The last person she wanted…was the only one who could keep her safe

Janie Vincent had no use for cops. They’d never done her any favors. But when she uncovers a lead into the disappearance of a girl at the college where she’s a teaching assistant, suddenly Janie’s life depends on the officers of Scorpion Ridge. And one in particular: Sheriff Rafael Salazar.

Rafe knows how much destruction a missing-persons case can cause a family, and so to solve this case, he’s determined to stick to Janie like glue. She’s clearly not a fan of the 24/7 surveillance, but he intends to break down her distrust. And maybe they’ll discover that what Janie saw can be the key to healing them both.

“I should never have opened his art book,” Janie muttered.

“But you did,” Rafe said, “so now we’ll deal with it.” He smiled, trying to communicate that she wasn’t alone, that he’d do his job, take care of her.

Then she gave him a glare that almost stopped him in his tracks. He was used to people being grateful, looking up to him, believing him, wanting to be taken care of, trusting him. Janie Vincent didn’t trust him.

Before he was quite ready, she stood, practically tapping her foot in impatience. “Fine. Let’s do it.”

“You want me to stay, Janie?” her sister asked.

“No, you go on back to work. I’ll find—”

“I’ll make sure she gets home,” Rafe asserted.

Janie’s eyes narrowed. For some reason, Miss Vincent didn’t appreciate his offer. And that made no sense at all.

Dear Reader,

I read a lot because I’m in love with words. I love old, used cookbooks where someone has written notes in the margin. I love diaries and letters and newspaper so that the past comes alive for me.

Besides writing for Mills & Boon, I’m an English professor. I read a lot there, too. I have students who, by far, write better than me. I’ve read about midnight border crossings (I’m in Arizona) and about midnight escapes from the Lost Boys of Africa. I’ve read about near-death experiences, special-needs children and about the path back to sobriety. Best of all, I’ve read about the dreams and goals of our future generation. I’ve also read a few things I wish had not wound up under my red pen. But, while the idea for What Janie Saw came to me one evening after a marathon grading session, I’ve never read a murder confession.

Like Janie, I entered teaching through the back door. But it doesn’t matter how you came to the classroom—it matters what you do while you’re there. Janie makes all the right moves. She cares about her students even while trying to pursue her own dream. I think, for Janie, chasing the dream, questioning the dream and then reinventing the dream is what makes her grow. See, her childhood wasn’t of the soil that allowed dreams to grow. She had much to overcome.

Rafael Salazar is too busy being sheriff to have dreams. He has to save the world. His world is the small town of Scorpion Ridge, Arizona. Soon he has to save Janie, and she could become his world if he’s smart enough to realize it and change.

My story is complete fiction with the world of what-ifs, flawed people and love triumphing. It’s about hope and change and romance.

My editor, Adrienne Macintosh, is a master, full of ideas for cementing conflict. Mills & Boon Heartwarming is an awesome place to be. If you’d like to meet some of the Heartwarming authors, please visit www.heartwarmingauthors.blogspot.com. If you’d like to learn more about me, please visit www.pamelatracy.com. I love to hear from readers!

Pamela

What Janie Saw

Pamela Tracy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PAMELA TRACY

is an award-winning author who lives with her husband (who claims to be the inspiration for most of her heroes) and son (who claims to be the interference for most of her writing time). She started writing at a very young age (a series of romances, all with David Cassidy as the hero, though sometimes Bobby Sherman would elbow in). Then, while earning a B.A. in journalism at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, she picked up writing again—this time it was a very bad science-fiction novel.

She went back to her love and was first published in 1999. Since then, Pamela has had more than twenty romance novels in print. She’s a winner of the American Christian Fiction Writers Carol Award and has been a RITA ® Award finalist. Readers can find her at www.heartwarmingauthors.blogspot.com or www.pamelatracy.com.

To Rachel Pekera,

an extraordinary second grade teacher,

who stole my son’s heart and taught him to

believe in himself and much more.

Thank you.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER ONE

KILLING SOMEONE IS not nearly as simple in real life as it is on television.

“What the...” Janie Vincent sputtered. She grabbed her coffee cup, more for comfort than for the caffeine at this late hour, and ordered herself to stop reading.

But she was already hooked.

She glanced back at the art book’s cover. Yup, this was Derek’s book, the one he’d done as an assignment for the Intermediate Canvas class Janie was assisting in. His first two pages had stayed true to the assignment: he’d drawn thumbnail sketches of what he was working on for the class’s main project. Page three was where he’d strayed. Oh, he’d included thumbnail drawings amidst his prose. But prose didn’t belong in the workbook unless he was summarizing his ideas for future drawings. She seemed to be looking at a mixture of fact and fiction, original art complementing a master. Derek had drawn windy, mountainous roads with sharp curves, a dark four-door car, and a re-creation of The Scream by Edvard Munch.

The re-creation had more hair.

He had, however, made no indication of what medium he intended to use or final dimension. Maybe he was planning a graphic novel?

Even though it was obvious that Derek had not adhered to the assignment guidelines, she continued to read:

For one thing, murder is black-and-white and mostly soundless after the bullet fires. Maybe the sound of the report temporarily deafens you? Or maybe you go into shock?

Derek, by far, was her darkest student. What he created in class always centered on battle scenes. Occasionally, he included bleeding dragons and eerie castles in the distance.

But they didn’t scare her as much as the drawings in this art book. Derek had somehow managed to make his stick figures ominous. Frowning, she stopped reading long enough to take another a sip of coffee. Her hand, clutching the cup, shook a little. Then, because anyone could be watching, she glanced around the student union to make sure no one had noticed her shocked response. She’d hate for a student to think she was this aghast over his homework.

She didn’t expect to see Derek; he’d been absent a full week—since he’d turned in the art book last Wednesday.

I knew Chad and Chris planned to kill her before we even stopped the car. She knew it, too, and looked at me with pleading eyes as if realizing I was the only sane person in the car. Before that night I was sane. But from the moment I figured out he was going to kill her, and from the moment she stared at me, silently begging me to intervene, I was no longer sane. I was simply the man in the backseat. The only one close enough to her that she could make eye contact with.

If this were truly a graphic novel, then it was pretty good. Too good.

In the drawing, a lone mailbox braved the wind by a tall, dark, ragged tree. Four people occupied the vehicle. They were stick figures, but he had added minute details—a big nose on one, hair sticking straight up on another—that made Janie long for a magnifying glass. The tiny license plate even bore minute letters and numbers.

But Derek Chaney’s fiction didn’t really belong in an art book.

A tiny sliver of concern snaked its way up Janie’s spine. Surely Derek wasn’t keeping track of actual events...?

Chad was cussing and driving. Chris wasn’t saying a word, just stared out the window that wouldn’t roll down. And, for the first time, no one complained about the broken air conditioner. Maybe Chad was thinking about heat. He’ll feel it soon enough; Hell is hot. And that’s where he’s going because Chad pulled the trigger. He better get used to the heat.

Derek had always been a disturbed young man. As a brand-new teaching assistant, first time in a college classroom, Janie had been ill equipped to deal with his mood swings. She’d tried to give him some stability by partnering him with other students.

But they mostly avoided him.

She’d sought help early on from Patricia Reynolds, the course’s main instructor and chair of the art department.

“Derek needs this class more than anyone else,” was Patricia’s response. “Right now he’s antisocial with a bad temper, but if he can make a connection with art, feel good about something he’s created, who knows how his future might change.”

Janie had nodded. There’d been a teacher in her past—Mrs. Freshia, seventh-grade English—who’d read one of Janie’s personal art-book entries and taken the time to ask, “Are you all right?” And then she’d believed Janie when she’d said, “No.”

Mrs. Freshia had testified in court on Janie’s behalf so that she could go live with her sister, who at just eighteen years old, wanted to be her guardian.

Katie had wanted her. Janie had hoped somebody wanted Derek.

So Janie had offered him alternatives to some of his more gruesome ideas. She’d tried to be friendly, to engage him in conversation. He’d smirked, then drawn a scar down the side of one of his female warrior’s face. A scar just like Janie’s, maybe a bit more pronounced.

She’d long ago come to terms with her physical scar, though. He couldn’t hurt her that way.

She’d lent an ear, but he hadn’t wanted to talk. So she’d backed off, hoping Patricia was right. Derek hadn’t been willing to talk to her, but maybe he’d been willing to draw and write.

I’ve never been a nature boy. I prefer the city with its bright lights, crowds and constant noise. I never want be hot again. It was so hot that night. The radio man said we’d broken a record for heat. I never want to hear the noises of nature again. I hate the eerie sound the wind makes. It’s like someone’s walked over your grave. It’s like a loud whistle, probably to get your attention. It says, “I know what you’re about to do.”

Janie heard the wind outside the student union windows and shivered. If she were painting tonight’s scenery and mood, she’d only use black, white and grays.

Her least favorite colors unless she was painting zebras.

In the animal world—and she was a nature artist—bright colors dominated. Tigers were orange, giraffes were yellow and camels smiled.

As a rule, she didn’t watch horror movies or read scary books. Like this one...

Brittney Travis didn’t scream. She didn’t beg. She tried to run and stumbled. Why do girls always stumble? Then, Chad shot her in the back. It was all in black and white. The blood was even black. Funny, I expected to see red, even in the darkness.

The art book dropped from Janie’s hands, and a shiver of doubt spiraled with such sincerity that she stood up, almost upending the chair she’d been sitting on.

Brittney Travis?

Janie knew the name...but from where? She wasn’t sure. Couldn’t remember.

Suddenly, there wasn’t enough light in the student union, not enough people, and the air seemed to decrease in volume. Scanning the room, she searched for a familiar face: a teacher, a student, even a janitor would do. Two students, not hers, cuddled in a corner. They were young, innocent. She recognized one of the English adjuncts. CeeCee Harrington. She was an animated woman who would talk your ears off if given a chance. As the shadows of evening fell, people were leaving. At this time of night, people didn’t linger.

Except for Katie.

Pulling out her cell phone, Janie started to call her big sister, but changed her mind. Katie was eight months pregnant and didn’t need the worry. Besides, this could be nothing. Just the crazy rant of a student wanting attention.

Right?

