Chapter 9 #2
A surge of anger rose up fast, hot and protective in a way that surprised her. She’d known men like Hank Goodwin her whole life. Men who looked at someone different and saw only a threat. Men who would rather pin a crime on an innocent man than do the work to find the answer.
“Were you even here when she went missing?”
“I was still in high school two states away, but Goodwin didn’t care about that. He cared about closing a cold case, and I was the closest thing to a suspect he’d ever had. He held me for questioning. Tore apart what was left of the cabin. Brought in dogs. Brought in ground-penetrating radar.”
Rainey could picture him in a tiny interrogation room, facing down a smug sheriff who’d already decided he was guilty. His quiet fury at that moment must have been something to witness.
“What happened?” she asked.
“The bones turned out to be another victim of Alice’s adductor.” He turned from the window. His face was hard to read, but she thought she saw something soften around his eyes. “Despite Goodwin’s incompetence, the man was eventually arrested, and Greta finally found out her sister.”
“Alive?”
He nodded. “After the arrest, we suspected she was still alive. I went out searching with Jonah Reed—he’s at the ranch, a good man—and we found her wandering the mountains in a nightgown. She’d been held in a basement for the whole nearly sixteen years and escaped during the flood.”
Rainey released the breath she’d been holding in a rush. Almost sixteen years in captivity. She couldn’t imagine the horror of that. “Was she hurt?”
“Badly. She has selective mutism now. Trauma. But she survived.” He said it with quiet ferocity. “She got out. Her sister got her back.”
“Greta,” Rainey said, and tried to understand why the name felt like a splinter under her skin.
Maybe because his voice and expression had gone soft when he spoke of the woman.
Which was dumb.
If he had a relationship with Greta, it shouldn’t matter to her.
And yet she couldn’t help but ask, “Who is she?”
Evander came back to the table. Sat down across from her. The rain kept falling, relentless, and the cabin seemed to shrink around them.
“She runs a wilderness outfitting business in Solace. Tracks missing persons, trains search and rescue dogs.” He paused. “When the bones were found, and everyone else was calling me a murderer, she stood beside me. Never believed a word of it.”
The splinter under Rainey’s skin twisted deeper. She recognized the feeling, and hated herself for this hot, stupid rush of jealousy that had no right to exist.
She had no claim on Evander Cole.
None, whatsoever.
She swallowed it back. “She sounds important to you.”
“She’s my friend,” he said, apparently reading her mind. “One of two.”
Rainey looked up. “Who’s the other?”
“You.”
Rainey’s face burned. She ducked her head, pretending to adjust the tin of coffee holding down the corner of the map. Her fingers trembled. She pressed them flat against the table.
“It’s been almost forty-eight hours,” she said. Her voice came out steadier than she deserved. “The rain won’t last forever, so let’s re-evaluate. We need a plan.”
Evander crossed to the table and stared down at the topo map. His wet hair had darkened to near-black, water beading along his jaw. He looked younger like this. Less like the man who’d put a knife in Rux Granger and more like someone who might have had a life before the woods claimed him.
“Two routes.” His finger traced a line north of Solace. “Main approach follows County Twelve to the west gate. Fastest. Most exposed. The Sons will have it watched.”
“Not an option.”
“Second route cuts east, then north along the fire road. Washed out in spring. Steep. Five miles on foot from where the road ends.” He looked up. “Your ribs won’t like it.”
“My ribs don’t get a vote.” She leaned over the map. His shoulder was warm beside hers. She could smell the rain on his skin, pine and cold water and something underneath that was just him. “What about communication? River needs to know I’m alive.”
“There’s a high point on the north ridge. Clear line of sight to Valor Ridge. We can signal from there. Morse. Simple code. Ghost will understand.”
“Ghost?”
“Owen Booker. The ranch’s security guy. Scary good at what he does.”
“Okay.” Knowing their next steps settled some of her nerves, but the rain kept coming. Harder now, driving against the windows in sheets. The stove threw heat against the damp, and the smell of wet wool and woodsmoke filled the small room.
She grumbled and pushed out of her chair to pace.
Ugh, she needed a distraction. She scooped up her guitar.
But when she strummed a chord, the low E string buzzed against the fret and died with a flat, metallic thud.
The saddle had slipped in its slot again, and the bridge pin under the low E had backed out a hair.
