Red Wolf's Return. Mary Forbes J.

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СКАЧАТЬ the years. Here today, gone tomorrow, and before you knew it a chunk of life vanished.

      He looked so familiar—yet not. Lines fanned around those quiet, earth-colored eyes she’d gazed into ten million times, eyes that understood pain and loss and bias, and had spoken to her heart from the moment they’d met when he was eight and she seven.

      His hair was far longer than it had been at eighteen. Back then, he’d still been trying to squeeze into a world that often shunned him. Today, he was his own man and that hair was artfully cut into a shaggy, raven mane that touched the collar of his denim jacket. Her fingers tingled to dive into the thick mass, feel the silk slide against her fingers.

      But she had no right to touch anymore. No right to him. She had made the choice two decades past.

      Oh, the losses. She couldn’t begin to tally them.

      Dropping her hands, she looked at her closed door, heard the soft scrape of his boots as he came from the interview room and stopped outside her office.

      Would he knock? Call her name?

      No, he walked away. Away, as she had at seventeen.

      Ethan.

      It wasn’t lost on Meg that he hadn’t used her name during the interview. Undoubtedly, she had been a stranger, a woman he no longer recognized.

      Well, wasn’t that what she wanted when she’d returned to Sweet Creek six years ago, why she had not sought him out, rekindled their friendship, their love?

      God, he’d been her best friend. She’d told Ethan things she never told a soul, not her best girlfriend, Farrah; not her brother, Ash. Not even her ex-husband.

      A knock sounded. He’d returned, changed his mind. “Come in.”

      Dispatcher and receptionist Sally Dunn poked her head around the door. “Chief, you might want to see this before I scan it into the computer.” She held a sheet of paper.

      “What is it?”

      “Ethan Red Wolf’s…statement.”

      Meg tamped back a sigh. “You’re going to tell me he didn’t give one.”

      “Uh, well, actually he did. Just not the way you’d expect.” The dispatcher set the page on the desk.

      A drawing. He’d done a sketch, an intricately detailed sketch. For a second Meg closed her eyes. Oh, Ethan. This is so you. How on earth was she supposed to submit this to court, if the investigation reached that point?

      “What should I do with it, Chief?” Sally toyed with the gold chain around her neck.

      Meg picked up the page, tossed it onto the stack of files loading her In box. “Nothing, Sal. I’ll deal with it.” With him.

      “He left his cell phone number. Should I call and have him come back?”

      Meg shook her head. “I’ll be taking a look out that way this morning. Need to get some pictures of the scene and the eagle over at the clinic.” Deliberately changing topics in an effort to remove thoughts of Ethan in those long, lanky Wranglers, she asked, “Has Gilby left yet?” It was the deputy’s turn to pick up the bagels from Old Joe’s Bakery today.

      “Five minutes ago.”

      “Good, let me know when he’s back. I’m starving.”

      Sally laughed. “You’re always starving. Sheesh, I wish I had your metabolism, grazing on carbs all day and never gaining an ounce.”

      “It’s called being the mother of a teen, Sal. Takes a lot of stamina.”

      “I hear ya. Thank goodness those days are over in my house.” Chuckling, the dispatcher headed out the door.

      The instant she was alone again, Meg picked up Ethan’s “statement.” A time line wove over the page. Along it, he’d created more than a dozen sketches, each intricately detailed and described with notes. His spiky, slanted initials angled across the bottom right corner.

      She identified her son and Randy Leland, read the time and date. She recognized Beau’s obstinate attitude in his down-turned mouth. Randy looked out of the page with some reluctance, exactly as the boy appeared whenever he came to her house two miles east of Sweet Creek.

      And a quarter mile from Ethan’s place. Don’t forget that, Meg.

      No, she never forgot the fact as she watched the sun rise and set, ate and slept and argued with her son, just over a small bluff from the man she once loved so much she’d believed their souls were attached at the heart.

      And when she had learned a year ago about his inheritance of the O’Conner place, about his plans to move into the house on land separated from hers by a narrow creek…God, she had walked around with a clog of fear in her throat for weeks. It was one thing to see him from a distance on her brother’s ranch; it was another to be Ethan RedWolf’s direct and only neighbor.

      Blinking, she focused on his portrayal of her son and Randy Leland. They weren’t bad kids, just teenagers striving for independence. That’s what she kept telling herself.

      She studied the female figure, back to the viewer, sitting on the boulder where Ethan claimed to have discovered the raptor.

      A small jolt darted through Meg. It’s me. He’s drawn me at seventeen.

      When her hair had been long enough to touch her belt, when innocence colored the future.

      Why? she wondered. Why would he include her in a present-day time line? And suddenly she understood. She, sitting on that megaton rock, offered directions to the scene of the crime.

      Oh, yes, he knew she’d recognize the boulder. They’d sat there for hours as kids, and he’d kissed her a thousand times, touched her breasts while, over lake and mountain, they had observed a pair of adult eagles seek prey to feed their offspring.

      More than that, on that rock, she and Ethan had dreamed of the home they’d build together, of the children they’d raise. Years of life and love wending into the future from that base point. So many plans.

      Oh, Ethan. You never forgot.

      Admit it, Meg, neither have you.

      Simply put, she’d been bullheaded about burying the key that locked her heart. But looking at her younger self, remembering the emotion in his eyes back then, remembering those eyes today harboring secrets, she wondered what he would say about her secret.

      The scarred one under her shirt that said she’d been cancer free for seven years.

      Chapter Two

      Fifteen minutes after Ethan left, two more complaints were called in, the first involving five overturned headstones at the Sweet Creek Cemetery to which Meg sent Gilby. Then Beth Ellen Woodley carped about a Ford Bronco parked on her lawn with Ulysses McLeod snoring off an all-night drunk behind the steering wheel.

      By the time Meg eked out an hour of free time, it was nearly ten o. “Sal, I’m going to Blue СКАЧАТЬ