style="font-size:15px;"> Dana jerked her head up and met her aunt’s steady gaze from luminous dark eyes. Auntie Mary always could read her mind, and Dana didn’t believe it had anything to do with that gift thing.
She pulled the keys out of her purse and swung them around her index finger. “Yeah, I saw him. You didn’t tell me he was Sheriff McClintock of Silverhill.”
“When are you going to tell him about Kelsey?”
“Who said I was?”
“He deserves to know, Dana. He’s a good man.”
“He didn’t come after me.” Dana clutched her purse to her chest with clammy hands. She’d already come to the same conclusion as Auntie Mary, but the thought of telling Rafe about his nine-year-old daughter scared the hell out of her. Rafe hated secrets and lies.
“He was a boy and starting college himself.” She tapped her cane on the floor. “Besides you hurt him deeply. His mother abandoned him and his two brothers when she left Ralph McClintock. When you took off without a backward glance or explanation, he must’ve felt that abandonment all over again.”
Tilting her head back, Dana laughed. “Please. As I recall, he recovered pretty quickly with Melanie. Or was it Belinda or Shari? He could have his pick, and I’m sure Pam approved of those girls.”
“Don’t let his stepmother scare you off this time. You’ve turned out nothing like your mother. To draw comparisons between the two of you is ridiculous.”
Dana crossed the room and planted a kiss on her aunt’s weathered cheek. “Let me worry about Rafe. Thanks for dinner. I’ll probably be home late. Don’t wait up.”
Auntie Mary straightened her spine and narrowed her eyes. “Be careful out there. There’s a killer on the loose, and you’re in danger.”
A chill rippled along Dana’s flesh and she gripped her purse tighter. Unlike Dana, Auntie Mary did use her gift and she was right more often than Dana cared to admit. Pure coincidence.
“There’s always an element of danger when you’re investigating a series of murders. It comes with the job.”
Shaking her head, Auntie Mary collapsed in her chair. “But this is different, isn’t it? This killer is targeting young Native American women…and you’re half Ute.”
“Don’t worry.” Hitching her purse over her shoulder, Dana waved. “See you later.”
Dana locked the dead bolt behind her. As she approached her car, a low growl rumbled from the underbrush at the edge of the driveway. She spun around, gripping her car keys in one clenched fist. Squinting into the darkness, her gaze tumbled across bushes and scrub, the glow from the lamppost touching their leaves with a blurry light. Auntie Mary’s house sat on the edge of the reservation and blackness smothered the rest of the landscape where ominous shapes hunched and waited.
Would wild animals from the mountains venture this close to a populous area? Her gaze swept from side to side, taking in the unrelenting wilderness hugging the clearing of reservation homes. The reservation didn’t exactly occupy the hub of civilization.
She grasped the door handle of her rental car and tugged. A louder, more menacing growl sent a river of chills up her spine as she yanked open the car door. Her keys slid from her clammy hand, and she swore as she crouched to retrieve them.
A rush of damp air surrounded her. Cold fingers gripped the back of her neck, pushing her to the ground, immobilizing her. She froze in place, her knees grinding into the rough gravel. Her jaw locked, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
A whisper as soft as the wind brushed her ear. “Go away. You might be next.”
Chapter Two
The hand grasping Dana’s neck melted away, and she hunched her shoulders against the cold vice that lingered even as her attacker relinquished his grip. The bushes rustled, and she rolled her head to the side, picking out two golden orbs glowing in the night as if suspended in the darkness.
Feral eyes.
As the eyes faded in the darkness, Dana seemed to recover from a trance. Her rigid muscles relaxed and she slumped forward, leaning her forehead against the car door.
A footstep crunched the gravel next to her and a scream ripped from her throat.
“Dana, what the hell happened? What are you doing on the ground?”
Blinking, Dana tried to focus her gaze on a pair of cowboy boots. Safety. Security. Rafe.
“S-someone attacked me.” She rubbed her eyes and grabbed the handle of the car door to struggle to her feet.
Rafe cursed and hooked his arms beneath hers, pulling her up and into his embrace. She sank against his broad chest, inhaling his clean, masculine scent, which seemed to revive her senses.
“Where’d he go?”
She raised her arm and with a shaky finger, pointed toward the underbrush. Rafe withdrew his weapon and gripped her shoulder. “You’re going back inside.”
“Dana? What’s going on?” An oblong of light appeared where Auntie Mary opened her front door.
“Go.” Rafe gave her a shove from behind and stalked toward the bushes.
“No!” Dana lunged toward him, grabbing his forearm. “Don’t go in there, Rafe.”
He cupped her face with one hand. “Don’t worry. Get inside the house.”
Dana stumbled toward Auntie Mary, who encircled her waist with one sinewy arm and drew her onto the porch. A beam of light from Rafe’s flashlight pierced the darkness as he crashed through the underbrush.
Dana held her breath, watching the foliage engulf him. Would Rafe’s gun be any match for what awaited him in the darkness?
Auntie Mary patted her arm. “He’s going to be fine. What happened?”
“A man attacked me from behind while I was getting into my car.”
Auntie Mary gasped and squeezed Dana’s hand. “He’s come after you sooner than I expected.”
“He didn’t come after me, at least not with murder on his mind. He whispered a warning. He may not even be the killer. Maybe it’s some sicko playing a joke. A serial murder investigation brings all the wackos out of the closet.”
With each sensible phrase she uttered, Dana gained a foothold back to reality.
“Did you get a look at him?”
“No. He came at me from behind, grabbed my neck.”
“You didn’t twist around to see him or go for your weapon?” Auntie Mary’s dark eyes seemed to bore into her very soul, and Dana turned away to stare at the bushes where Rafe disappeared.
She didn’t want to tell Auntie Mary about the growling or the yellow eyes or her trancelike state. She shook her head to dispel the images from her youth at
