Читать книгу Countdown - Lindsay McKenna - Страница 6
ОглавлениеChapter Two
EM Clubs traditionally were noisy and crowded at noontime, and Annie was grateful when Rose decided to drive over to the base cafeteria instead. Once they’d selected their lunches, she found them a quiet corner.
“I think it’s wonderful that Captain Ramsey got you transferred here,” Rose said again as she sat down.
Annie smiled briefly and sipped her iced tea. “It’s sure a change from North Carolina.”
Rose waved her hand, then took a bite of her tuna sandwich. “Isn’t it, though? Camp Reed has three temperatures—hot, hotter and hottest.”
Laughing, Annie relaxed more. She liked Rose’s easygoing nature. “I think I’ll adjust. I was born in the New Mexico desert.”
Her eyes twinkling, Rose said, “That’s right—the captain mentioned that you were Navajo. I haven’t met too many Native American marines. What prompted you to enlist?”
“My grandfather was a code talker in World War II. He saw that I was restless, that I wanted to see more of the world than the reservation I grew up on.”
“So he figured a hitch in the corps would cure you?”
With a grin, Annie nodded. “Yes.”
“And it didn’t?”
“No. I signed up for a second one. I’ve been in six years.”
“Do you plan to get your twenty in and retire?”
“I hope to,” Annie agreed.
“Did you have to leave someone special behind at Camp Lejeune?”
For a moment, pain flitted across Annie’s heart, but she knew Rose was being kindly, not nosy. “Well…there was someone…but he died in Desert Storm.”
“Oh, dear,” Rose murmured, and reached out to touch Annie’s arm. “I’m so very sorry. Were you in Desert Storm, too?”
“Yes. We need provost-marshal and brig people in a wartime situation, too, I’m afraid.”
Frowning, Rose took a few stabs at her salad with her fork. “Were you married?”
“No, engaged. Jeff and I decided to wait until Storm was over to get married.” Annie shrugged, feeling the residual loss and pain filtering through her. “I guess it was the best decision. I don’t know….”
“My grandma always told me it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved.”
“Your grandmother was a wise woman.”
Rose smiled a little. “Well, who knows? Maybe you’ll meet someone here at Camp Reed.”
“No,” Annie murmured. “I made myself a promise never to get involved with another marine. I think a civilian man will be safer in the long run.”
“Now you sound like Libby Tyler—she’s a riding instructor here on the base. You know, I think Captain Ramsey really likes her. Joe is doing some preliminary investigating for Libby right now, as a matter of fact. She’s noticed that someone’s been riding five of the stable-owned horses nearly to death about once a month. She feels something fishy is going on, so Captain Ramsey sent Joe to check it out.” She paused in her monologue to take a sip of cola. “Libby was married to a marine helicopter pilot,” she explained, grimacing momentarily. “He died three years ago in a crash here at Reed, and since then she’s sworn off marines as potential mates.”
“I don’t blame her,” Annie said softly, feeling sympathetic pain for the unknown woman. “People in our line of work face more dangers than most.”
“I don’t agree,” Rose countered matter-of-factly. “I mean, I could be killed in a car crash on the way to work at this base on any given day. If marines follow the proper safety procedures, they don’t get hurt any more than your average human.”
“Except in case of war,” Annie amended wryly.
“Yes, but that’s the only exception.”
Annie finished her salad and started on her french fries. “Do you think our boss is serious about Ms. Tyler?” she asked, intrigued.
Rose grinned. “I think so.”
“Captain Ramsey was at Camp Lejeune when I first enlisted. I liked him a lot. He was a fair man who cared for the people who worked under his command.”
“Nothing’s changed that I can see,” Rose murmured. “But I have to tell you, the last commanding officer, Captain Jacobs, was a stinker. I felt sorry for the enlisted people who worked under him. He was a terrible manager and the entire brig section more or less collapsed under the weight of his mismanagement. If it hadn’t been for Joe Donnally, I think a lot worse could have happened.”