Patricia would still be in her office. Janie was supposed to take her the art books when she finished checking them anyway.

Holding the art book pressed to her chest, Janie hustled out the main doors and headed for the building that housed the faculty offices. Patricia didn’t leave until every class had ended and every light was turned out. Which was why in a hallway that housed more than a dozen faculty offices, hers was the only door open and the only beckoning light.

The cold finger of doubt tapped Janie on the shoulder. What if she was overreacting? What if Derek was just trying to scare her because she was young and new to her job?

She needed this opportunity, needed to do well at it and get a glowing recommendation so she’d have a shot at her dream: an artist residency in Africa.

Yet tonight, her feet didn’t falter; her mind didn’t change.

After all, she might have just read an art book detailing a murder.

When she finally got to the professor’s office, though, she wasn’t sure how to begin, so she simply stood in the doorway, trying to find her voice.

There were stacks of art supplies on every surface of the room, including chairs. Textbooks were stacked in towering rows. When Janie’d come in last August for her interview, she’d had to stand and answer Patricia’s questions.

Finally, she managed to clear her throat. Patricia turned around, all smiles.

While her office was a study in organized chaos, Patricia wasn’t. She wore a blue pantsuit with a red blouse underneath. Her hair was short and she had a thing for red high heels, almost stilettos. An angel pin was clipped just above her heart. It was her most cherished possession. Her father had given it to her before he died. It was solid white gold with a natural diamond.

Taking one tiny step into the room, Janie handed Patricia the art book. “I just read something, written by a student, and I think you need to take a look.”

“Personal issues? Is a student in trouble?”

Janie paused. Personal issues might be one way to sum up Derek’s art book. “It’s Derek, and I’m not sure.”

Patricia frowned. “What’s in it that concerns you?”

“Does the name Brittney Travis mean anything to you?”

Patricia leaned forward, her expression so stern that Janie almost took a step back. “Why are you asking?”

“Her name’s in his art book, and it’s worrying me. He wrote and drew pictures of her murder.”

Janie didn’t quite catch the interjection Patty muttered under her breath, but she could guess what it might have been. Patty scooted her chair to the left, lifted a manila folder and took a page from it. She scanned the words before handing it to Janie.

It was a campus email alerting faculty and staff that over the winter holiday an Adobe Hills Community College student had gone missing.

Brittney Lynn Travis.

* * *

SHERIFF RAFAEL SALAZAR didn’t need another thing to do this morning. He already had a full slate. He was due at the courthouse in a little over an hour and still had three phone calls to make before he could leave. None of them involved good news. His afternoon included a long drive to Phoenix and an overdue visit to a correctional facility.

So when his phone rang, Rafe wished he could ignore it.

“Salazar!” he barked into the phone. Maybe his tone would let the caller know what an inopportune time this was.

“Morning, Rafe.”

Suddenly, court dates, phone calls and the visit to the correctional facility seemed irrelevant.

Nathan Williamson was a detective and the director of the drug task force in nearby Adobe Hills, Arizona, located right outside of Tucson. Adobe Hills was not part of Laramie County, the area Rafe was in charge of. But occasionally their paths crossed, and usually the two departments worked well together.

Right now, Rafe and Nathan only had one case in common, and it was cold.

The Brittney Lynn Travis case.

She was from Rafe’s town, Scorpion Ridge, but she’d gone missing from Nathan’s town, Adobe Hills.

Nathan’s voice sounded terse, and in the background, Rafe could hear the sounds of other people, probably cops, doing their job.

“What’s going on?” Rafe asked, cop’s intuition telling him this wouldn’t be good news.

Nathan didn’t even pause. “What do you know about Janie Vincent?”

“Why do you want...?” Rafe started to answer but stopped when the door to his office flew open.

The woman in question stood in the doorway, looking tense. At her side was her big sister, Katie Rittenhouse, eight months pregnant and with an expression that said she was ready to take on the world.

“You have to talk to him,” Katie was telling Janie. “You can trust him. I promise.”

Janie didn’t appear convinced.

Behind them, his front-desk officer, Candy Riorden, hurried up. “I tried to tell—”

He halted Candy’s admonition, dismissed her with a wave of the hand, and motioned Janie and Katie toward the chairs facing his desk. Without missing a beat, he continued, “They’re here right now. But, to answer your question, Janie’s from Texas. Her sister and brother-in-law run BAA, Bridget’s Animal Adventure.”

“I need her to come here sometime today so we can question her.” Nathan didn’t sound interested in Janie’s connection to wildlife. “I’ve spent the last hour at Adobe Hills Community College, and I’ve got more questions than I have answers.”

“Questions about what? You haven’t exactly said why you want to speak with her.”

Janie was looking at the door as if she were ready to bolt.

“The kind that will help me solve a case!” Nathan snapped, bringing Rafe’s full attention back to the phone.

“Is it about—” Rafe started, but Nathan butted in.

“You’re aware she teaches at Adobe Hills Community College?” Nathan said quietly. “Well, Miss Vincent apparently read something in a kid’s art book last night, a kid by the name of Derek Chaney. I’ve spoken with the chair of the art department, Patricia Reynolds, but apparently your Miss Vincent is who I really need to speak with. Whatever she read might have been a murder confession about our missing coed.”

“Brittney Travis,” Rafe said slowly.

Across from him, Janie pressed her lips together and nodded.

Rafe gripped the phone, hard. He prayed—prayed that it was some kind of mistake, some kind of joke, that Brittney wasn’t dead, hadn’t suffered. He prayed that he could still save her.

This wasn’t the kind of closure Rafe had been hoping for.

“Yes.” Nathan’s voice was terse, guarded.

“Have you had time to—”

“We can’t do anything until we speak with Miss Vincent in person.”

“I’ll escort her myself,” Rafe promised. “I can free up my late afternoon.”

Katie reached across and took hold of one of Janie’s hands.

Nathan immediately snapped, “Late afternoon? I was hoping it would be sooner. And why do you have to escort her? You think she’s the type to skip?”

“No.” Rafe eyed Janie and Katie. “I don’t think that at all.” Katie couldn’t run, not in her condition, and while Janie was the type, she only ran when she felt no one was listening to her.

Well, if what she’d found was a true account of a murder, she’d have plenty of people willing to listen to her. Too bad it wasn’t Katie who’d read the art book. Solid, businesslike and driven, Katie would be the kind of witness cops dreamed about.

Janie, on the other hand, was flighty, whimsical and always believed the grass was greener on the other side. She acted and spoke without much forethought and a bit rashly.

Rafe said to Nathan, “I intend to be involved in every step of this new lead. So, along with you, I’m Janie’s new best friend.”

Janie raised one eyebrow and looked askance at her sister.

Actually, Rafe had a home-court advantage over Nathan. He might not be Janie’s best friend, but he knew her fairly well. He knew things like she only enjoyed coffee if she had French-vanilla creamer to add to it. That she could sit at a table at the Corner Diner and draw for an hour without being aware of anything that was going on about her. That if the very pregnant waitress happened to serve Janie, Janie tripled the tip.

His mother, Lucille, owned the diner and had noticed these traits first. She’d passed every observation on to Rafe, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

Mom had been playing matchmaker for Rafe over a decade now. She wasn’t very good at it, though admittedly, he’d always found both sisters intriguing. Katie Rittenhouse played with tigers. Janie Vincent painted them from a safe distance. Though the scar on the left side of her face indicated that hadn’t always been true.

“Is there something I should be aware of?” Nathan asked. “She ever been in trouble?”

Rafe had twice been called out to Bridget’s Animal Adventure, the animal habitat Janie’s big sister and husband managed, and where Janie spent much of her time. Once, he’d investigated the plight of two tiny bears, declawed and abandoned. On the second instance, he’d had to make sure the big cats were all accounted for, as there’d been a sighting in town. The cougars, leopards and mountain lions at BAA were all in their enclosures. Rafe never did find out whether it had been an actual sighting or whether someone in Scorpion Ridge owned a very large black domestic cat.

“No, she’s never caused me any trouble,” Rafe said.

It was a lie.

Janie Vincent had caused him trouble, but it was not the kind that made its way into a police report. No, it was the kind that messed with a man’s mind.

During the large-black-cat incident, he’d asked Janie out. He’d not been concerned about a conflict of interest because he’d been sure by then that the case was merely mistaken identity.

They’d gone out once, but he hadn’t called her for a second date.

It had been clear from the start that they were too different—she was a free spirit; he was rules and realistic.

He’d also very clearly gotten the sense that Janie didn’t have much use for cops, and that she’d only gone on the date to appease her sister.

“As a matter of fact,” Rafe continued, “she just walked into my office. Seems she wants to help.”

He wasn’t exactly sure want was the right word. More likely felt obligated to help was a better choice.

Nathan muttered a few choice expletives, all having to do with her being there and not in Adobe Hills.

Looking across his desk at the pretty woman in question, as she so impatiently held herself in check, Rafe thought maybe he’d been an idiot not to call her again.

“Okay, it’s good she’s there,” Nathan finally said. “But please see that she gets here, and soon. I don’t want her to forget anything. Apparently Brittney’s name and her death were chronicled in that art book. I want to know what it said, every detail.”

“I want to see this art book—” Rafe said.

Janie shook her head.

Rafe started to protest, but Nathan, still on the phone, gave a long sigh before saying in a tight voice, “This whole thing’s turned into a mess, which is why I need your help. Campus police locked the book up last night after Janie’s boss handed it over to them,” Nathan said. “Patricia, along with the dean of students and the campus police, opened the safe this morning. Then, they called me.”

“And—”

But before Rafe could ask his question, Nathan said, “It’s gone.”

CHAPTER TWO

NOW RAFE UNDERSTOOD why Janie and her sister had scurried to his office—bypassing the officer on duty. With the art book missing, Janie and her boss were the only people who had read an alleged murder confession. If Derek Chaney had changed his mind about wanting to confess, then he’d be sweating bullets about now, and Janie might be where he’d aim those bullets.

Rafe couldn’t cancel his court date, but now, returning the phone calls and the visit to the correctional facility would no longer be his top priority.

Today, Rafe would be spending time with Janie, lots of time.

