With a woman’s life in jeopardy and a body found in the Colorado wilderness, an agent’s homecoming is anything but smooth…

When Kayla Larimer’s investigation into a US senator’s missing daughter leads her to a Colorado cult, a murdered FBI special agent and the Ranger Brigade’s Dylan Holt, the fiercely independent private investigator is determined to ditch the sexy Black Canyon lieutenant and catch the criminals on her own. Dylan admires Kayla’s stubborn dedication—even as his protective instincts kick into overdrive. But then a kidnapping attempt on Kayla coincides with the disappearance of the senator who hired her, and these two opposites must fight a faceless enemy—and their growing attraction—to bring a killer to justice.

The Ranger Brigade: Family Secrets

“You’re a great guy, but I’d prefer to keep things between us professional,” Kayla said.

“So no more kisses?”

“No more.” She had to hold back a sigh. The kiss really had been great, but kissing Dylan again would only lead to more kissing and hugging and caressing and… She shoved the thoughts away and sat up straighter. They were almost to the turnoff for her house.

He switched on his blinker to make the left turn. Behind them, headlights glowed in the distance. Kayla squinted and shielded her eyes from the glare in the side mirror. What was the guy behind them doing with his brights up? And he was driving awfully fast, wasn’t he?

Dylan took his foot off the brake, prepared to make the turn. But before he could act, the car behind them slammed into them, clipping the back bumper and sending the cruiser spinning off the road and into the ditch. The air bags exploded, pressing Kayla back against the seat. Then she heard another sound—the metallic popping of bullets striking metal as someone fired into their vehicle.

Murder in Black Canyon

Cindi Myers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CINDI MYERS is the author of more than fifty novels. When she’s not crafting new romance plots, she enjoys skiing, gardening, cooking, crafting and daydreaming. A lover of small-town life, she lives with her husband and two spoiled dogs in the Colorado mountains.

For Coco—Female PI Extraordinaire

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

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

Epilogue

Extract

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

As jobs went, this one paid more than most, Kayla reminded herself as she parked her battered Subaru at the mouth of the canyon a few miles from the Gunnison River. A private investigator in the small town of Montrose, Colorado, couldn’t be overly picky if she wanted to keep putting food on the table and paying rent, though interceding in family squabbles had to be right up there with photographing philanderers on her list of least-favorite jobs.

Still, this assignment gave her an excuse to get out into the beautiful backcountry near Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park called Dead Horse Canyon. She retrieved a small day pack from the backseat of the car and slipped it on, then added a ball cap to shade her face from the intense summer sun. A faint dirt trail marked the way into the canyon, through a windswept landscape of dark green piñon and juniper, and the earth tones of sand and gravel and scattered boulders.

A bird called from somewhere in the canyon ahead, the high, trilling call echoing off the rock and sending a shiver up Kayla’s spine. Maybe she should have brought a weapon with her, but she didn’t like to carry the handgun, even though she was licensed to do so. Her work as a private investigator seldom brought her into contact with anyone really threatening. She spent most of her time surveilling cheating spouses, doing background checks for businesses and serving the occasional subpoena. Talking to a twenty-four-year-old woman who had decided to camp out in the desert with a bunch of wandering hippies hadn’t struck Kayla as particularly threatening.

But that was before she had visited this place, so isolated and desolate, far from any kind of help or authority. Someone holed up out here could probably get away with almost anything and not be caught. The thought unnerved her more than she liked to admit.

Shaking her head, she hit the button to lock her car and pocketed her keys. The hard part of the job was over—she had tracked down Andi Matheson, wayward adult daughter of Senator Peter Matheson. Now all she had to do was deliver the senator’s message to the young woman. Whether Andi decided to mend fences with her father was none of Kayla’s business.

Her boots crunched on fine gravel as she set out walking on the well-defined path. Clearly, a lot of feet had trod this trail recently. The group that referred to themselves as simply “the Family” had a permit to camp on this stretch of public land outside the national park boundaries. They had the area to themselves. No one else wanted to be so far away from things like electricity, running water and paved roads. Her investigation hadn’t turned up much information about the group—only some blog posts by the leader, a young man whose real name was Daniel Metwater, but who went by the title of Prophet. He preached a touchy-feely brand of peace, love and living off the land that reminded Kayla of stuff she’d seen in movies about sixties-era flower children. Misguided and irresponsible, maybe, but probably harmless.

“Halt. You’re not authorized to enter this area.”

Heart in her throat, Kayla stared at the large man who blocked the path ahead. He had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, but he must have been waiting in the cluster of car-sized boulders to the left of the path. He wore baggy camouflage trousers and a green-and-black camouflage-patterned T-shirt stretched over broad shoulders. His full beard and long brown hair made him look like a cross between a biker and an old-testament patriarch. He wasn’t armed, unless you counted the bulging muscles of his biceps, and what might have been a knife in the sheath on his belt. She forced herself to stand tall and look him in the eye. “This is public land,” she said. “Anyone can hike here.”

“We have permission to camp here,” Camo-man said. “You’ll need to walk around our camp. We don’t welcome gawkers.”

What are you hiding that you don’t want me to see? Kayla thought, every sense sharpened. “I’m not here to gawk,” she said. “I came to visit one of your—” What exactly did she call Andi—a disciple? A member? “A woman who’s with you,” she decided. “Andi Matheson.”

“No one is here by that name.” The man’s eyes revealed as much as a mannequin’s, blank as an unplugged television screen.

“I have information that she is. Or she was until as recently as yesterday, when I saw her with some other members of your group in Montrose.” The three women, including Andi, had been leaving a coin operated Laundromat when Kayla had spotted them, but they had ignored her cries to wait and driven off. She had been on foot and unable to follow them.

“We do not have anyone here by that name,” the man repeated.

So maybe she had changed her name and went by Moon Flower or something equally charming and silly. “I don’t know what she’s calling herself this week, but she’s here and I want to talk to her,” Kayla said. “Or satisfy myself that she isn’t here.” She spread her hands wide in a universal gesture of harmlessness. “All I want to do is talk to her. Then I’ll leave, I promise. What you do out here is your business—though I’m pretty sure blocking access to public land, whether you have a permit or not, is illegal. It might even get your permit revoked.” She gave him a hard look to go with her soft words, letting him know she was perfectly willing to make trouble if she needed to.

He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “I’ll need to search you for weapons. We don’t allow instruments of destruction into our haven of peace.”

She was impressed he could deliver such a line with a straight face. “So that knife on your belt doesn’t count?”

He put a hand to the sheath at his side. “This is a ceremonial piece, not a weapon.”

Uh-huh. And she had a “ceremonial” Smith & Wesson back at her home office. But no point arguing with him. “I’m not armed,” she said. “And you’ll just have to take my word for it, because I’m not in the habit of allowing strange men to grope me, and if you lay a hand on me I promise I will file assault charges.” Not to mention she knew a few self-defense moves that would put him in the dirt on his butt.

A little more life came into the man’s face at her words, but instead of arguing with her, he turned and walked down the trail. She followed him, curious as to what kind of compound the group had managed to erect in the wilderness.

The man turned into what looked like a dry wash, circled a dense line of trees and emerged in a clearing where a motley collection of travel trailers, RVs, pickup trucks, cars, tents, tarps and other makeshift shelters spread out over about an acre. To Kayla, it looked like a cross between the Girl Scout Jamboree she had attended as a child and the homeless encampments she had seen in Denver.

No one paid any attention to her arrival. A dozen or more men and women, and half as many children, wandered among the vehicles and shelters, tending campfires, carrying babies and talking. One man sat cross-legged in front of a van, playing a wooden flute, while two others kicked a soccer ball back and forth.

Kayla spotted Andi with a group of other women by a campfire. She looked just like the picture the senator had given her—straight blond hair to the middle of her back, heart-shaped face, upturned nose and brilliant blue eyes. She wore a long gauze skirt and a tank top, her slim arms tanned golden from the sun, and she was smiling. Not the picture of the troubled young woman the senator had painted. Rather, she looked like a model in an advertisement for a line of breezy summer fashions, or for a particularly refreshing wine.

