“They dated for how long? A year?”
“Something like that. Maybe eighteen months. Long enough for Marcie to figure out what kind of man he was.”
“And what kind of man is that?”
“A loser. A coward. An abuser.”
“He hurt her?” A dangerous edge cut through Wyatt’s voice.
Nina bit her lip. She shouldn’t have gone that far. She really didn’t have any proof of abuse. Marcie had never admitted any specific mistreatment. “She just said he could be mean.”
“Mean how?” He slowed the Jeep as they passed the high school and turned onto Main Street.
She should have known better. Wyatt Colter wasn’t the kind of man to dismiss anything he heard or saw without sticking it under his personal microscope. Right now he was focusing that scope on Shane Tolbert, and she understood why.
Tolbert was guarding his crime scene. Wyatt considered it his duty to know everything there was to know about the deputy.
Nina wasn’t sure how or why she had suddenly become an expert on Wyatt Colter. But she was definitely not comfortable with her newfound insight.
Time to change the subject. “I’m supposed to have a room at the Bluebonnet Inn.”
In the watery glow from the streetlights, Nina saw Wyatt’s jaw flex. She almost smiled. He was upset because she’d deflected his question.
“With your students?” he asked.
“No. They’re staying on campus at West Texas Community College. The college made arrangements for us to have one of their chemistry labs as a temporary forensics lab, so we don’t have to drive for an hour each way to the Ranger lab each time we need something. That’s why I was so late getting out to the site. I was setting up the equipment.”
“Is a community college lab going to be good enough? I can arrange for a driver—”
“It’s really nice. Brand-new. All the chemicals a girl could ask for, as well as sterile hoods and some very nice testing equipment. Obviously there will be specific sophisticated tests that can be done only at a forensics lab, but for the most part, it’s got all the comforts of home.” She smiled.
For a few seconds, Wyatt didn’t speak. “So you’re the only one who rated a hotel room?”
“Perks of the job,” she murmured as he pulled into a parking place in front of the Bluebonnet Inn, a two-story Victorian with double wraparound porches and sparkling clean windows. It was one of the original buildings in town. “Wow. Betty Alice has really fixed up this place.”
He didn’t comment, just turned off the engine and reached for the door.
“You don’t have to—” Oh. For a second she’d thought he was getting out to walk her to the door. But that wasn’t it. His jaw action earlier hadn’t been because she’d changed the subject. “Don’t tell me you’re staying here, too? Well, isn’t that…convenient.” She sighed. She’d finagled herself onto this project, knowing she’d have to put up with Wyatt Colter. Relishing the opportunity.
He’d been so arrogant two years ago, pushing Marcie to testify against Jonah Becker and assuring her that she didn’t have to worry. That as long as she was under the protection of the Texas Rangers, she’d be safe.
Marcie had trusted him. Everyone had. And no wonder. Not only did the very large, reassuring shadow of the Texas Rangers envelop the entire state of Texas and everyone in it, but Wyatt Colter himself exuded competence, assurance, Safety.
It was the first thing Nina had noticed about him when she’d met him back then.
From his honed jaw and the cleft in his chin to his confident, deceptively casual stance, from his intense blue eyes to the long, smooth muscles that rippled with reined-in power beneath his clothes, he was the perfect personification of the Texas Rangers. And as long as he was guarding Marcie, nothing could possibly happen to her. He’d promised her.
Well, something had happened.
And it was Wyatt Colter’s fault. Her best friend was gone—likely dead—because he’d never once doubted his ability to keep her safe.
When Nina had called in a favor to get on this task force, she hadn’t thought any further than her determination to be a thorn in Lieutenant Colter’s side and to find justice for Marcie. She hadn’t bargained on spending this much time this close to him.
Still, at least this way she could keep an eye on him.
While Nina’s thoughts whirled, Wyatt got out of the Jeep and headed for the front porch. As he climbed up the steps, it started raining again. He removed his hat and slapped it against his thigh, then glanced back at her before disappearing inside.
She could read his thoughts as easily as if they were printed in a cartoon bubble above his head.
Open your own door. No double standard for Wyatt Colter. If she wanted in on the task force in place of George Mayfield, then she should expect to be treated like him or any other member of the team.
Little did he know, that was fine with her. Gestures like opening doors, holding seats, paying for dinner all came with strings attached. And Nina didn’t like strings.
She was here in an official capacity. She expected to be treated like any other member of the task force. While it was true that there was a chance that the site could turn out to be archeologically significant, Nina wanted nothing more than to find out what had happened to Marcie.
Well, that and to keep an eye on Colter. Not that she thought he was less than honest and aboveboard. She just didn’t want to take any chances. This find could remove the haunting grief that had enveloped her for the past two years.
Marcie and she had been paired as roommates at Texas State, and despite their very different personalities, they’d become fast friends. Marcie had been there for Nina when Nina’s father died and when her brother was killed in combat in Iraq. She’d been Nina’s family. There was no way Nina was going to pass up this chance to find out what had happened to her friend.
The town was split. Half of the people thought Marcie had been killed. Her kidnapping had never resulted in a ransom notice. She and her mysterious kidnapper had just disappeared.