“Did the campus cop who put the art book in the safe discover it missing, or was it a different campus cop?” Rafe asked.

“Same cop.”

“Did he happen to admit to looking at the art book?”

“He glanced at the first couple of pages, but not the whole thing. It was late and there’d been a report of someone trying to break into parked cars on campus. He wanted to keep his eye on the monitors. Still, he filled out the report, so he knew what was in it.”

“Why didn’t they contact the police last night?”

Across from him, Janie—ever the teacher—raised her hand. Rafe bit back a wry smile.

“The confession is in Derek’s personal art book,” Janie burst out. “His art book! It’s supposed to contain thumbnail sketches and ideas for the project he was working on. I thought—hoped—he’d decided to write some sort of graphic novel. We had some doubt as to whether it was fact or fiction. Patricia Reynolds, the chair of my department, was going to notify the dean this morning and see what he wanted to do.”

“Hear that?” Rafe said into the phone.

“The dean called us just after eight this morning,” Nathan affirmed. “Our guy arrived at twenty after. He was there when they opened the safe.”

Rafe looked across the desk at Janie. “How did you find out the art book had gone missing?”

“The dean called me.”

Turning his attention back to the phone, Rafe asked, “What does Patricia Reynolds think of all this?”

Nate answered, “She’s coming to the station this afternoon to make a statement and try to recreate what she read. She admits, though, that she only scanned the first page then flipped to the last. Once she saw Brittney’s name, both she and Miss Vincent headed straight to campus police. Apparently there was quite a bit more to the art book, though, at least six pages.”

Rafe could only frown and stare across his desk at Janie. “How much did you see?”

“About six or seven pages. Only four pages had to do with Brittney.”

Was there anything after that? Anything you didn’t read?”

“Not sure, but I don’t think so.”

“What’s your gut feeling?” he asked. “Does the art book show fact or fiction?”

Her sister squeezed Janie’s hand. Janie, for her part, seemed more interested in fiddling with the edge of her shirt, tugging at some unimportant thread.

Janie might not have answered, but on the phone, Nathan didn’t hesitate. “I told you this whole thing’s become a mess. Kid might have been capable of murder, but not anymore. He died over the weekend in a meth explosion.”

Rafe almost dropped the phone. “Accidental?”

“We didn’t have reason to believe otherwise until we got the call about the art book this morning. Now there’s reason to look at the case again.”

“Does Janie know?”

“No.”

“Send me what you’ve got so far concerning Derek Chaney. I’d like a copy of last’s night police report, too. I’ll be by with Janie this afternoon,” Rafe said, ending the conversation and ignoring the raised eyebrow Janie shot him. No doubt she didn’t like him making promises for her.

Well, as a potential witness to murder, Janie was about to find out that certain obligations were not negotiable.

He studied Janie’s expression: fear battling compassion with a dash of shock at being in such a situation.

He understood that fear and shock, and was glad Janie had her big sister with her. The whole town knew Katie had pretty much raised Janie.

Small towns weren’t big on secrets.

“What don’t I know?” Janie asked.

He’d hoped she’d let that part of his conversation with Nathan slip by. But, as an artist, details were her life, whether she created them or observed them.

“Well?” she nudged.

As much as he wanted to protect her, he had to prepare her. “You don’t know how ugly this case might turn out to be.”

Janie and Katie looked at each other. He noted that Katie’s expression was starting to resemble Janie’s: it was one of fear.

He booted up the computer and retrieved the file on Derek Chaney that Nathan had already sent. Silently, he skimmed the words before turning to Janie, sliding over some blank sheets of white paper taken from the bin of his printer and giving the direction, “Recreate everything from the art book that you remember.”

“Everything? Can’t I just describe it to you?”

“I want it written and drawn. We can’t afford to miss something. And you should re-create it while it’s still fresh in your mind.”

“Can I do it at home?”

Not a chance. He wasn’t about to let her leave. She pretty much lived at a zoo. He couldn’t imagine a place with more distractions. Plus, she was constantly rushing back and forth between her own classes at the University of Arizona and her lab assistant duties at Adobe Hills Community College.

“No, I need you here. I want you to copy Chaney’s art book as closely as you can—presentation, margin, everything. If he wrote in pencil, I’ll get you one. If you need special artist supplies, give me a list.”

She looked a bit shell-shocked. “This might take a while.”

“Rafe,” Katie said, “I can see to it—”

“No, she has to be here.”

“But—”

“I’ll do it.”

Rafe wasn’t sure what had put a fire under Janie, but suddenly it was as if she had to get whatever she’d seen out of her.

He watched as she frantically arranged herself so his desk became a drawing table. She brushed aside bits of something he couldn’t see and, without asking, moved some of his belongings aside. She then placed two pieces of paper, one on top of the other, in front of her. She held the pencil as if she were afraid it would explode. The point merely broke and he handed her another one.

She made an attempt to draw something on the page. But it only took her a moment to wrinkle the paper and toss it in the trash. Two more pages quickly followed. Her hand was shaking badly—no wonder she couldn’t draw.

Katie watched, her lips pressed together. “What kind of danger is Janie in, Sheriff? Are you going to arrest the kid who wrote the art book?”

Of course that would be Katie’s first concern. She knew all about predators, though mostly the animal kind. Being a zookeeper did that. And she and Janie both understood what Rafe knew.

The human predator wasn’t all that different.

“Right now,” Rafe said, “we just have to focus on finding out what was in the art book so we can take the next steps. Derek’s not a threat to Janie.”

Janie’s fingers tightened around the pencil, but she didn’t look at the paper. Instead she stared at Rafe. “What do you mean he’s not a threat? How can he not be a threat if what I read is true?”

A case that already set his cop teeth on edge was going to get even uglier. She needed the truth. “Chaney’s dead. He died this weekend in a meth-lab explosion.”

* * *

GUILT PRICKLED UP the back of Janie’s neck even as she felt the floor tilt. She started to stand, wanting to run but unsure of where to go. Derek’s death wasn’t something she could escape from. Nor could she escape her guilt that she’d been relieved by Derek’s absence this past week.

She hadn’t realized it would be permanent.

She should have tried harder to reach the kid, to find out what made him so unhappy, so dark.

Katie opened her mouth to say something, but Janie settled back into her seat and stopped her. “I’m fine. Really fine. I know what I need to do.”

But crowded with three people, the walls of the office started to close in on her. The room was devoid of color.

It made her remember living with her aunt. They’d rented a barren apartment, with no real colors anywhere to brighten the mood of the place. Until she picked up her paintbrushes and created.

Rafe must have picked up on her assessment of his office. “We can do this somewhere else if you’d like? We have a nice conference room.”

No, the brown, black and beiges of his office were fitting colors for what she was about to do. If they walked through the police station again, she’d have to see the men in uniform. She’d have to think about how they shone their flashlights while they searched for people on the run. Rafe was dressed like one of those cops, even though he was the sheriff. His badge was bigger, too.

“Here’s fine,” she managed to say.

Katie excused herself and went to find the ladies’ restroom. Janie relaxed a little bit. She should have come by herself, should never have dragged a pregnant Katie along.

“I’m sorry you have to go through this,” Rafe said.

She’d heard that line before, from cops even.

Rafe didn’t look like any of the cops she’d met, though. His black hair was somewhat short, straight, and only mussed where he’d run his fingers through it in frustration. His piercing eyes were as black as his hair. He gazed at her as if he could see past the facade she presented the public. He was a big guy, solid. He was the kind of guy who would catch you when you fell and not grunt because you weighed more than one-thirty.

She got the feeling he really was sorry.

But many of the cops she’d dealt with had been sorry for what they’d put her through. Rafe was no different. She didn’t need his sympathy. After all, he would only be sorry until he didn’t need her anymore. Then he’d forget her as the next day, the next crime, dawned.

Typical cop, or sheriff, or person in authority, or whatever.

Janie’d learned at a young age to only trust herself and her sister, Katie. That was why Janie drew animals. They gave no false pretenses, had no ulterior motives.

“Yeah, I get it.” Janie’s goal right now was the same as it always was when it came to the local authorities. If she couldn’t avoid them, do what they wanted so they’d leave her alone.

This time, however, she needed the cops. She just wished she believed, like her sister did, that the men in uniform were the good guys, defenders of the innocent and destroyers of evil.

Because evil had definitely rocked her world.

“It was just a typical evening, a typical class,” she muttered, amazed by how quickly normalcy had changed into nightmare.

“I’m sure—” he started.

“And then it wasn’t.”

How could she explain to him that after reading a few pages of a kid’s art book, her world had turned upside down, and she was still clinging to the hope it would right itself, that what she’d read would prove to be just a graphic novel—fiction, and nothing more.

“So nothing happened in class?”

“Nothing. It was after class, in the student union, that everything happened.”

“Give me every detail. Brittney’s been missing too long.”

“You talk as if you knew her.”

“Her dad’s my insurance agent. Her family attends the same church I do. I’ve known her since she was born.”

Janie couldn’t imagine that kind of stability. Rafe had lived in Scorpion Ridge his whole life. She’d bounced from her father’s place to apartment after apartment, neighborhood after neighborhood with an alcoholic aunt. In some ways she was still bouncing. Maybe she always would be, as her goal was to paint exotic animals in their natural habitat, and this meant lots of travel. Right now, she was saving every dime and putting together her portfolio and résumé, hoping she would be chosen as a visiting artist in Johannesburg, South Africa.

She could hardly wait.

Rafe, on the other hand, was a third-generation law officer with roots so deeply grounded in Scorpion Ridge that even during his few vacations, he’d rather have been home.

Janie’s idea of home didn’t match his.

She’d figured that out during their one date.

He’d been all about Scorpion Ridge, its people, the way of life. She loved it here, too, but there were people to meet and places to go.

And pictures to paint of so many different things far away.

* * *

RAFE OPENED HIS top desk drawer and withdrew two flyers. These were just the newest. From the day his father entered the Scorpion Hills Police Station to serve and protect, missing persons had received special consideration.

But his father had never solved the one missing-persons case that was the most important to him—his own son, Rafe’s brother. Ramon could have been dead all these years...or he could be alive, waiting to be found.