Evander straightened away from the table and looked at the guitar in her hands. “Let me fix it.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Your guitar. The saddle’s walked out of its slot and that pin’s not seated. I can reset both. Won’t be a permanent fix, but it’ll hold tune until you can get it to a luthier.”
Rainey looked from him to the guitar. “You know what a luthier is?”
“I’m not a caveman.”
“Do you play?”
He didn’t answer right away. Just held out his hand, palm up, patient as if she were Sable pressed against the back wall of the lean-to.
Rainey hesitated. The guitar had been her father’s before it was hers—one of the only things she’d taken when she left, one of the few good memories she had of her dad. Letting someone else touch it felt like handing over a rib.
But the saddle kept slipping, and the low E wouldn’t hold tune for more than a verse, and Evander was still standing there with rain dripping from his hair, waiting.
She passed him the guitar.
He took it carefully with both hands like he understood how precious it was. He sat at the table and turned it over, studying the damage with the same quiet focus he’d given the topo map.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said. “Do you play?”
He loosened the low E, freeing the tension across the bridge. “A little. My mother taught me when I was a kid. Haven’t touched one in years.”
There was a story there and, if she had to guess from his voice, a whole complicated mess of emotions.
She knew better than to dig.
Instead, she watched him lift the saddle free, clear the slot with his thumbnail, and seat it back down square.
He worked the loose pin out, checked it against the light, and pressed it home until it caught.
Then he brought the low E back up to pitch, plucked it, and listened—reset it a fraction, plucked again.
He remembered. She’d been upset about the damage since the Dead Marshall, and he’d remembered, and he’d waited until she was ready to let him near it.
The thought settled in her stomach, warm and dangerous.
“There,” he said, sitting back. He held it out to her. “Give it a try.”
Rainey reached for the instrument and tested the strings. The low E held its tension when she plucked it. She tuned by ear, one string at a time, and the notes rang clear in the small room.
She played and everything in her settled. The chords came without her deciding on them. Something slow. The melody wandered. Her voice found it.
There’s nothing to brace for,
Nothing coming through the door,
No voice getting louder,
No glass hitting the floor...
The rain backed her, a steady percussion on the tin roof. She didn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at him. Her fingers found the frets. The words came from somewhere deeper than thought.
I don’t have to read your face,
To know if I should run,
You can be angry,
And I’m still safe when you’re done…
She let the last chord trail off, and a thrill raced through her, making her skin prickle. Oh. That was good. She grinned up at Evander, but he had gone still.
Absolutely still.
It didn’t even look like he was breathing.
His hands on the table’s edge, white at the knuckles. His breath came shallow. She could hear it from across the room.
“Evander?”
He crossed to her in three strides. Stopped so close she could feel the heat off his skin, the rain still damp in his hair. His eyes were dark and raw and utterly unguarded.
“That’s about me.” His voice was rough. Stripped.
“Yes.”
“You wrote that about me.”
“Yes,” she breathed, and her heart rate spiked as she stared up at him.
His hand came up and cupped her jaw. His thumb brushed her cheekbone, and the touch sent another, hotter thrill through her. “Rainey. Wanting me doesn’t make me safe.”
“Neither does wanting nothing.” Since he didn’t seem inclined to close the distance between them, she pressed up on her toes and kissed him.
His mouth was warm, his beard still damp from the rain, and it prickled her skin. Perfect. But he was still holding back.
She opened her mouth, encouraging him to explore.
He groaned softly, and his hand slid from her jaw to the back of her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair, and he finally kissed her back with a hunger that made her knees weak.
His other arm banded around her waist, careful of her ribs, pulling her against him until there was no space between them.
No air. Just his chest against hers and his heart hammering where her palm had landed and the rain on the roof and the stove throwing heat and Tilly watching from the floor with those dark, knowing eyes.
He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead against hers. His breath came hard. His hand on the back of her neck trembled.
“Don’t,” he said. Rough. Raw. “Don’t start something I won’t be able to stop.”
“I already started it,” she said.
Outside, the rain kept drumming on the roof, but the sound didn’t bother her anymore. It felt safe. The world narrowed to this cabin, this moment, this man whose breath warmed her skin and whose hands held her like something precious he was afraid to break.
Evander Cole looked at her one last time. Then he lowered his head and kissed her again.