“He looked beat down. Exhausted—and he knew I was getting in touch with you. He said …”

“He said what.”

“That I always do the right thing. Look, he was aware that we had to turn him in. And we got the bomb—”

“How do you know he didn’t have more of them in his car? At his house?”

Lydia opened her mouth. Closed it. Then she shook her head. “He’s not a danger to anybody else. And I’m going to go there now and make sure he’s all right. He’s—”

“He’s in love with her,” Daniel cut in. “And he thought instead of a dozen roses, he’d blow up the hotel. That’s why she wants to go over there. She feels partially responsible, and from your point of view, I’d want her around. She’ll get through to him like no one else can. I saw it myself.”

“He knows what he was going to do was wrong.” Lydia looked down. “But that’s no defense.”

“No,” Eastwind said. “It’s not. And you don’t go over there without me. I’ll be five minutes to get dressed.”

As the sheriff went back into his house, Daniel returned to his bike. Threw a leg over. Waited with a grip on the handlebars.

When he felt Lydia get on behind him, he jump-started the engine. “We’re not waiting for him, are we.”

“No,” Lydia said. “We aren’t.”

RICK’S PLACE WAS not far from the center of town, and as Lydia told Daniel where to go, she thought of all the little moments she’d shared with the WSP’s vet: Laughs in the break room with Candy. Tracking the wolf packs through the preserve on camera and out on the mountain. Tagging and releasing the wolves.

Rick had been every bit as committed to their mission as she was, and he’d always seemed to have his head on straight—although now, as she thought about it, he had been tense and more irritable lately. She’d assumed it was because of the financial struggles of the WSP and the way he was being forced to economize on his supplies.

There clearly had been something else going on, and God, she prayed it wasn’t only what he felt for her. If it was, then Daniel was right. She did feel responsible, even though she had never encouraged him, never led him on.

With a sad curse to herself, she remembered him coming through the forest just the other morning, as she had laid by the poisoned male, so disapproving, so competent.

She had never expected them to end up here.

Wherever “here” was.

Although surely, he was going to be arrested.

Rick’s cottage, which he owned, not rented, was set back from the road, in a field that bloomed with wild-flowers during the spring and summer. There was no garage and his Jeep was parked by the side of the little house. When Daniel pulled up behind that vehicle, Lydia got off, but didn’t go right for the door.

Which was open, even though it was cold.

As dread clawed up her spine, Lydia searched the windows with her eyes. All the drapes were pulled—which hadn’t been the case ever before. When she’d given him a ride home or had to drop something off, she’d always been able to see inside the place. But maybe it was just because the winter had been so cold and he was trying to lower his heating bills.

“Stay here,” she heard herself say.

“If you need me, let me know.”

She nodded in a distracted way and went over to the flagstone path. Following the gray and cranberry pattern up to the door, she swallowed hard.

“Rick?” she said loudly. “It’s me, can I come in—”

The sound of the gun going off was so loud, it rang in her ears.

“Rick!”

As the echo of the boom! faded, she rushed inside and skidded on the rug in the parlor. Her breath was loud in her ears, and she looked around in a panic, barely noticing the furniture.

“Oh, my God, oh, my God …” She kept repeating the words, a mantra that prevented her from panting and going light-headed.

“Rick?”

Walking forward, she went into the kitchen in the back. No messes, no clutter, no dishes in the sink or things out on the counter. It was too neat, like he’d put everything in order before he’d left—because he hadn’t expected to ever come back.

The house was the polar opposite of Peter’s—and yet she felt like they were just different sides to an evil coin.

The gunpowder smell reached her nose as she was turning to leave the kitchen. And that was when she saw through a narrow doorway … a dark room full of bookshelves. With the drapes all pulled, a computer screen was its only source of illumination, the ghostly blue glow drawing her forward.

Beneath her feet, the floorboards creaked, and as sweat broke out on her forehead, she brushed it away with her sleeve. Her lungs struggled to pump, and with her throat as tight as it was, she had to open her mouth and suck air in.

As soon as she stepped through into the study, she saw the feet sticking out from the far side of the desk.

Rick’s running shoes were lax, the treads muddy, the toes out to the sides.

“Rick,” she choked as she leaped forward—

The shotgun had been dropped on his chest, as if he had been sitting on the floor when he’d pulled the trigger. And it was obvious he had put the muzzle in his mouth—

Crashing down beside him, she covered her own mouth. Then she wrenched to the side, planted her palms on the rug, and dry heaved.

With eyes squeezing shut, she continued to see the details of the face with horrible clarity, the jaw vaporized, the nose gone, one of the eyes hanging loose.

Her friend, the man she had known and worked beside, the vet she respected and valued, was no more.

And it felt like all her fault—

Warm hands drew her back, and she collapsed into the compassion being offered, sobs racking her torso as she was held against a strong chest. With her head angled away from the horror, and her body supported, she couldn’t think of a reason to pull herself together, and as she let out a moan, a low, deep voice spoke to her in soothing syllables.

Although she couldn’t follow the words, Daniel’s murmuring was the only thing that kept her on the planet.

He was still holding her when Eastwind walked in.

“We haven’t touched anything,” she heard Daniel say. “And he pulled the trigger just as she got to the open front door.”

Lydia intended to lift her head and speak.

But in the end, she had no voice.

 

Later that day, much later, Lydia walked to work.

After everything that happened, she needed the fresh air, and with her car at Paul’s Garage, she had no other option than showing up on the back of Daniel’s bike.

Considering Candy was the only person on-site, it probably would have been okay, but she felt like she had to breathe by herself for a while. God, there seemed to be fifty percent less oxygen in the atmosphere than there usually was.

As she went along the side of the county road, she was aching from head to foot, proof, she supposed, of the mind/body connection: She wasn’t injured. She hadn’t overexercised. She wasn’t sick. But her muscles throbbed as if she had been put in a tumble jar, no surface on her left unbattered.

She and Daniel had stayed for a couple of hours at Rick’s house, out on his lawn, in the sunshine. She had remained sitting up, her arms balanced on her knees until her elbows had lost feeling and so had her dangling hands. Beside her, Daniel had stretched out flat on the mostly brown grass, his legs crossed at the ankles, one arm under his head. He had been like a dozing dog, lifting his lids at sounds that were outside the bandwidth of chirping birds, occasional cars out on the county road, and dim conversation inside the house.