Not knowing he had a family that loved him and that had never stopped searching for him.

Rafe stared at both flyers for a moment before casually placing one in front of Janie.

Three words could describe the photo: young, pretty, happy.

In comparison, Ramon’s missing-persons photo had been of a baby not even forty-eight hours old.

Compassion warred with fatigue across Janie’s face.

Brittney’s white-blond hair streamed past her shoulders. A gray, sleeveless blouse hugged curves that hadn’t had time to mature. In her right arm, she clutched a brown-and-white spotted dog, maybe just a puppy, that stared happily at the camera.

Janie leaned forward and began re-creating.

While she worked, Rafe logged onto CopLink and learned more about the late Derek Chaney.

The kid’s rap sheet was long enough to make Rafe grind his teeth. However, nothing but petty crimes were listed. And yet, judging by the names of those alongside Derek during his criminal activities, the boy was capable of finding himself in the middle of a murder.

Rafe would love to give Brittney’s parents some good news. But Derek’s involvement only pointed to bad news. For everyone.

He’d just noted the absence of sound, the lack of pencil scratching against paper, when Janie asked, “Do you think Derek died because of the art book?”

“Anything I say would be speculation, and this early in the case, I’d rather not speculate.”

She gave him an indignant glare that spoke louder than words. “But if—”

“If is a pretty powerful word,” Rafe returned.

She gripped the pencil tightly, scratching out words on the paper as if she had to get them out, away from her. Finally, she finished, but not before whispering, “I’m afraid.”

“I understand,” Rafe said. “I’ve not slept a full night since Brittney disappeared. Neither have her parents.”

She let out a deep breath and turned the last paper so he could see it. “I’ve re-created everything I remember.” She finished by tapping on the last paper. “When I got to her name and then the blood in the dirt, I stopped and headed for my division chair.”

Blood in the dirt...

He’d have to, in some form or another, repeat this information to Brittney’s parents, so they didn’t hear it on the news. Reporters were like cockroaches, they showed up where they didn’t belong and were hard to get rid of.

No matter how much Rafe wanted to handle Brittney’s case without sensationalism, the media would get involved, would push the envelope, wouldn’t care whose emotions got trampled as long as their ratings soared.

“And you’re sure you’re done?” He nodded toward the paper on his desk.

She glanced again at Brittney’s photograph on the flyer and then picked up the pages she’d created. Four in all. Slowly, carefully, she examined each one. After about fifteen minutes, only erasing a few things or adding a detail here and there, Janie scooted the paper across the desk and settled back in her chair. “I’m done.”

It took him just two minutes to scan the haunting sketches.

“This is it, all you remember?”

“There wasn’t that much more, but after I got to this, I stopped and went to see Patricia.”

It had been the right move. The moment she realized what she had in her hand, she should have turned it over to the authorities—too bad it hadn’t been the local police. Rafe could only imagine the grief Nathan was giving the campus cops over the art book’s disappearance.

Still, he wished she’d read the whole thing, memorized every picture.

“What I’m most sorry about,” Janie admitted, “was not paying attention to the numbers on the license plate. He’d included them, but I did no more than glance at the numbers because they were so tiny.”

“Could you distinguish the sex of the occupants?”

“They were tiny stick figures but with details.”

Still, they could label the occupants—Derek and Brittney were in the back, Chad was driving and Chris was the front-seat passenger.

“I know you’ve said that nothing happened in class, but I still want to hear about the last week. All the events leading up to you reading the art book. Don’t leave anything out.”

Her sister returned.

Janie glanced at Brittney’s photo again, then showed it to Katie. To Rafe, she said, “I’m assisting with two classes this semester. Both art. In the late afternoons, if I get an appointment, I work in the Writing Tutoring center. I’m pretty good with English, and it’s extra money.”

“And she’s taking classes at the University of Arizona as well as being employed at Bridget’s,” Katie threw in.

“My Monday/Wednesday class starts at six. I didn’t have a student appointment yesterday,” Janie continued. “So last night, I got there right on time.”

Rafe noticed a sudden blink of her eyes, a quickening, slightly out of sync. She’d either just told a lie or she’d left something out.

Janie regained her composure, smoothed back her unruly strawberry-blond hair, and went on, “I’d earlier set up the stations and put handouts on the back table. So, when I got there, the students were signing in and already starting to work on their major projects.”

“What was Derek working on?”

“It’s a medieval battle scene. Very detailed. He’s done two others so far. All pretty much the same focus. Lots of blood, battle, destruction.”

“You say you got there right on time. Is being on time important?”

She hesitated before answering, “Yes, for both me and the students. I take points from students who are late. If they’re more than twenty minutes late, I count them absent.”

Rafe nodded. So, Miss Janie Vincent was a free spirit who also liked rules. “Seems to me that someone as concerned about punctuality as you are would arrive to class early, just in case a student needed to talk to you, or something.”

Her lips pursed together before she said, “I used to get there early, but then...”

“Then?”

She looked him right in the eye. “Then Derek Chaney started arriving early, too. At first, it wasn’t so bad. He asked questions because he claimed he also wanted to paint murals. I gave him some books to read. He kept them a while, then returned them.”

“And this behavior caused you to stop arriving to class early?” Rafe had to give her credit. She was a master lip purser, but she didn’t squirm at all.

“Look,” Janie said, giving him a haughty glare that reminded him of his own college days and how a professor could reduce him to age twelve without blinking. Few, however, had made him want to achieve more than a pass in the class. And none had been as pretty as Janie Vincent. “I don’t want anything I say here to slant the investigation. I—”

“Slant the investigation?” Rafe sat up. “What do you mean?”

“I mean if I tell you this guy creeped me out, had anger issues, you might believe I’d already condemned him. I can answer impartially, and—”

“Janie,” Rafe said carefully, “right now, we can only label Derek as a person of interest, that’s all. His art book and drawings are probably just the work of a young adult crying for attention.”

She gave a slight shake of her head. She hadn’t given her opinion on fact versus fiction earlier, but she clearly had an opinion now.

Not fiction.

He agreed but couldn’t let on to that.

“Innocent until proven guilty,” was a double-edged sword. In Rafe’s profession, his job was to decode, visualize, analyze and interpret. Years ago, a cop’s perspective—his intuition—had counted for something. Today, because of politics, Rafe didn’t dare share what he thought. It could later be used against him in a court of law.

Plus, Jane Q. Public—especially in the case of a missing or wayward child—wanted optimism.

“Do you want to know how many people have come forward with information about the disappearance of Brittney Travis? Hundreds. And all of them turned out to be dead ends.”

“How many of the hundreds attended the same college?” Katie jumped in.

“More than you’d believe.” Rafe leaned forward. “We investigate all leads, and certainly, we hope this one will take us closer to the truth, but chances are it won’t. Chances are you have the misfortune of reading some misguided young man’s work of fantasy.”

“I know fantasy when I read it,” Janie muttered. “Derek draws fantasy and his writing was nothing like his usual drawings.”

She had him there. And, he figured, by the end of the interview she’d get him a few more times if he wasn’t careful.

“Did you tell Professor Reynolds that he creeped you out?”

“Yes.” Janie filled him in on some of the suggestions Patricia had made for dealing with a difficult student—like one who invaded personal space, who believed in staring as a way to intimidate, and who got argumentative when given constructive criticisms. She explained how ineffective those suggestions had been and finished with, “Derek left during the break Wednesday, a week ago, and didn’t return.”

“Any idea why he left?” Rafael prodded.

She grimaced. “No idea. Patricia had me clean and put away his supplies.”

“How about the people he sat by? Did any of them leave, too?”

“The students all have their own stations. Pretty much their own worlds. The station to his left is empty. The station to his right is a reentry adult. She ignores him. I’ve heard her mutter a few times about teenagers with attitudes.”

“So you weren’t the only person he creeped out?”

“Attitude came off of him in waves.”

“Since you were scared to be in the room alone with him before class started, what did you do after class?”

She hesitated but didn’t purse her lips. Too bad, he somewhat enjoyed watching her expressions of angst. And she had perfect lips. “Derek was the first one out the door. I don’t think the other students even thought twice about what he did after class ended.”

“So, no complaints or other students who lingered?”

“Not that I noticed.”

She would have noticed.

Katie fidgeted in her chair, but Rafe’s attention was on Janie as she stood up and perused his office, stopping to count the softball trophies, smiling at his Baxter the Bobcat keepsakes and studying his photos. Many were of him and his family. His dad had been the sheriff, and his grandpa before that. The photo in the center of the shelf was an enlarged baby picture, the kind taken at the hospital immediately after a birth. Rafe kept it there to remind him. Some of the other photos were of him and his men, or people about town. One showed him holding a fishing rod and a ten-pound bass. She didn’t wince at the mess on his desk—a bit messier since she’d rearranged things—although her eyes lingered on his Bible.

He liked her attention to details. She had an artist’s eye. It made his job easier. “How many times did Derek miss class?” he asked her.

“Four. He’d used the limit. I can’t tell you the dates without the roster, though.”

Rafe opened a new window on his computer, punched in a code, and again stared at Derek Chaney’s rap sheet. Derek had been arrested driving a stolen car at the end of November. Rafe quickly checked, but neither a Chris nor a Chad had been with him. The judge had given Derek another chance.

Derek should have been in jail, not college.

Maybe if the judge had to knock on the door of Lee and Sandy Travis, instead of Rafe, and tell them that their daughter’s car had been found in Adobe Hills Community College’s parking lot but not their daughter, maybe then the judge would have been less lenient.

Rafe still called the Travises every two to three days to tell them that there was no news.

Today, his call would be different. He’d have to mention that a student at Adobe Hills Community College had come forward with evidence—a wee stretch of the truth—and that he was meeting with all involved for details.

He wouldn’t say anything yet about the nineteen-year-old who had turned in an art book detailing their daughter’s murder.

Or that the nineteen-year-old was dead.

He leaned forward, intent, thinking. “The names in the art book were Chad and Chris. Throughout the semester, did Derek mention those names in any other context?”

Janie didn’t hesitate. “No, I’m pretty sure he didn’t. I haven’t taught or tutored any Chads. As for Chris... I’m the lab assistant for two classes on Monday/Wednesday. There’s a Chris in my first one, but she’s female. I have two boys named Chris in my second class, Derek’s class. But I never saw them with Derek, and Chris is a very common name.”

