punched his friend in the arm and the tall kid dropped his beer where it fizzed out in the dirt. “Hey, man.”
All three boys picked up where they’d left off, crashing back into the woods, cursing at each other and laughing, startling a flock of birds with their raucousness.
“Well, that’s interesting.” Beth tapped the toe of her boot. “I wonder what that boy meant about the Quileute not talking about the crime. Did law enforcement ever question anyone from the tribe?”
“Not that I know of, but I’ll leave that to your superior investigative talents.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “It’s been real, but I gotta go.”
“I guess I’ll see you around, Duke. We are in the same hotel, same small town, same case.”
“Don’t remind me.” He waved over his shoulder and hit the trail back to his rented SUV, putting as much space as possible between him and Beth St. Regis, his mind as jumbled as the carpet of mulch he was plowing through.
She looked the same, except for the clothes. Beth had always been a girlie-girl—high heels, dresses, manicured nails, perfect hair and makeup. The jeans, boots and down vest suited her. Hell, a burlap sack would suit Beth. She had the kind of delicate beauty that shifted his libido into overdrive.
He’d fantasized about those girls when he was a teen growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in Philly—the rich girls with the expensive clothes and cars, the kind of girl that wouldn’t give him the time of day unless she wanted to tick off her parents by running with a bad boy.
He’d been drawn to Beth like a magnet for all the wrong reasons. You couldn’t use a living, breathing person to fix whatever you’d missed in your childhood. But, man, it had felt good trying.
When he’d had Beth in bed, he couldn’t get enough of her soft porcelain skin, the way her breast fit neatly into the palm of his hand and the feel of her fine, silky hair running down his body.
The thought of those nights with Beth’s slim legs wrapped around his hips got him hard all over again, and he broke into a jog to work off the steam.
When he got to the car, he collapsed in the driver’s seat and downed half a bottle of water. Just his luck to run into the woman of his dreams on this nightmare assignment.
He dug his cell phone from the pocket of his jacket and called his boss, Mickey Tedesco.
“I was just thinking about you, man. All settled in up there? I hear it’s some beautiful country.”
“Don’t try to sell this, Mick. I checked into my hotel and took a walk in the woods to have a look at where the kidnap victims were held a few months ago, not that those kidnappings had anything to do with the Timberline kidnappings, except that the brother of one of the original victims turned out to be the kidnapper.” He dragged in a breath. “Why am I doing this? Doesn’t the FBI have more urgent cases that need my attention?”
“You know why, Duke.” Mick coughed. “It’s always a good idea to ease back into work after a...um, situation.”
“I’m good to go, Mickey.” His hand tensed on the steering wheel. “I don’t need to be poking around a twenty-five-year-old kidnapping case based on some slim new evidence, which isn’t even evidence.”
“I don’t know. It may not have started out too promising, but you might be getting more than you bargained for, Duke. You might have yourself a hot one.”
A vision of Beth aiming her pepper spray—pepper spray he’d given her—at his face flashed across his mind. “I might be getting more than I bargained for, all right. That bogus Cold Case Chronicles show is out here nosing around.”
Mick sucked in a breath. “Beth St. Regis is there, in Timberline?”
“Yeah.” Mick knew a little about the drama that had gone on between him and Beth...but not all of it.
Mick whistled. “That makes total sense now.”
“It does?” Duke clenched his jaw. “Are they promo-ing the segment already? She doesn’t even have her crew out here.”
“No. It makes sense that Beth’s doing a show about the Timberline Trio because someone sent us an email about her yesterday.”
Duke’s pulse skipped a beat. “About Beth? What’d it say?”
“The email, untraceable of course, said ‘Stop Beth St. Regis.’”
Beth parked her rental car in the public parking lot on the main drag of Timberline and flicked the keys in the ignition. Why did Duke Harper have to be here mucking up her investigation?
She chewed her bottom lip. He’d been sent out on a cold case because of what had happened in Chicago. She’d read all about the botched kidnapping negotiation that had ended in the death of Duke’s partner, a fellow FBI agent. But Duke had rescued the child.
Tears pricked the backs of her eyes. Duke had a thing about rescuing children...but he couldn’t save them all.
She plucked the keys from the ignition and shoved open the car door. She couldn’t get hung up on Duke again. This story had presented her with the opportunity to get to the bottom of her identity, and she didn’t plan on letting tall, dark and handsome get in her way.
She locked the car with the key fob and dropped it in her purse. The chill in the autumn air had her hunching into her jacket as she walked toward the lit windows lining the main street.
If she recalled from the TV news story on the kidnappings, the tourist shop was located between an ice-cream place and a real-estate office. She started at the end of the block and passed a few restaurants just getting ready for the dinner crowd, a quiet bar and a coffee place emitting a heavenly aroma of the dark brew she’d sworn off to avoid the caffeine jitters. The Pacific Northwest was probably not the best place to swear off coffee.
A neon ice-cream cone blinking in a window across the street caught her attention. She waited for a car to pass and then headed toward the light as if it were a beacon.
The tourist shop, Timberline Treasures, with the same frog in the window, nestled beside the ice-cream place, and Beth yanked open the door, sending the little warning bell into a frenzy.
A couple studying a rack of Native American dream catchers glanced at her as she entered the store.
“Hello.” A clerk popped up from behind the counter. “Looking for something in particular?”
“I am.” Beth gripped the strap of her purse, slung across her body, as she scanned the shelves and displays inside the store. “I’m interested in that frog in the window.”
“The Pacific Chorus frog.” The woman smiled and nodded. “Timberline’s mascot.”
Beth’s gaze tripped across a small display of the frogs in one corner. “There they are.”
The clerk came out from behind the counter and smoothed one hand across a stuffed frog,
