Mallory Kane - Classified Cowboy

So now he was talking to dead people? He reined in his runaway imagination sharply. If the remains unearthed here were those of his missing witness, Marcie James, at least her family and friends would have closure.

And he would know for sure that his negligence had gotten her killed. As always, he marveled at his unrealistic hope that somehow Marcie had survived the attack that had nearly killed him. Still, he recognized it for what it was—a last-ditch effort by his brain to protect him from the truth.

She was dead and it was his fault.

He heard the voices arguing with his, like they always did. His captain, assuring him that the Rangers’ internal investigation had exonerated him of any negligence. The surgeon who’d worked for seven hours to repair the damage to his lung from the attacker’s bullet, declaring that he ought to be a dead man.

But louder than all of them was the one low, sexy voice that agreed with him. The voice of Nina Jacobson.

My best friend is gone. She could be dead, and it’s all your fault. You were supposed to protect her.

He rubbed his chin and tried to banish her words from his brain. He needed to put the self-recrimination and regret behind him. Whether or not Marcie James’s death was his fault wasn’t the issue now.

Identifying whoever was buried in this shallow hole was. For a few moments, he got caught up in examining the scene. This was the first time he’d seen it. The kids had erected the canopy, so the area underneath was dark.

But Wyatt could imagine what had happened. The road crew that was breaking ground for the controversial new state route that cut across this corner of Jonah Becker’s land had brought in its bulldozer. It had dug into this rise and unearthed the bones.

The discovery of the bodies—combined with the fact that the ME couldn’t make a definitive identification of the age, sex or time of death of any of the victims—had reopened a lot of old wounds in Comanche Creek.

Marcie James’s kidnapping and disappearance two years before had been the latest of several such incidents in the small community in recent years.

About three years prior to Marcie’s disappearance, an antiques broker who had been accused of stealing Native American artifacts from Jonah Becker’s land had disappeared, along with several important pieces. Everyone thought Mason Lattimer had skipped town with enough stolen treasure to set him up for life. But none of the pieces had ever surfaced.

Then, less than a year after Lattimer’s disappearance, a Native American activist leader named Ray Phillips had vanished into thin air after a confrontation with Comanche Creek’s city council and an argument with Jonah Becker.

One odd character vanishing was a curiosity. A second disappearance was noteworthy. But a third in five years?

That the third person was an innocent young woman scheduled to testify in a land-deal fraud case connected to a prominent local landowner cemented the connection between each of the bodies and that landowner—Jonah Becker.

It had taken less than twenty-four hours to rekindle the fires of suspicion, attacks and counterattacks in the small community of Comanche Creek. The warring factions that had settled into an uneasy truce—the Comanche community, the wealthy Caucasian element and activist groups on both sides—were suddenly back at each other’s throats.

Wyatt straightened and took a deep breath as he surveyed his surroundings. The moisture in the air rendered it heavy and unsatisfying. He unwrapped a peppermint and popped it into his mouth. The sharp cooling sensation slid down his throat, and its tingle refreshed the air he sucked into his lungs.

Jonah Becker and his son Trace had both protested the state’s acquisition of this corner of their property for a newly funded road, although the state of Texas had paid them. From what Wyatt could see of the area, the fact that they wanted to keep it despite the generous compensation was suspicious on its face.

To him, the land was barren and depressing. Anemic gray limestone outcroppings loomed overhead. The worn path that served as a road was covered with more limestone, crushed by cow and horse hooves into fine gravel, which sounded like glass crunching underfoot. Scrub mesquite and weeds were just beginning to put on new growth for spring.

Wyatt knew that in daylight he’d see the new blooms of native wildflowers, but a splash of blue and yellow here and there couldn’t begin to compete with all that gray.

He pushed air out between his teeth, thinking longingly of his renovated loft near downtown Austin. The houseplants his sister had brought him for his balcony were much more to his liking than this scrub brush.

Just as he started to crouch down to take a look at the area Nina Jacobson had been photographing, he heard something. He froze, listening. Was it rain dripping off the trees? Or a night creature scurrying by?

Then the crunch of limestone from behind and to the left of him reached his ears.

In one swift motion he drew his Sig Sauer and whirled.

“Whoa, cowboy,” a low amused voice said.

Wyatt carefully relaxed his trigger finger.

Nina Jacobson. Son of a …

He blew out breath in a long hiss and holstered his gun. “I told you to get out of here.”

“No. You told me to—and I quote—'get them out of here.’” She lifted her chin and stared at him defiantly. “I did that. For now.”

He set his jaw. “Great. So we’ve established that you can follow directions. Good to know. Follow this one. You get out of here. Now.”

She shrugged. “No can do. No transportation.”

His gaze snapped to the empty road where the SUVs had been parked. Then back to her. First her face, then her left shoulder, which was weighed down by a heavy metal case, and on down to her right hand, where it rested on the telescoping handle of a small black weekend bag.

Oh, hell. He raised his gaze to meet hers.

Her eyes widened, and like before, he was grimly pleased that he could so easily intimidate her. He knew the effect of his glare. He’d seen it in the faces of suspects, subordinates and, occasionally, friends.

“Then you better start walking,” he muttered, turning and propping his boot up on the fallen tree trunk again.

“Not a chance, cowboy. I’m staying with my site. I need to get some more pictures.” Her hand moved from the bag’s handle to the camera around her neck.

“It’s not your site. It’s my crime scene.”

She didn’t answer. Wyatt felt a cautious triumph. Maybe he’d won. Of course, he knew he was going to have to take her back to town, so she scored props for that. But there was no way she was going to turn his crime scene into a field trip for a bunch of students.

No way. He set his jaw and got ready to tell her to get into his Jeep.

“The ME said he thought there were two bodies.” She spoke softly, but her tone got his attention.

Reluctantly, he slid his gaze her way. “He thought? Does that mean you don’t?”

She stepped over the crime-scene tape and dropped to her haunches at the edge of the hole. He started to stop her, but she’d piqued his curiosity, so he followed her and crouched beside her, sitting back on his heels.

She slid her narrow, powerful flashlight beam over the clods of dirt and debris left by the road crew. After a couple of seconds he picked up on the pattern she was tracing.

Across, up, down and back. Then she moved the beam back to where she’d started and traced the pattern again. “What? What are you showing me?” he asked.

“Look closer.”

“If I look any closer, I’ll fall in.”

She laughed, a sexy chuckle that impacted him like a bullet straight to his groin. Surprised at his reaction, he shifted uncomfortably and swallowed hard to keep from groaning aloud.