This time.
As the head of the Texas Rangers Special Investigations Unit, Wyatt hadn’t been surprised when he was assigned to investigate a suspicious shallow grave containing badly decomposed remains. What had surprised him was that his assignment was in this town.
The last time Wyatt had seen Comanche Creek, it had been through a haze of pain and the stench of failure as he was loaded into an ambulance two years ago.
The idea that he was here now, to possibly identify the body of the woman he’d failed to protect back then, ignited a burning in his chest. He absently rubbed the scar under his right collarbone.
“Where’s your boss?” he snapped.
“Over there.”
Wyatt looked in the general direction of the kid’s nod. There was a group of people standing inside the tape, right in the middle of his crime scene. He caught flashes of light as one of them took pictures.
“Which one?”
“In the hoodie.”
Wyatt raised his arm an inch, nearly lifting the kid off his feet. All three had on hooded sweatshirts. “Try again.”
“Ow, dude! I mean, sir. The black hoodie. Taking pictures.”
Wyatt let go of the kid and turned on his heel.
So the forensic anthropologist was going to be his first problem. He was the only member of the task force that Wyatt knew nothing about. He’d been appointed by the captain.
Wyatt had chosen the rest of the team. He’d picked Reed Hardin, the sheriff of Comanche Creek, and Jonah Becker’s daughter Jessie, because of their familiarity with the area. He had hopes that Ranger Sergeant Cabe Navarro’s presence would ease the tension between the Caucasian and Native American factions in town.
He’d never worked with Ranger Crime Scene Analyst Olivia Hutton, but she had an excellent reputation, even if she was from back East.
It was the captain’s idea to use an anthropologist from Texas State University. “They have one of the premier forensics programs in the United States,” he’d told Wyatt.
“And besides, the governor’s looking for positive press for the new forensics building and body farm Texas State just built.”
Great. Politics. That was what Wyatt had thought at the time. And now his fears were realized. The professor was trying to take over his crime scene.
“Well, Dr. Mayfield,” Wyatt muttered. “You might be the head of your little world, but you’re in my world now.”
As he strode over to confront the professor, he took in the circus the guy had brought with him. Two spotlight holders, plus four other students milling around. Add to that three rubberneckers drooling over his crime scene, and it equaled nine people. And that was eight—nearly nine, too many.
He stopped when the scuffed toes of his favorite boots were less than five inches from the professor’s gloved hand and toeing the edge of a shallow, lumpy mud hole.
“Hey, Professor.”
The guy had hung his camera around his neck and was now holding a high-intensity pocket flashlight. He shone it on Wyatt’s tooled leather boots for a second, then aimed it at a white ruler with large numbers on it, propped next to what looked to Wyatt like a ridge of dirt.
“Okay,” Wyatt muttered to himself, pulling his own flashlight out and thumbing it on. En garde. He crossed the other man’s beam with his own. “Hey. Excuse me, Professor?” he said loud enough that heads turned from the farthest spotlight pole.
Wyatt heard drops of rain spattering on the brim of his Stetson as the guy thumbed off the flashlight and pushed his hoodie back. Wyatt spotted a black ponytail. Oh, hell. This was no gray-haired scholar with a tweed jacket and Mister Magoo glasses. He was a long-haired hippie type.
Just what he needed, along with everything else. He hoped the guy didn’t have a cause that could interfere with this investigation.
The professor rose from his haunches and lifted his head.
“Hey to you.” The voice was low and throaty.
Low, throaty and undeniably feminine. Wyatt blinked. It matched the pale, oval, feminine face, framed by a midnight-black crown of hair pulled haphazardly back into a ponytail.
He’d heard that voice, seen that face, wished he could touch that hair, before.
“Oh, hell,” he whispered.
“Yes, you already said that.”
Had he? Out loud? He clamped his jaw.
She turned to look at the kid with the spotlight. “Let’s get that canopy back up. It’s starting to rain.” Then she gestured to the two standing beside her. “Help them. No. Leave my kit here.”
Then she tugged off her gloves and wiped a slender palm from her forehead back to the crown of her head. The gesture smoothed away the strands of hair that had been stuck to her damp skin, along with several starry droplets of rain.
Wyatt wasn’t happy that he remembered how hard she had to work to tame that hair.
“I have to say, though, I’m really fond of hey. You’re just as eloquent and charming as I remember,” she said.
He felt irritation ballooning in his chest. He could show her eloquent and charming.
No. Screw it. She didn’t deserve to see his charming side. Ever.
“The name listed on the task force was George Mayfield, from some university. Not Nina Jacobson,” he informed her.
Her lips, which were annoyingly red, turned up. “Texas State. And that’s right. It was supposed to be George Mayfield. Think of this as a last-minute change.”
“I’m thinking of it as a long, thick string being pulled. Where’s Spears?”
“Who?”
“The deputy who’s supposed to be guarding my crime scene.”
“Oh. Of course. Kirby.” She smiled. “He’s very helpful. I told him he could leave.”
“And he did?”
She nodded.
He was about two seconds away from exploding. He lowered his head, and water poured off the brim of his Stetson, onto her pants.
“Oh!” she cried, brushing at them. “You did that on purpose.”
“I wish,” he said firmly, working hard not to smile. “I want these people out of here.”
“No.”
“What? Did you just say no?”
“That’s