Kayla started across the compound toward the young woman. Camo-man stepped forward as if to intercept her, but her hard stare stopped him. “Andi?” she called. “Andi Matheson?”

The young woman turned toward Kayla, her smile never faltering. “I’m sorry, but I don’t go by that name anymore,” she said. “I’m Asteria now.”

Asteria? Kayla congratulated herself on not wincing. “My name’s Kayla,” she said.

“Do I know you?” Andi/Asteria wrinkled her perfect forehead a fraction of an inch.

“No. Your father asked me to check on you.” Kayla stopped in front of the woman and scrutinized her more closely, already mentally composing her report to the senator. No bruises. Clear eyes and skin. No weight loss. If anything, she looked a little plumper than in the photos the senator had provided. In fact...her gaze settled on the rounded bump at the waistband of the skirt. “You’re pregnant,” she blurted.

Andi rubbed one hand across her belly. “My father didn’t tell you? I’m not surprised, but he did know. It’s one of the reasons I left. I didn’t want to raise my child in his corrupt world.”

Interesting that the senator had left out this little detail about his daughter. “He was concerned enough about you to hire me to find you and ask you to get in touch with him,” Kayla said.

Andi’s smile was gone now. “He just wants to try to talk me into getting rid of the baby.” She turned to the two women with her. “My father can’t understand the happiness and contentment I’ve found here with the Prophet and the Family. He’s too mired in his materialistic, power-hungry world to see the truth.”

Dressed similarly to Andi, the other two women stared at Kayla with open hostility. So much for peace and love, Kayla thought.

Andi turned back to Kayla. “How did you find me? I didn’t tell anyone in my old life where I was going.”

“I talked to your friend Tessa Madigan. She told me about attending a speech Daniel Metwater gave in Denver, and how taken you were with him and his followers. From there it wasn’t that difficult to confirm you had joined the group.”

“I only want to be left alone,” Andi said. “I’m not harming anyone here.”

Kayla looked around the compound, aware that pretty much everyone else there had stopped what they were doing to focus on the little exchange around the campfire. Even the flute player had lowered his instrument. Camo-man, however, had disappeared, perhaps slunk back to guard duty on the trail. “This isn’t exactly a garden spot.” She turned back to Andi. “What about the Family attracted you so much?” Senator Matheson was a wealthy man, and his only daughter had been a big part of his lavish lifestyle until a few months ago. Kayla had found dozens of pictures online of Andi and her father at celebrity parties and charity benefits, always dressed in designer gowns and dripping with jewels.

“The Family is a real family,” Andi said. “We truly care for one another. The Prophet reminds us all to focus on the things in life that are really important and fulfilling and meaningful. Satisfaction isn’t to be found in material wealth, but in living in harmony with nature and focusing on our spiritual well-being.”

“You can’t live on air and spiritual thoughts,” Kayla said. “How do you all support yourselves?”

“We don’t need a lot of money,” Andi said. “The Prophet provides for us.”

Camping on public land was free and they didn’t have any utility bills, but they weren’t living on wild game and desert plants, either—not judging by the smell of onions and celery emanating from a pot over the fire. “You’re telling me your Prophet is footing the bill to feed and clothe all of you?”

“I am blessed to be able to share my worldly goods with my followers.”

The voice that spoke was deep, smooth as chocolate and commanding as any Shakespearean actor. Kayla turned slowly and studied the man striding toward them. Sunlight haloed his figure like a spotlight, burnishing his muscular, bare chest and glinting on his loose, white linen trousers. He had brown curly hair glinting with gold, dark brows, lively eyes, a straight nose and sensuous lips. Kayla swore one of the women behind her sighed, and though she had been fully prepared to dislike this so-called “prophet” on sight, she wasn’t immune to his masculine charms.

The man was flat-out gorgeous and potentially lethally sexy. No wonder some women followed him around like puppies. “Daniel Metwater, I presume?” Kayla asked.

“I prefer the humble title of Prophet.”

Since when was a prophet humble? But Kayla decided not to argue the point. “I’m Kayla Larimer.” She offered her hand.

He took it, then bent and pressed his mouth to her palm—a warm, and decidedly unnerving, gesture. Some women might even think it was sexy, but Kayla thought the move too calculated and more than a little creepy. She jerked her hand away and her anger rose. “What’s the idea of stationing a guard to challenge visitors to your camp?” she asked. “After all, you are on public land. Land anyone is free to roam.”

“We’ve had trouble with curiosity seekers and a few people who want to harass us,” Metwater said. “We have a right to protect ourselves.”

“That defense won’t get you very far in court if anything goes south,” she said.

The smile finally faded. “Our policy is to leave other people alone and we ask that they show us the same courtesy.”

One of the few sensible pieces of advice that Kayla’s mother had ever given her was to keep her mouth shut, but Kayla found the temptation to poke at this particularly charming snake to be too much. “If you really are having trouble with people harassing you, you should ask for help from local law enforcement,” she said.

“We prefer to solve our own problems, without help from outsiders.”

The Mafia probably thought that way, too, but that didn’t make them innocent bystanders who never caused a stink, did it?

“I’m not here to stir up trouble,” she said. “Andi’s father asked me to stop by and make sure she was all right.”

“As you can see, Asteria is fine.”

Kayla turned back to the young woman, who was gazing at Metwater, all limpid-eyed and adoring. “I assume you have a doctor in town?” she asked. “That you’re getting good prenatal care.”

“I’m being well cared for,” she said, her eyes still locked to Metwater’s.

“Asteria is an adult and has a right to live as she chooses,” Metwater said. “No one who comes to us is held against his or her will.”

Nothing Kayla saw contradicted that, but she just didn’t understand the attraction. The place, and this man, gave her the creeps. “Your father would love to hear from you,” she told Andi. “And if you need anything, call me.” She held out one of her business cards. When the young woman didn’t reach for it, Andi shoved it into her hand. “Goodbye,” she said, and turned to walk away.

She passed Metwater without looking at him, though the goose bumps that stood out on her skin made her pretty sure he was giving her the evil eye—or a pacifist prophet’s version of one. She had made it all the way to the edge of the encampment when raised voices froze her in her tracks. The hue and cry rose not from the camp behind her, but from the trail ahead.

Camo-man appeared around the corner, red-faced and breathless. Behind him came two other men, dragging something heavy between them. Kayla took a few steps toward them and stared in horror at the object on a litter fashioned from a tarp and cut branches. Part of the face was gone, and she was pretty sure all the black stuff with the sticky sheen was blood—but she knew the body of a man when she saw one.

A dead man. And she didn’t think he had been dead for very long.

Chapter Two

After ten years away, Lieutenant Dylan Holt had come home. When he had left his family ranch outside Montrose to pursue a career on Colorado’s Front Range with the Colorado State Patrol, he had embraced life in the big city, sure he would never look back. Funny how a few years away could change a person’s perspective. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed the wide-open spaces and more deliberate pace of rural life until he had had the chance to transfer back to his hometown.

It didn’t hurt that he was transferring to a multiagency task force focused on preventing and solving crimes on public lands promised to be the kind of interesting and varied work he had longed for. “For our newer team members, plan on spending a lot of time behind the wheel or even hiking into the backcountry,” FBI Captain Graham Ellison, the leader of the Ranger Brigade, addressed the conference room full of officers. “Despite any impression you might have gotten from the media, the majority of our work is routine and boring. You’re much more likely to bust a poacher or deal with illegal campers than to encounter a terrorist.”

“Don’t tell Congress that. They’ll take away our increased funding.” This quip came from an athletic younger guy with tattooed forearms, Randall Knightbridge. He was one of the Brigade veterans who had been part of a raid that brought down a terrorism organization that had been operating in the area. The case had been very high profile and had resulted in a grant from Homeland Security that allowed the group to expand—and to hire Dylan and two other new recruits, Walt Riley and Ethan Reynolds.