“And you didn’t have Brittney as a student?”

“No.”

“And you’d never seen her around campus?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Was this the first time Derek mentioned Brittney in his book?”

“He usually doesn’t draw modern people, so I’ve never had cause to ask him who he was drawing.”

Rafe looked at Brittney’s flyer again. Everyone—her parents, her high-school guidance counselor, her teachers—all said Brittney was an easy kid, well-liked and with lots of friends. She’d been a senior in high school and already taking college classes, thanks to dual enrollment.

Rafe’s phone rang. It was Justin Robbins, an undercover officer that Rafe trusted. Based on his next words and the emotion in his voice, Justin had known and liked Derek Chaney. A moment later, he told Rafe something he’d already suspected.

Derek Chaney had enemies.

Justin insisted that one of them, and not the meth explosion, had killed Derek.

And now Janie Vincent just might have the same enemies.

CHAPTER THREE

“DEREK CHANEY’S DEATH might not have been accidental. He might have been murdered.”

Katie made a sound of shock and Janie collapsed into one of his straight-back brown chairs. For a moment, Rafe again thought she might bolt from the room. Instead, her hands tightened on the chair’s arms until he expected her fingernails to leave a permanent mark.

She might look small, but her imagination was big and usually spot-on. She took a deep breath and then, somewhat shakily, asked, “How?”

Rafe only debated a moment before telling them straight out what Nathan had reported to him and what Justin believed. He wanted to see Janie’s reaction. Even more, he wanted her to understand just how serious the situation might be.

She came to the same conclusion he did.

“So, do you believe someone was trying to kill him because they knew he wanted to confess?”

“I don’t have enough facts to make a judgment,” Rafe said.

But he had already made a judgment. He agreed with Justin. Someone wanted Derek out of the picture. And even worse—

Janie, however, didn’t give him time to decide what was worse. She did it for him. “And they obviously knew about the art book because it’s missing. What if he told them he’d given it to me, before they killed him?”

Years of dealing with witnesses had taught him to be cautious, to not always share the worst-case scenario until he was sure, plus he wanted to reassure her. Aloud he said, “It could have been a drug deal gone bad, it could have been an accident. We don’t want to jump to conclusions just yet.”

She shot him a dirty look before whispering, “Poor Derek.”

Katie gasped. “What? Are you in shock or something? What do you mean ‘poor Derek’?”

Katie was right to be worried. Right now there was no poor Derek; there was, however, a poor Janie. Rafe didn’t believe for a moment that Derek’s death had been the result of a drug deal gone wrong. Not just a few days after he’d turned in a possible murder confession. And, if Derek was killed to prevent his art book from seeing the light of day, then whoever killed him wouldn’t hesitate to kill again, had indeed already killed twice.

Another thing that worried Rafe was how the murderer had tracked the art book to the school safe.

Had the killer been on campus last night, watching Janie, waiting to get her alone? Had the killer watched as Janie read the book, watched as she walked to her boss’s office and then watched what the campus police did with the book?

So many questions.

But what Rafe found most chilling was that the same someone had been able to get the art book from the safe, quickly and seemingly easily.

Janie must have been thinking the same thing because she asked, “Did they find anything at all in the safe? Are they already gathering DNA?”

Rafe grimaced. Television had given DNA abilities it didn’t really have, like the ability to be everywhere. “A safe isn’t likely to cough up much DNA. Campus police report that this particular safe is opened by a code that has to be punched in. The crime-scene specialists will fingerprint the push buttons, but, keep in mind, the guard opened the safe this morning, technically putting his prints over whoever had opened it last.”

Katie leaned forward, intent. “Did the Adobe Hills police officer say what was inside the safe this morning?”

Finally, something he could answer. “A pair of handcuffs, two wallets and plenty of drug paraphernalia.”

Which meant any of that DNA Janie’d been hoping for would be compromised.

It hadn’t escaped Rafe’s notice that the two women were asking more questions of him than he was asking of them. But before he could form a question, Katie asked, “How long will it take to get back the results?”

“The average is one hundred and twenty days.”

The two towns in his county were small, so they were a low priority after both Tucson and Phoenix for the crime lab, located in Phoenix.

A list of who knew the code to the safe could be helpful, yet he doubted an accurate list could be put together. Most likely the college had had the same safe for twenty years, and every officer, past and present, had been given the code. Add to that list the college president, the deans...

Janie started to stand, decided to sit, then stood again, before finally plopping into the chair and burying her forehead in her hands. “Oh, man! I wish I’d never opened that art book. It was the first time Patricia was trusting me to evaluate the students’ work and offer comments.”

“If it leads to Brittney’s murderer,” Rafe said, “then we’re glad you did read that art book. Her parents deserve closure.”

“And I deserve to live to thirty!”

“You will.” Rafe personally intended to keep that promise. His number one priority was finding Brittney’s killer while keeping Janie safe.

He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes until he needed to leave to testify in court, and while he didn’t want to leave the case or Janie, there was no reason for him to delay the court date. In an hour, the art book would still be missing; Derek would still be dead.

And, for right now, Janie was about as safe as one could be at the Scorpion Ridge police station.

But he did need to keep her busy. He didn’t want her to bolt or break down. “I’m going to turn you over to my chief of police,” Rafe said. “I’m going to have you look at some photos. See if you recognize any of Derek’s friends.”

“He didn’t have friends,” she reminded him. “And I’m supposed to be at the university. I have classes today.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to miss them today. And you’ll be surprised what you’ll remember, the details you’ll recall, people and places.”

“I should never have opened his art book,” Janie muttered again.

“But you did,” Rafe said, “So now we’ll deal with it.” He smiled, trying to communicate that she wasn’t alone, that he’d do his job, take care of her.

Then she gave him a glare that almost stopped him in his tracks. He was used to people being grateful, looking up to him, believing him, wanting to be taken care of, trusting him. Janie Vincent didn’t trust him.

Before he was quite ready, she stood, practically tapping her foot in impatience. “Fine. Let’s do it.”

“You want me to stay, Janie?” Katie asked.

“No, you go on back to work. I’ll find—”

“I’ll make sure she gets home,” Rafe asserted.

Janie’s eyes narrowed. For some reason, Little Miss Vincent didn’t appreciate his offer.

Rafe gathered up what he needed for court, and then followed Janie and Katie out his office door. Katie hurried toward the exit, checking her watch, too. Before Rafe could steer Janie toward the back room, she caught the attention of one of his auxiliary officers. The cop gave her an appreciative once-over before Rafe sent him packing. Then he gently guided Janie to the back room and set her up in front of a computer before summoning his chief of police, Jeff Summerside.

It took her a moment to realize what he planned and then her only question was, “I’m surprised, as small as Scorpion Ridge is, that you’re not still using mug-shot books?”

“I’m not even sure they still make Polaroid film,” he told her wryly. “As a border community, CopLink is a necessity. It saves time and manpower.”

He typed in some keywords and soon Janie was perusing faces. It was all Rafe could do to walk from the room, away from her and what she was doing, and hurry to court. He wanted to be sitting next to her, noting her reaction, and seeing if any of the faces meant something not only to her but also to him.

But he trusted his chief of police.

He wasn’t sure he trusted the officer who’d given her the once-over. At least, not when it came to Janie.

And that made no sense at all.

* * *

JANIE TOOK A deep breath and looked at yet another young, angry face. Chief Summerside had typed in various bits of information, bringing up the type of people who might be associated with Derek Chaney.

Just as Janie was wondering what type of keywords Summerside had used in his search—scary, mean, glowerer must surely have been among them—the officer left to take a private call. Leaving Janie to sit on a hard chair and feel alone. Vulnerable. It wasn’t Janie’s first time at a police station. It was, however, the first time she’d entered the doors without a police escort. And this time her sister, Katie, had been escorting her in instead of out.

Rafe’s words, I’ll make sure she gets home, had taken Janie back to a low point in her life. Janie had just turned thirteen, and her big sister Katie, now of legal age, had left Aunt Betsy’s.

Alone with her alcoholic aunt, Janie had been terrified, and for a solid year the system couldn’t be convinced that an eighteen-year-old guardian—one who had a job, was in college and with no police record—was better than a fifty-year-old aunt who couldn’t hold a job, keep an apartment, and had lost her driver’s license thanks to her best friend vodka.

“I’ll make sure she gets home.”

Janie closed her eyes. He couldn’t have picked a worse declaration. During the year Katie had fought the system, Janie had run away eight times.

Rafe wasn’t the first cop to see Janie safely home.

Only in those days, there’d been nothing safe about the home she’d been escorted back to. He also wasn’t the first cop to sympathize with her.

Empty words. It was easy to say “I’m sorry.” Janie knew from experience that a cop could only do so much, and that when the next call came in, she was just a report to be filed.

And forgotten.

Sighing, she refocused on the screen. After what felt like days, another officer, Candy Riorden, drove her home to her cottage behind the house where her sister and brother-in-law lived.

Since it was only a ten-minute drive, there’d been little conversation aside from the cackle of the radio and a few directions from Janie. Just before Janie closed the police cruiser’s back door, Officer Riorden said, “Sheriff Salazar says he’ll pick you up later and escort you to Adobe Hills.”

It was an order, not a suggestion.

Given by a cop who’d said he’d make sure she got home and then had turned her over to someone else.

Typical.

Yet today, as she took her second shower in under twelve hours, she wondered if she just might have to rethink her own policy. The one she had about not trusting cops. Years ago, when she’d run away, it had always been a cop who had escorted her back to a place she didn’t want to go, a place where she didn’t feel safe, instead of to her sister.

But in this instance, Katie wouldn’t be much help. Janie might actually be putting her in danger. For a protector, Sheriff Salazar might be the logical, and only, choice. And, he did look like someone who could keep her safe. He was tall, over six feet, and had the square jaw that boasted a five-o’clock shadow before noon. Were she the type of artist to paint people, she’d choose him. She’d make sure to emphasize his strong hands, knowing smile and piercing black eyes.

Janie couldn’t deny he was easy to look at, if one went for the dark, brooding type.