The other half figured she had got cold feet and arranged the kidnapping herself to get out of testifying against Jonah Becker, one of the most powerful men in the state of Texas. But if Marcie were alive, why hadn’t she contacted anyone in all this time?
Of course, Nina wanted Marcie to be alive and well, but there was one huge obstacle to that theory. If Marcie had arranged her own kidnapping, that meant she was responsible for shooting Texas Ranger Wyatt Colter.
And Marcie wouldn’t have done that. Nina couldn’t see her shooting anyone. Not even to save her own skin.
Through the glass front door of the Bluebonnet Inn, Nina saw Wyatt glance back toward her. With a wry smile, Nina opened the passenger door and climbed out, leaving her forensics kit on the floorboard at her feet. She hefted her weekend bag by its handles.
Wyatt was disappearing up the dark polished stairs by the time she got to the front desk.
“Hey there,” the round-faced woman said on a yawn. She’d obviously been asleep until Wyatt had slammed the front door. “I’m Betty Alice Sadler. Welcome to the Bluebonnet Inn. Can I help you?”
“Nina Jacobson. I have a reservation. I apologize for getting here so late.”
“That’s all right,” the woman said, tapping the keyboard with her index finger. “I’m always happy to have a guest. Let me just look here.”
Nina sighed. “Oh, I forgot. The reservation is in the name of George Mayfield, Texas State University Anthropology Department.”
“Ah. Of course.” Betty Alice eyed her curiously. “This is about those bodies on Jonah Becker’s place.” In Betty Alice’s Texas drawl, the word bodies sounded sinister. “Will Mr. Mayfield be joining you?”
“No.” Nina didn’t see any need to explain.
However, Betty Alice obviously thought she deserved an explanation. She waited for a few seconds, hoping to get one, but Nina just stood there calmly.
“Well,” Be
tty Alice drawled finally and hit a few more keys. “I’ll need your ID.”
Nina handed over her driver’s license and glanced at her watch. Betty Alice yawned again and sped up the check-in process. Apparently she was ready to get back to sleep.
She handed Nina a room key—a real key, to room 204 on the second floor. “If I’d known you would be here instead of—” Betty Alice glanced at the computer screen “—Mr. Mayfield, I could have given you the pink room. I keep it for my female guests.”
Nina winced inwardly as she pictured how the pink room would be decorated. She didn’t need a pink room. She just needed a room. She was exhausted, and eight o’clock was going to come very early.
“That’s very nice of you, but I’m sure room two-oh-four will be fine. Do you have Wi-Fi?”
Betty Alice beamed at her. “We surely do. My niece hooked it up—or whatever you do with Wi-Fi. And it’s complimentary.”
Nina thanked her and headed up the stairs.
“Say, Nina Jacobson.”
She turned around to find the woman pointing a finger at her. “I thought I recognized you. You were Marcie’s friend. I remember you were staying here when she disappeared and that Texas Ranger got shot.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Nina said, forcing a smile.
“Oh, my goodness.” Betty Alice’s hand flew to her mouth. “I remember him, too. Lieutenant Colter was the one who got shot.”
Nina nodded, doing her best to suppress a yawn.
“Oh, honey, run along. Here I am, just talking away, and you’re asleep on your feet.” Betty Alice shooed her toward the stairs and turned around to head back to her own room behind the desk.
When Nina got to the second floor, Wyatt was holding a full ice bucket in one hand and pushing his key into the lock of room 202 with the other.
He turned his head and his offhand glance morphed into annoyance as his eyes lit on the key in her hand.
“That’s right,” she said, brandishing the key with a gaiety she didn’t feel. “Howdy, neighbor.”
He scowled. “Good night,” he said and went into his room and closed the door.
“Good night, cowboy,” she muttered.
After an ineffectual attempt to get mud off her black hoodie and jeans, and a defeated glance at her favorite work boots, which were beyond any help she could give them tonight, Nina took a hot shower.
By the time she had slipped on a bright red camisole and panties and was ready for bed, her mind was racing with her impressions of the burial site.
She settled into bed with both pillows behind her back and the pad and pen she always kept in her purse. She rested her pad on her bent knee and wrote the date, the location and her name. Beneath that she jotted a note to herself.
Ref: report of State Highway Dept regarding unearthing of remains. Attach copy.
Then she let her thoughts float freely. She’d type up an official report later on her laptop, but right now what mattered was getting her first impressions down before she lost them.
Incredible find. Texas Ranger Lieutenant Wyatt Colter has claimed it as his crime scene, but it’s likely to be of archeological significance. Appearance consistent with indigenous burial grounds.
Important to note that condition of the find suggests a possible hoax. Three unique thigh bones, laid out in a star pattern. Accidental? Or placed by someone? All three femurs appear to be of recent origin. The largest is certainly male. But I need to measure and examine all three to estimate gender.
Nina stopped and closed her eyes. Bones were her business, but that didn’t mean she was immune to the idea of handling remains that could turn out to be those of her best friend.
A wave of nausea slithered through her, and her eyes pricked with tears. What if one of the bones was Marcie’s?
