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She and Donna had grown up in this house and had lived here together until Jamie had gone off to college. She hadn’t gone far—only across the mountains to Boulder, and the University of Colorado. She had studied business, thinking she would look for a job in Junction, so that she could be close to Donna and her parents. Then, her parents had been killed in a car accident, plowed into by a tourist who was texting while driving. The tourist had walked away with only a few bruises, while her parents had both been pronounced dead at the scene.
So much for a business career in Junction. Jamie needed to be in Eagle Mountain, with Donna. She might have sold the family home and moved with her sister to Junction or Denver or somewhere else, but the thought made her heart ache. Eagle Mountain was home. And Donna didn’t do well with change. She needed familiar things—her home, the neighbors she knew, her job at the grocery store—to keep her firmly grounded.
Jamie had moved back to Eagle Mountain for good four years ago. After a series of low-paying clerical jobs, the opportunity at the sheriff’s department had been a welcome relief—a way for Jamie to stay in Eagle Mountain and earn a living that would support her and her sister. But it had also been a lifesaver because it gave Jamie a focus and purpose. She had discovered, somewhat to her surprise, that she loved the work. She liked looking out for her hometown and the people in it, and she liked being part of a team that was trying to protect everyone here.
Oh, it wasn’t all good feelings and easy times. She had been sworn at by people she stopped for traffic violations, kicked and punched by a shoplifter she had chased down on Main Street, with half a dozen locals and tourists standing around watching the battle and no one lifting a finger to help her. And she had looked on the bodies of those murdered women and felt a mixture of sickness and anger—and a fierce desire to stop the man before he hurt anyone else.
The loud trill of an old-fashioned phone startled her. She raced to grab her cell phone off the hall table, and frowned at the screen, which showed Unknown Number. A sales call? A scammer? Or maybe one of the bank employees, calling her back because he or she had remembered something. She answered, cautious. “Hello?”
“It’s Nate. I called to see how you’re doing.”
The deep voice vibrated through her, making her heart flutter, but she steeled herself against the sensation. The question—coming from him—annoyed her. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Finding a dead woman shakes up most people. It shook me up.”
She settled onto the sofa, a pillow hugged to her stomach. “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s part of the job. I knew that going in.”
“From what I saw today, you’re good at your job.”
Was he flattering her, trying to persuade her to forgive him? She sighed. “Nate, I don’t want to do this.”
“Do what?”
“I don’t want to pretend we’re friends. We’re not. We can’t be.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
A long pause. She began to wonder if he had hung up on her. Then he said. “So, because we were once lovers—each other’s first lovers—we can’t be friends now? Jamie, that was seven years ago. We were kids.”
“And now we’re adults, and we don’t have to pretend we’re two old pals.”
“I don’t know why not,” he said. “There was a time I knew you better than anyone—and you knew me better.”
“Like you said, that was seven years ago.” A lot had happened since then. She wasn’t the same woman anymore.
“We’re going to be working together on this case,” he said. “We shouldn’t be enemies.”
“You’re not my enemy.” Did he really think that? “But we can’t be…close…anymore.”
“Why not?”
Because if she let him too close, she knew she would fall for him again. And she couldn’t trust him to not leave her again—at the next promotion, or if someone better came along. He had proved before that he looked out for his own interests and he wasn’t one to stick with a relationship if things got tough. “It would be too complicated,” she said. “I know you don’t like that.” He had said that when he broke up with her before. There’s no sense us staying together. It would be too complicated.
Was that sound him grinding his teeth together? “You’ve got a lot of wrong ideas about me,” he said.
“You’re the one who gave them to me.”
“Fine. Have it your way. We won’t be ‘close’—whatever that means to you. But we can be civil. Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Now I’d better go. We’ll have another long day tomorrow. Good night.”
She didn’t wait for him to answer but hung up. She’d handled that well, she thought. No sense starting something that was bound to end badly. She’d been very mature and matter-of-fact. She ought to be proud of herself.
She knew a lot about grief now. The pain never went away, but with time, it always got better.
NATE SCANNED THE sheltered meadow at the base of Mount Wilson with his binoculars, counting the number of elk in the small herd gathered there. Most of them still looked to be in good shape, but this would be a good place to put one of the feeding stations the Department of Wildlife had decided to set up starting this weekend. Local ranchers and hunters had volunteered to help distribute the hay and pellets to the three main feeding sites in the area. The supplies were being delivered by helicopter, which meant the project wouldn’t be hampered by the still-closed highway.
He entered the information about the herd into a database on his phone, then snowshoed back to the trailhead where he had left his truck. Once inside the cab, with the heater turned up high, he headed down the road, his speed at a crawl, alert for signs of anything unusual. As he passed the turnout toward a closed campground, he caught a flash of color through the trees and stopped. The binoculars came out and he zeroed in on a dark gray SUV parked up against an icy expanse of exposed rock. He scanned the area and focused in on two climbers halfway up the ice.
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