You’ll have more than I’ll have,” Maggie said. “You’re the smartest, most independent person I know.”
The tears already stinging her eyes threatened to spill over, but Rae blinked them back to smile at her friend. “I’m not sure about smartest. Law school is tougher than I thought it would be.”
“Because you just had a baby two months ago and you’re working,” Bellamy reminded her as she stared down at Connor, who was sleeping so peacefully in her arms.
If only he slept that peacefully at night...
“It’ll get easier,” Rae said. That was what she kept telling herself.
Bellamy chuckled softly. “You’re smart, but I think it’s your stubbornness that keeps you going.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Rae’s mouth. She couldn’t deny that.
“Just don’t be so stubborn and independent that you put yourself in danger,” Bellamy advised. “Promise?”
Rae sighed. “Of course I’m not going to put myself or Connor in danger,” she assured her. “Stop worrying about me. And let’s get you ready for your honeymoon!”
“Since she’s already pregnant, I think she knows about the birds and the bees,” Maggie teased.
They all laughed, rousing Connor from his impromptu nap. But he didn’t cry when he awakened; he just groggily looked up at Bellamy, who was holding him. She was like an aunt to him, and Maggie was fast becoming like another. These women and her baby were the only family that Rae needed.
She didn’t need a man for protection or for anything else. But when she left Bellamy’s cute two-bedroom house and headed home with Connor safely buckled into the back seat, an odd chill passed through her despite the warmth of the August night. Fear.
Maybe it was all of the talk about bodies and killers.
Or maybe it was her postpartum hormones.
She preferred to blame the hormones. Because she had nothing to fear.
* * *
The television screen illuminated only the area of the dark room around the TV. From the shadows, he watched the evening news report from the crime scene at Lone Star Pharma.
Her body had been found. His hands clenched into fists as rage coursed through him.
Damn it...
The news crews had been kept back, behind the police barricade. But the camera zoomed in on the scene and captured the people investigating the discovery. The Cowboy Heroes.
What the hell were they doing there?
He unclenched one fist to turn the volume up.
“Chief Thompson has enlisted the help of former Austin cold-case detective Forrest Colton,” the reporter announced. “Colton has been given special dispensation from the Whisperwood Police Department to lead the investigation of this murder and the body discovered last month in a mummified condition. Colton holds the highest clearance rate in the Austin Police Department, so an arrest seems imminent.”
He cursed again.
No. An arrest was not imminent. Forrest Colton might have gotten lucky in Austin, but his luck was about to run out in Whisperwood. And maybe his life, as well.
Chapter 2
A week had passed since his brothers had ambushed him at the crime scene. A week of frustration that gripped Forrest so intensely, he wished he’d never accepted the position no matter how temporary it was going to be.
The hurricane had caused so much damage, and not just physically. Emotionally people were dealing with the loss of loved ones and their homes or their livelihoods. The Whisperwood Police Department was stretched thin. The crime-scene techs were understaffed and overworked, so nothing had been processed yet from either scene. And the coroner...
She hadn’t even taken the bodies from their refrigerated drawers yet, let alone begun the autopsies. And until he had more information, Forrest didn’t want to parade in the family members of every missing person to see if the dead woman was their loved one. He didn’t want to put every family that was missing someone through that kind of pain.
Hell, he didn’t want to put one family through that kind of pain. But it was inevitable. Once they figured out who she was.
Everybody expected miracles from Forrest, but his hands were nearly as tied as the poor victim’s hands had been—bound behind her back.
He wrapped the reins around his hands and clenched his knees together as the quarter horse he rode scrambled over the uneven ground. Despite taking the detective position, Forrest continued as a volunteer for the Cowboy Heroes. The team was not done with Whispe
rwood and the surrounding area, which had been hit particularly hard with flooding after Hurricane Brooke.
The water had begun to recede, though, leaving only muddy areas like the one in which the horse’s hooves now slipped. His mount leaning, Forrest nearly slipped off it and into the mud. Ignoring the twinge of pain in his bad leg, he tightened his grip.