Annie’s heart raced momentarily. “Sergeant Donnally…”
“He’s quite a man, isn’t he?” Rose gushed.
Not sure how to answer that, Annie kept her own counsel. After a moment, she offered, “He made quite an impression on me.” At least that was the truth.
“Joe’s special. He’s a tough sergeant and he’s a fighter from the word go. I don’t know how many times he squared off with Captain Jacobs. They had awful shouting matches behind Jacobs’s office door. I mean, you could hear their voices clear down the passageway sometimes. Jacobs tried to get Joe transferred, but he fought that, too, and won.” Rose wagged her finger at Annie. “I’m telling you, Joe Donnally single-handedly supported the brig personnel during those two years. He was more the officer than Jacobs. He got things done right and on time—and then Jacobs took all the credit. Jacobs got even by not allowing Joe to get his next sergeant’s stripe. He gave him bad ratings in his personnel record. But Joe didn’t care. He knew he stood between Jacobs and the welfare of his people.”
“So Joe should be an E-6 instead of an E-5?” Annie asked slowly, thinking of her stupid remark to him about passing her E-5 test to become a sergeant. Perhaps that’s why he had rounded on her so angrily—she’d struck an old wound.
“Yes, he should have made E-6 at least a year and a half ago. I’m sure Captain Ramsey will right the wrong as soon as he can, but the poor man’s snowed under with work. Jacobs left our office in a disaster, moralewise and every other way.”
No wonder Joe Donnally had been short with her, Annie ruminated, folding her hands and resting her chin against them. “Is Captain Ramsey working to create better conditions for the brig chasers?”
Chuckling, Rose wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “Better believe it. We were four people short, and the captain already has four new people coming in, you among them. Of course, he went after you big-time when he saw the layout of Reed—all the rugged terrain and such.”
“Have there been many brig breaks?”
“No, but when there have been, a tracker’s been needed. We’ve always had to fly someone in from another base.”
Annie nodded. “When I worked with Captain Ramsey at Camp Lejeune, he set up a drug program for the base. Is he doing that here?”
“Yes. Colonel Edwards was so impressed with what he did down at the Yuma Air Station in Arizona that he had him ordered up here to set up a similar program for Reed. Captain Ramsey’s a real doer, but then, so is Joe Donnally.” She laid her napkin aside and picked up her purse. “They’re a great team. I can already see the positive effects around our office. ’Course, Captain Ramsey’s still new and I’m trying to fill him in on all the stuff that concerns us here at Reed, but he’s a quick study.” She smiled happily. “Well, you ready to get to work? I know Captain Ramsey wanted to see you at 1300. He wasn’t able to come and meet you personally, but he wants to see you as soon as possible. Joe will take you in to meet him.”
Annie’s heart fell. She wished she could go alone instead of under the angry, watchful eyes of Donnally. Was he always like that, or just with her? Well, she’d find out soon enough.
* * *
Joe felt their entrance into the brig office long before he heard them. He was working at his desk over a stack of paperwork, and his heart raced momentarily, puzzling him. Annie’s voice had a soft, husky quality to it, surprisingly low and soothing, as she conversed with Rose. Trying to ignore her tone, Joe hastily signed his name to several pieces of paper as Rose approached with the tracker.
“She’s all yours, Joe.”
“Thanks, Rose.” He refused to look up even though Annie stood patiently in front of his desk. Getting up, he threw the papers into his Out basket and finally nailed her with a glance. He was struck by how serene Annie appeared in the midst of the office chaos. Did anything ruffle her composure? Probably not. He’d heard that Native Americans traditionally were stoic and expressionless.
“What would you like me to do?” Annie ventured.
Joe snapped a look at her. “That file over there. Read it.”
Trying not to be hurt by his gruffness, Annie reached for the file on her new desk.
“When you get done reading the report I typed up, we’ll talk.”
