After his test and another class the next day, he’d called her cell shortly before noon. A student with no connection to the missing girl or her boyfriend had answered, saying she’d heard the ringing and tracked it to a phone partway under a bush beside the sidewalk.

  The boyfriend had gone to the missing girl’s apartment. She wasn’t there. Her roommate said Hayley had not returned the night before. He called campus police right then.

  The search began.

  It also started the questioning of Michael John Ralston as a person of interest in the still unsolved disappearance of Hayley Robertson eleven years ago.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Val? What’re you doing?”

  Jack’s voice, and she felt her insides clench and her heart rate accelerate. Talk about a conditioned response. After one night together. “Washing my hands.”

  He’d stopped half a dozen feet from the pump outside the back door of the Flying W main house. “Do your dirty hands have anything to do with the flowers by the porch?”

  She kept working at the dirt under her nails. Maybe he hadn’t overtly avoided her in the thirty hours since he’d walked out of the ranch office, but he sure hadn’t sought her out, either. Thirty hours while she’d read and re-read every scrap. Building a picture of the black hole of pain he’d fallen into eleven years ago, but only a partial picture. To truly know would require Jack talking to her, really talking to her.

  “Yep. Matty and I thought perennials would do well there. They should come back every year without any effort from you. I wasn’t expecting you here.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  She looked around. “No.”

  He was staring off and didn’t appear to notice her shortness. “Where’s Addie?”

  “Taylor took her and Cassie to the library for the morning.”

  “Huh. And Matty just sent me over here.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yeah. Some coincidence, huh? Taylor taking Addie, Matty sending me over here right after she found out I’d given Bryan work that’ll keep him in a distant corner of the Slash-C all day.”

  At the change in his voice. she looked over her shoulder at him. “Did you?”

  “I did.” He came close behind her, not touching. “Val. Saturday night … Sorry. Sorry I took off like that. What happened between us was … True.”

  True. She closed her eyes. The word sliced right through thirty hours, bringing them right back to that couch.

  He came up against her back, reaching around to cover her hands with his under the dwindling flow, washing first one of her hands then the other until the water ran clear.

  She leaned back against him, watching as he slowly drew his wet hands up her arms to her shoulders. Water dripping from his hands made small round pools on her shirt, the fabric clinging to her skin.

  He trailed his fingers up her throat, under her chin, his thumbs behind her ears, massaging in slow, even circles. Her gaze shifted, down to a new round of damp on her shirt. Her nipple tightened against the spot.

  “Val.”

  At the choked version of her name, she turned to him.

  He picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist.

  “Inside,” he said.

  “Hurry.”

  But he took the time to bend his head, bringing her higher, so his mouth covered her damp breast through t-shirt and bra.

  It felt … “Don’t stop.”

  “If I don’t—”

  “Okay, okay. Stop. For now.”

  He gave a pained chuckle and started for the house while she bit softly at his neck.

  “Val,” he warned as he reached for the back door.

  She sucked. That would show him she was not someone to be warned off.

  He released the door, adjusted his hold, raising her higher, then pressed her against the wall.

  “What are you—? Ah.” He’d taken advantage of the wall helping to support her to free his hands to pull down her top and bra together, covering one nipple with his mouth and the other with a hand.

  She was panting. “I’m not going to—” His hands were at her shorts. He had them open. He was touching her.

  “Yes, you are.”

  He had them off her almost before she realized her feet had touched the floor. Shorts and panties.

  “Then you, too.” She was at his belt, the snap and zipper.

  “No. Me upstairs. You here.”

  He picked her back up. Reflexively, she wrapped her legs around him again.

  “Val—”

  She was pushing down the waist of his jeans.

  “This can’t—” he started, but his hands were helping. Moving, adjusting.

  “Yes, it can.”

  It had to. Now. Now.

  It did.

  “Yes.” She slid down him, so complete, so right. The only motion in the universe was the pulse of him inside her.

  And then she wiggled.

  And motion was everywhere. Around her, between them, and — oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes — inside her.

  *

  Lying on her stomach beside Jack in his bed, Val wallowed in boneless bliss.

  Until he sat up abruptly and swore.

  She turned her head toward him but as long as the world was still in one piece she didn’t have the energy for more. “Hmm?”

  “Your back.” He swore again. “That outside wall. What the hell was I thinking?”

  “Nothing,” she said with lazy satisfaction. “No thinking at all.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “A little tender. But worth it.”

  “Val, why didn’t you say—”

  She laughed. A little laugh so it didn’t move her much from this absolutely perfect position. “Wasn’t thinking about my back.”

  He bent and pressed his lips lightly to her flesh.

  “Now I am,” she murmured.

  “Hmm?”

  “Thinking about my back,” she explained. She started to turn.

  His hand on her shoulder stopped her. “You are not lying on your back.”

  “I’m not?”

  He kissed her back again, slid his leg under her, lifting her atop him.

  “You’re not.”

  *

  “I read about Hayley. You knew I would.”

  They were on their sides, facing each other. He squeezed his eyes closed. “Damned Internet. So, do you want to ask if I did it?”

