Too Sexy for his Stetson (9 page)

The men shrugged into ponchos.

Blade commanded, “Rambo,
such
.”

Just as the first cold drops of rain splatted the ground, Rambo took off. Brandy focused her flashlight and fell in behind the dog, scrambling down the trail. At the bottom of the descent, they reached the river’s edge. The trail leveled out, and by the time Rambo planted his nose to the ground and followed the river bank, rain pelted them in earnest.

Again, the drop in grade grew steeper. Rain slashed Brandy’s face, and her feet skidded on the slickened path. She skated down the last five feet of decline, crashing onto her butt at the bottom. Rambo halted. Blade came sliding after Brandy, managing to stay on his feet. Christiansen followed, galloping over the loose gravel, pulling to a halt inches from the river’s edge.

“You okay?” Blade gave her a hand.

“Fine.” She scrambled to her feet, ignoring her protesting tailbone, and moved beside Rambo where he sat at attention.

The dark river churned, but with each sporadic flash of light, the landscape came into focus, swaths of white foam glowing where water poured over rocks. Brandy strained to see. Hail started to clutter the mix, hammering a rhythm against the hood of her raincoat. She studied the path of Rambo’s gaze and redirected the lantern.

Eyes scrunched, Blade used his hand to shield his face from the rain and icy pellets.

Brandy spotted a dark object. Something—or someone—snagged amidst the frothing current. “Over there. Five feet from the bank. About ten feet upstream.”

Could be trapped debris, but Rambo remained steadfast, sitting at attention in his signal position, staring into the water, which caused Brandy’s pulse to kick up. If it were a person, he could be hanging onto life by a thread.

Blade tossed Christiansen a rope. “Wrap this around that aspen,” he yelled, and then exchanged glances with Christiansen. “The dive team is twenty minutes behind us. If that’s our guy and he’s still alive, he may not have twenty minutes.”

Christiansen nodded in agreement.

Brandy was chilled to the bone. When Blade stripped off his rain poncho and boots and donned a lifejacket, her insides knotted into a ball of ice, and when he secured the rope around his waist and plunged into the black water, her heartbeat raced.

Shivering, she held the lantern while he fought his way toward the object, and Christiansen manipulated the rope. Rambo stood tensely on alert, focused on Blade. Water bubbled around his shoulders as the sky continued to belch lightning and thunder like a giant ogre.

Within minutes, Blade reached the object and started towing it back. Once he closed in on the bank, Brandy helped with the rope, and she and Christiansen reeled Blade in. When he was close enough, Christiansen clamped hold of Blade’s hand and dragged him ashore.

In the unrelenting rain, Brandy dropped to her knees next to the bank and helped drag the object Blade had been towing from the water. Her pulse galloped as she retrieved her flashlight. The silver–blue beam focused on a swimsuit–clad man, his body curled in a semi–fetal position.

He was stiff, she noticed when Blade rolled him over. Rigor mortis stiff. And the glow from her flashlight reflected off wide–open glistening eyes. Her pulse pounded in her ears. From a mottled purplish face, blank eyes seemed to stare into her soul. Blade went through the motion of feeling for a pulse, then shook his head.

Brandy’s intellect told her the man was dead. She recognized the classic signs she’d memorized from the forensic medical text books. Early stage lividity, as well as early stage rigor mortis. Even so, she said, “Aren’t you going to try mouth to mouth?”

Blade tipped his face up and studied her. “This your first corpse?”

“I’ve seen pictures.” She stared at the wrinkling skin on the bare arms and chest of the casualty. A swarm of tiny black insects crawled from his hair and scattered across his forehead.

Feeling bile rise in her throat, she reached deep inside for strength and averted her attention to the victims hands. The skin had started to separate from the fingers.

Taking a deep, slow breath, she struggled against her queasy stomach, willing herself not to puke. She turned to watch Rambo a second as he shuddered, trying to shake water from his coat amidst the bleating barrage that still drenched everything in sight. Another futile effort.

Toughen up, deputy.

When Brandy forced herself to face the corpse again, she felt the need to cover him, to shelter him from the water washing over his still, lifeless body.

