Raine called after him in a last, desperate bid for his cooperation.
Chase stopped walking. He turned to look at her, menace in every line of his body.
“What did you say?”
Raine felt as if she’d poked a mountain lion with a stick and had him turn on her. She’d wanted Chase’s attention. Now she had it and chills of fear prickled her skin.
“Trey received a letter telling him that if he wanted to know how Mike really died fifteen years ago, he should be at the Bull ’n’ Bash tavern in Billings on Friday night. He refused to let me go with him and he hasn’t come home.”
“Was the letter signed?”
“No.”
“Have you got it?”
“No. Trey took it with him when he left for Billings.”
Chase propped his hands on his hips, his expression unreadable.
“All right.” He nodded abruptly. “You’ve got yourself a hunter. I’ll need all the information you can give me about your brother. Have you got a picture with you?”
Raine was dizzy with relief. “Not with me, no. But I have several on Trey’s computer in the apartment above the Saloon.”
“I’ll need a recent photo and his statistics, date of birth, eye and hair color, height and weight. Also what kind of car he was driving and the license number.” He broke off and thought for a moment. “Has his car been found?”
“No. He drove his SUV. It’s missing, too.”
“Get the data together and I’ll pick it up this evening on my way out of town.”
“Where are you going?”
“Billings. If that’s the last place he was seen, that’s where I’ll start looking.”
Ten minutes later, after telling Chase to come to her brother’s apartment above the Saloon to collect the information about Trey, Raine was racing down the highway toward Wolf Creek. She didn’t have a lot of time to collect Trey’s vital statistics and choose a photo of her brother to give to Chase.
For the first time in days, the heavy dread that weighed down her heart lifted, giving her hope.
Chase McCloud was more dangerous in person than his reputation claimed. Raine didn’t care. She’d have dealt with the devil himself if it meant a chance to find Trey.
Chapter Two
C hase stood on his deck, watching the small red car until it turned onto the highway and sped out of sight.
Raine Harper had just knocked his world off its axis. And not only because a possible clue had surfaced in a fifteen-year-old mystery.
He hadn’t lied to her—he didn’t take cases for locals. He wanted nothing to do with Wolf Creek residents. He’d sworn long ago to focus on the present and let the past lie undisturbed—that included Mike’s death and the local jury that held him responsible. Raine, however, was the exception.
She was the last woman he’d expected to see when he looked up from the hot metal taking shape under his hammer and saw a female form silhouetted by the sunlight. Then she’d stepped inside the workroom and he could see her clearly.
He’d recognized her with one glance.
That brief moment when they’d collided in the Saloon weeks ago was seared in his memory. He’d looked down into startled grey eyes and pink lips parted in surprise. For a second, their bodies were pressed together from chest to thigh. Those eyes, her mouth, creamy skin, mahogany hair and the feel of her curves against him had featured prominently in his dreams ever since.
He hadn’t decided what, if anything, he wanted to do about her. Given their family history, he’d doubted she’d be willing to share casual conversation with him, let alone consider the kind of relationship that ended up with the two of them getting naked.
He had a strict rule against getting involved with anyone hiring his services. He’d never broken it in all his years as a bounty hunter.
Agreeing to search for her brother made Raine his client. He hoped to hell he’d be able to keep his distance until he’d located her brother and had a look at the mysterious letter.
For the first time in his life, Chase wasn’t confident his control was unshakable.
Several hours later, Chase tossed a small duffel bag packed with essentials onto the floor behind the SUV’s driver’s seat, whistling a brief melodic tune. Three-year-old-Killer, a ninety-eight pound Rottweiler, immediately ceased sniffing the grass by the house gate and trotted forward. He leaped easily into the backseat and Chase slammed the door behind him before sliding behind the wheel.
The late-afternoon sun heated the interior of the black four-wheel-drive vehicle but Chase didn’t turn on the air-conditioning, choosing instead to lower all the windows. Killer stuck his head outside, eyes half-closed as the hot wind pinned his ears back.
Chase drove by instinct, his mind occupied with the possible angles presented by the mysterious letter sent to Trey Harper just before he’d disappeared.
There were only three people who knew what really happened the night Mike Harper died. Chase was one of them. The other two were Lonnie and Harlan Kerrigan. One of them must have sent the letter to Raine’s brother. But which one? And why?
Chase was convinced neither Harlan nor Lonnie would come forward and confess which meant he had to consider a third possibility. Could someone else have been present at the accident scene fifteen years earlier?
He remembered the sequence of events leading up to the crash on the highway outside Wolf Creek clearly. But he’d been thrown from the truck on impact, hit his head, and lost consciousness. Could another vehicle have arrived on the scene while he’d been comatose? Could a fourth person have seen Harlan remove Lonnie from the driver’s seat and put Chase behind the wheel?
The unlikely scenario was easier to accept than the equally unlikely possibility that one of the Kerrigans had suddenly become conscience-stricken and had decided to confess after all these years.
Chase reached Wolf Creek and pulled into the alley behind the Saloon, parking several yards from the back door. Leaving Killer on guard in the SUV, he went inside. A stairwell rose to his immediate right and he moved silently up the steps to the second floor where two doors, directly opposite each other, opened off the carpeted landing. He knocked on 2B and waited, rewarded moments later by the snick of a dead bolt as it slid free.
Raine stood in the doorway. Chase stilled, rocked by the sudden urge to reach out, catch her narrow waist and draw her close. He felt an intense, nearly compulsive desire to bury his face against the thick mahogany fall of hair, wind the long strands around his fists and run his tongue over the lush fullness of her lower lip to discover the taste of her mouth.
He never broke his strict rule against romantic involvement with a client, no matter how beautiful. Raine Harper was off-limits.
He made his response as impersonal as possible. “Evening.”
“Come
