“Hey!” a deep male voice yelled.
Oh, no! She kept running.
“Jules! Slow down!”
She whirled, ready to swing the carrier at her attacker’s face, only to spy Trent, hands buried deep in the pockets of his sheepskin jacket, collar turned up to the wind as he jogged through the blizzard to catch up to her.
“You scared the liver out of me!” she cried, relieved nonetheless to see his sharp features. “For the love of God, what were you thinking? I nearly clocked you with this!” She held up the wood carrier with its fragile contents. “You bastard, you’ve been following me!” She was instantly hot.
“Just keep walking. And don’t yell, okay?”
“But I was scared to death.”
“Good, you should be.” He grabbed her by the arm and propelled her forward. His breath fogged in the night, and snow had collected on the
shoulders of his jacket. The strands of hair that had escaped from beneath his hat were frozen, icy and white. “What the hell have you got?”
“Lynch’s files. He was starting to burn them.”
“What?” He glanced at her as if she’d gone mad. “So you, what, stole them?”
“Yep.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“I said he was burning them,” she said as they trod through the heavy snow. “I figured I just saved him the trouble of disposing of them.”
“He won’t like it.”
“Definitely not. I thought we were meeting at your place.”
“We were,” he agreed, his free hand digging in his pocket as he retrieved a small key chain. “But I didn’t think it was smart to let you walk in the dark all by yourself, so I waited outside Stanton House, then saw you cut into the chapel after being accosted by Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”
She smiled, thinking of Takasumi and Taggert.
“So I had to wait outside, damned near freezing to death, until I saw you sneak out the back. Here, let me take that.” He grabbed the carrier with his free hand. His jaw was set stubbornly, his muscles tense as he surveyed the ice-crusted shrubbery flanking the buildings as if he expected the killer to leap out from the shadows at any second.
“What has the sheriff’s department found out?”
“Nothing new.”
“Damn.” They rushed past the stables, and she thought of the murder scene, the hayloft and floor of the stable where Drew Prescott had lost his life and so much blood. Again, she flashed on the secondary stain, the smaller indication of blood. It bothered her, pulled at her conscience, and she felt there was something to it that she should understand, but the thought drifted away again. “What about the bloodstains?”
“Still working on them.”
They were jogging together, slogging through the snow, bending their bodies against a wind so harsh it froze her skin. She glanced up, noting the tense lines of Trent’s face, the unforgiving line of his jaw, and a long-forgotten memory flashed, a ridiculous recollection of warmth and love in this frigid February night.
Like tonight, they had been running through the woods, but it was summer and warm, sun dappling the dried grass under their feet, a startled rabbit leaping into the scrub oaks and pine. Trent had grabbed her hand then, strong fingers twining with hers as he’d pulled her toward a hidden spot near a river, where the water eddied into a clear pool and the branches of a willow formed a canopy over the banks. Dragonflies had snapped over the surface of the water while trout had flashed silver in the depths. An osprey had circled high overhead in a sky as blue as all of June.
They’d skinny-dipped in the water, splashing and laughing. Afterward, they made love on the banks while the sun baked the dry earth and cast shimmering sparkles over the water.
For a few precious months, she’d felt alive and in love and assured that the future was golden.
And then Rip Delaney’s life had been cut short and everything had changed.
And now she was running for her life through a frigid winter, Trent’s gloved hand urging her along a darkened path that had once been shoveled but now was thick with new snow. Her ears were frozen, her nose running as the blizzard just kept whistling through the mountains.
And, on top of everything else, a murderer was in their midst. A killer holed up here, beyond the reach of any arm of the law.