Her arms and legs quivered.

Because of the icy rain.

She swallowed the bile seeping into her throat.
Don’t be a wimp. This is part of your job.
Rambo nuzzled her hand, and she reached down to touch his soaked fur. Her body trembled, but she stiffened her shoulders.

“Come on,” Blade said, “let’s get out of here and call the medical examiner. Todd will stay with the body.” He draped his arm around Brandy’s shoulder.

She couldn’t see through the blur of rain washing her eyes, but she kept putting one foot in front of the other, slowly gaining purchase on the water–glazed trail, making her way toward the parking lot. Blue and red lights peeked through blotches of black aspen leaves, signaling the arrival of additional official vehicles, probably the dive team.

Back at the parking lot, Blade directed the new arrivals and called the ME.

“I’ll take you home, Brandy.” Blade led her toward the Tahoe. They climbed in and closed the doors against the storm. The silence was startling after the noise of the wind and rain and the raging Shoshone.

Blade, who also had to be drenched to the bone, cranked up the heater.

Even so, shivers chased one another down Brandy’s back. She straightened and fought to clear the image of the distorted face from her mind. When she tried to speak, her throat swelled shut.

Blade put the car in gear and drove away in silence.

The silence prevailed until they were all the way down the mountain, and the rattling of Brandy’s teeth apparently got to him. He stopped when they were near her apartment, a block away, and took her left hand in his, then hooked his index finger under her chin, and turned her face to his. “You okay?”

Shaken, cold, numb, she couldn’t seem to move or speak.

“As many times as I’ve witnessed death, I’ve never gotten used to it,” he said.

Dear God, he sensed her devastation, and he was attempting to keep her from feeling like a wimp.

He leaned into her.

And kissed her.

Not the wild explosion she’d expected their kiss would be, but a soft reassuring touch of his warm lips against hers.

A celebration of life.

She shouldn’t read anything into it.

But when he withdrew, and their lips separated, a guttural sound vibrated from his throat. A livewire of current zapped between them, the jolt tempering the desperate cold feeling inside of her. Even when he pulled back, she sensed the electricity. A dangerous, barely contained flash fire, waiting to combust. Lord in heaven, if that ever ignited, it’d be a five–alarm blaze. And there’d be hell to pay.

Shaken, she grabbed the door handle and jumped out. She needed to be alone, to process the data thrumming through her mind.

“Hey… wait,” Blade called.

“Thanks, Blade, for…” In the dwindling rain, she ran, jogging toward the Tour d’Alene building. The Tahoe tagged along behind her and followed her into the back parking lot. Blade jumped out and walked up the stairs with her, waited while she unlocked the door. She hurried inside and closed him out.

She stood at the door for several long minutes, watching until the headlights glistening through the rivulets on the window started to move. She stared as the beams blurred when the vehicle turned around and the pattern on the glass glowed red from the taillights. She was still shaking after all signs of the squad car had faded from view.

It took another ten minutes of standing quietly in the darkness before her breathing evened out. Untold minutes for her heart’s rhythm to settle to a normal beat.

Once she grounded herself, she strode to the bedroom, changed into dry clothes, and forced herself to do something. She had to occupy her mind, and it had been days since she’d communicated with Attorney Rosenberg. The mountains played heck with cell phone reception. Most of the time she could forget about checking her email on her phone, which was a hassle. Tonight, she didn’t mind returning to the office. She marched to the door, let herself out, and ran down the steps.

Inside the sheriff’s department building, she ditched the raincoat, went straight to her desk, and logged in on her computer. While she waited to get into her email, a visual of dead eyes set in a swollen face hovered on the edge of her consciousness.

She concentrated on the computer screen and directed her thoughts to the most pleasant thing she could think of, the taste of Blade’s kiss, which clung to her lips and ruined her concentration in yet another way. The kiss. A single act of kindness. It didn’t mean anything. He hadn’t intended it to be sensuous, but… it had stirred fire inside her.

Her emails came up, and a message from Attorney Rosenberg grabbed her attention.