Appearances weren’t everything, though.

Twenty minutes later, she headed through the front gate of BAA, waved at the cashier, and immediately headed for the building that housed her sister and brother-in-law’s office.

It was empty; both were in the field.

Good. Janie didn’t think she could go over the story again. But because she knew her sister would expect it, Janie took out her cell phone and texted, Where U?

A moment later, Katie responded, Feeding Aquila. U? Aquila was the trained black panther that had brought the Vincent sisters to Scorpion Ridge, Arizona.

Going 2 c George, Janie replied.

Walking next to the employee lounge, Janie suddenly felt a knot forming in the back of her neck. Anxiety boiled through her, ready to send her into a full-blown panic attack.

She wasn’t about to let that happen; it had been more than a year. And she’d kept it together last night, as well as this morning and afternoon at the police station. The best thing to do was take her mind off the present situation. When she was younger, she’d always been able to push aside her troubles. All it took was pen and paper.

Today, it would take acrylics and cinder block.

A few minutes later she stood by the Ursus Americanus house. George, the bear that belonged to her father, was sleeping under a tree in the shade. Otherwise, he might have limped over and greeted her. He’d always been an extremely friendly bear, and her favorite.

Crisco, the bear they’d helped nurse back to health more than a year ago, was swimming in a tiny pool designed to resemble a natural pond.

George used to weigh six hundred pounds. Now, he was an old man and starting to shrink. He had arthritis. Crisco was still a youngster, about two years old, and not so friendly.

She didn’t blame him. Being mistreated, declawed and underfed was hard to overcome.

At least she’d not been declawed.

The mural for the bear habitat would be the first Janie would complete alone. Adam Snapp, who’d been painting murals around BAA for the last four years, was busy doing other projects outside the zoo. Projects that made him money. He was at BAA today, though, finishing up a few odds and ends, and now showing up just in time to help her.

She’d wanted to be alone, lick her wounds, and try to cleanse her mind.

Within minutes, Adam had already asked her a dozen times if she was all right. Maybe the fact that she’d been staring at the crowds of people—all going somewhere, smiling, acting normal—instead of getting ready to draw the bears gave him a clue something was amiss.

He’d assumed her mood had to do with the mural she was about to start.

He’d never been more wrong.

“You’ll do fine,” he said, standing back, arms crossed and waiting for her to do something, anything. “You have a whole month to finish.”

Until yesterday, finishing this mural and adding it to her portfolio was the most important item on her to-do list. Today, taking the lead on a zoo mural that tens of thousands would see almost seemed frivolous. But Adam couldn’t understand her lack of enthusiasm because she hadn’t told him about last night, or this morning, or any of what had taken over her life. What she couldn’t stop thinking about.

He was her brother-in-law’s best friend, and for a short while, she’d thought about making him a bit more. But there’d been no chemistry beyond what they had in common.

They were artists.

Adam was making a name for himself, even as far as California and New Mexico. And now she was aiming to secure a spot as an artist in residence in South Africa.

Just last Friday she’d mailed in the last of her application. For the next month, she’d need to inform the judging panel about her ongoing projects, both in the community and at school. She felt confident about her application.

This was what she wanted to do: paint real animals in their natural habitat. She’d wanted it since the day Tyre, the black panther, had attacked her, since hearing someone say, “You can take the cat out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the cat.”

“Show me your ideas,” Adam ordered.

Today must be her day for getting ordered around. First from Katie, who’d dictated, “We are going to see Sheriff Salazar.” Then from Salazar: “I will pick you up at two and escort you to Adobe Hills.” And now from Adam. “Show me...”

Didn’t anyone say please anymore?

Nevertheless, because he was a reference and a friend, she dutifully complied. That had been her assignment from him: come up with thumbnail sketches for the mural. She opened her art book and studied her drawings—done with colored pencils—that were her final choices for the design.

“Crisco’s story still makes people cry. It seemed a logical choice.” She turned the tablet so he could see that she’d created a time line, starting with Crisco being found with his head caught between the slats of fence, segueing to his rehabilitation and ending with now. Crisco, named because of how they’d managed to free him, now lived in luxury with a pool, plenty of food and a town full of fans who’d read his story in the paper.

“Maybe,” Adam said slowly, “you should add something, such as a pelt of real fur. Something for the kiddos to touch.”

Janie shrugged. Not what she’d pictured. For the last couple of years, Janie had called BAA home. The place was named after her brother-in-law’s little sister, who’d died years ago from complications of Down Syndrome. The real Bridget had loved animals, but Luke had taken the appreciation and healing she’d gleaned from animals to another level. BAA had struggled at first, but Luke had made it into a success story. Next month, BAA would start taking the first Monday of every month’s proceeds and donate them to the Down Syndrome research group.

Luke had made goals and kept them.

It was something Janie was trying to learn to do, with her art. She’d always been dedicated to the world her paints created and the projects she committed to. She had to get the bear mural finished by the end of March, plus help Adam finish the orangutan wall. It was his pride and joy, as he’d managed to add 3-D moveable parts to the vague likeness of Ollie, the actual orangutan.

In his heart of hearts, Adam was part caricaturist, part toy maker.

Janie looked at her thumbnails again. She—as always—had been going for realism with just a hint of Norman Rockwell plus a shot of Van Gogh on the side. “Everyone expects cute and fluffy,” she argued. “Anyone can draw it.”

“We’re a kids’ zoo. It’s what they don’t expect but need to know that makes the mural. If you don’t want something they can touch, add something interesting like a Seek and Find amidst your time line.”

Janie was aghast. “So I’d have a list of words written on the wall, and the children have to find the hidden pictures?”

He brightened. “Absolutely, give the kiddos something to do.”

Yup, there was no changing him from his trademark ventures. He did “engaged” murals. Janie hated to think of what he might do if BAA had any skunks.

She changed the subject. “Have you ever heard of Derek Chaney?”

Adam didn’t even blink. “No, why?”

“How about Brittney Travis? Do you know her?”

Adam stepped back, no longer looking at the thumbnails. “Yes, I’ve met Brittney in town. Why? What brings her up? She’s been missing more than two months, since Christmas.”

“Would Brittney ever run away, do you think?”

“No one who knows Brittney believes she ran away,” Adam said. “She’s a lot younger than me, so I only met her because she took tae kwon do at my father’s studio.”

Janie had gone to the studio once with Adam. Even though he’d started her in a beginners’ class, one he’d been teaching, she’d stumbled with the most basic of moves. Luckily, she’d been able to laugh at herself.

“That doesn’t mean she would never run away.”

“No, it doesn’t, but she’s just not that kind of girl. She was nice to my brother.”

Janie couldn’t come up with the words to respond. Having siblings with special needs was what had cemented Adam and Luke’s friendship all those years ago. Luke had had Bridget; Adam had his twin, whom he fiercely protected.

Being nice to his brother was akin to sainthood, at least to Adam. Right now, Aaron lived with Adam’s parents and worked at their tae kwon do studio. He was a helpful ten-year-old trapped in a twentysomething body and was always cheerful.

“What have you heard? Why are you asking this now? Has there been news about Brittney?” Adam asked.

“Nothing I can share,” Janie said.

Adam raised one eyebrow. His lips went into a thin line of disappointment. “Look—” he started to say.

And just like that, the anxiety enveloped her again. She couldn’t breathe, and the only thing she could do was seek escape. She managed to gasp, “I have to get out of here. I’ll talk to you later.”

She took off, running, ignoring the echoing shouts of Adam’s concern.

Nine years. It had been nine years since the walls had closed in on her, keeping her awake nights and searching for places to hide during the day.

Her sister had never shaken the anxiety. Even today with a husband and a baby on the way, Katie sometimes paced the living room unable to sleep or find peace.

Not Janie.

The minute she’d escaped their aunt to go live with Katie, she’d pushed the fear to some corner of her mind and fenced it in.

But today, it returned.

Her safe world had crumbled.

CHAPTER FOUR

TWO HOURS LATER, an hour later than he’d wanted it to be, Rafe pulled into a circular driveway just a mile down from BAA.

Belonging to Ruth Moore, who also owned the land BAA resided on, the minimansion was today a place where fund-raisers were held and where Ruth, along with Katie and her husband, Luke, lived.

Ruth was currently on her honeymoon. She and her new husband, Jasper, were overseas exploring the place where Jasper had lived before Hitler and the war made him an orphan.

Rafe exited the Jeep and walked around to the cottage out back where Janie lived. He had to knock twice before Janie opened the door. She’d changed into jeans and a button-down sky-blue shirt with ruffles.

“Do I really have to do this?” she questioned.

“Yes.”

She followed, and soon she sat beside him in his Jeep, no longer looking frightened. Fear had been replaced by exhaustion. They left the property and hit the main road.

“You did a good job with the CopLink photos today. I’ve given the names of the three students you picked out to the Adobe Hills police. Chief Summerside’s gonna go pick up the fourth, our local boy,” Rafe shared.

“I wish I could have done more. And I’m still not sure if the people I identified are just people I’ve seen at school or here at the zoo. Except for Tommy. You know him?”

Yes, Rafe knew Thomas Skinley. He’d been in and out of trouble for the last five years.

“How often does he come to the zoo, and are you sure you never saw him at school?” Rafe asked, trying not to show how disturbed he was by the name.

“No, not at school. He’s come to the zoo more than a few times with his sister. As I told your officer, Amanda Skinley is in my Monday/Wednesday class, Derek’s class.”

The dots were beginning to connect. Amanda was Tommy’s sister. Rafe could feel the case turning, gaining ground, starting to move forward. If he didn’t lose focus, if he asked the right questions, maybe they’d find Brittney.

“Was Amanda in class last night?”

“Yes, she never misses. She’s taking advantage of a dual-enrollment program that allows high-school seniors to take college courses for credit.”

Amanda Skinley was a bright girl, born deaf, who rarely made waves and basically avoided the criminal path her brother had taken. Still, she might know something.

“In class last night, did anyone ask about Derek? Did Amanda ask about him?”

“Amanda didn’t say anything, but she rarely contributes much. She depends on her interpreters. She did seem out of sorts yesterday, though.”

