“Her gear is all there, man.” The law enforcement ranger swore low enough Harvey didn’t catch it. “But your medical examiner is not.”
Chapter Thirteen
Her waterproof gear was no longer…waterproof.
And heavy. Or maybe gravity had doubled in the time since she’d died. Ugh. Drennan blinked against the onslaught of sunlight overhead. Sheer cliffs rose up on either side of her, trees peppering her vision every few feet. Water spit into her face with a strong gust of wind. Her skin prickled with the sudden change in temperature. Twisting her head to one side, she cringed against the tender spot at the back of her head. The one pulsing with every beat of her heart. Water had infiltrated her gear. Her clothing clung to her frame, holding her down, hair plastered to her face and neck.
Fluffy white clouds skimmed across the sky overhead.
This wasn’t the Emerald Pools trail.
Where the hell was she?
Wind kicked up a second time, spitting another few drops into her face. The short waterfall was nothing like the one that’d towered over her at the upper emerald pool. Drennan tried shoving to stand, though she didn’t trust herself to make it far. Head injuries weren’t like those in the mindless action movies and TV shows she liked to binge. There was no getting straight back up and walking off this trail like nothing had happened. Headaches, sensory issues such as vision and hearing, unconsciousness. Comas. She’d seen enough of them in the ER. Car accidents, assaults, domestic disputes.
Wait. Was that why she couldn’t remember how she got here? No. She remembered…something. Pain speared throughher head the harder she tried to recall the seconds leading up to waking here, but there was nothing more than a shadow. Had she passed out again? She sucked in a sharp breath. Was the baby okay?
Her wrists burned, the tendons in her shoulders pulling taut. She wrestled with whatever had pinned her hands. Then stilled. Drennan understood then. Why she couldn’t push herself to sit up. Why her arms hurt and she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here.
Someone had hit her.
Someone had attacked her.
She’d gone to Emerald Pools to dredge the bottom of the pond for the victim’s personal items, and… The shadow. It’d come up from behind. She hadn’t gotten a chance to turn around before her attacker knocked her unconscious. Drennan struggled against the rope digging into her skin. It was dry compared to the rest of her. There wasn’t any swelling to the strands, but it wouldn’t budge. She wasn’t strong enough to—
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The voice sounded close and yet too far away at the same time. Like it’d set out to play a trick on her. Disembodied. No owner in sight. “You’ll tear your wrists up real good that way.”
Her breath guttered in her chest then pressurized until she was forced to release it. Scanning her surroundings, she studied every tree, every rock, every shift to pinpoint the source of the voice. “Who—”
“That’s not the question you should be asking, Dr. Hawes.” The crunch of dirt and rock registered from behind. Footsteps.
The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Unfiltered warning exploded through her. Drennan twisted—too fast—aggravating the thudding pain in her head. The moan escaped without her permission, and she closed her eyes against the sudden brightness that lit up the back of her brain. One breath.Two. The pain receded slowly but surely. She forced her eyes open to keep her attacker in her line of sight, but it was too soon. Searing agony rippled across her head, and she had to close her eyes again, tripping the panic she could barely keep under control. She didn’t like this. Being in a position of helplessness, of not knowing where the threat was coming from. Or from whom. There’d been too many times when her mother had doted on her, gone out of her way to include her and said all the things a mother should say to her daughter. It was disarming and promising. Only to have that hope ripped right out from under her.
His laugh worked to soothe the rough edges of her building anxiety against her will. Low and rolling, light considering the circumstances. She wasn’t supposed to like it, but it reminded her of Harvey’s. Deep and warm when he let go of thinking he was a monster.
“That had to hurt.” That unexplainable sixth sense every human on the planet owned told her he’d taken up position in front of her. The small drop in temperature, too. He’d blocked the sun from beating down on her. “I was hoping to avoid this, but you have something that belongs to me. I would’ve gotten out of this hellhole free and clear if that ranger hadn’t interrupted me.”
Relief spread quick and fast as she attempted another glance at the man who’d hauled her off the Emerald Pools trail. He was tall. Taller than most of the men she’d known in her life, including her father and Dr. Yarrow. Thick beard growth and eyebrows matching dark hair—at least what she could see of it with the sun haloed around his frame—masked a large part his facial features. It didn’t add to his attractiveness. It just made him look more weathered. Worn. He filled out his T-shirt well enough, though not nearly as well as most outdoorsmen. Pressed slacks that were stained with what she assumed werewater spots and red dust from the trail had kept their crease as he crouched in front of her. Who in their right mind wore slacks out here? Well, other than park rangers. The sun was back in her eyes, and Drennan was forced to turn away, but she’d seen enough of his face she could identify him to police and the law enforcement rangers. If she got out of this in one piece.
Then his words registered. Her stomach flipped. Harvey. He was talking about Harvey. About discovering the body face down in the upper pool yesterday morning. Which meant… “You killed her. That woman who drowned.”
“I warned her what would happen if she kept pushing.” The weariness in what she now noted in his gray eyes aged him at least a decade right in front of her. “I didn’t want to kill her, but she just wouldn’t listen to reason. I had no other choice.”
It took everything Drennan had left not to flinch against the familiar victimization of the predator in front of her. And even then, she failed. How many times had her mother played that part so well? Blamed Drennan for something that hadn’t been her fault in the first place? Her mom’s moods, her bad days, her grief, her life. How many times had Drennan internalized it? Tried to make things better? Apologized for things she never should’ve apologized for just to avoid losing another piece of herself?
The man in front of her might have a different face, but Drennan identified the abuser beneath the mask. Knew that no matter what she said, he would never see himself as anything other than a reasonable man. Because in his head, he’d done no wrong. Her attacker caught the reaction, a slow smile spreading underneath all that beard growth a split second before he reached out for her.
She leaned back but was only able to go so far. His fingertips grazed her cheek, all the way down to her jaw, cold and alien. Her insides revolted at the touch. He was making heruncomfortable on purpose, trying to get a rise out of her when she’d spent so many years shutting down her emotions so they wouldn’t be preyed upon. The rope seemed to tighten around her wrists, cutting off the blood flow to her fingers and digging into her low back.
“You remind me of her, you know.” Wayward hair fell into his eyes as the wind kicked up, but he didn’t bother to remove it. Almost like he didn’t even realize it impaired his vision in the first place. So focused on her with a look she couldn’t place. “She fought me, too. About everything. Where we would eat, which movie to watch, our future. It was one of the things I like about her the most.”
A hint of grief charged into those steel gray eyes that seemed to contain several hundred years of thunderstorms, but it only lasted a minute.
“I don’t…” She shook her head. “I don’t know you. I don’t have anything of yours.”
“Sure you do.” He shoved to stand, towering over her all over again. Every muscle in her body tightened at the prospect of all that power—that strength—turning against her. “You have her body.”
Her… What? Air crushed from her chest.