I talked with Joey Secada briefly via telephone earlier this week. For the time being, he has put off meeting with me in person. He hasn’t changed his story. Still says he was with Skip Coogan the night of the murder. His nervousness was palpable, but that doesn’t prove he’s lying. Brandy, I hesitate to keep taking your money and furthering this investigation. We need to talk.

For the first time since the trial, doubt crept in. Could she be wrong about Skip? Uncertainty hit like a landslide. She thought about Blade and his perception of her stepfather, which was the exact opposite of hers. What if she
was
wrong?

She glanced at her watch. Too late to call Rosenberg.

If Secada wouldn’t change his story and discredit Skip Coogan’s alibi, they’d be right back where they’d been ten years ago. Nowhere. And with no new evidence to reopen the case.

Her stomach squeezed.

She could still see the look on Skip’s face the day he’d testified, and she remembered the sly wordless exchange between him and Secada outside the courtroom. A child’s observation. A child distraught over the mistake she’d made—the bit of information she’d spilled to a clever prosecuting attorney. A familiar ache pierced her heart.

The thought that she may owe Skip an apology curdled her blood.

But if she was wrong about Skip Coogan, and he hadn’t killed his lover and framed Brandy’s mother, who had? Someone had committed murder.

No matter what, Brandy had a killer to track down.

Her chin set in determination. She gritted her teeth and smoothed wet hair away from her face. She would
never
give up on proving her mother’s innocence. Whoever the murderer was, she would expose them and clear her mother’s name. Or she’d die trying.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
he air conditioning struggled against the warm evening air in the utilitarian VFW building. Long tables covered with cloth linens and decorated with fresh flowers ran in parallel lines, crowding the room where most of the Fort Shoshone Police Department personnel and half the city, it seemed, had assembled to honor Skip Coogan for his valiant service.

Blade had wondered if Brandy was going to stand him up, but she’d been ready when he’d knocked on her door at six. Of course, just because she’d come with him didn’t mean she was ready to rethink her accusation; she’d barely said a word to him on the ride over or through dinner and the short program.

After the program, Blade hung close to Brandy while they pushed through the crowd and headed toward the podium to give their regards to the man of the hour.

Every time Blade looked at Brandy, dressed in a shimmery pink dress, his knees started to give out. He sucked in a deep breath and wiped his brow when she gave him a nervous smile. He forced himself not to think about how pretty she looked and refrained from thinking about what lay beneath the pink fabric teasing the nerve endings of his fingertips where his hand settled over her hip.

Concentrate on Skip.
Blade was bursting with pride over the accolades bestowed on his friend, the picture–perfect symbol of authority in dress uniform who stood in a receiving line at the front of the room.

He considered it a privilege to call Skip Coogan his friend.

Bringing Brandy along to meet Skip face to face could be the first step in reconciling their differences. The fact that Skip had played around when he’d been married to Brandy’s mother would be a hard obstacle for her to overcome. The alleged affair ate at Blade as well.

He could understand Brandy’s frustration and how the trauma of her mother’s conviction would have forged deep scars. He could see how the ordeal could cause her to jump to false conclusions. Still, Blade couldn’t imagine that Skip would have testified falsely. And Brandy’s insinuation that he’d done worse than lying under oath was preposterous. He just had to show her the real Skip, the Skip who’d set Blade’s life on the right track.

As he maneuvered Brandy closer to the front of the room, he sensed every muscle in her body tensing. “You doing okay?”

“Maybe I should wait outside.” Her voice shimmied.

“Relax, this is no big deal.”

Her hip brushed him when she stopped. Shockwaves tingled down his leg. God help him, the woman turned his blood to red–hot lava. His hand muscles twitched, and it was all he could do to keep his fingers from exploring the curves that lay so decadently close at hand.

He swiveled and studied her face. Golden curls ranging in color from fine wood–aged cognac to corn silk danced across her shoulders. No restraining elastic band contained the corkscrew locks tonight.

She was so tough, yet so vulnerable. He realized how much he admired her. How much he cared. He knew if her mother had been wrongly convicted, he’d help her set the record straight any way he could. He just hoped and prayed it wouldn’t be at Skip’s expense.