“Whoa, steady,” Forrest murmured soothingly. When the horse regained its balance, a sigh of relief slipped through Forrest’s lips. This was why he usually handled the desk work for the rescue agency and not the fieldwork. But like his brothers, he’d been born in the saddle. He couldn’t not ride.
He wasn’t able to help with the rescues as physically as he would have liked, though. Sometimes his leg wouldn’t hold his weight, let alone the weight of another person or animal. He sighed again but this time with resignation. It was what it was.
He’d accepted that a while ago. And he helped out where he could—like riding around to survey the areas. There were still some people missing, and maybe the floodwater had hidden their remains.
Not that he wanted to find any more bodies.
But that was the purpose of the recovery part of the Cowboy Heroes’ rescue-and-recovery operation. Survivors needed that closure of knowing what had happened to their loved one and having that body to bury. That was why he needed the body in the morgue identified, so he could give her family some small measure of peace.
Until he found her killer.
And he would.
His frustration turning back to determination, he urged the horse across the muddy stretch of land. Heat shimmered off the black shingles of a roof in the distance. He’d started out early from his family ranch, before the sun had even risen much above the horizon, and it wasn’t much higher now. So it was going to be another hot August day, which was good.
The last of the water should recede and reveal whatever secrets it has been hiding. Whatever bodies...of animals and people.
So much livestock had been lost, too. A pang of regret over all of those losses struck his heart. Then another pang of regret struck him when he realized whose house he’d come upon in the country.
Hers.
Rae Lemmon. His new sister-in-law’s best friend, and quite the beauty. He hadn’t lived in Whisperwood for years, but he remembered this was her family home. And maybe he’d subconsciously headed that way.
But why? Sure, she was beautiful, but because she was beautiful, she wouldn’t want anything to do with a disabled man. She’d asked him to dance at the wedding, but that must have only been out of pity or maybe just a sense of obligation to her friend.
And maybe that was why he’d come this way, to check on her place—out of a sense of obligation. She was his new sister-in-law’s best friend, so that almost made her family, too. And as much as the Coltons took care of everyone else, they took extra care of their own.
He knew that because of how everybody had taken care of him after he’d been shot. Well, everybody but one person. But she hadn’t been family yet, and after he’d been shot, she’d returned his ring.
He flinched as the memory rushed over him. Not that he could blame her. As she’d said, she hadn’t fallen in love with a cripple, so he really shouldn’t have expected her to stick around for him. It wasn’t as if they’d said their vows yet either, and now he expected those vows would not have included “in sickness and in health.”
While the old memories washed over him, the horse continued across the muddy field, toward the back of the house. The field was higher than the yard, so he could see into it, could see that a tree had toppled over into the water pooled on the grass. Maybe the roots had turned up a mound of dirt, or maybe something else had made the hole. The pile was almost too neat, as if it had been shoveled there.
Maybe she’d thought the hole would drain away the water.
But as Forrest drew nearer, he peered into the hole and discovered it wasn’t water filling it. Something else lay inside it, something all swaddled up in linen material smeared with mud and grime.
“What the hell...?” he murmured.
He swung his leg over the saddle and dismounted. His boot slipped on the muddy ground, but he used the horse to steady himself. Like all of the horses for the Cowboy Heroes, Mick was well trained and helpful. Forrest patted his mane in appreciation before stepping away from his mount and turning toward the hole. He leaned over and peered inside it, and his boot slipped again.
This time he didn’t have the horse to steady himself, so his leg—his bad leg—went out from beneath him. As he began to fall, he reached out to catch himself. But like his boot, his fingers slipped on the mud, too, and he slid into the hole, knocking the loose dirt into it with him. It sprayed across that weird material.
Whatever it was, it had contoured to the shape of the object beneath it. But it wasn’t an object.
It was a body with arms and legs and a face.
