Heart pounding, she held back a second, focused on the sounds he was making, keeping herself close enough to hear him without being seen. Stopping when she came to flat pieces of land with cliff overhang above her, little hiding places that allowed her to let him get far enough ahead of her that he wouldn’t discover that she was behind him.

Adrenaline poured through her. Two years of yearning, of studying, investigating, knowing, and she was finally starting to get some answers. If it hadn’t been for the ranger’s rudeness the night before, and then the attempt made to run her off the road, alerting her to the fact that she wasn’t wanted up on the mountain, she’d never have known that she was onto something.

The chief always said that everyone made mistakes and sometimes cracking a case meant waiting for the perp to make his.

Standing at a jutted-out piece of the face of the mountain, half hiding behind it, Kerry listened. She couldn’t hear the thug—or a perfectly nice guy who just happened to know Odin Rogers and hang out at the site of a murder from the night before—and couldn’t move until sound alerted her to his whereabouts. He could, at any time, head back down the mountain and if he did, she had to make damned sure he didn’t find her.

Looking around for an alcove big enough for her to fit in, she noticed a pile of tumbleweeds off to her left. They generally blew and conglomerated in places where they got stuck—an inlay? Looking around the craggy mountainside, to see if she could make out any indication that anyone was coming back down, she turned, thinking she’d hide for a minute or two, just in case, maybe check her phone to see if she had service...

Before she could move, blinding pain struck the back of her skull.

* * *

Rafe had had no problem finding Kerry’s car. From there he had no idea where to go, but figured up was more likely than down so he headed up the road, keeping to the mountain side, looking for any sign of underbrush that had been broken down recently, stepped on. Listening for any sign of human habitation.

Was he too late?

No way was he going to be too late.

As soon as he’d gotten her text he’d headed out of the office, and into a clothing store half a block away. Bought the first pair of jeans and tennis shoes he could find in his size, and wore them out of the store, carrying his pants and dress shoes with him.

He thought he heard a rock drop. Stopped. Listened, and then saw an old, beat-up black car pulled off into an alcove on the side of the mountain. Instinct told him Kerry would have seen it, too, and he headed in that direction. It didn’t take him long to find the trail that led up the back of the mountain.

Could just be a hiker out there. It wasn’t uncommon, especially with January being the beginning of hiking season, but something was telling him that Kerry needed him.

Or maybe he just needed her to need him.

Wanted her to need him.

He’d gone a quarter of a mile up the trail when he heard a sound that gave him a sickening feeling. Maybe a startled yelp. Human, he thought. But a large thump, too. Like something had been dropped, as opposed to sliding rubble.

Visions of the brick thrown through Kerry’s front window that morning had him racing toward the sound. Whoever was out there would hear him, but he figured that couldn’t be bad at the moment. Not if the distraction saved Kerry’s life.

Could be she’d just slipped.

Might not have been her he heard at all. His feet raced forward anyway, sliding on the mountainside as he veered off the uneven path, taking shortcuts wherever he found them.

He saw her a couple of minutes later, lying in an unmoving lump on the ground—several yards below him. He’d gone too far.

Movement off to his left alerted him he wasn’t alone just as a hunk of black came sailing toward him.

“What did you do to her?” he yelled as he caught the flying weight and threw it down to the ground. Thank God for the karate lessons he’d taken to spite Payne during college. The man, all in black, was easily fifty pounds heavier than Rafe, but the anger fueled energy flowing through him, and the heavy landing with the man’s own weight working against him, gave Rafe the upper hand. If this man had killed Kerry, he wasn’t getting off the mountain alive.

He punched. And punched again. With every bit of force in him, he kept attacking until he realized that the other man wasn’t fighting back. He didn’t know if he’d killed his opponent, or just knocked him out, but left him on the ground there as he raced toward the body lying so still down below.

God, let her still be breathing. She had to still be breathing.

If she wasn’t...

She was breathing. He could discern the small up-and-down movement of her chest while he was still several feet away.

“Kerry,” he called, aware that the guy up above them could regain consciousness at any moment.

She moaned. Blinked. Then lay still again.

“It’s okay, Ker,” he said softly, not sure if he was crying or not. Hoped not. Suddenly, he was thirteen again, being forced to stay in his room and watch the person he loved most in the world heading out to their hill all alone.

Crying as he knew he’d lost her.

Tags: Tara Taylor Quinn Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net