Annie quickly perused the file on the Libby Tyler investigation that Rose had mentioned at lunch. She found it interesting that Ms. Tyler had reported the horses were being ridden hard at night during the new moon—and that the stable manager, Stuart Garwood, refused to take the matter seriously. But when she saw the scribbled note recently added to the file, she turned in her chair and stared at Joe. “She was shot at today?”
Grimly, Joe nodded. “While you were at lunch, the captain called me. Ms. Tyler was out riding about three miles northeast of the stables when someone fired two rounds near her.”
“Near or at?”
He scowled. “I don’t know.” With a sigh, he tossed the pen aside. “Captain Ramsey wants us to go check out the general area where it happened.”
Annie’s heart rose with hope. “Both of us?”
“Yes,” Donnally said irritably, rising. “The captain seems to think you walk on water, so let’s see if you do. Come on.”
Annie could think of nothing she could say to defuse his anger. She pointed to her uniform. “Could I change into my brig uniform before we go out?”
“This isn’t going to take long.”
She held his stare. “If we’re going to be out in the boonies of Reed, I’ll change. It will only take me a minute.”
Holding onto his patience, Joe knew he’d overstepped his bounds. “Yeah, go ahead. I’ll meet you at the HumVee parked out front. It’s the vehicle we use for base investigations.”
She offered him a slight smile of thanks. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
* * *
Joe was surprised when Annie emerged from the main brig building much sooner than he’d expected. Sourly, he admitted he was being hard on her. He was wrestling with so many stored feelings, and he had to stop being so nasty. She had changed into typical marine utilities, with the standard webbed, olive green belt around her waist. Ordinarily, a brig marine wore a pistol when on duty, but she hadn’t been issued one yet.
Annie opened the door to the HumVee and climbed in. She felt lighter and happier than she had since her arrival—at least she was getting to work on a case right away. Maybe it would help keep her mind off Donnally’s angry attitude. “I’m ready,” she said a little breathlessly as she shut the door.
With a grunt, Joe pulled the HumVee out of the parking spot. “Just to catch you up to speed, Libby Tyler is one of the base riding instructors, as you probably noticed in the file. According to Captain Ramsey, who had gone down to meet her for lunch, she was out riding roughly three miles northeast of the brig area when two shots were fired. Her horse reared up and she fell off, hitting her head on a rock. The captain is with her now—she’s still at the hospital getting fixed up.”
“Will she be okay?”
“I think so. The captain said he was going to be taking her to his apartment, because she can’t stand staying in hospitals and she’s in no shape to take care of herself.”
“I don’t blame her,” Annie said wryly.
Joe gave her a questioning look.
“My mother is a medicine woman for our people. I never saw the inside of a hospital until I entered the Marine Corps.” Her voice lowered and she looked away from the eaglelike intensity of his blue gaze. “I had a bad experience with a hospital recently. I can’t say I like them, either.”
“You were injured?”
“Uh, no….” Annie prayed that Donnally wouldn’t ask any more questions. Her heart couldn’t stand to open up the very painful past before his glowering dislike.
Joe turned onto a dirt road that meandered into the desert. “I’m not a great fan of hospitals, myself,” he growled, and left it at that, his attention temporarily focused on driving the big, clumsy vehicle across the rolling landscape of sagebrush, sand and cactus.
The silence was a familiar friend to Annie as they bumped their way along the road’s uneven surface. Donnally seemed to know every inch of Camp Reed. He followed increasingly narrow and more rugged roads deeper and deeper into the inhospitable terrain. Off to the left, Annie could see the brig growing smaller. Finally, Joe pulled the vehicle to a halt and shut off the engine.
“Well, this is roughly three miles northeast of the brig.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Where the horse reared and threw Ms. Tyler. That,” Joe said as he climbed out of the HumVee, “and maybe the rocks where the bullets hit.”
“So we’re searching for the scene of the accident?”
“Yes.”