  “I know you didn’t. You weren’t ever a serious suspect. It’s very clear you weren’t.”

  But it explained so much. His tendency toward solitariness, encouraged by his upbringing, had been cemented by his loss and the investigation. Add in the media attention and the knowledge that the story, the suspicion, the doubt would last forever on the Internet…

  His shoulder moved. Possibly a shrug. “That’s what my lawyer said. It sure as hell felt like I was. Suspecting me made sense. I saw that. She had that damned party for my birthday even after I’d told her I had a big test. We fought some about that. People heard. Then when everybody’d finally gone, she wanted to fool around. I said no. She left in a huff, saying she was going back to her place. If I hadn’t said no, if she’d stayed—”

  “You can’t know that, Jack.”

  “I can. I do. She never got back to her place. Somewhere between my place and hers … They wouldn’t let me help search. Potential contamination of evidence.” The last sentence was said so flatly it took her a couple times of re-running it through her head to recognize the implications. And how it must have felt to him then. “That was hard. But then her family came…”

  She thought he’d stopped. She was afraid he had, because this might be her last chance to get him to talk.

  But then he started again. “She took me home to meet her family that first Thanksgiving we were together. They welcomed me. Made me part of everything. All of them. I’d never known anything like that. Like them. I was part of it. Three years. And then they walked into that police station and I knew. I wasn’t part of the family anymore. Even before…” He shook his head. “How could I blame them? How could anybody? I’ll never forget their faces when they arrived. What it did to them. But until you and Addie, maybe I didn’t understand, not completely, what it meant to have their daughter missing.”

  Val felt as if her heart was simultaneously expanding and being squeezed.

  “For almost a year there were searches and appeals for information and something would come up that looked like it might be a lead. But every damned one evaporated. Then her family sued me.”

  “Sued you? Why?”

  “Wrongful death.”

  This had not been in the articles she’d read. “Oh, God, Jack—”

  “They kept saying all they wanted was for me to tell everything I knew about that night. To not hold anything back, so they could find Hayley. They said the only reason they sued me was to find out everything I knew.”

  “But you’d told them. How could they—?”

  “They didn’t believe me. A couple years ago I started thinking … maybe they couldn’t believe me, because believing me meant there was no answer. The answer of me killing her was better than no answer at all. But at the time … I wanted to give up. God, I wanted to give up. I thought about it.”

  Val made herself breath slowly, fighting back the terror that he’d considered suicide.

  “My lawyer kept saying I had to keep on living and fighting for Hayley’s sake. Because if I stopped living, everyone would think I’d killed her and they’d stop looking for her. Marion is a very smart woman.”

  She said a quick, silent thanks to the lawyer who’d given him a reason to keep living. “What happened, Jack?”

  “I kept living and kept fighting, right through the suit. And then it was over and I’d won … won. Right. So there wasn’t anything to fight for anymore. Nobody was really looking for her because there was nowhere to look, nowhere that made sense. She could be anywhere. Or nowhere. And then there wasn’t anything to live for, either.”

  She heard the rasp of her own breath, holding back the tears. She would not cry. She would not add comforting her to all that this man already carried.

  “So you started driving west.”

  “Driving, not necessarily west. Anywhere. When I wasn’t driving, I was drinking. Oh, I didn’t drive drunk. No way was I going to risk killing somebody else and coming through without a scratch myself.”

  She put her arms around his neck, drew his head to her shoulder. “You came west and you found the Curricks. So you were here to find me when Addie and I so desperately needed you.”

  There is so much for you to live for, Jack. If you’ll just let yourself see it.

  But she didn’t say that to him. Not now.

  She rocked him even after she knew he’d fallen asleep.

  She couldn’t imagine how exhausted he must be from all these years of carrying this, of never letting it out, of never having any support.

  She couldn’t imagine, either, the pain of Hayley’s family, her parents. But dammit, how could they have known Jack and not known he couldn’t possibly have hurt Hayley? How could they have turned away from him — really the only family he’d known — when he’d most needed them?

  …The people I knew would love Addie no matter what. That’s what home is. That’s what it means.

  I wouldn’t know.

  He’d turned to the people he’d thought would love him no matter what, and they’d not only not loved him, they’d suspected him — accused him — of murdering the woman he loved.

  She refused to let the tears drop, because he’d feel them and she wanted him to sleep. But she held him a little tighter and rocked him more.

  *

  “How do you hold the reins, Addie?” Jack asked.

  “Firm but light.”

  “Good girl.”

  Val wished he could see Addie beaming at his praise, but she was sitting in front of him in the saddle on Buster, so he couldn’t see her face.

  Jack had resumed overseeing her horseback-riding education, including hands-on instruction of how to get into the saddle from the ground. So hands-on that it took three tries to complete the lesson. She’d added to her store of knowledge that a roll in the hay was scratchy and sneezy and so highly uncomfortable that she would have avoided it if it hadn’t meant doing without Jack for the three minutes it would have taken to get inside.

