breathed out a silent curse. Nothing had been the same around there since the young woman he’d hired to help out around the office had discovered she was pregnant. Files had piled up, faxes had gone unsent and the phones were ringing off the hook.
“Again? Didn’t she just have one?”
“Don’t ask me,” Ryan said, raising his hands in surrender. “The woman’s going to have a baby, who knows what goes on with that?”
“Then maybe you could e-mail that out.”
“Oh, no,” he said, reaching for his hat from a hook on the hat stand. “I don’t know anything about that Internet stuff.”
“It’s not Internet, it’s e-mail,” he explained. “It’s like typing a letter.”
“Don’t make no difference to me,” Ryan insisted, shaking his head. “I don’t mess with any of the cyber stuff.” He slipped his hat on over his shaggy black hair and turned back to Joe. “Besides, I’m heading across town. Those drivers from the old mine have been barreling down Wheeler Road again and when school lets out that place is just an accident lookin’ for a place to happen.”
“What if I pull rank on you?”
“You won’t,” Ryan said, his eyes all but disappearing as his smile grew wider. “Because you know I don’t know how to type.”
“You’ve got two fingers, don’t you?” Joe called after him as Ryan disappeared out the door and into the small parking lot outside.
He was annoyed, but not at Ryan. Not even at Gracie. He was angry at himself, angry that he was losing perspective and he couldn’t seem to do anything to stop it.
In all their official documents and queries, she was listed as Jane Doe, but she was Rain to everyone else. She was the woman who had stepped out of the wilds of a storm and took refuge in his arms, the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about, the woman he couldn’t get out of his mind.
He’d been the law in Mesa County for over a decade and he’d seen his share of crime and unrest during that time. He’d investigated cases that upset him, that made him mad. He’d even had cases he’d taken personally, but none of those compared to this. Rain was different. He’d known it the moment she’d looked at him.
She may not remember what had happened to her out there in the desert, but the memory of it had been there in her eyes. They’d had a harrowing, haunted look so clear and so frightening, it had sent a chill rattling through him.
He thought of that moment when she’d walked out of the gloom, when for a moment the clarity of the horror flashed like a beacon on her face. Something had passed between them then, something significant and profound. He’d not only seen the terror in her eyes, he had felt it and it had left him shaken.
He flipped the manila file closed and pushed himself away from the desk. He had to take a break, had to get away from this for a while. He was less than twenty-four hours into this investigation and already he could feel himself becoming lost, feel himself losing focus, losing touch.
Slowly he rose to his feet, heading out of his office toward the small break room just down the hall.
“Damn,” he cursed in a low voice as he rounded the corner and spotted the empty coffee carafe. No filing, no e-mail and now no coffee. He only hoped once Gracie had her baby and got back to work things would finally get back to normal.
Grumbling, he walked to the sink and filled the coffee carafe with water, poured it into the drip coffee-maker and filled the filter with fresh grounds. But he grew restless waiting for the coffee to brew and wandered back out through the hall and to the outer office.
He stopped at Gracie’s desk, looking at the computer. Reaching down, he tapped the mouse, bringing the screen to life, and called up the Internet messaging service. Maybe with a little caffeine running through his veins, he could give those e-mails a try. He was the sheriff and this was his office and like it or not, it was his responsibility to see to it that everything got done, no matter how small or how mundane—even if that meant he had to do it himself.
The truth of the matter was, this was his county, his piece of the planet and he had a stake in everything that went on in the sprawling two hundred miles of territory. When something went wrong or somebody got hurt, he took it personally.
And somebody had hurt Rain. They may not have stabbed her, or raped her or even beaten her up, but the pain on her face had been so great, it had managed to find its way to him, as well. He had felt it, just as sure and if he’d been the one abandoned. He had nothing to go on, no leads to pursue or clues to follow but somehow, someway he was going to find out who had injured her and why.
It may be his job to help her, but it was also the right thing to do, the only decent thing to do. The woman was alone in the world; she had no one to lean on, no one to calm and comfort her. She was the stuff legends were made of, the object of myth and lore. She was Rain Woman, born of the elements and christened by the rain. Like the tales from his ancestors, she had walked out of the desert, a mysterious woman with no past, no people and no one to protect her—and into his arms. It was not only his duty to help her, it was his destiny.
Reluctantly he sat down at the desk and slowly started composing the e-mail he wanted to send, but with his hunt-and-peck style on the keyboard, progress was slow and he soon grew restless. He wanted the information sent to the newspapers and media as soon as possible, but at this rate it was going to take forever.
He pushed away from the desk, stretching the stiffness in his arms and back. He needed something to help him, something to boost his sagging spirits and tense muscles. But just as he rose to go pour himself a fresh cup of coffee, the telephone rang.
“Sheriff Mountain,” he barked into the phone.
“Sheriff? It’s me, Gracie.”
Joe could hear the alarm in her voice. “Gracie, what’s the matter? You sound terrible.”
“Oh, Sheriff Mountain,” she sobbed through the wire. “Sheriff, I’m so scared. It’s my baby. The baby’s in trouble.”
“Trouble? Gracie, what are you talking about?”
He pressed the phone close, straining to hear through the sobs and tears. He made out something about tests and lab results, none of which meant much to him, but the culmination of them all meant complete bed rest for her for the remainder of her pregnancy.
“Jerry’s trying to find someone who can come in with me while he’s at work during the day,” she explained, stopping only long enough to blow her nose loudly. “I have to stay flat for at least the next twelve weeks. I can’t come back to work. What about my job? What about all my work?”
He could hear how overwhelmed she was and looked around at the reams of papers yet to be filed and felt a little overwhelmed himself.
“Don’t worry about your job,” he assured her. “It’ll be here whenever you get back—and we’ll get along just fine. You just concentrate on taking care of yourself and that baby.”
Chapter 4
It wasn’t him, she could tell that now. He was short and stocky and this man was huge, built like a football player with his enormous shoulders and powerful arms. No, she could