Next to Randall sat Lieutenant Michael Dance, with the Bureau of Land Management, and DEA Agent Marco Cruz. Behind them, Deputy Lance Carpenter from the Montrose Police Department, Simon Woolridge, a computer specialist with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Carmen Redhorse, with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, listened attentively. The veterans had welcomed the rookies to the team with a minimum of good-natured ribbing.

“We do have a couple of areas of special concern,” Captain Ellison continued. He picked up a pointer and indicated a spot on a map of the Rangers’ territory—the more than thirty thousand acres of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, plus more than 106,000 acres in adjacent Curecanti National Recreation Area and Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area. “We’ve got a group camping in Dead Horse Canyon, some sort of back-to-the-land group. Not affiliated with any organized movement that we can identify. They have a legal permit and may be harmless, but let’s keep an eye on them.”

One of the other new hires, Ethan Reynolds, stuck up his hand. Ellison acknowledged him. “Agent Reynolds has some special training in cults, militia groups and terrorist cells,” the captain said. “What can you tell us about this bunch?”

“They call themselves the Family and their leader is Daniel Metwater, son of a man who made a pile in manufacturing plastic bags. He calls himself the Prophet, though he doesn’t identify with any organized religion. There are a lot of women and children out at that camp, so it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye open for signs of abuse or neglect. But so far, they’ve lived up to their reputation as peace-loving isolationists.”

“Right.” Ellison eyed the rest of them. “We don’t have any reason to harass these people, but keep your eyes and ears open. On to other areas of concern...”

The captain continued with a discussion of off-road vehicles trespassing in a roadless area, reports of poaching activity in another area and suspicion of hazardous chemical dumping in a remote watershed.

“Randall, you and Walt check out the chemical dump,” the captain ordered. “Carmen, take Ethan with you to look into the roadless violation. Dylan, you go with—”

The door burst open, letting in a gust of hot wind that stirred the papers on the table. “I want to report a body,” a woman said.

She was dressed like a hiker, in jeans and boots, a day pack on her back. Her shoulder-length brown hair was in a windblown tangle about her head and her eyes were wide with horror, her face chalk-white. “A dead man,” she continued, her voice quavering, but her expression determined. “I think he was shot. Part of his face was gone and there was a lot of blood and—”

“Why don’t you sit over here and tell us about it.” Carmen Redhorse, the only female on the Ranger team, stepped forward and took the woman’s hand. “Let’s start with your name.”

“Kayla Larimer.” The woman accepted the glass of water Carmen pushed into her hands and drained half of it. When she lowered the glass, some of the terror had gone out of her eyes. Hazel eyes, Dylan noted. Gold and green, like some exotic cat’s.

“All right, Kayla,” Carmen said. “Where did you see this body?”

“I can show you. It’s in a canyon on Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, land. The Family is camping there.”

“Your family is camping there?”

“Not my family.” She gave an impatient shake of her head. “That hippie group or whatever you want to call them.”

“The peace-loving isolationists,” Dylan said.

Kayla looked at him. She wasn’t desperate or hysterical or any of the other emotions he might have expected. She looked—angry. At the injustice of the man’s death? At being forced to witness the scene? He felt a definite zing of attraction. He had always liked puzzles and figuring things out. He wanted to figure out this not-so-typical woman.

“Are you a member of the Family?” Ethan asked.

“No!” The disdain in her tone dropped the temperature in the room a couple degrees. She slid a hand into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a business card. “I’m a private detective.”

“What were you doing in Dead Horse Canyon?” Graham Ellison asked.

She took another drink of water, then set the glass aside. “A client of mine has a daughter who cut off contact with him. He hired me to find her, and I located her living with the group. Then he asked me to check on her and make sure she was okay, and to ask her to get in touch with him.”

“He had to hire a PI for that?” Dylan asked.

That hot, angry gaze again. “He hired me to find her, first. He didn’t know where she was. After I located her, he thought she might listen to me if I approached her initially.”

“Most parents wouldn’t be too thrilled about their kid running off to join a group some people might see as a cult,” Ethan said.

“Exactly.” Kayla nodded. “Anyway, I found the young woman, gave her the message from her father and was leaving when three men rushed into the camp, shouting. Two of them were dragging a body behind them. The body of a man. He was covered in blood and...” Her lips trembled, but she pressed them together, her nostrils flaring as she inhaled. “Part of his head was gone.”

“What were they shouting?” Graham asked.

“They said they were walking out in the desert and saw him lying there.”

“Saw him lying where?” Carmen asked.

Kayla shook her head. “I don’t know. And before you ask, I don’t know why they thought they needed to bring him back to the camp. I told the leader—some guy who calls himself the Prophet—that his men shouldn’t have touched the body, and that they needed to call the police, but he ignored me and ordered the men to take the dead man back to where they had found him, then report to him for a cleansing ritual.”

“He refused to report the incident?” Graham’s voice was calm, but his expression was one of outrage.

“He said they didn’t have cell phones. Maybe they don’t believe in them.”

“Phones don’t work in that area, anyway.” Simon Woolridge, the team’s tech expert, spoke for the first time. “They don’t work on most of the public land around here. No towers.”

“That’s why I didn’t call you, either,” Kayla said. “By the time I got a signal on my phone, I was almost here.”

“Did anyone say anything about who the dead man might be?” Graham asked. “Did you recognize him?”

“No. Everyone looked as horrified as I did.”

“Did the men do as the Prophet asked and take the body away?” Dylan asked.

“I don’t know. I left before they did anything. No one tried to stop me. I wanted to get away from there and I headed straight here.”

“What time was this?” Graham asked.

“I don’t know. But it’s a long drive. So...maybe an hour ago?”

“More like an hour and a half,” Carmen said. “Dead Horse Canyon is pretty remote.”

“Lieutenant Holt, I want you and Simon to check this out,” Captain Ellison said. “Ms. Larimer, you ride with Lieutenant Holt and show him exactly where you were.”

“We know where Dead Horse Canyon is,” Simon protested.

“The canyon is seven miles long,” the captain said. “She can show you the location more quickly.”

Silently, Kayla followed Dylan to his Cruiser. He opened the passenger door for her and she slid in without looking at him. He caught the scent of her floral shampoo as she moved past him, and he noticed the three tiny silver hoops she wore in each ear. By the time he made it around to the driver’s side, she was buckled in and staring out the windshield.

“You holding up okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine.” Her clipped tone didn’t invite sympathy or further conversation, so he started the Cruiser and followed Simon out of the parking lot. They followed the paved road through the national park for the first five miles, past a series of pull-offs that provided overlooks into the Black Canyon, a half-mile-deep gorge that was the reason for the park’s existence. Every stop was crowded with RVs, vans and passenger cars full of tourists who had come to enjoy the wild beauty of the high desert of western Colorado.

“How long have you been a private detective?” he asked.

She was silent so long he thought she had decided not to talk to him, but when he glanced her way she said, “Two years.”

“Do you have a law enforcement background?” A lot of PIs he knew started out with police or sheriff’s departments before hanging their shingle to do investigations, but Kayla hardly looked old enough to have had many years on the force under her belt.

“No.”

“How did you get into the work?”

She let out a sigh and half turned to face him. “Why do you care?”

“I’m making conversation. Why are you so hostile?”

She ducked her head and massaged the bridge of her nose. “Sorry. I think I’ve just had an overdose of arrogant, good-looking men today.”

She thought he was good-looking? He filed the information away for future reference. “I’m not trying to be arrogant,” he said. “Cops are trained to get the facts of a situation as quickly as possible. That can come across as brusque sometimes.”

She nodded. “I get that. It’s just been a tough day. A tough week, really.” She glanced at him, her expression a little less guarded. “I thought I was applying for a secretarial position when I answered the ad for the job,” she said. “My boss got sick and trained me to take over the business. When he died from cancer last year, he left the business to me.”

“And you like it enough to keep at it.”

Another sigh. “Yeah, I like it. Most of the time. I mean, it beats a job in a cube farm. I like it when I can help people, even if it’s just finding a lost pet or helping a woman locate her deadbeat ex so that she can collect child support. But you see the ugly side of people a lot.”

“What you saw today wasn’t very pretty.”