Annie climbed out and began to look around. She could feel Donnally watching her as she moved slowly around to the front of the vehicle. He had his hands on his hips, surveying the terrain with a scowl. He was handsome in a rugged kind of way, Annie thought—if only he didn’t frown all the time.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
Joe barely glanced in Annie’s direction, all too aware of her quiet, gentle presence. “You’re the world-famous tracker. You tell me,” he snapped.
Annie knew better than to fall into that trap. Donnally was a sergeant, she a corporal. She was below rating and, therefore, the assistant, not authorized to make command decisions. “I can’t tell you anything until you give me an idea of the framework of this investigation. You’re in charge,” she reminded him calmly.
Joe stiffened and turned toward her. He saw that her cinnamon eyes had gone hard and challenging again, and it surprised him. But why should it? Belatedly, Joe knew he’d overstepped his bounds with her. “You’re right. I want you to search this half of the area, maybe a quarter of a mile in diameter. I’ll search the other half. If you come up with something, give me a holler.”
Annie gave him a slight nod and pulled the brim of her soft uniform cap, traditionally called a “cover,” farther down over her eyes to shade them from the intense sunlight. “Okay.” She turned and began an automatic perusal of the terrain, still feeling Donnally’s gaze burning into her back. Maybe he needed to be reminded that she wasn’t always going to take his anger. At least he’d backed down and started behaving in a correct manner with her. As Annie moved carefully through the brush, she admitted she didn’t want to fight with anyone. At heart, she considered herself a peaceful warrior, certainly not someone who relished violence.
For more than an hour they searched the area, looking for any kind of evidence of the episode. Finding nothing at all, Joe was disgusted and finally called Annie back with a wave of his hand. As he stood by the HumVee waiting for her, he tried to ignore the delicate way she made her way between the sagebrush and avoided a prickly pear cactus. She moved with such natural grace that she looked more like a deer than a woman, he thought wonderingly. Then, angry at himself for his unbidden interest, he turned away from her approach.
“I didn’t find anything,” Annie told him as she arrived on the road beside him.
Joe nodded and gestured to the HumVee. “Makes two of us. Get in. When I get back to the office I’ll call and tell Captain Ramsey we need more specific directions. It was a wild-goose chase, anyway.”
On the way back to the brig office, Annie remained silent. She wanted to like Joe Donnally—at least as her superior. True, he was gruff and abrupt, but she’d worked with marines like that before. She just hoped that his attacks would stop seeming so personal. If she could figure out why he was like this, she thought, maybe she could understand the basis of the anger aimed at her. Maybe something was causing him a lot of stress right now. She took a deep breath.
“How long have you been here at Camp Reed, Sergeant?” she asked, struggling to keep her tone conversational.
Joe shrugged. “Too long.”
“Are there a lot of transition pressures on you right now?”
He stared at her momentarily, then concentrated on navigating the dirt road. Once again, her astuteness surprised him. “Why would you want to know?”
“I’m just trying to get a feel for what’s going down here. A new base always has its own set of rules.”
“Isn’t that the truth.” Joe gave her an oblique look and was struck again by Annie’s earthy beauty. Her high cheekbones made her eyes look very large. And her mouth… Joe groaned inwardly. Then, disgusted by his unprofessional response to her, he gave himself an internal shake and said, “As I mentioned before, Captain Jacobs, the officer who just transferred out of here, was hell to work under.”
“In what way?” Annie hoped that if she could get Joe to talk, it might ease the tension between them.
“Jacobs was a screwup, as I said. All he was interested in was punching his ticket to get the necessary provost-marshal time on his personnel record and continue his goal toward being a major someday.”
“Oh, that kind of officer….”
“You got it.”
She glanced at him, his profile set and his mouth a hard-looking line. Annie wondered if Joe ever smiled. Probably not often, after working under someone like Jacobs. No wonder he was sour. “A lot of problems?” she probed.
“That doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
“Were you badly understaffed?”
