He hadn’t been able to stop repeating that single statement since the moment the words had left her mouth. Drennan didn’t want his financial support. She’d wanted something more. And while he admired her ability to speak her mind and ask for what she wanted, it wasn’t possible. He couldn’t give her that. Not ever. She knew that, and yet… He couldn’t stop thinking about the potential, either.
She wasn’t just havingababy.
She was havinghisbaby.
Maybe a boy who looked just like him with dark hair and wild blue eyes and got into all kinds of trouble wearing his mama down. Or a girl whose knowing green gaze that resembled a spring morning widened every time he walked through the door at the end of his day walking the trails. Laughter would fill his bare house as he scooped up his kid and spun them around until they were both dizzy. Drennan would be there with that wide smile she seemed to reserve just for him, and he’d finally feel that tension in his chest release from being away from them when he dragged her mouth to his in greeting.
He could see it. Right there in front of him. All he had to do was reach out and grab that reality. Make it his. Drennan wanted that. Had admitted to wanting them to try.
But the image bled away to sharp reds and swallowing blacks, leaving nothing but the fitful nightmares of his childhood behind. To the bruises his mother had always caked in makeupto try to hide, to the scrapes and scabs on the backs of his dad’s hands and the sickening smile on the old man’s face when Harvey went out of his way to avoid getting anywhere near him. He could still feel the tightness in his arms and legs every once in a while, the automatic bracing at loud noises, to the point he thought his tendons might snap. A lot of those same bruises had found a way to him, his mother’s begging and pleas going unheard as his father punished Harvey for some imagined slight. Low grades, not coming home from school fast enough, walking in front of the TV, not cleaning up his plate at the end of a meal. And while Harvey had found little ways to rebel against his dad, years of survival and pain had ingrained itself in his cells. It was part of him.
But he wouldn’t let it touch her.
His fingers curled around the steering wheel, knuckles working to escape the backs of his hands. Harvey killed the ignition and forced himself from the SUV and through those doors. The too-sweet and stale floral scent filled the lobby in a cloying, invisible mist he’d have to work at to get rid of. Just like the last time he set foot in a funeral home, gleaming wood coffins angled and glinted across the sales floor, ranging in an array of colors and prices right down to a plain pine box. He’d chosen the cheapest option for his father because that was what the bastard deserved. Actually, he’d deserved less. Unfortunately, due to zoning laws burying the son of a bitch under the animal shelter to spend the rest of eternity getting crapped on wasn’t possible. Though deserved.
But it wasn’t until now Harvey realized he didn’t know what his mother had been buried in, what his father had chosen to lay his wife of twenty-two years to rest in. Had there been a service? Flowers? Had anyone showed with their favorite casseroles to pay their respects to the woman who’d sacrificed her body and mental health to protect her son? He hadn’t gotten more thana text message from his father letting him know she’d died and already been laid to rest. Taking that last ounce of hope she’d save herself.
His throat dried. A sign for the Office of the Medical Examiner at the front directed him to a set of stairs off to his right, leading down into the basement. The temperature dropped a few degrees with every step until he faced a set of wide steel doors. Shoving through, he pulled up short as a pair of terrifying oversize bug eyes locked on him. “What the hell?”
His skin tightened down his arms as he realized the magnifying glasses were worn by a light-haired man with a scalpel in one hand and a pair of tweezers in another. Other details started registering, too. Like the blood staining the front of the man’s once white lab coat. And the female body stretched open on the table in front of him.
“Well, you’re not supposed to be down here, Ranger Knight.” Dr. Yarrow set aside his tools on a small rolling cart and peeled off his gloves before going for the lit magnifying glasses on his head. They’d met in the clinic parking lot to pass off the woman Harvey had recovered from the trail yesterday morning, but seeing the medical examiner in this light came with a whole new set of nightmare material he didn’t need. “I assume you’re here about our drowning victim?”
