“I’ll let you get to work,” Noah said with a loaded glance that told her he’d guessed exactly what Bonner had been up to. “Officer.”
“Sabrina,” she murmured as Bonner gave her a pointed stare. So what? She could give the SAR expert her first name if she wanted to. “I’ll be back.”
She forced herself to walk away at a measured pace, very aware of Noah’s gaze following her. And Bonner’s. Who didn’t leave. She wouldn’t put it past him to feel out Noah’s intent just to be a thorn in her side.
But as she glanced back at Noah, something pinged inside her. This was a beginning. No question. The beginning of what remained to be seen. She didn’t have a great track record with the handful of men she’d dallied with over the years. Which was fine. If Noah ended up being yet another in a string of fun guys who backed off after figuring out they had zero prayer of keeping up with her, better to discover that right out of the gate instead of later.
Meanwhile, they both had a job to do.
The recovery operation continued as the sun sank toward the horizon, painting the canyon walls in deep orange and red. Floodlights clicked on, casting harsh shadows across the scene. Sabrina finished her report and found herself gravitating back to where Noah coordinated with the engineering team.
That’s when the first telltale flash of beige caught her eye. The excavation team paused as a distinctive patch of human skin appeared beneath the rubble. Finally.
Noah turned to Sabrina, his natural enthusiasm spilling over into the space around them. “There’s your Jane Doe. Exactly where you said she’d be.”
Why this guy seemed as excited to prove her right as she was to get her vindication, she couldn’t quite fathom. But she appreciated it.
“Thanks for helping me prove it,” she told him.
“Now comes the good part. The investigation,” Noah clarified as they both watched the team switch to hand tools in order to avoid triggering another rockslide.
“Not my jurisdiction,” Sabrina said flatly, and he nodded.
“Mine either.” But she could hear the wistfulness in his voice. “I’m sure the Dark Canyon folks assigned will do the case justice.”
A young woman had died up here alone in the cold. Someone definitely needed to find the answers. Normally, Sabrina would be happy to pass that job off to the experts and dust her hands of the situation. She’d done her part.
But something about this situation tugged at her. Maybe because Noah remained so clearly invested in the outcome. Or maybe just because she’d been involved from the very beginning. It was hard to distance yourself from something you had such a big stake in.
“West.” Her radio crackled with Marcus Reynolds’s voice. “I need you on the perimeter to ensure the site stays as clear as possible. Now that we have a body, this is a crime scene. Assist as needed.”
“On it.” She nodded at Noah, who smiled.
And then she didn’t see him again before she was finally able to call it a day.
CHAPTER 4
Normally, Noah would call himself a master multitasker. He had to be in order to handle the intricacies of search and rescue. And investigative reporting too, for that matter.
The problem was that he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about a certain dead woman while simultaneously running Dancer through advanced certification sequences and mentally composing an article about K-9 training innovations.
Okay, that wasn’t the problem. If those were the only things on his mind, he’d be golden. But a certain blonde USFS officer had wound her way into his very molecules and dug in.
Sabrina.
Yesterday, he’d gotten busy and she’d drifted away from him at the recovery site, then he’d lost sight of her. It had gotten late, and Dancer needed some downtime before he burned out, so Noah had bugged out of there, regretfully, without Sabrina’s phone number.
And calling up the USFS office to casually ask for her felt pathetic. Especially since she hadn’t sought him out either.
Also pathetic? Hanging out at the K-9 training facility in hopes of running into her.
The training facility sprawled behind the main police building, a complex maze of specialized areas designed to challenge both dogs and handlers. From his position near the covered break area, Noah could see officers coming and going from the department’s main entrance.
What he could not see was a reason why Sabrina would darken the door of the police station, but it was all he had. No one would question him if he spent the entire day here. Multitasking. Allegedly.
“You’re kind of a disaster today,” he told Dancer as they lined up for another practice run. His partner gave him a look that clearly said Noah was the disaster in this partnership. Fair enough. The dog had never met a task he couldn’t focus on completely.
Meanwhile, Noah’s attention could generously be called split.