“Very. Captain Ramsey just transferred four new brig marines to our office.” Joe sighed. “It’s going to help. We’ve all been standing twelve-hour duty, five days a week. Finally, we can start getting back to eight-hour shifts.”
“It must have been pretty rough on you. You’re the section leader.”
“I guess.”
Annie decided that Joe Donnally was the master of understatement. She had been in her share of grueling, mismanaged situations, where the officers in charge were less-than-spectacular managers. “Pulling that kind of duty must have been hard on your family,” she ventured softly.
“I’m not married.”
“Oh….”
Joe turned onto the asphalt highway that led back to the brig office, needled by her attempt to talk to him. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to Annie. It would mean dropping his defenses, and he wasn’t about to do that. No, somehow he’d have to get Captain Ramsey to put Annie into someone else’s section—anyone’s but his.
* * *
Joe hung up the phone unhappily. He’d just called Captain Ramsey at home, and Annie sat expectantly at her desk, looking at him. Stifling a curse, he ripped a piece of paper off the yellow legal-size pad and folded it haphazardly.
“Ms. Tyler gave the captain specific information on where the shooting occurred. We have to get back there and check it out.”
“No rest for the wicked,” Annie said with a slight smile, reaching for her cover.
Joe glanced at his watch. It was 1700, quitting time. “No, we’ll do it tomorrow. I know you have to get moved into a new apartment, so I’m going to send you home. We’ll go out at 1400 tomorrow and check out this new area. I’ve got a bunch of work to catch up on for the transfer of a couple of brig prisoners. That has to be gotten out of the way first.”
Annie rose and picked up her purse. Since her return to the office, she’d discovered that Rose had kindly set up her desk with everything she would need. “Okay, I’ll see you at 0800,” she agreed.
Joe nodded and said nothing, watching her move toward the door. Why couldn’t Annie be less pretty? Less graceful? Less everything? Grumpily, he turned back to the demands of the long-overdue paperwork that crowded his desk. Not only did he have to bring Captain Ramsey up to speed, but Private Shaw, a marine in his section, had been discovered to be illiterate, and Joe had been assigned to watch over him and make sure the kid learned to read. On top of everything else, he had Annie. Well, it was too much. At first opportunity, he was going to talk long and hard to Ramsey about getting rid of her. He just didn’t want her around him or his section—the pain, the memories from the past that her presence called up were too great for him to deal with on top of the responsibilities he already shouldered.
* * *
The hot afternoon sun bore down on Annie as she climbed out of the HumVee. This time she had a camera slung over her shoulder, a report in hand, and she was prepared to search the area where Libby Tyler had said she’d fallen. Joe Donnally was no different, however much she’d hoped he would be. No, he was just as gruff and grumpy as ever. Compressing her lips, she moved around to the front of the HumVee where he stood, arms crossed, surveying the terrain.
“This is it,” he said, discouraged by the rough rocks and sparse vegetation. How the hell were they supposed to find the exact spot where Libby Tyler had fallen? Frustrated, he looked over at Annie’s clean profile. He’d thought a day would make a difference in how he felt toward her, but it hadn’t. After a broken night’s sleep, with memories of the past bleeding into the fabric of the present, he was in an even fouler mood than yesterday, if that was possible.
“We need to look for sagebrush or tufts of grass that have been disturbed,” Annie said.
“Yeah? Well, it’s like looking for a needle in a damned haystack, if you ask me.”
Annie smiled a little and set the report on the hood of the HumVee. Waves of heat, like invisible curtains, shimmered in front of them. It was over a hundred degrees, the sky a bright, cloudless blue. Only the refreshing scent of the Pacific Ocean less than ten miles away offered refreshment to Annie’s senses. “Maybe not.” She pointed toward the left. “You see that area?”
“What, that bunch of sagebrush?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“I’ll bet that’s where the horse dumped her.”
“How can you tell?” Joe looked over at her, incredulous.