  This was the fourth lesson he’d given Addie, once sitting on a saddle with no horse under it, twice on Bo with Jack holding her on while Matty led the horse, and now the two of them in the saddle on Buster with Matty joining Val outside the fence, along with Taylor, Dave, and Bryan. Even Taylor’s dog Sin and the Curricks’ Vegas were in enthusiastic attendance.

  “She’s doing great,” Taylor said. Cassie’s old helmet had been adjusted to a perfect fit for Addie.

  Cassie’s helmet, Brennan’s boots, Dave’s horse, Bryan’s volunteer labor preparing the horses, the big saddle Donna and Ed had taught their children on — it took a whole ranch community to bring this smile to Addie’s face. But most of all it took Jack.

  “Don’t worry. Buster’s an old hand at this,” Matty said.

  “I’m not worried.” Jack wouldn’t let anything happen to Addie or to anyone or anything else in his care. They’d come here to the Slash-C for this lesson on Buster because he didn’t think Bo should carry his weight.

  Taylor cut her a look that Val didn’t return.

  There’d been an unspoken conspiracy in the weeks since the party for Lisa and Shane, participated in by every one of the people here, along with Donna and Ed, Cal Ruskoff, Lisa and Shane before they left, and who knew how many else. She wouldn’t put it past the stool-sitters down at the café to somehow have a hand in the plot to maximize the time she and Jack had together. A fair amount of it alone.

  As their equally unspoken part of the conspiracy they’d accepted unusual work assignments for Jack, abundant sleepovers for the kids, you’ve-gotta-see trips requiring Jack’s escort for her. Unspoken to the others or to each other. They talked of her past, but never his. They talked of Addie’s future, but never their own. They talked of making love, but never of being in love.

  These weeks had been the best, the worst, the strangest, and the most natural of her life. And now they were coming to an end.

  Four more days.

  Ninety-six hours. No, ninety-three.

  “Next step will be out on the trail,” Matty said easily.

  There would be no lesson on the trail for Addie, because this was the last lesson.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Anybody home?” Matty’s voice came from the back door.

  “C’mon in,” Val invited. She might not want company, but how could she refuse when Matty owned the place?

  “You were kind of quiet at Addie’s riding lesson yesterday and I wanted to see if—” Matty stopped at the open double doorway to the bedroom. “What are you doing? You’re packing.”

  She’d answered her own question with an accusation.

  Val kept her hands moving and her voice steady. “I am. Addie and I have accumulated so much extra that I’m sure it won’t all fit in the suitcases. So I’m shipping a couple boxes home.”

  “But … Jack?”

  “What about him?”

  “Oh, Val.”

  “It’s okay, Matty. I’m okay. I will be okay.”

  “He hasn’t said…?”

  “No.”

  Matty moved around to the far side of the bed and waited until she looked up. “Have you?

  *

  The clock moved on, unmentioned.

  She and Jack had a full night together when Addie had a final sleepover at the Slash-C. Val slept little that night, storing up the sensations of being in his arms, making love with him, watching him.

  The day before their ticketed flight back to Boston, she drove to the Slash-C, choosing a time when she knew Jack, Dave, and Matty wouldn’t be there. She rather hoped no one would be there, but Donna and Ed were sitting on the porch of their little house, side by side, holding hands and looking out to the horizon.

  She left a box of things — kitchen supplies, towels, toys, and more — that had migrated from the Slash-C main house to the Flying W foreman’s house over the past seven and a half weeks, along with her note of heartfelt thanks by the main house’s back door.

  Then she headed toward Donna and Ed, carrying the boots she’d borrowed.

  She produced a smile along with her words of thanks and appreciation as she set them on the porch.

  “Don’t say good-bye now,” Ed ordered, interrupting her farewell. “It’s already decided, we’re taking you to the airport tomorrow. Unless…?”

  She answered the question by not answering it. “There’s no need for you to come. I have to turn in the rental car, so I have to drive. I sure am going to miss seeing the mountains.” She turned in that direction quickly, putting her back to the couple. “Jack says you have to respect the mountains. I understand that. You have to respect the ocean, too, or you get in trouble fast.”

  “That’s true. All of it,” Ed said. “There’s something more, though. The mountains — the ocean, too, I’d expect — can build a man’s self-respect. Not by ever respecting you back, mind you. But when you work with or against something that demands that you respect it day after day, you can’t help feeling that being able to rise to that level makes you worthwhile, too. Does that make se — Hey, what’s that all about? You okay, Valerie?”

  She blinked back tears. “I’m okay, Ed. I’m just so grateful Jack found you all those years ago.”

  “We’re glad he came to work for us, too. Works hard. And smart. That’s a rare combination.”

  “That’s not what she means, Ed,” Donna said quietly.

  “Oh. You mean…” He turned from his wife to her. “Give the boy time, Valerie. Time and space. This land can bring a man answers that nothing else can.”

  She considered that. Then she shook her head. “No. If all the years since he came here haven’t been enough, if all the space of Wyoming, not to mention the space he’s put between himself and other people haven’t been enough, then, no. If time and space were going to do the trick, it would be done by now. And it hasn’t. No more time. No more space.”

 

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