“Go on.”

“Truthfully, until after class, when I opened his art book, there wasn’t much to tell. We had our break, right at seven-thirty. Class dismissed at nine. I went to the student union to go over their art books and comment on their progress.”

“Something you did after every class?” he asked.

“No, Patricia and I usually do it together in her office. Last night was the first time I went through the books by myself.”

“And up to Wednesday night, Derek was turning in only what you expected.”

“Yes. I don’t know why I kept reading. His words made me feel like I wasn’t safe, like I needed to hide, like someone was watching me.”

Rafe knew what it was that had prompted her to continue: morbid curiosity. It was the same pull that urged civilians to slow down when they drove by an accident. Derek’s life had been a train wreck, and right now, unless Rafe missed his guess, Janie was more or less one more victim tied to the track.

They made it five miles before Rafe got a call from Nathan canceling their meeting and rescheduling it for tomorrow. Seemed Nathan was dealing with a multivehicle collision on Interstate Ten where a tractor-trailer had spilled enough cocaine to imitate a snowstorm.

After hanging up, Rafe hit the steering wheel. Not very professional, but a heck of a lot tamer than what he really wanted to do. “I need something concrete to tell Brittney’s parents,” he muttered as he pulled into a convenience-store parking lot and turned the car around.

Janie just stared out the window. Rafe couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but after Nathan’s cancellation, she had visibly relaxed. “The fact that we’re not meeting Nathan today,” Rafe reminded her, “doesn’t mean that Derek or his art book is going away. It’s a delay, not a cancellation.”

“I’m well aware of that.” Janie gave him a haughty look. “It’s just that everything’s happening so fast. I need some time to think.”

Some of his annoyance lessened. He knew he was being unreasonable. Missing persons cases did that to him. And, truly, Rafe understood what she was feeling. It was like a horrible roller-coaster ride, one you’d not meant to get on and one that had no end in sight. The police world was like that. You had to solve a case in twenty-four hours or the odds of solving it decreased by more than half.

A good officer held on to that roller-coaster car and rode it until the tracks collapsed and the park closed.

A great officer knew that at some point you had to exit the roller coaster, step back, watch what others were doing on the ride and then, in just a matter of moments, get back on.

Janie seemed more like the Ferris-wheel kind of girl. The roller coaster? Not so much. She’d probably want to paint the cars.

And look beautiful doing it.

He shook his head, trying to clear the wayward thoughts that were taking his mind off the case. He couldn’t afford the distraction. And she was distracting. From the elegant way she held her chin, so stubborn, to the way she crossed her long legs. Again he wondered why he’d not called her for a second date. A date didn’t mean committing to eternity. Maybe they’d have found common ground and built, if not a relationship, then a friendship.

“Tell me,” Rafe said, bringing himself back to the case, “did Derek share his drawings or writing in class? Is it possible that he showed it to another student?”

She took a moment; her face scrunched in concentration.

“No, I don’t think he showed it to anyone. Amanda’s the only one who ever showed any interest in his drawings. I doubt any of the other students even glimpsed the one he turned in last Wednesday,” Janie said. “It was a new art book. It only had those six pages altogether.”

“What do you mean, it was new?”

“All semester he’s been handing in an art book. It was full of ideas, projects and such. This time he gave me a brand-new one. I thought maybe he’d misplaced the one he’d been working on previously...” Her words tapered off as Rafe pulled off the road and swung the vehicle around again. This time he didn’t wait for a spot on the side of the road, he just did a U-turn, scaring up dirt and revving the engine.

“Hey!” She slid slightly toward him, her left hand reaching out to gain balance. It brushed against his knee. Rafe barely noticed—he knew when a lead was handed to him.

It took only a moment to get Derek Chaney’s parents’ address from the system.

“We’re heading to Adobe Hills,” he told Janie. “You’d recognize the previous art book. Maybe he added something to it, something we need to see! If we can get Derek’s parents’ permission, maybe we’ll have some new information within the hour.”

He was of two minds about taking Janie along. He hated involving a civilian. On the other hand, she knew what the art book looked like and could save him a lot of time.

Next, Rafe phoned Nathan to get his go-ahead. After all, they’d be on the other man’s turf. No luck there; Williamson’s number went right to voice mail. The deputy who answered the main number took a message and promised Nathan would return the call. Rafe neglected to tell the deputy exactly what was going on or why the call was necessary. The second call he made was to Derek’s parents. More luck there. They were eager to talk to anyone who might shed light on why their son had died. After hanging up, Rafe quickly called his office and got someone to do a background check on the Chaneys.

Janie seemed confused. “Don’t we need a search warrant to go through Derek’s stuff?”

“Not if the person in control of the property gives us permission to search.”

She checked her watch. “It’s two o’clock. I usually don’t help on Thursday night, but an instructor asked if I’d come in. You should take me back to BAA so I can get my own car.”

After returning Janie to where she lived and seeing her safely to her vehicle, Rafe spent the whole drive, nearly an hour, checking to make sure she was still behind him, and getting the dirt on Derek’s parents—there was none, and none on Derek’s much older brother, either.

In the early afternoon, there wasn’t much traffic on Interstate Ten. There was a slight slowdown because of Nathan’s accident that put them in one lane for a while. Nathan didn’t even notice them drive by. He was pacing while looking at a clipboard, talking on the phone and giving orders to a patrol officer.

Multitasking, getting things done. Nathan was doing it. Rafe, too. It was an exhilarating feeling, chasing down a lead, especially one on a case that was personal. It was also bittersweet. His grandfather had been a cop. His father hadn’t wanted to become one but had, all because of a missing child.

Rafe’s brother.

Rafe had long ago given up the hunt for Ramon. It had been thirty-six years, after all, and Rafe knew how to shove the memories aside, not that there were many. And today, the memories would only distract him from what he had to do.

The Chaneys’ restored two-story home was just a mile into Adobe Hills and in an established neighborhood. A basketball hoop stood guard over the driveway, and a swing sat on the porch.

It looked a lot like the house he’d grown up in.

As soon as Janie pulled up behind him, parked and joined him, Rafe headed toward the porch and rang the bell. It was Mrs. Chaney who answered. Her hair was wild, as though it hadn’t been combed in a week. Her yellow-and-red-striped T-shirt was on inside out and didn’t go with her orange pants. Her green eyes were watery and bloodshot. She kept dabbing at them with a Kleenex. Judging by the lines on her face, she was about the same age as Rafe’s mother.

Rafe wondered what she’d looked like last week—before her youngest son’s death.

“Thanks for agreeing to see me,” Rafe said. “This is Janie Vincent, she was—”

“Derek’s teacher.” She held out a trembling hand, and Rafe was glad he’d followed his instincts to bring her.

“He talked a lot about you. I’m Judy Chaney.”

“Derek was a talented artist,” Janie murmured, shaking Judy’s hand.

Mrs. Chaney held the door open so they could walk into the living room. “We’re so glad you called, Sheriff. We’re desperate to know what’s going on and how we can help. This shouldn’t have happened.”

She didn’t invite them to sit but seemed content to let them peruse their surroundings. The couch looked comfortable, inviting and well-used. A television dominated the room. There were two bookcases cluttered with books, knickknacks and photos. Above the fireplace were three portraits. The middle showed a family: mom, dad, two boys.

Derek’s father was another tall blond.

Flanking the family portrait were high-school graduation photos. The one on the left showed a craggy blond-haired young man with a crooked grin and kind eyes. The one on the left showed Derek, black-haired, no grin and guarded eyes. On the fireplace mantel was a basket full of sympathy cards.

“We received twenty-two in the mail today.” Mr. Chaney entered the room from the kitchen. “Twenty-two.” His voice caught, and he faltered for a moment. “My wife’s only been able to open six.”

Rafe cleared his throat. Five years ago, when his father had died, they’d been inundated with cards. Rafe’s mother cried over every one.

“They’re from my friends at work,” Mrs. Chaney said.

“Mine, too,” Mr. Chaney added.

Mrs. Chaney added, “Some are also from family.”

Rafe waited. He wasn’t getting the we-received-so-many-cards report because the family felt the need to talk. Both parents were looking at the card basket as if it were an enemy.

“We didn’t get a single card or phone call from any of Derek’s friends,” Mr. Chaney said. “Not one. Or even from the parent of a friend. My wife noticed that first.”

“Of course, it’s early. Kids tend to take a little prodding. They assume they have all the time...”

Her words faded, and Rafe quickly inserted, “It’s early yet.”

“We received a few from our neighbors, and even from Derek’s past teachers,” Mr. Chaney said, “but, they were so generic—‘Sorry for your loss. Please know you’re in our prayers.’ Nothing personal.”

Rafe almost said that it had only been a couple of days and that they’d be receiving cards for months yet. Instead, he asked, “Why does this surprise you?”

“Used to be, he was surrounded by friends, kids who laughed, kids who would talk to us. I’m so mad at myself. We could sense something was going on.”

“How well do you know the friends he has now?” Rafe continued examining the portraits.

“For the last two years, not well at all.” The Chaneys looked at each other. Two people, one emotion: regret.

Mr. Chaney went first. “We mentioned this to the officer who came to notify us about finding Der—” His voice cracked. “About finding Derek’s body.”

Mrs. Chaney joined in. “We didn’t like any of Derek’s current friends. He’s been in and out of trouble lately, serious trouble, with them. They weren’t the kind to knock on the door and be respectful. They honked and Derek ran. The few times one of his friends came in, well, let’s just say his new friends didn’t bother to curb their language, hide their cigarettes, or even clean up after themselves.”

Rafe definitely wanted to show them photos of the four kids Janie had picked out. Tommy especially.

“We talked to him, gave him a curfew,” Mr. Chaney said. “We did what we could. We monitored his computer, found nothing. Whenever we could get our hands on his phone, we went through his text messages. There weren’t many. Two years ago, he kept everything. The last three months, it was obvious that he erased his messages as soon as he read them.”

Savvy kid, Rafe thought.

“But he’s almost nineteen, legal age. Outside of kicking him out, what could we do?” Mrs. Chaney sounded more like she was talking to herself than to them.

