Cold Case Cowboy. Jenna Ryan
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an opportunity to change the subject, Sasha asked, “Were you a local boy once, Nick?”
“In a way. I grew up in Outlaw Falls, about a hundred miles from here. Dana and I went to grade school together. His family moved away before we started high school, but we managed to stay in touch.”
Dana continued to massage his temples. “We made a point of going fishing every summer at Sun Lake—that’s near Outlaw Falls—but the fish got scarce and the licensing laws changed. Now we hike up Hollowback and do the camping thing. My five-year-old’s already pestering me to take him along next summer. Fawn would love it. Fawn’s my wife,” he added. “We’re celebrating our fourteenth—” His pager went off, and he unhooked it from his belt. “And even as we speak, she wants me.” Taking a quick sip of beer, he slid from the booth. “My cell phone’s dead. Gotta use a pay phone.”
“My cell’s charged,” Sasha said, but Dana waved her off.
“I want to call Will, too. Besides, it’s quieter in the lobby.” He stabbed a finger at Nick. “Tell her about Kristiana Felgard’s features.”
“No, don’t tell her,” Sasha said when he was gone. “She has a pretty good idea already. Tell me about camping on Hollowback Mountain.”
Nick shrugged. “Hundreds of urbanites do it every summer, which is probably why Skye Painter wants to build a resort.”
Sasha smiled. “You don’t like cities, do you, Nick?
“I don’t mind them.”
Humor nudged aside fear. “My, but you are an enigma.”
The ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. “Not so much. I work in the city but grew up on a ranch. I like to hike up mountains in the summer, fish when I can. Doesn’t seem overly enigmatic to me.”
“I sense a strong desire for solitude.”
The dimple in his cheek deepened. “Point taken. Rocks and trees don’t ask questions.”
“Or commit crimes.” She regarded him in profile, noticed the length of his lashes and the way his hair curled over his shirt. “Are you married?”
The vague smile held. “Not anymore. You?”
“Almost. I did the runaway bride thing, except I was more civilized and left him in his living room rather than at the altar. Do you have a partner?” Amused by the way his eyes narrowed, she clarified, “I mean a police partner.” Then she raised her brows. “Oh, that’s right, you don’t like questions, do you? But I’m not a rock or a tree. You and Dana want to pry into my background, I’m going to pry into yours. Fair’s fair, Detective Law.”
“I ask questions for a reason, Sasha.”
“So do I.”
“You don’t want to talk about Kristiana Felgard. Why not?”
“For the same reason I don’t walk behind horses. If you were me, would you want to spend your first evening in a strange town talking about a dead woman?”
“I would if her death might pertain to me.”
“Guess that makes me totally perverse then. Or maybe I just find it a little spooky that a lunatic killer who couldn’t possibly know I was coming to Painter’s Bluff might want me dead.”
She saw Nick’s lips curve as he watched a group of rowdies at the bar. “Are you trying to goad me, Sasha?” he asked.
Her own smile blossomed. “Maybe a little. If I am, I come by the trait honestly. I also know a loner when I meet one. And I’m truly curious about why a person like you would want to separate himself from the rest of the world.”
“News flash, loners don’t all live in caves.”
“Or even close to it in your case. Why Denver?”
“Why not?”
“Okay, let’s go back further. Why a cop?”
He tipped his face to the ceiling. “You are perverse, aren’t you? And persistent. There’s no deep mystery. I’m a kid from Colorado who watched TV and fell in love with the idea of becoming a cop. The kid grew up, moved to Chicago, learned the difference between reality and fantasy and slowly made his way back to the mountains.”
She watched the play of expressions in his eyes when he turned them toward her. They truly were amazing.
“That’s a very succinct story, Nick, but it’s not an answer. Why a cold case cop?”
“Why an architect?”
She regarded him for a moment, then sighed. “My mother wanted me to design clothes.”
With the glass raised to his lips, he chuckled. “That wasn’t succinct—it was downright confusing.”
“Not if you knew my mother. And our relationship.” She watched Mandy the waitress spill a shot glass of whiskey onto the bar, and relented. “Okay, give, why do you think the man who killed Kristiana Felgard will come after me?”
“I didn’t say he would. I said he might.”
“Subtle difference. Come on, Nick, I don’t even live here. And not that I want any woman to be killed, but in a town of three thousand residents, there must be one or two blond females with Scandinavian backgrounds.”
“The sheriff and his deputies are looking into that.”
“So you’re what? Here in an official capacity, or merely as an interested Denver cop?”
He reached for and captured her right hand. Stroking the back of her fingers with his thumb, he said, “Dana contacted me early this morning. I’m official.” He regarded her through his lashes. “Stories about this serial killer were all over the newspapers eight and five years ago. How is it you never read any of them?”
Tiny threads of electricity raced up her arm. Sasha considered removing her hand from his, but for the moment the sensation fascinated more than it unnerved her.
“Eight years ago, I lived in Atlanta, and Philadelphia after that. The East Coast has murders of its own, serial and otherwise. I moved back to Denver three years ago when two of my Atlanta associates decided to make a lifestyle change and thought I might like to do the same.”
“So you’ve lived in Denver before.” When his thumb grazed her knuckles and made her shiver, she knew she really should pull away. That she didn’t both surprised and intrigued her.
“I was born in Denver. I lived there until my parents divorced and my mother took me to New York. She remarried, divorced again. We moved to Miami. By then I had a brother. Another marriage, another divorce, on to New Haven. Then it was London for a while and Paris, but it was difficult in France. She couldn’t speak the language, and I refused to take the modeling course she enrolled me in. It didn’t matter. Her relationship there failed as miserably as her previous marriages. We went to Stockholm, stayed with my grandmother for a year. I finished high school and moved to Boston to study architecture. That’s where my mother lives now.”
It was more than she usually told people. Unsure why she’d become so garrulous, Sasha gave her fingers a subtle tug. He released her hand but continued to regard her in an assessing way.
“Did you enjoy living in all those places?”
“I liked the people. I make friends easily, so the moving part wasn’t a problem. And who wouldn’t love New York, London and Paris?” From an adjacent booth she heard Mandy laugh as she served her customers, and once again, the image of eight murdered women flitted into Sasha’s mind’s eye. Vexed by her lack of mental control, she released a breath. “Do you have any idea why he killed her?”
Nick had no trouble following her change of subject. “All we’ve got so far is the obvious physical connection to his previous victims.”
Sasha’s