He was so damn good-looking, even with mud on his clothes and smeared across his cheek. A fission of concern passed through her. “Did you get thrown?” she asked. Over his shoulder—his very broad shoulder—she caught a glimpse of a dark horse pawing at the muddy grass. “Are you okay?”
“I did not get thrown,” he said, his voice sharp as if she’d stung his pride.
Or maybe that was just the way he always talked. He’d sounded that way when he’d told her that she couldn’t be serious about asking him to dance.
Her face heated with embarrassment, but she didn’t know if it was because of what had happened then or how unkempt she looked now. And with the way he kept staring at her, he couldn’t have missed it. He was probably horrified.
“Then what are you doing here?” she asked again.
“I’ve called the police.”
“I thought you were the police,” she said. She knew, from the news reports and the gossip around Whisperwood, that the chief and his brothers had successfully talked him into investigating the murders.
“I am,” he said. “That’s why I called. I need to tape off your backyard. It’s a crime scene.”
Despite the heat of the August day, a cold chill raced down her spine and raised goose bumps on her skin. “Crime scene?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”
“I found something in your yard,” he said.
“Why were you searching my property?” she asked. “Did you have a warrant?”
His face flushed now.
“I know my rights,” she said. “If you didn’t have a warrant, your search was illegal.”
“I was surveying the flood damage,” he said, “and your yard was in plain view from the field behind it.”
Which was his family’s property. In Whisperwood, the Coltons’ ranch was second in size only to the Corgan spread.
“So you weren’t even acting as a lawman when you performed this illegal search?” she asked. “You were just riding around your own property?”
His brow furrowed, and he opened his mouth to answer her, but she cut him off with a, “How dare you!”
She’d thought she’d let it go—her embarrassment over how he’d rejected her request to dance. But now that embarrassment turned to anger, which she unleashed on him.
Or maybe her exhaustion had made her extra irritable.
“You’re trespassing on my property,” she continued. “And when your fellow officers arrive, they will be obligated to issue you a citation.”
“Rae—”
“You’re not above the law,” she said, “just because you’re a Colton.”
“I know I’m not above the law,” he said, his face still flushed, but with anger now. It burned in his hazel eyes, as well. “And neither are you.”
“I am a law student,” she said. “And I’m already working as a paralegal. I probably know the law better than you do.”
He snorted then. “I’ve been a police officer for years,” he reminded her. “I know the law. Why did you switch from managing the general store to law?”
She narrowed her eyes and studied his handsome face. He’d barely talked to her at her friend and his brother’s wedding, so why was he curious about her now? Especially since he seemed to know more about her than she’d realized.
She was proud of her decision to go to law school, so she answered him, “I want to do something about all the crimes happening around Whisperwood.”
“Then you should want me to investigate what I found on your property,” he pointed out.
Now she was curious, which she probably would have been right way if she wasn’t so damn exhausted. “What did you find?” she asked.
“A body.”
She gasped in shock and shook her head. “No.” It wasn’t possible. Someone couldn’t have been murdered in her backyard, where she’d imagined her son playing as he grew up, just like she had played there as a child. She shuddered and murmured again, “No.”
Forrest nodded. “I’m afraid it’s true.”
“But—but I didn’t hear anything.” Wouldn’t she have heard something if someone had been murdered in her backyard? But with work and school, she was gone so much that she probably hadn’t even been home when it had happened. “I didn’t see anything amiss.”
“Have you missed anyone?” he asked. “Somebody staying with you that suddenly disappeared?”
She shook her head. Somebody had disappeared years ago on Rae, but that had been his choice to leave. Nobody had murdered him, although she’d sometimes wished she would have...when she’d watched her mother suffer.
“So you didn’t notice anything in the backyard? Any digging?” he asked, persisting with his questions.
She shook her head again. “Why the hell would someone bury a body in my backyard?”
“I’m not sure if they’d just buried it, or if it was just uncovered,” Forrest said. “It could have been there awhile.”
“Like the body that Maggie and Jonah found after the hurricane?” she asked.
They had just stumbled across the body—the mummified body. She shivered with revulsion. What if that was what Forrest had found in her backyard? Another mummy?
“I’ll know more once the coroner arrives,” he continued.
The wail of a siren grew louder as it came closer to her house. Maybe the coroner was arriving now, along with the squad cars with the flashing lights that were pulling into her driveway.
Connor cried out now, and it wasn’t a sleepy little cry but a wail almost as loud as the siren.
“What the hell is that?” Forrest asked in alarm.
And Rae bristled all over again with outrage. “That is my son,” she replied as she hurried off to the nursery.
* * *
Tension gripped the chief, and he tightened his grasp on his cell phone before sliding it back into his pocket.
Behind him, sitting on the porch of his two-story farmhouse, Hays Colton chuckled. “Forrest has always had good timing,” he said of his son. “You drive out here, looking for him, and he calls you like he somehow knew.”
Chief Thompson shook his head. “That’s not why he called.” And he could have pointed out that Forrest’s timing wasn’t always perfect, or young Colton wouldn’t have taken that bullet in his leg. But if his instincts weren’t as strong as they were, he might have taken that bullet in his heart or his head instead of his leg.
He had survived.
His shooter had not.
“What’s wrong?” Hays asked, his blue eyes wide with alarm. “Is he all right?”
Thompson nodded. “Yeah, he just called to give me a heads-up.”
“Did he find out the identity of that poor girl found at the pharmaceutical company?”
The chief shook his head. “I wish that was why he called. Or better yet, to tell me he caught the killer.” Because it would probably hit the news soon anyway, Archer Thompson shared, “He found another body.”
Another person for the already overworked coroner to identify.
“I’m