“No.”

She fell silent again, and he was sure she was back at the camp, picturing that bloody body again. He wanted to pull her away from the image, to keep her focused on him. “Who are the handsome, arrogant men who rubbed you the wrong way?” he asked.

“Daniel Metwater, for one.”

“The Prophet of this so-called Family?”

“Yeah. Have you met him?”

Dylan slowed for the turn onto a faintly marked dirt track that veered away from the canyon and the park. “No. What’s he like?”

“He talks a good game of peace and love and spirituality, or at least, that’s what he writes in his blog. But it all sounds like a con game to me, especially considering he preaches about the futility of cell phones and technology, yet he has a website he updates often when he’s away from the camp. Maybe I’m too cynical, but I wanted to shake all those women who were making cow eyes at him and tell them he didn’t really care about any of them. He’s the kind of guy who looks out for himself and his image first.”

“What makes you think that?”

He halfway expected her to slap him down again. Instead, she relaxed back into the seat. “My dad was a charming swindler like Metwater—good-looking, silver-tongued and scary intelligent. His game was as a traveling preacher. I spent most of my childhood moving from town to town while he conned people out of whatever they would give him.” She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back from her face. “I guess that experience has come in handy in my work. I can usually spot a grifter as soon as he opens his mouth. Daniel Metwater may be preaching peace, love and communing with nature, but I think he’s hiding something.”

“Do you think he killed the guy you saw?”

“I don’t know. It depends on when the guy died, I think. Metwater was standing with me for a good while before his followers dragged the body into camp. He was wearing white linen trousers and there wasn’t a speck of blood or dirt on him, so he didn’t strike me as a man who had just come from a murder.”

“So you think the man was murdered.”

“I think he had been shot. Whether the wound was self-inflicted or not is up to you people to determine.” She shuddered. “I’m going to spend my time trying to live down the sight of him. The only dead people I’ve seen before were peacefully in their coffins, carefully made up and dressed in their Sunday best.”

“Violence leaves an ugly mark on everything.”

“Yeah, well, I guess you could say reality does that, too.”

She turned away, staring out the side window, as unreachable as if she had walked into another room and closed the door. Dylan focused on the landscape around him—the low growth of piñon and scrub oak, and formations of red and gray rock that rose up against an achingly blue sky. He had grown up surrounded by this scenery. The country here didn’t look desolate and hostile to him, as it did to some, but free and unspoiled.

Simon’s brake lights glowed and he stuck his arm out the open driver’s-side window, gesturing toward a gravel wash to their left. He stopped and the passenger window slid down as Dylan pulled alongside him. “That’s the south entrance to Dead Horse Canyon,” Simon said. “Where do we go from here?”

“Turn in here,” Kayla said. “There’s a trailhead about a quarter mile farther on. I parked there, but apparently the campers have been driving right into the camp.”

“I’ll follow you,” Simon said, and waited for Dylan to pull ahead of him.

As camping spots went, this one lacked water, much shade or access, Dylan thought, as the FJ Cruiser bumped over the washboard gravel road into the canyon. But it did offer concealment and a good defensive position. No one would be able to approach without the campers knowing about it.

As if to prove his point, a bearded man in camouflage pants and shirt stepped into the road and signaled for them to stop. Dylan braked and waited for the man to approach the driver’s side of the Cruiser. “You can’t drive back here,” the man said, his eyes darting nervously to the Ranger Brigade emblem on the side of the Cruiser. The words Law Enforcement were clearly visible.

“We’re here to talk to Daniel Metwater,” Dylan said. “Officers Woolridge and Holt.”

“I’m not supposed to let anyone drive into the camp,” the man said. He was sweating now, jittery as an addict in need of a fix.

“What’s your name?” Dylan asked.

“Kiram.”

Dylan waited for more, but Kiram had pressed his lips tightly together. “Well, Kiram, we’re here on official business and you don’t have the authority to stop us. We don’t want trouble, but you need to step out of the way.”

Kiram ducked his head and peered into the car. “Hey, what are you doing back here?” he asked Kayla.

“I brought them to see your dead body,” she said, giving Kiram a chilly stare.

Dylan let off the brake and the Cruiser eased forward. Kiram jumped back. The two vehicles proceeded at a crawl up the wash, around the knot of trees and into the side canyon the Family had chosen as their home in the wilderness.

Dylan shut off the engine, but remained in the car, assessing the situation. The motley cluster of campers, tents and vehicles shimmered like a mirage in the midday heat. A child’s ball rolled a few feet, stirred by the wind, which made the only sound in the area. “The place looks deserted,” Kayla said. “Do you think they left?”

“Not without all their stuff. Do you notice anything missing?”

She studied the scene for a moment, then shook her head. “Only the people.”

“Stay in the vehicle.” With one hand hovering near his weapon, Dylan eased open his door, ready to dive for cover if anyone fired on them. But the camp remained silent and still.

“Daniel Metwater!” he called. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

No answer came but the echo of his own words. Simon joined Dylan beside his car. “What do you think?” Dylan asked.

“They could have all headed for the hills, or they could be lying low inside these tents and trailers,” Simon said.

“Come out by the time I count to ten or we’ll start taking this place apart,” Dylan shouted. “One!”

At the count of five, the door to the largest RV, a thirty-foot bus with solar panels on the roof, eased open. A slim but muscular man, naked except for a pair of white loose trousers, moved onto the steps. “I wasn’t aware we had company,” he said. “We adhere to the custom of an afternoon siesta.”

“Are you Daniel Metwater?” Dylan asked.

Sharp eyes scrutinized the three of them. “Yes,” he said at last.

“Call your people out here,” Simon said. “We have some questions about an incident that happened here this afternoon.”

Metwater shifted his gaze past the two cops. Dylan turned to see Kayla standing beside the car. “You had no cause to bring these people here,” Metwater said to her.

“We’re here because we understand you found a dead body this morning,” Dylan said. “Why didn’t you report it to the police?”

“We don’t have cell phones, and since nothing we could do or say could bring the man back to life, I made the decision to report the incident the next time I was in town.” Metwater spoke as if he was talking about a minor mechanical problem, not a dead man.

“Where is the body?” Simon asked.

“I ordered the men who brought him here to take him back where they found him,” Metwater said. “They never should have defiled our home with such violence.”

“We’ll need to talk to these men.”

“They are undergoing a purification ritual at the moment.”

“Bring them out here.” Simon wasn’t a big man, but he could put a lot of menace and command in his voice. “Now.”

Metwater said something over his shoulder to someone inside the RV. A woman with long dark hair slipped past him and hurried away. “She’ll bring the men to you,” Metwater said, and turned as if to go back inside.

“Wait,” Dylan said. “Who was the man?”

“I don’t know. I’d never seen him before in my life. But I believe he’s one of yours.”

“What do you mean, one of ours?” Dylan asked.

Metwater’s lips quirked up in a smirk. “I checked his pockets for identification. He’s a cop.”

Chapter Three

Kayla watched Dylan as Metwater dropped his bombshell. His was a face full of strong lines and planes, not classically handsome, but honest—the face of a man who didn’t have any patience with lies or weakness. Anger quickly replaced the brief flash of confusion in his eyes as he absorbed this new wrinkle in the case. The dead man wasn’t a stranger anymore—he was a fellow lawman. “Take me to him,” he ordered.

“The men who found him will—” Metwater began.

“No. You take me.” Dylan’s fists clenched at his sides, and Kayla tensed, expecting him to punch the smirk off the Prophet’s face. But he remained still, only one muscle in his jaw twitching.

Instead of answering, Metwater looked away, toward a flurry of movement to their right. Kiram and another burly man escorted two other men to them. “These are the two who found the body,” Metwater said. “They can answer your questions.”

Dylan pulled a small notebook and pen from his shirt pocket and shifted his focus to the new arrivals. Kayla thought they looked young, scarcely out of their teens, with wispy beards and thin bodies. Dylan pointed to the taller of the two, who stared back from behind black-framed glasses. “What’s your name?”

“Abelard,” the young man whispered.

“Your real name,” Dylan said.