“I’ll show you.” Annie felt good about this opportunity to demonstrate to Joe that she knew her job as a tracker. As they walked about two hundred feet into the desert, she pointed to several surrounding markers. “She said she fell in a ravine. There are rocks on both sides of this V-shaped area. And the sagebrush down there looks damaged.”
“It doesn’t to me,” Joe said flatly.
Annie said nothing, but gingerly made her way down the steep side of the rocky ravine. Once at the bottom she knelt. Feeling Donnally’s presence, she looked up at him. “The sagebrush is broken here and here. This is where she fell.” Annie turned over several branches to show him they recently had been broken.
Amazed that she could be so bold and sure about her discovery, Joe snorted. “Sure, and the next thing you’ll find is where the bullets hit the rocks.”
Lifting her chin, Annie tried to ignore the sarcasm in his tone. “There’s one,” she said, pointing to a gray-and-black rock on the other side of the ravine.
His eyes widening, Joe’s gaze followed her finger’s path. Stepping across the ravine, he spotted the rock she’d indicated. The surface of the huge boulder had been scarred recently by a bullet. Without a word, Joe lifted the camera and took a photograph of it, as well as where the brush had been broken by Libby’s tumble from the horse.
Annie rose and started a rock-by-rock search for a second bullet indentation. About five feet away, on the opposite side of the ravine, she found what she was looking for. Calling Donnally over, she pointed to the rock.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered, and took another photo.
Annie felt hope soar within her. Joe’s look had been one of praise, not anger. In her heart, she wanted to like him a lot. If only he would drop that angry wall he held up like a shield. Time, Annie cautioned herself. They needed time to adjust to each other.
“The trajectory of the bullets indicate they were fired from that direction,” she told him, pointing off into the distance.
Joe straightened. “You’re probably right.” He frowned and looked down at the rocks. “Whoever was doing the firing hit five feet either side of that horse.”
“Yes,” she murmured, “the shooter knew what he was doing.”
“I don’t think this was an accident,” Joe said quietly.
“I don’t, either.”
Joe wrestled with how easy it was to fall into a comfortable working relationship with Annie. She was all-business, and possessed a keen intelligence that startled him. He tried to suppress his burgeoning respect for her. “I’m going to assume the shots came from an M-16,” he told her. “Ms. Tyler said she didn’t see the person who fired, so it must have been long-range.”
“Six hundred yards?” Annie guessed.
“Bingo.”
“You think the person who fired it was more than just an expert marksman? Maybe sniper-quality shooting?”
“Yes.”
Annie saw a gleam of respect in Joe’s eyes—if but for a fraction of a second—and a warmth flowed through her. At last, he was thawing a little toward her—even if it was strictly business, she thought as she nodded and followed him back to the HumVee. They rode in silence, the HumVee grinding over several small, rounded hills as Joe headed in the direction from which they believed the bullets had been fired.
“Look,” Annie said suddenly, excitement in her voice. “See that cluster of rocks on top of that hill?”
Joe smiled grimly. “Great place to hide a sniper, isn’t it?”
Annie grinned. She liked Joe when he acted more human and less like a cornered mountain lion. Suddenly, they were a working team. She loved the natural high that came from successful investigative work, and obviously, so did Joe. The usual frostiness in his blue eyes had been replaced by an intensity that could only be translated as enjoyment.
Getting out of the HumVee, they cautiously approached the series of boulders that were stacked haphazardly to form a semicircle at the top of the hill. Her eyes scanning the ground for spent cartridge casings, Annie felt her heart pump with excitement as she neared the other side of the boulders.
“Look! Footprints!” She knelt and pointed to a partial print barely visible on the sand and rock.
Joe grunted. “Good. Keep looking.”
Feeling like a bloodhound on a fresh trail, Annie scanned the ground. Sunlight was glinting off something about ten feet from her and she picked her way through the thick sagebrush. Leaning down, her fingers searching, she felt the heat of metal and quickly grasped it. Triumphantly, she turned and held the cartridge casing up for Joe to see.