He wouldn’t look at the remains on the table. He wouldn’t look—
He looked. And, hell, he wished he hadn’t. Wished he hadn’t seen the victim’s chest splayed open and pinned back like one of those butterflies he’d once seen spread out and framed in his boss’s office. Harvey cleared his throat, feeling the blood drain from his face. “Sorry. I’m looking for Drennan. She working today?”
Dr. Yarrow came around the table, maneuvering in front of what Harvey could see of the victim and her insides. “She’s outon an errand. If you’re here about the autopsy of the victim recovered from the park, I won’t have a final report for another few days. I still have multiple samples to be taken and organs to be weighed. Based on the bruises at the back of the victim’s neck, I believe the manner of death is homicide by drowning. She was held under the water for several minutes, but we don’t have an identity. That’s why I sent Drennan back to the trail about an hour ago. We should have something for you soon.”
“To the trail?” Warning signals exploded through him, and Harvey took one step farther into the exam room that smelled of fruity decay. Well, he certainly wished for the cloyingly thick scent of flowers now. “You sent her alone?”
“Ms. Hawes is more than capable of dredging the pond for the victim’s personal effects on her own as well as determining if there is any evidence we need to consider for this investigation.” The medical examiner grabbed for a new set of gloves. “Besides, I expect nothing less from a former trauma physician to be able to pick up the slack so I can make it home for dinner on time for once. My wife tends to get sensitive if I am not where I am expected to be when I am expected to be.”
Dr. Yarrow’s smile crested and fell in equal time as he donned the new set of latex. “Is there anything else, Ranger Knight?”
“Have you heard from her?” He couldn’t explain this simmering in his chest.
The medical examiner checked his watch, the lines between his brows deepening. “She should’ve checked in by now.”
Harvey backed toward the door, a deep, resonating urgency taking hold in his blood. He had no doubt Drennan was far more qualified to collect any evidence at the scene than the rangers on staff, but knowing she was in the park alone—where a killer had recently murdered a lone hiker—didn’t sit well. Of course, there was no evidence the killer would target an assistant medicalexaminer, but he couldn’t get the warning bells in his head to quiet down. “Thanks.”
He shoved through the double steel swinging doors meant to keep temperatures balanced on both sides and hauled himself up the stairs, rushing by the time he got to the top. He had no reason to think Drennan might be in danger, but some instinctual drive inside of him had Harvey jogging out of the building and to his truck and tearing out of the funeral home’s parking lot. He’d given her his number to call in case of emergency with the pregnancy, but he hadn’t saved hers. Navigating back to the highway, he headed straight for Zion, calling the visitor’s center on the way.
The ranger on the other end hadn’t seen or heard from the medical examiner’s office, but the upper pool was still closed at Ranger Simpson’s direction due to the investigation. Drennan must’ve bypassed the visitor’s center and set out on the trail herself. Damn it. He should’ve reached out to her before now, but he’d wanted to give her space after their argument last night.
No. That wasn’t it. His gut churned as the truth surfaced. He’d assumed she wouldn’t want to talk to him, and her rejection… He didn’t want that.
He put in a call to the head of the law enforcement division next for no other reason than to assure himself someone knew she was on that trail alone. The call connected.
“Simpson.” The ranger’s no-BS greeting didn’t faze him one bit.
“It’s Knight. That medical examiner we met yesterday at Emerald Pools. She reach out to you?” Harvey pressed down on the accelerator, his blood heating and humming in his veins. “Her boss sent her back to the trail to dredge the pond a little more than an hour ago. He hasn’t heard from her since.”
“Cell coverage is spotty up there, but no. I haven’t seen her. I’ve got a ranger in the area. Give me a second. I’ll have her checkin.” The silence on the other side of the line ratcheted Harvey’s heart rate into dangerous territory. Two minutes. Three. Five? He lost sense of time, desert and sharp mountains ripping by as he navigated around slower vehicles down the highway toward Springdale.
“Knight, you’re not going to like this.” Simpson interrupted the chaos working to unravel him from the inside.
Harvey’s entire body braced from a threat he couldn’t even see coming, as automatic and painful as those nights his dad’s footsteps were just a little bit louder than normal outside his bedroom door. He swallowed through it. “What happened?”