Abelard blinked. “That is my real name. Abelard Phillips.”

“His mom was a literature professor,” the other young man said. “You know, Abelard and Heloise—supposed to be a classic love story or something.”

Abelard nodded. “Most people call me Abe.”

Dylan wrote down the name, then turned to the second man. “Who are you?”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Zach. Zach Crenshaw.”

“I want the two of you to show me this body you found this morning.”

Their heads moved in unison, like bobblehead dolls. Metwater started to turn back to his trailer, but Simon took his arm. “You’re coming, too.”

Kayla trailed along after them, sure that if Dylan remembered she was here he would order her to wait at the camp. But curiosity won out over her squeamishness about seeing the body again—that, and a reluctance to spend any time alone with the rest of the “family.”

Single file, the six of them followed a narrow path out of camp, out of the canyon and into the open scrubland beyond, following drag marks in the dirt Kayla was sure had been made by the makeshift travois Abe and Zach had used to transport the body. She estimated they had walked about a mile when Abe halted and gestured toward a grouping of large boulders. “He’s behind those rocks over there,” he said. “We put him back just like the Prophet told us to.”

“And you’re sure that’s where you found him?” Simon asked.

Zach nodded. “You can tell because of all the blood.”

“Show me,” Dylan said.

The two young men led the way around the boulders. Kayla hung back, but she still had a view of the dead man’s feet, wearing new-looking hiking boots, the soles barely scuffed. Had he bought them especially for his visit to the Black Canyon area?

Dylan and Simon stood back, surveying the scene, the wind stirring the branches of the piñons nearby the only sound. The sour-sweet stench of death stung her nostrils, but she forced herself to remain still, to wait for whatever came next. “Was he lying like this when you found him?” Dylan asked. “On his back?”

“Yeah,” Zach said.

“Why did you move him?” Simon asked. “Were you trying to hide something? Did you realize you were tampering with evidence?”

“We weren’t trying to hide anything!” Abe protested. “We just came around the rocks and almost stepped on him. There was blood everywhere and it was awful. Like something out of a movie or something. Too horrible to be real.”

“Once we realized it was a man, we couldn’t just leave him there,” Zach said. “There were already buzzards circling. And I thought I heard him groan, like maybe he was still alive. We thought if we got him back to camp, someone could go for help, or take him to the hospital or something.”

“We couldn’t just leave him,” Abe echoed.

“All right.” Dylan put a hand on Abe’s arm. “Tell me exactly what happened. Start at the beginning. What were you doing out here?”

“We were hunting rabbits,” Abe said. “We thought we saw one run over here so we headed this way to check it out.”

“What were you hunting with?” Simon asked. “Where is your weapon now?”

The two young men exchanged glances, then Zach walked over to the grouping of piñons. He reached into the tangle of branches and pulled out a couple crude bows and a handful of homemade arrows. “The Prophet only allows us to buy meat for one meal a week, so we thought if we could catch some rabbits the women could make them into stew or something,” he said.

“And maybe they’d be impressed that we were providing for the Family,” Abe added. He looked even more forlorn. “We weren’t having any luck, though.”

“Why were you hunting with bows and arrows?” Simon asked. “Why not guns?”

“The Prophet doesn’t allow firearms,” Zach said.

“We’re a nonviolent people.” Metwater spoke for the first time since they had left camp. “Guns only cause trouble.”

“They certainly caused trouble for this man.” Dylan looked at Metwater. “You said you checked his identification?”

“The wallet is inside his jacket,” Metwater said. “Front left side.”

Dylan knelt, out of Kayla’s view. When he stood again, he held a slim brown wallet. He read from the ID. “Special Agent Frank Asher, FBI.” He fixed Metwater with an icy glare. “What was the FBI doing snooping around your camp, Mr. Metwater? And what did he do that got him killed?”

* * *

AS EXPECTED, THE Family’s Prophet claimed to have no knowledge of Agent Frank Asher or what had happened to him. None of the three men had heard any gunshots or vehicles or seen anything unusual in the hour leading up to the discovery of the body. They were like the three bronze monkeys Dylan’s dad had on a shelf in his home office—see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Dylan and Simon would bring them all in for questioning, but he doubted the interviews would yield anything useful.

With no cell phone coverage in the area, Dylan was forced to leave Simon with the body and the Family members while he drove to an area with coverage.

“I’m coming with you,” Kayla said, falling into step beside him as he strode back toward the camp.

He’d been so intent on his job that for a while he had forgotten about her. She was one more complication he didn’t need right now. “Why didn’t you stay in the car like I told you?” he asked.

“This place gives me the creeps. I’m not staying anywhere alone around these people.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “Do you think one of them killed that FBI agent?”

“I don’t know what to think. I need the medical examiner’s report on when he died, and what kind of weapon killed him.” He glanced toward the motley collection of RVs and tents. “I’m not buying that all of these people are unarmed.”

“The agent will have a vehicle around here someplace close,” Kayla said. “Those boots he was wearing weren’t worn enough for him to have walked very far, and I didn’t see a pack anywhere near him.”

Dylan stopped and considered her more closely. She had regained her color and no longer looked fragile and shaken. “I’ll get someone to look for the car right away. Maybe something in there will tell us why he was out here. That was a good observation,” he added. “Did you see anything else?”

“I think the two kids are telling the truth.” She glanced back in the direction they had come. “When they said that about not wanting to leave him for the buzzards—I believed them.”

“Maybe.” He had learned not to trust anyone when it came to crime, but his instincts made him want to focus on Metwater more than the two kids. “Them moving the body makes our investigation tougher. They may have destroyed a lot of evidence.”

“For a man who sees himself as a leader, Metwater is a cold fish,” she said. “He seemed more annoyed by the inconvenience than anything else.”

“He’s going to be a lot more inconvenienced before this is over. I’m going to get a warrant to take this camp apart. If the murder weapon is here, we’ll find it.”

“If it was ever here, they had plenty of time to get rid of it before we got here,” she said. “It could be stashed in a cave or buried in an old mine or broken into a million pieces on the rocks.”

“Maybe,” he conceded. “But we might find something else incriminating.”

They walked through the camp, which was as empty and silent as a ghost town, but he sensed people watching him from the windows of trailers and open flaps of tents. “Who did you come here to see?” he asked Kayla. “I know you said a client’s daughter, but who?”

“I don’t see how that relates to your case.” The frost was back in her voice.

“You’re the one who reported the body. You were the only non-Family member present when it was discovered. Some people might think that was an interesting coincidence.”

She turned on him, cheeks flushed. “You don’t think I killed that man!”

“My job is to rule out everyone. Do you own a gun?”

“I have a Smith & Wesson 40 back at my office. I have a permit for it.”

“But you didn’t have it with you today? Why not?”

“I don’t like to carry a gun. I didn’t think this was a particularly dangerous situation.”

“Who did you come to see?” he asked again. “I can subpoena your files to find out. Save us both some hassle and just tell me.”

She hesitated, a deep crease between her brows as she weighed her options. “I came to see Andi Matheson. She calls herself Asteria now. But she doesn’t have anything to do with your case.”

“You said her father hired you. Who is he?”

She glared at him.

“I’ll bet I can find the answer in five minutes or less online.”

She continued to glare at him, and the intensity of her gaze sent a thrill of awareness through him. Oh, he liked her, all right. Maybe a little too much, considering her involvement in this case.

“Her father is Senator Peter Matheson,” she said. “I imagine you’ve heard of him.”

Dylan had heard of the senator, all right. Until recently, he had been in the news primarily for his campaign to disband the Ranger Brigade. He had claimed the task force of federal agents was intrusive, expensive and ineffective. He had succeeded in having the group defunded, only to wind up looking like a fool when the Rangers had brought down a major terrorist group that had been operating in the area. Congress had responded by expanding the group, and Matheson had mostly kept a low profile ever since.

And now the senator was mixed up with Metwater and his bunch of wanderers. Dylan scanned the silent camp. “How did you track her down here? You said her father didn’t know where she was.”