“I found one!”
He turned. The glint of sunlight off metal in Annie’s fingers spoke of her important find. From where he stood, he noticed a number of hoofprints. “Great! Looks like whoever fired the rifle rode a horse, too.”
Annie nodded. She moved carefully around the prints and placed the shell in Joe’s outstretched hand. Just that minimal contact with his hand—callused from hard, outdoor work—was unexpectedly thrilling. Trying to hide her response, she examined the hoofprints closely.
“Wait!” she whispered excitedly. “Take a look at this, will you?”
Joe hunkered down opposite Annie. He liked the husky enthusiasm in her voice as she pointed to a particular print. “What about it?” he asked, mystified by her excitement.
“The horse has a big chunk missing from the wall of its hoof. See? There’s a crescent-shaped piece gone. The horse has thrown a shoe; maybe he chipped his hoof on a rock.”
“Yeah?” Joe grunted.
Lifting her head, Annie met and held his blue gaze. For a moment, she felt a thrilling sense of joy move through her, hotter than the desert breeze. Joe was a powerful man, and her heightened senses were responding. He was masculine without being threatening, stimulating her in ways she’d never experienced. Mystified, Annie forced those discoveries aside and tried to explain the importance of the print.
“Horses are usually shod to protect their hooves. If they lose a shoe, they risk chipping the outer hoof wall or bruising the soft area known as the frog.” She pointed to the print. “This horse lost its shoe and chipped a chunk off the outside wall of its hoof. I can take a plaster cast of this, and we can go back to the stables to see which horse this matches—just like a fingerprint or a tire tread. If we find the horse, we might find out who rode it or owns it.”
Joe assimilated her explanation. If only he didn’t have to look into those warm, wide eyes of hers, with so much life sparkling from their depths. Part of him wanted simply to stand and stare like a love-smitten twelve-year-old. Fighting the desire, he said, “You’re assuming the horse was used by the sniper.”
“Yes,” Annie conceded slowly, “I am.”
“But if it was just someone riding out here, it may have nothing to do with the sniper.”
“Still, it’s a clue,” she urged. “A starting point. The sniper couldn’t have driven out here, or Ms. Tyler would have seen the vehicle. The only two ways he could have gotten here are on foot or, quicker, by horseback.” She twisted around and pointed to the deep ravine at the foot of the hill. “He could have hidden his mount down there and waited for her to ride by. She never would have seen the horse.”
It was good, basic logic, Joe had to admit. “Okay. Take a plaster cast of the print—and any others you think might be significant,” he ordered.
That done, they’d need to bring the evidence to Captain Ramsey. Glancing at his watch, Joe realized it would be nearly 1700 before they could finish here and drive over to the officer’s home with their findings. He watched Annie for a moment, then forced himself to continue searching the site. But the rocky ground had destroyed any possibility of prints elsewhere. Disgusted, Joe realized they’d probably end up with only the one hoofprint. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a bullet casing near the end of the boulderlike fortress. He crossed the rough terrain and picked it up.
“Bingo,” he said, holding it up to show Annie. “Here’s the second spent cartridge.”
Annie broke out in a wide smile of appreciation. “Good work!” she praised.
Heat sheeted through Joe at her beaming smile, and he stood frozen, stunned by the glow in her eyes and the radiance in her face. Such genuine happiness shone in her gold-flecked eyes that he was helpless to combat the rampant feeling rushing through him. Was the woman part witch? Casting a spell on him? Confusing him? Angrily, he spun around and walked down into the ravine, pretending to look for more prints. If only Annie wasn’t so beautiful—and in such a natural way. She looked completely at home in this arid land—a part of it rather than the stranger to it that he felt.
Disgruntled, Joe tried to shift his focus back to the investigation. No question about it. As soon as he possibly could, he would ask Captain Ramsey to put Annie in another section—permanently.