A mummy...like the one his brother Jonah had found. But unlike that body, Forrest suspected the storm hadn’t turned up this one. Someone else had either dug it up or dug the hole to bury it here, like someone had buried the woman by the pharmaceutical company.
But why here? Why in Rae Lemmon’s backyard?
Forrest reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He needed to call in a team to process the scene. Hopefully he could remove himself from it without compromising any evidence. After he called the coroner and some crime-scene techs, he shoved his phone back into his pocket and tried to pull himself out of the hole. Using his good leg, he dug his boot into the side of the hole and climbed out. As he pulled his boot free, some dirt tumbled down into the hole, next to the body, and the sun glinted off it.
It wasn’t just dirt. There was something shiny beneath the mud and grime. Something metallic. Like coins or...
Buttons?
Had those belonged to the victim or the killer?
* * *
Rae closed her eyes and savored the silence. She would have to get up soon for work, but she had a few minutes to rest her eyes and relax. And after Connor had spent most of the night crying inconsolably, she needed some peace. He’d finally fallen back to sleep.
The pediatrician suspected the baby had colic, for which Rae blamed herself. The stress of law school, her job and single parenthood had affected her ability to produce breast milk and she now had to supplement with formula. When she’d called the doctor’s service last night, she’d been told to switch to a soy-based formula, which she would do today on her way to bring Connor to day care.
Exhaustion gripped her, pulling her into oblivion. But she had been asleep for only a moment when a noise startled her. It wasn’t the light beep of the alarm, but a loud pounding at a door. Worried that the knocking would wake up Connor, she rushed out of her bedroom without bothering to grab a robe. The only people who visited her were Bellamy and Maggie. Maybe Bellamy was back.
But she probably would have just let herself in; she had a copy and knew where the spare key was hidden. Disoriented for a moment from lack of sleep, Rae rushed to her front door and opened it. But nobody stood on her porch. If someone was there, they probably would have rung the bell.
The back door rattled as that fist pounded again. And a soft cry drifted from the nursery. Connor wasn’t fully awake, but he was waking up. She ran across the living room and kitchen to pull open the door. “Shh,” she cautioned her visitor. Then she gasped when she recognized the man standing before her. “What—what are you doing here?”
What the hell was he doing there? Especially now?
She had to look like death—after her sleepless night—with dark circles beneath her eyes, and her hair standing on end. And her nightgown...
She glanced down at the oversize T-shirt an old boyfriend had left behind. At least she’d gotten something comfy out of the relationship. But she hadn’t expected much. Her experi
ence with her father had taught her to never count on a man to stick around, and every boyfriend she’d ever had had reinforced that lesson.
That was why she’d chosen to be a single mother. She didn’t need a husband to have a family. She didn’t need a man. But this one...
He was so damn good-looking, even with mud on his clothes and smeared across his cheek. A fission of concern passed through her. “Did you get thrown?” she asked. Over his shoulder—his very broad shoulder—she caught a glimpse of a dark horse pawing at the muddy grass. “Are you okay?”
“I did not get thrown,” he said, his voice sharp as if she’d stung his pride.
Or maybe that was just the way he always talked. He’d sounded that way when he’d told her that she couldn’t be serious about asking him to dance.
Her face heated with embarrassment, but she didn’t know if it was because of what had happened then or how unkempt she looked now. And with the way he kept staring at her, he couldn’t have missed it. He was probably horrified.
“Then what are you doing here?” she asked again.
“I’ve called the police.”
“I thought you were the police,” she said. She knew, from the news reports and the gossip around Whisperwood, that the chief and his brothers had successfully talked him into investigating the murders.
“I am,” he said. “That’s why I called. I need to tape off your backyard. It’s a crime scene.”
Despite the heat of the August day, a cold chill raced down her spine and raised goose bumps on her skin. “Crime scene?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”
“I found something in your yard,” he said.
“Why were you searching my property?” she asked. “Did you have a warrant?”
His face flushed now.