“I talked to her friends. Her best friend told me she and Andi had attended a presentation given by Daniel Metwater and Andi had been very attracted to him, and to the ideas he preached. I did some more digging and verified that she had indeed joined up with Metwater and his group.”

Dylan nodded. Textbook solid detective work. “Let’s have a word with Ms. Matheson. Maybe she knows something she’s not telling about all this.”

“I really don’t think—” Kayla began.

But Dylan had already moved to the nearest camper, a battered aqua-and-silver trailer wedged beneath a clump of stunted evergreens. He pounded on the door, shaking the whole structure. “Police! Open up!” he called.

A woman with a deeply tanned face and bleached hair eased open the door and peered out at them. “I’m looking for Andi Matheson,” Dylan said.

The woman shook her head. “I don’t know anyone by that name,” she said, and started to close the door.

“What about Asteria?” Kayla asked. “Where does she live?”

“Over there.” The woman pointed to a large white tent next to the Prophet’s trailer.

The tent was the kind used by hunting outfitters as a mess tent or gathering area, with a tall frame and roll-up canvas sides. One of the sides was open to let in the hot breeze. Dylan moved around to the opening and peered in. A blonde woman sat cross-legged on a rug on the floor, eyes closed, hands outstretched.

“Ms. Matheson?” Dylan asked. “Asteria?”

She opened her eyes, which were a deep blue. “I was meditating,” she said.

“Sorry to interrupt, but I have to ask you a few questions.” He took a step toward her. “I’m Lieutenant Dylan Holt, with the Ranger Brigade task force. I wanted to ask you about the body that was brought to your camp earlier today.”

Andi looked away. “I didn’t see anything. I didn’t want to look. It was horrible.”

Kayla moved up beside Dylan, her voice gentle. “We don’t want to upset you, Andi,” she said. “We just have a few questions and then we’ll leave you alone.”

“All right.” She motioned toward the rug across from her. “You might as well sit down.”

The room was furnished with a cot and several folding camp chairs, but Dylan lowered himself to the rug. The coolness of the earth seeped up through the rug’s pile. Kayla sat beside him. “Tell me what you saw this morning,” he said.

Andi shrugged. “I didn’t see much. There was shouting, and Abe and Zach came in, dragging something on a tarp. I thought they had killed an animal at first—there was so much blood. Then I saw it was a man and I looked away. I ran back here and hid.” She rubbed her hand across her stomach. “I didn’t want to see any more.”

“Do you know a man named Frank Asher?” he asked. “He works for the FBI.”

“Frank?” She stared at him, eyes wide. “What about Frank?”

“Did you know him?” Dylan asked.

“No!” She shook her head, hands clutching her skirt. “No,” she repeated in a whisper, even as tears ran down her face.

“I think you did know him,” Dylan said. “Frank Asher is the man who was killed—the body Zach and Abe found this morning.”

Andi covered her mouth with her hand. “I told him not to come here,” she said, the words muffled. “I told him not to come and now look what happened.” She collapsed onto the rug and began to sob, the mournful wailing filling the tent and making Dylan’s chest hurt.

Chapter Four

Kayla knelt beside Andi, alarmed by the speed at which the beautiful, defiant young woman had dissolved into this wailing heap of grief. “I’m so sorry,” she said, rubbing Andi’s back. “Please sit up and try to calm down.” She looked back over her shoulder at Dylan, who looked as if he wanted to be anyplace but here at this moment. “Would you get her some water?” She pointed toward a large jug that sat on a stand at the back of the tent.

He retrieved the water and brought it to her. “What was your relationship to Frank Asher?” he asked. “When was the last time you were in contact with him?”

The questions brought a fresh wave of sobs. Kayla glared at him. Did he have to act like such a cop right now, firing official-sounding questions at this obviously distraught woman? “You’re not helping,” she said.

Frowning, he backed away.

“Drink this.” Kayla put the cup of water into Andi’s hands. “Take a deep breath. You’ve had a shock.”

“What’s going on in here? What are you doing to her?”

The outraged questions came from one of the women Kayla had seen with Andi earlier—a slight figure with a mane of brown curly hair and a slightly crooked nose. She rushed over and inserted herself between Andi and Kayla. “Asteria, honey, what have they done to you?”

“What’s your name?” Dylan joined them again.

The brown-haired woman glared at him. “Who are you, and why are you upsetting my friend?”

“Lieutenant Holt.” Dylan showed his badge. “I’m investigating the death of the man whose body was brought into the camp earlier today. What’s your name?”

“Starfall.”

Kayla thought Dylan was about to demand she tell him her real name, but he apparently thought better of it. “Were you here when Abe and Zach brought him in?” he asked.

Starfall wrinkled her nose. “They should have known better than to pull a stunt like that. It was awful.”

“What do you mean, ‘a stunt like that’?” Dylan asked.

“The man was dead. I mean, half his head was gone. We couldn’t do anything for him. They should have left him where they found him and not involved us in whatever happened to him.”

Andi began keening again, rocking back and forth. Starfall wrapped her arms around her friend. “You need to go,” she said. “You’ve upset her enough.”

“Do you know a man named Frank Asher?” Dylan asked.

“No. Now go. You have no right to harass us this way.”

Kayla touched Dylan’s arm. “Give her a chance to calm down a little,” she said softly. “You can question her later.”

He nodded and led the way out of the tent.

The camp was just as deserted as it had been before. “Looks like nobody wants to take a chance on running into a cop,” Dylan observed.

“Or maybe they really are taking a siesta.” She pulled the front of her shirt away from her chest, hoping for a cool breeze. “It’s baking out here.”

He glanced back at her. “You should wear a hat.” He touched the brim of the fawn-colored Stetson that was part of his uniform.

They left the camp, back on the trail to the parking area. “What are you going to do next?” Kayla asked.

“There’s so much that feels wrong here it’s hard to know where to start.” He gave her a hard look. “What’s Andi Matheson’s relationship to Frank Asher?”

“How should I know?”

“Her father hired you to find her. You must have looked into her background, talked to her friends and people who knew her.”

“I did, but none of them ever mentioned a Frank Asher.” No one had mentioned any men in Andi’s life, outside of her father and a few very casual acquaintances. None of the photos and articles Kayla had viewed online linked Andi with a man. At the time, Kayla had thought it was a little unusual that a woman as attractive and seemingly outgoing as Andi didn’t have a boyfriend, or at least an ex-boyfriend.

“Maybe he wasn’t a friend of hers then,” Dylan said. “Maybe her father knew him. It’s not unreasonable to think a senator would know an FBI agent. Maybe you weren’t the only person the senator had tailing his daughter. Maybe he sent the Fed after her, too.”

“Or maybe Asher is the father of Andi’s baby.”

Dylan stopped so abruptly she almost plowed into him. “She has a baby?”

“She’s pregnant. Didn’t you notice?” Kayla gestured toward her own stomach.

He flushed. “I thought maybe she was just a little too fond of cheeseburgers or beer or something.” He patted his own flat belly.

She stared at him. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“What did you expect? I’m a cop and a rancher—two professions known for plain speaking.” He started walking again, long strides covering ground quickly so that she had to trot to catch up with him.

“You’re a rancher?” she asked.

“My family has a ranch near here. In Ouray County.” He pulled out his keys and hit the button to unlock the FJ Cruiser.

That explained a lot—from the way he seemed so at home in this rugged landscape, to the swagger in his walk that was more cowboy than cop.

He climbed in and started the engine even before she had her door closed. “If Asher is the father of Andi’s baby, it would explain why she was so torn up over the news of his death,” he said as he put the vehicle in gear and guided it onto the washboard road. “But why would she have told him to stay away from the camp?”

“I thought she joined the Family to get away from her father and his lifestyle,” Kayla said. “But maybe she was trying to get away from Asher. Maybe he was the one who wanted her to get rid of the baby. Or maybe he was abusive.”

“Would she carry on like that over a man who had abused her?”

“I don’t know. Love can make people do crazy things, I guess.” After all, her own mother had followed Kayla’s father across the United States and back, sticking with him even when he cheated on her and lied to her.