Marcie. Sweet and kind, but impulsive, and maybe even a little bit self-destructive. Definitely not the best judge of character.
“Oh, Marcie, what did you get yourself into?”
Chapter Three
Nina shook off the renewed grief over losing her friend. She couldn’t afford to get emotional. She needed to concentrate on the bones.
She reached for her camera and viewed the flash photos she’d taken.
She tried to view the three thigh bones in close-up, but the exposures were too dark. She’d have to send them to Pete, the graphics expert at the university, to have them corrected and enhanced.
She glanced at her laptop. She ought to send the photos tonight so Pete could get to work on them as soon as he got in tomorrow. The sooner she got the enhanced photos back, the sooner she could make more specific determinations of age, sex and time of death.
Still, in the morning she’d be able to look at the bones themselves. She glanced at her watch and yawned. Tonight it was more important to get her first impressions down on paper.
She continued writing.
Bones too covered with dirt and mud to tell much more. Already dark when we arrived at the site at 8:30 p.m.
History. (See fax from Ranger captain.) Two days ago road workers were breaking ground for a state route on land owned by Jonah Becker when they unearthed bones, which the foreman suspected were human.
The foreman stopped the ground breaking and called Sheriff Reed Hardin, who called the county medical examiner. The ME found the bodies “too decomposed and mixed up to identify” (i.e., skeletonized) and requested help from forensics experts.
Because of the state of decomposition and the fact that three people have disappeared from the area in the past five years, Sheriff Hardin called in the Texas Rangers, who were responsible—
Nina paused, then crossed out that last word.
—who were involved in one of the disappearances. The Rangers put together a Special Investigations Task Force.
Nina paused, clicking the cap of the ballpoint pen she held. If the site was a Native American burial ground…
Her pulse jumped slightly. She couldn’t deny her excitement. New burial sites were rare. A junior professor getting a chance to be the principal on such a find was even rarer.
In fact, she wasn’t sure why Professor Mayfield had acquiesced so easily when she’d asked him to let her take his place on this task force. Maybe he already knew the site wasn’t old.
That thought gave her mixed feelings. She’d love to have a significant find with her name on it. On the other hand, she couldn’t forget the real reason she’d requested to be on this task force. That could be Marcie lying out there. If it was, then she deserved a proper burial, as well as closure.
Nina clicked the pen angrily. Who was she kidding? If her best friend had been murdered, she deserved vengeance.
Nina twisted her thick black hair in her left fist and lifted it off her neck. Glancing down at the pad, she saw that she’d written vengeance and then underlined it three times.
She crossed through it and took a deep breath. Okay, Dr. Jacobson. Get it together. You’re a professional.
Plan: Tomorrow students will construct a plywood platform from which we can extract the bones with as little disturbance of the site as possible. Until I can determine whether the site or any part of it is of archeological significance (a historic burial site), I am compelled to treat the entire site thusly.
First order of business: take samples of the three femurs for physical examination, dating and DNA extraction.
Nina chewed on the cap of the pen and read back over what she’d written, but she found it hard to concentrate. At least she’d gotten her first impressions down. She could add to it tomorrow.
She set the pad and pen on the bedside table, set her cell phone alarm for 7:00 a.m., and then turned off the lamp and sank down into the warm bed. But light from a streetlamp reflected off her camera lens. She turned her back to it.
It would take only five minutes to transfer the photos and send them.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered to herself.
Tonight, the camera taunted her.
Sighing, she t
hrew back the covers and turned on the lamp. She retrieved her laptop and booted it up, then grabbed the camera and transferred the photos into an e-mail and sent it off to Pete.
By the time she was done, her arms and legs were thoroughly chilled. She turned off the lamp and dove under the covers.
Despite how tired she felt, it took her a long time to fall asleep. To her surprise, it wasn’t thoughts of the burial site or the identities of the remains buried there that kept her awake.
The image that seemed burned into the insides of her eyelids was of Wyatt Colter lying in a matching double bed not forty feet from hers, his broad bare shoulders and torso dark against the white sheets. Was he also having trouble sleeping?
Even if he was, she doubted it was because he was picturing her lying in bed this close to him. More likely, if he were fantasizing about her, it was a dream of watching her mud-covered backside recede as he ran her out of town.
She sniffed and squeezed her eyes shut. She had no idea why she couldn’t stop thinking of Wyatt Colter. Probably she was just too tired to concentrate on anything rational, and too excited about the case to calm her mind for sleep.
She concentrated on her breathing, counting each breath until she dozed off. But as soon as sleep claimed her, an image of Wyatt rose in her vision—in boxers. In briefs.
In nothing.
“Stop it, Nina!” she growled as she turned over and pounded the pillow again.
Finally her breathing relaxed, and her brain began to banish the sensual but disturbing images.
A SHRILL RING pierced Nina’s eardrums.
She moaned and squeezed her eyes shut. It wasn’t her phone. That wasn’t the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Which one of her neighbors had gotten a new, hideously loud tone? She pushed her nose a little deeper under the covers.
“Colter.”
The low, commanding voice reverberated through her. Her eyes sprang open.
Classified Cowboy Page 3
