of six months.
“I told you. He took his truck and camper and his camera, just like he always does,” Emily had said when Roz called her yesterday. “He said he’d be back when he came back and not to concern myself. He was very clear about that.”
Yes, for a few days. Not for two weeks. Liam Sawyer was in great shape for his age. He would be sixty on Thanksgiving Day, but Roz worried he might be trying to act even younger after marrying a woman fifteen years his junior.
Since no one had heard from him, Roz was sick with worry that something had happened. And now this “detour” would only make her arrival in Timber Falls all that much later.
The other driver had turned around in the gravel parking lot and stopped, his headlights blinding her as she pulled past and started to turn around.
The moonless rainy darkness and the dense forest closed in around her car as she began her turn. Remote areas like this had always unnerved her, especially since from the time she was a child she’d known what was really out there.
Suddenly someone ran through her headlights. All she caught was a flash of yellow raincoat. She hit her brakes and stared ahead of her as the person wearing the bright yellow hooded raincoat climbed over the safety barrier at the top of the falls and disappeared in the trees that grew out over the water.
The driver of the pickup? Why would he venture out to the falls on a night like this, she wondered, watching to see if he reappeared.
Suddenly, she spotted the yellow raincoat through the trees at the edge of the falls. The figure seemed to be teetering on the precipice above the roaring water as if—
“Oh, God, no.” Roz threw open her door and ran coatless through the icy cold rain toward the waterfall, fear crushing her chest making it nearly impossible to breathe. Not again. Dear God, not again.
“Don’t!” she cried, still a dozen yards away.
The person didn’t look her way, didn’t even acknowledge hearing her. Through the rain and darkness, Roz ran, watching in horror as the bright yellow raincoat seemed to waver before it fell forward, dropping over the edge, and being instantly swallowed up in the spray of the falls.
Roz raced to the railing but couldn’t see anything past the trees. Panicked, she ran around the barrier and pushed her way through the tree limbs, praying she’d find the person clinging to the edge.
The roar of the waterfall was deafening. She could feel the spray, warmer than the rain falling around her as she worked her way out onto the moss-slick boulders. She’d had a horrible fear of heights for the past ten years.
But her fear for the jumper was stronger than for herself as she grasped the slim branch of a pine tree leaning out over the waterfall.
Holding on fiercely, she stepped to the edge, her heart dropping as she glimpsed something bright yellow churning in the dark waters below.
She let out a cry and tried to step back. The limb in her hand broke and suddenly she was trying to find purchase on the wet, slick moss at her feet.
With the roar of the waterfall in her ears, she didn’t hear him. Nor did she realize he’d come out onto the rocks above the dizzying dark water until he grabbed her from behind.
Chapter One
November 14
It was late when Charity Jenkins heard someone come in to the Timber Falls Courier newspaper office, and realized she’d forgotten to lock the front door.
Her hand dropped to the desk drawer and the Derringer she now kept there. She’d put it in the desk after almost being killed a few weeks before. Unfortunately, as the days had gone by, she’d become lax again about security. Probably because for almost thirty years, she’d been safe in Timber Falls.
“Dammit, Charity, if you’re going to work late, you’ve got to lock the door,” Sheriff Mitch Tanner barked as he came through the dark doorway.
She let out the breath she’d been holding and gently lowered the gun back into the drawer. “Forgot.” She smiled up at him as he moved in to the pool of light at her desk. Her heart did a little dippy-do-da dance, as it always did at the sight of him.
He was tall and dark with two perfect deep-set dimples, a Tanner trait. Gorgeous and impossible and the only man for her.
She watched him glance around the small newspaper office. As owner, publisher, editor and reporter, she often worked late. Her only help was a high school student who came in some evenings. This wasn’t one of those evenings.
So it was just the two of them. Which was nice since it had been a few days since she’d seen the good sheriff.
For years she’d been trying to get him to realize he couldn’t live without her. True, there’d been moments when he’d weakened and kissed her. But he’d always taken off like a shot, holding fast to his conviction that he wasn’t good marriage material and that the two of them together would be murder.
That is, until recently. A few weeks ago, after she’d almost been killed, Mitch had asked her out. On a real date. It had been nothing short of miraculous. Same with the date. And there’d been more kissing. He’d even given her a silver bracelet she’d once admired. The entire episode had bowled her over completely. Maybe there was hope after all.
Unfortunately, she could tell that he was still fighting the inevitable as if he thought there was some doubt that they’d be getting married. Obviously, he didn’t believe, like Charity did, that love conquered all.
“You’re working late,” he said, coming around to pull up a chair next to her desk. His gaze went to the open drawer and her gun. With a groan, he reached over to close the drawer. “Tell me it isn’t loaded.”
“What would be the point of an unloaded gun?” she asked, wondering why he’d stopped by.
“Try not to shoot yourself, okay?”
She grinned at him. Just the sight of him made her day. Maybe he was here to ask her to that dance at the community center this coming weekend. Or maybe he’d just come by for a kiss. Her lips tingled expectantly at the thought.
But that hope was quickly dashed when he pushed back his sheriff’s hat and put on his official business face.
He cleared his throat and said, “You’re going to hear about this anyway so I thought the best thing to do—”
“What is it?” she asked, sitting up a little straighter. He’d come to tell her something he didn’t want to tell her. This ought to be good. Almost as good as a kiss. Almost.
“You were right,” he said, the words clearly difficult for him.
She sat back. Oh yeah, this day just couldn’t get any better. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard you correctly?”
“You heard me. You were right. The shot that killed Bud Farnsworth didn’t come from Daisy Dennison’s gun. It came from Wade’s.”
Charity jerked back in her chair, the ramifications of his words nearly flooring her. “I knew it. I told you Wade Dennison was in on the kidnapping!”