“Are you speaking from personal experience?”

The question jolted her. “Why would you even ask something like that?”

“I’m just curious.” He kept his gaze focused on the road, but she sensed most of his attention was fixed on her. “Something in the way you said that made me think you don’t have too high an opinion of love.”

She hugged her arms across her chest. This was not a conversation she wanted to be having. “I’m no expert on the subject. Are you?”

“Far from it. I’ve managed to avoid falling in love—serious love—so far.”

“You make it sound like an accomplishment.”

“I don’t know. Some people might consider it a failing. My job doesn’t really leave a lot of room for close relationships.”

“Yet you have time to help run your family’s ranch.”

“Family is important to me. Which is why I don’t get why Andi Matheson wanted to leave hers to live out in the wilderness with a bunch of people she hardly knows.”

“Not everyone has a family they care to be close to—and yes, I say that from personal experience.”

“Right—your con-artist dad. What about your mom? Brothers and sisters?”

“My mom is dead. I didn’t have any siblings.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I don’t want your pity.”

He glanced at her, surprising warmth in his brown eyes. “Sympathy and pity aren’t the same things.”

She turned away, conversation over. She didn’t like not being in control of a conversation. One of the advantages of being a private investigator was that she usually got to ask all the questions. Situations like this one always made her feel like a freak. She didn’t do relationships. Not close ones. She couldn’t relate to people like Dylan, with his warm family feelings and determination to figure her out.

He apparently got the message and stopped talking. She focused on breathing deeply and getting her emotions under control. They passed through a brown sea of sagebrush and rock, beneath an achingly blue sky, unbroken by a single cloud. She would never get used to how vast the emptiness was out here. The wilderness made her feel small, lost even when she knew where she was.

He stopped the Cruiser and shifted into Park. “Why are you stopping?” she asked.

“I’ve got a phone signal.” He dragged his finger across the screen on his phone. “I’m going to call in to headquarters.”

He gave whoever answered the particulars of the situation at the camp and asked them to send crime scene techs and a medical examiner, along with more Rangers to interview people at the camp. “Simon is waiting,” Dylan said. “I’m going to see if I can locate Asher’s vehicle.”

He ended the call and pocketed the phone, then put the Cruiser in gear once more. Neither of them said anything for several minutes as they bumped over increasingly rugged terrain. Finally, Dylan spoke. “I apologize if my questions were out of line,” he said. “It’s another cop thing. I want to know everything about people I’m with. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

His words touched her, and made her feel a little vulnerable. In her experience, people rarely apologized. “I didn’t mean to snap,” she said. “I’m just—on edge. Seeing that body, and then Andi falling apart like that—I guess it hit me harder than I realized.”

“You’re a very empathetic person,” he said. “You feel other people’s pain. You absorb their emotions. It probably makes you a good investigator, but it’s tough.”

“I guess so.” She didn’t really think of herself that way. If anything, she would have said she was too cynical most of the time.

He braked and pointed ahead of them. “What’s that, up there?”

She caught the glint of sunlight off metal. “Maybe it’s a car.”

Dylan shut off the engine. “We’ll walk from here.”

He led the way toward the white sedan, which was partially hidden behind a clump of scrub oak. A small sticker on the bumper identified it as a rental car. When they were approximately ten feet away, Dylan held out his arm. “Stay here while I check it out,” he ordered.

She waited while he approached the car. He peered in the front driver’s-side window, which had been left open a few inches. Then he pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and put them on. He opened the driver’s-side door, which wasn’t locked, and peered into the car. Then he withdrew his head and looked back toward Kayla. “You can come up here if you promise not to touch anything.”

She joined him beside the car. He had leaned in and was looking through a handful of papers on the front passenger seat. “There’s a couple of maps here and a Montrose visitor’s guide,” he said.

“The parking pass on the dash is from a motel in Montrose,” she said. “That’s probably where he was staying.”

Dylan examined the pass, then pulled out his notebook and began making notes. “I don’t see anything out of the ordinary, do you?” he asked.

The only other thing in the car was a half-empty water bottle in the cup holder between the seats. “It doesn’t look like he planned to be out here long,” she said. “There are no snacks or lunch, no pack or change of clothes.”

“So he either figured on a quick trip or he headed out here on impulse, not taking the time to prepare.” Dylan opened the glove box, which was empty except for registration papers and the vehicle service manual. He flipped down both visors. The passenger side revealed nothing, but next to the mirror on the driver’s side was a photograph.

Or rather, half a photograph. A tear was evident on the left side of the picture, a color snapshot of a man in jeans and a button-down shirt. Daniel Metwater’s smiling face stared out at them.

“Maybe Andi wasn’t the person Agent Asher came here to see,” Dylan said.

Chapter Five

Dylan retrieved an evidence envelope from his Cruiser and sealed the photograph of Metwater in it. He took a few pictures of the vehicle and wrote down the plate number and the GPS location. “Let’s go,” he told Kayla as he pocketed his notebook. “I’ll take you back to your car. You’ll need to give us a statement about what happened at the camp this morning, then you can go. I’ll probably have more questions for you later.” He wanted to dig deeper into what she knew about Andi Matheson and the Family. And he wanted to see her again. Her mix of cold distance and warm empathy intrigued him.

“Do you do this kind of thing often?” he asked.

“What kind of thing?”

“Finding missing persons. Tracking down wayward children.”

“Andi wasn’t a lot of trouble to find. She just didn’t want to talk to her father. Senator Matheson thought I might be able to get through to her.”

“Seems an uncomfortable position to be in—caught in the middle of a family quarrel.”

He wondered if she looked at everyone so intently, as if trying to decipher the hidden meaning behind every word he said. He wanted to protest that he didn’t have an ulterior motive in talking with her, but that wasn’t exactly true. He was trying to figure out what made her tick. Maybe she was doing the same to him. “A lot of my work involves dealing with people in one kind of pain or another,” she said. “Whether it’s a divorce or estranged families, or investigating some kind of fraud. Isn’t it the same for cops?”

“Yeah.” Too much pain sometimes. “You learn pretty quickly to distance yourself.”

“My father made his living by preying on people’s emotions. He was an expert at making people afraid of something and then offering himself as the way out of their trouble—for a price. I think seeing him in action made me wary of letting others get too close.” Her eyes met his, dark and searching.

“Is that a warning?” he asked.

“Take it however you like.”

Neither of them said anything on the rest of the drive back to Ranger headquarters. Carmen met them at the door to the offices. “A crime scene team is on its way out to meet Simon,” she said.

“I found the victim’s car, parked not too far away.” Dylan read off the plate number and location.

“I’ll call it in,” Carmen said. “Some of the team might still be in cell phone range.”

“I’ll call them,” he said. “I’d like you to take Kayla’s statement.”

“All right.” Carmen sent him a questioning look. He knew she wondered why he didn’t take Kayla’s statement himself. He wasn’t ready to admit that the dynamic between him and the pretty private detective was too charged. He couldn’t be as objective about her as he liked and that bothered him. He wasn’t one to let a woman get under his skin. “I’ll be in touch later,” he told Kayla, and turned away.

* * *

KAYLA WATCHED DYLAN leave the room, annoyed that his dismissal of her bothered her so much. So much for the detachment she’d bragged about. This cowboy cop, with his probing questions and dogged pursuit of information, drew her in.

“There’s an empty office back here we can use.” Officer Redhorse led the way to a room crowded with two desks and a filing cabinet. She sat behind one desk and indicated that Kayla should sit across from her. “Have you been a private investigator long?” Carmen asked.

“A couple of years.”

Carmen opened up a file on the computer, then set a recorder between them. “Why don’t you tell me everything that happened, from the time you arrived at the Family’s camp this morning,” she said. “I’ll ask questions if I need you to clarify anything for me.”

Kayla nodded, and took a moment to organize her thoughts. Then she told her story, about approaching the camp, and the two men bringing in the body. Carmen asked a couple questions, then typed for a few minutes more. “I’ll print this out and you can read it over and sign it,” she said, and swiveled away from the computer. “What happened when you and Dylan went back out there?” she asked.

