Considering that two people had been murdered inside.
Jodi adjusted the grip on the gun when she heard the footsteps. They weren’t hurried, but her visitor wasn’t trying to sneak up on her, either. Jodi had been listening for that. Listening for everything that could get her killed.
Permanently this time.
Just in case she was wrong about who this might be, Jodi pivoted and took aim at him.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said. His voice was husky and deep, part lawman’s growl, part Texas drawl.
The man was exactly who she thought it might be. Sheriff Gabriel Beckett. No surprise that he had arrived since this was Beckett land, and she’d parked in plain sight on the side of the road that led to the house. Even though the Becketts no longer lived here, Gabriel would have likely used the road to get to his current house.
“You came,” Jodi answered, and she lowered her gun.
Muttering some profanity with that husky drawl, Gabriel walked to her side, his attention on the same area where hers was fixed. Or at least it was until he looked at her the same exact moment that she looked at him.
Their gazes connected.
And now it was Jodi who wanted to curse. Really? After all this time that punch of attraction was still there? She had huge reasons for the attraction to go away and not a single reason for it to stay.
Yet it remained.
At least on her part anyway. That wasn’t heat she saw in Gabriel’s eyes. Not attraction heat anyway. He was riled to the bone that she was back at the scene of the crime.
Gabriel hadn’t changed much over the years. He was as lanky as he had been a decade ago. His dark brown hair was shorter now, but he still had those sizzling blue eyes. Still had the face that could make most women do a triple take. Simply put, he was one hot cowboy cop.
“Is it true?” Gabriel asked. “Are you actually remembering more details from the night of the attack?”
She’d expected the question and heard the skepticism in his voice. Skepticism that she deserved. Because her remembering anything else was a lie. “No. I told the press that because I thought it would draw out the real killer.”
He gave her a look that could have frozen the hottest parts of hell. “That’s not only stupid, it’s dangerous. You made yourself a target.”
“I’m already a target,” she mumbled under her breath. And because she thought they needed a change of subject, Jodi tipped her head to the house. “I’m surprised it’s still standing. Why haven’t you bulldozed it?”
A muscle tightened in his jaw. “There’s a difference of opinion about that in the family.”
Yes, Jodi had heard about some of those opinions. One of his sisters had wanted the place to remain standing, though Jodi had no idea why. She couldn’t imagine any of them wanting to live in the house again. Still, maybe it was hard to demolish a childhood home even when that place was now a reminder of the nightmare.
“It’s not a good time to be out here,” he growled as if delivering an order that she would jump to obey. “And not just because you put out that lie to the press.”
Jodi stayed put, and she darn sure didn’t jump. “I was hoping if I saw the place again, it actually would help me remember, that what I told the press would no longer be a lie.”
He aimed a scowl at her. Then, another scowl at the house and the spot where he’d found her bleeding and dying nearly a decade ago. “Why the heck would you want to remember that?”
He had a point. But so did Jodi. It wasn’t a point that would likely make sense to Gabriel.
“I want to see his face.” She shook her head. “I want to remember his face.”
Ironically, it was one of the few things about that night that she couldn’t recall. That particular detail was lost in the tangle of memories in her head. She could feel the slice of the knife as it cut into her body.
The pain.
Jodi could remember the blood draining from her. But she couldn’t see the man who’d been responsible for turning her life on a dime.
“Why come back now?” Gabriel demanded. “Why tell the press that you’re remembering after all this time?”
Good questions. And she had good answers.
“I got an email.” Jodi figured that would get his attention, and it did.
Gabriel turned those lethal blue eyes on her. “What kind of email?”
She took out the printed copy from the front pocket of her jeans and handed it to him. Jodi didn’t need to see what was written there. She’d memorized every word.
Nearly ten years. I’ve waited long enough to finish what I started on the Blue River Ranch. This time, no one will be there to save you. This time, you will die.
Gabriel cursed again. “You got this, and you still came here?”
Jodi shrugged, tried to make it seem as if this message didn’t have her in knots. It did. But then, she’d been in knots for a long time now. For ten painful years. In some sick way, maybe this meant there’d be a showdown, and the knots would finally loosen.
“This proves my father’s innocent,” she said and waited for Gabriel to blast that to smithereens.
It didn’t take long before he attempted that blast. “No. A copycat could have written it. Or your father could have paid someone to do it.”
Both could be true, and she acknowledged that with a slight sound of agreement. “But I have to believe it wasn’t a copycat. It’s either that or accept that my father murdered both of your parents, attacked me and then left me for dead.” She paused, shook her head. “Of course, no one in your family had trouble believing it.”
“Neither did a jury,” Gabriel pointed out.
It was true. A jury had indeed convicted her father, Travis, of two counts of murder and also of her own attack, and the jurors had given him two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. He was rotting away in a jail cell, exactly where the Becketts wanted him. Of course, it could have been worse. Travis could have gotten the death penalty, but thankfully the DA had backed off on that because of some weaknesses in the case.
No eye witness to put Travis at the scene, and the fact that her father couldn’t recall what’d gone on that night.
“My father was convicted on circumstantial evidence,” Jodi said, though she was preaching to the choir. Because as the sheriff and the son of the murdered couple, Gabriel knew the case better than everyone else.
Everyone but the real killer, that is.
“My father didn’t have the murder weapon on him when the cops found him,” she went on. Yes, Gabriel knew that, too, but she wanted to remind him. “And the wounds to your parents and to me were made with a unique knife.”
“A skinning knife with a crescent-shaped blade. Is this going somewhere?” he continued without hesitating. “Because it doesn’t matter that your father claimed he didn’t own a knife like that—”
“He didn’t,” she interrupted. “I was the one who cleaned the house. Cleaned his room. The barn. You name it, I cleaned it, and I never saw a blade that resembled anything like a crescent.”
It wasn’t easy for her to talk about the knife. But even when she didn’t talk about it, the image of it was still clear in her head. Not from that night, though. Jodi hadn’t actually seen it, but the FBI had