“Jimmy, our oldest boy,” Mr. Chaney said, taking over, “was worried too. He came home from his job in California at least once a month so we could do something as a family over the weekend. We’d hoped things were changing. Last year, for a while, it was like we had the old Derek back. Then, at the beginning of fall semester, it all went wrong again. He started staying out all night, missing school, taking money without permission.”

The Chaneys were doing what most parents did in this type of situation—not so much trying to convince Rafe that they were caring parents, but trying to assure themselves.

“Derek had so much potential,” Janie said. “His art was riveting, daring. I could see the artist he could be. If there’d only been more time.”

Mrs. Chaney nodded, her eyes filling with tears.

“Would Jimmy possibly know who Derek was hanging around with?” Rafe pressed.

“We asked him. He gave us two or three names, but they were kids Derek had hung around with before leaving high school.” Mrs. Chaney shot her husband a guarded look. Rafe waited.

“Jimmy and Derek didn’t spend much time together,” Mrs. Chaney admitted, “unless we were doing family things.”

“Why is that?” Rafe asked.

“There’s a ten-year difference in their ages,” Mr. Chaney said. “And we adopted Derek. He’s my brother’s son. By the time the boys got comfortable with each other, Jimmy was heading off to college.”

“Jimmy’s going to be a doctor,” Judy added. “He has little tolerance for anyone he suspects of dabbling in drugs.”

Rafe wanted to jump on that comment, but the kid had just died in a meth explosion. He could read about Derek and drugs in Nathan’s report without putting the Chaneys through more grief.

“What were the circumstances of the adoption?”

“Derek’s mom is in prison. She’s not in the picture and she won’t be getting out anytime soon. My brother passed away when Derek was six.”

Rafe noticed Janie walking over to the picture, staring at Derek, and looking incredibly sad. She’d been taken in by relatives, too, Rafe remembered.

It hadn’t gone well, either.

“So none of Derek’s issues can be directly related to his birth parents?” Rafe asked. “Maybe something to do with his mother?”

“No, we’ve had him since he was eight. For the two years after his dad’s death, he was pretty much neglected by his mother. Besides, if any of his mother’s friends came looking for him, they wouldn’t know to search for him under our last name. Once we got his anger issues under control, he fit right in. We were thrilled. We’d wanted five of our own.”

The Chaneys were good people. They were doing what innocent people did, sharing everything, trying to be helpful, wanting to understand how things could go so wrong.

“He didn’t realize how good he had it,” Janie whispered.

Rafe thought the same about many of the juvenile delinquent cases he handled.

Getting back on task, though, he said, “There’s a chance that Derek had information about another case we’re working on. On the phone, you said you’d let us go through Derek’s room?”

“Of course,” Mrs. Chaney said. “We will do all we can to help the police so some other kid doesn’t become a victim like Derek.”

Mr. Chaney ushered them up the stairs and opened the door into a room almost the size of the living room. “My wife can’t bear to see all this,” he said. “It’s exactly the way Derek left it.”

A mess, typical teenager. The bed was unmade, the floor littered with clothes and books and video games. A flat-screen television was against one wall. Shelves of books were on two others. A whole row was designated for textbooks. Rafe noticed math, sociology and lots of English. Well, that made sense. According to Janie, Derek also had a gift for writing. Posters, of bands Rafe didn’t recognize, graced the wall.

“He used to be a reader,” Mr. Chaney said. “Up until about eighth grade.”

“What happened?” Janie asked softly.

“First sports, then girls,” Mr. Chaney said. “They wouldn’t leave him alone. Once he got to high school, it was a strange herd of friends.”

There were no photographs in the room, but lots and lots of drawings. Derek seemed to be enthralled by dark castles, fire-breathing dragons and fierce warriors.

“I’d better go check on my wife,” Mr. Chaney said.

Janie walked into the room, not a bit put off by the mess. She rubbed her shoulders as if cold, but it wasn’t a chill in the air that made her uncomfortable. It was more likely a chill in her heart. He felt it, too.

“I should have tried harder with that boy,” she murmured.

“You did make an effort,” Rafe reminded her.

“Not enough of one. Sometimes a teacher is the only one who can make a difference, see beneath the grime.”

Rafe wondered if a teacher had been there for her, back in her muddled childhood. She’d made it clear that cops hadn’t been. Somehow knowing that made him want to change her mind. Not only about cops in general, but about him specifically.

But they were losing precious time, so he asked, “Do you see the art book?”

“Not yet.” Janie walked to the middle of the room, sidestepping a pair of jeans and a skateboard. She turned in a circle, first with her eyes open and then with them closed. After a moment, she headed for a desk.

“The desk is too neat,” she explained. “Nothing else in this room is neat.” She briefly touched the computer’s mouse and lifted the pad. Then, she opened the only drawer.

Nothing.

Watching her, Rafe was again struck by her attention to detail. She was doing what he usually did, had been trained to do, and she was doing it by instinct.

Janie next checked under the bed. He’d already done that and found nothing unusual.

But she pulled out one tennis shoe. “This isn’t his.”

Rafe looked at it: dull brown and somewhat new. “How can you be sure?”

“Derek would never wear this color.”

“What color is it, exactly?”

Janie gaped at him in disbelief. “It’s green.”

Rafe wasn’t one for sharing what he didn’t consider a disability. But, in this case, it might make a difference in what she could see and what he couldn’t.

“I’m color-blind, which means I have poor discrimination with certain colors. Green being one of them.”

Her expression went from disbelief to pity. Well, an artist would feel sorry for someone who couldn’t appreciate every color’s beauty.

“That must make your job harder.”

“There was some concern that I wouldn’t pass the vision test. I did, and luckily, my condition is considered mild. The fact that I work for a small rural county makes a difference. I also wear corrective lenses.”

“Derek wore black, gray and white. It’s almost as if he was making a statement about his personality. Green is the color of safety.”

Rafe dumped the shoe in a baggie he pulled from his pocket and ran out the door to ask the Chaneys what size shoe Derek had worn—Mrs. Chaney said her son was an eleven.

Rafe reentered the room as Janie was bending to check an unzipped backpack that was stuffed to the side, books and papers spilling out. Janie riffled through it for a moment, then she pulled an art book from a side pocket and flipped it open. Derek’s inked name was on the cover. She thumbed through the pages.

He touched her arm and angled her so he could read over her shoulder.

“This is his, this is the right one. He’s done most of these thumbnails or scrapped them. No writing yet, but maybe there’s something at the end, some reason he didn’t want to turn this one in to me.”

He noticed how carefully Janie held the book—for a witness, she was getting too involved.

It only took her a moment to make it to the final pages, but it felt much longer to Rafe. Then her face turned white. He took a step toward her. She didn’t notice; she was focused on the art book, not on him.

Derek’s final drawing told Rafe exactly how much danger Janie was in.

Two dark trees, lots of dirt, and an open grave with a body in it. Derek had penned a few words underneath:

I have to tell somebody. I can’t live with this. But if I confess, whomever I tell will be in as much danger as me.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE OLD ART BOOK went into another baggie, which, to Janie, looked like an oversize sandwich Ziploc.

“I’m toast,” she whispered.

“No, there’s a chance they haven’t a clue Derek’s even—”

“They! I’ve got to worry about a they? As in, more than one?” This was going from bad to worse. She’d been thinking of who might be responsible. What kind of person would have access to the school’s safe? But it might be a who all was responsible, a what kind of people.

“You don’t know that for sure. All this could just be foolish fabrication.”

“Oh, right,” Janie said snidely. Since this morning, he’d been a man on a mission. No way could he shift his beliefs now. “Even if the art book hadn’t been taken from the school’s safe, I’d have a hard time believing you,” she finished.

Rafe’s hand went to his chin and he rubbed his thumb on stubble she’d not noticed before. It was dark, the same color as the circles under his eyes.

“So, what are we going to do?” she insisted. “Last night I was nervous about what I read. Today I’m nervous about who knows what I read. This is getting crazy.”

He didn’t disagree, and he kept rubbing for a moment. Finally, he said, “Everything points to the college. It’s where Brittney was last seen. It’s where Derek turned in the art book and where the art book went missing. We need to find a friend of Derek’s who’s willing to talk. And we also need to find out whose shoe is under his bed, and why it’s there.”

He finally stopped rubbing his chin and lifted the mattress, looking at the mess underneath: old food, socks, a girlie magazine.

Scattered there, too, were a few pieces of Lego bricks—red, blue and yellow. Finally some real color. Nearby was a well-worn baseball glove. Derek Chaney had been a boy, just like the ones who came to BAA and put their fingers in their mouths and made faces at Candy the spider monkey, and who fed pellets to the giraffes while being grossed out by the giraffes’ long tongues, and who dreamed about jumping into the pool with Aquila the black panther.

Just like the dark-haired man next to her had at one time been a boy, probably with his head in some Encyclopedia Jones book or insisting on playing I Spy over and over.

She bent down, wanting to move the Legos away from the girlie magazine. As if she could save Derek now.

“Don’t touch anything,” Rafe ordered.

She rolled her eyes. They’d been in the bedroom for a good fifteen minutes. Her prints were everywhere, and these Lego bricks weren’t the calling card for something sinister.

But Rafe was the cop and she the uncomfortable civilian.

When they finished in Derek’s bedroom, he led the way back to the living room and the bowl of sympathy cards. Rafe asked for the senders’ addresses, and Judy Chaney dug out her book to give him those she knew. Mr. Chaney went looking for envelopes for those she didn’t.

Every person who’d sent a card was meticulously recorded in Rafe’s little black book. No doubt Officer Candy Riorden would be assigned to find phone numbers and addresses to go with each name. Then, there’d be a visit.

Janie didn’t think she’d enjoy Rafe’s job.

Way too dark.

No wonder he saw the world in shades of brown.

And, boy, was he good at giving orders. She spent ten minutes sitting on the sofa with Derek’s high-school graduation photo staring down at her and listening to Rafe tell the Chaneys what to do. As soon as he and Janie left, they’d be going through Derek’s clothes searching for pieces that might not be his.

Clothes weren’t the only item. Rafe also asked them to check for out-of-place combs, wallets, books, videos, etc., and to widen the search to Jimmy’s old room, the backyard shed, the garage.

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