“Are you going to compare my story to his?” Kayla asked.

“I’m curious to get your take on things,” she replied. “Women sometimes notice things men don’t—emotions and details men don’t always pick up on.”

“I don’t think Lieutenant Holt misses much,” Kayla said.

“He’s new here, so I don’t know him well,” Carmen said. “Though he must be good at his job or he wouldn’t have been assigned to the task force.”

“He told me his family has a ranch in the area.”

“The Holt Cattle Company. It’s a big spread south of town. Knowing the country and the people here could be an advantage in this kind of work. Are you from the area?”

Kayla nodded. “But not knowing everyone can be an advantage, too. You don’t come into a job with any preconceived notions.”

“So what’s your impression of the lieutenant?”

Kayla stiffened. “Why are you asking me?”

“I thought I sensed a few sparks between the two of you—though maybe not the good kind. Did you two have some kind of disagreement?”

“No disagreement.” The two of them had worked well together, even though he sometimes made her feel prickly and on edge—too aware of him as a man who read her a little too well for comfort.

Carmen stood. “I’ll get your statement off the printer and you can read through it.”

When she was alone in the room, Kayla sagged back against the chair. Only a little longer and she would be free to leave. She wanted to do some investigating of her own, to try to make sense of what had happened this afternoon.

* * *

“I WANT A warrant to search Asher’s hotel room,” Dylan told Captain Ellison. The two stood outside Graham’s office, Dylan having filled him in on his findings at the camp. “That might give us a clue what he was doing out there.”

Graham nodded. “What about this PI? Kayla Larimer? Does she have any connection to Asher?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll talk to Senator Matheson to verify her story, but I think she was doing what she said—delivering a message to the senator’s daughter.”

“Did you learn anything else from her while you were at the camp?” Graham asked.

He had learned a lot—mainly that Kayla Larimer wasn’t the type of woman to get close to anyone very easily. “She’s good at her job, I think,” he said. “Observant. She pointed out right away that Asher had to have a car nearby, after noting that his boots were new, the soles barely scuffed. And she was good with the women at the camp. She thinks Andi Matheson was so distraught over Asher’s death because they had a close relationship. He may even be the father of her baby.”

“What do you think?” Graham asked.

“Maybe. But Andi might have been distraught because of what she’d seen when the body was dragged into camp. It was enough to upset anyone. And the picture I found in Asher’s car was of Metwater, not Andi. Asher may have had something on the Prophet that got him into trouble.”

“I’ve got a call in to the Bureau, asking if Asher was here working on a case,” Graham said. “Meanwhile, maybe his hotel room will turn up something.”

“Are you going to Agent Asher’s hotel?” Kayla asked.

Dylan turned to find the private detective, followed by Carmen, emerging from an office at the back of the building. “I want to go with you to the hotel,” Kayla said, joining him and the captain.

“This is a police matter,” he said. “You don’t have any business being there. You know that.”

She opened her mouth as if to argue, but apparently changed her mind. “Fine. Obviously, you don’t have a need for me any longer, so I’ll say goodbye.” She nodded to Carmen and the captain, but didn’t look at Dylan.

The snub irritated him. “I might have more questions for you later,” he said.

“Maybe I’ll have answers.” She left, closing the door a little more forcefully than necessary behind her.

“I don’t think she likes you too much,” Graham observed.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Carmen said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dylan snapped.

“If she really didn’t care what you thought, she wouldn’t react so strongly.” Carmen shrugged.

Dylan turned to Graham, and was surprised to find the captain grinning at him. “What are you smiling about?”

“My wife acted as if she hated my guts the first time we met,” he said. “Carmen may be on to something.”

Dylan turned away. “I’m going to file for that warrant.” And he would do his best to forget all about Kayla Larimer. The last thing he needed was a woman who wanted to play mind games.

* * *

KAYLA SCARCELY NOTICED her surroundings as she drove toward town after leaving Ranger headquarters. She had to find a way to see what was in Frank Asher’s hotel room. Lieutenant Holt might believe she had no right to get involved in this case, but he had made her a part of it when he took her back to the camp. She couldn’t drop the matter now, with so many unanswered questions. And it wasn’t such a stretch to see the FBI agent’s death as linked to the assignment she had taken on for Senator Matheson. Agent Asher’s murder had definitely upset Andi, and Kayla needed to know why.

Even if she had never met Dylan Holt and overheard him discussing searching Asher’s hotel room, visiting the hotel would have been the next logical step in her own investigation. She didn’t have the authority of a law enforcement agency behind her, but part of being a good private investigator was using other means to gain information. She might be able to charm a hotel clerk into letting her see the room, or to persuade a maid to open the door for her.

She wouldn’t interfere with the Rangers’ work. But she’d find a way to make Dylan share his information with her. She could even prove useful to him—another set of eyes and ears with a different perspective on the case.

She flipped on her blinker to turn onto the highway and headed toward the Mesa Inn—the name on the parking pass in Asher’s car. She found a parking place in a side lot that provided a good view of the hotel’s front entrance and settled in to wait.

She didn’t have to wait long. Less than half an hour passed before two Ranger Cruisers parked under the hotel’s front portico. Dylan and Carmen climbed out of the first one, while two officers she didn’t recognize exited the second vehicle. As soon as the four were inside, Kayla left her car and headed toward the hotel’s side entrance.

As she had hoped, it opened into a hallway that wound around past the hotel’s restaurant and gift shop, to the front lobby. A large rack of brochures shielded Kayla from the Rangers’ view, but allowed her to spy on them as they spoke first to the front desk clerk, then to a woman in a suit who was probably the manager. She wasn’t close enough to hear their conversation, but after a few minutes the manager handed over a key card and the four officers headed for the elevator.

Kayla put aside the brochure for a Jeep rental company she had been pretending to study and walked quickly to the elevator. She hit the call button. The car the agents had entered stopped on the fifth floor before descending again. Smiling to herself, Kayla found the entrance for the stairs and began to climb.

On the fifth floor, she eased open the door to the hallway a scant inch and listened. The rumble of men’s voices reached her. She was sure one of them was Dylan’s. Risking a glance, she opened the door wider, in time to see the four officers enter a room in the middle of the hall. Kayla stepped into the hall and checked the number on the room—535.

Now what? She couldn’t just barge in—that was a good way to get arrested. And she didn’t want to interfere, but she wanted information.

A loud squeak made her flinch. She turned to see a maid pushing a cleaning cart down the hall. Kayla moved toward her. “Excuse me,” she said. “I wonder if you could answer a few questions about the man who was renting room 535.” She opened her wallet and the maid, who looked like a student from the nearby university, stared at the badge. It clearly identified Kayla as a private investigator, not a cop, but most people didn’t bother to read the fine print.

“Why do you want to know about him?” the woman—her name tag identified her as Mindy—asked.

“He’s part of a case I’m working on.”

Mindy bit her lower lip. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk to anyone about the guests.”

“Any information you provide could be very helpful,” Kayla said.

Mindy pulled a cell phone from the pocket of her uniform top. “I’d better check with my manager.”

Kayla held her breath while Mindy put through the call. If the worst happened, she could make a break for the stairs, or bluff her way out of this. But when Mindy explained there was a woman cop who wanted to question her, the manager apparently told her to cooperate. Good thing Carmen was along on this job. The manager probably assumed Kayla was her. “What do you want to know?” Mindy asked, as she slipped the phone back into her pocket.

“Did you see the man who rented that room? Did you speak to him?”

“I saw him,” Mindy said. “But we didn’t talk or anything. I saw him when he left the room yesterday morning.”

“How did he act when you saw him? What kind of a mood was he in?”

Mindy shrugged. “I only saw him for a few seconds. He just looked, you know, ordinary.”

“Did you clean his room? Did you notice anything unusual about it?”

“No. I mean, it’s not like I spend that much time in the rooms. I clean them and get out.”

“So nothing about this guy stood out for you?”

Mindy rearranged the bottles of cleaning solution in the tray at the top of her cart. “Not really.” She avoided looking at Kayla.

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