Rancher's Redemption. Beth Cornelison

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СКАЧАТЬ with a keen, unnerving gaze. Tamara’s pulse scrambled, and she jerked her attention back to the carpet fibers. Sheriff Yates made another quiet comment, and Clay answered, his deep timbre as smooth and rich as dark chocolate. Tamara remembered the sound of Clay’s low voice stroking her as he murmured sexy promises while they made love. Just the silky bass thrum could turn her insides to mush.

      Her hand shook as she bagged the fibers and moved on to pluck an auburn hair from the passenger’s seat. She huffed her frustration with herself. She had to regain control, forget Clay was watching her and get back to business. She closed her eyes and steeled her nerves, steadying her hands and forcing thoughts of Clay from her mind.

      “What you got?” said Eric Forsyth, her superior in the CSI lab, as he bent at the waist to peer through the open driver’s door.

      Tamara bagged the hair and labeled it. “Not much. I’ve never seen such a clean car. It’s odd.”

      Eric shrugged. “Not surprising. It’s a rental car. A company typically washes and vacuums the cars after every customer.”

      “That’s not what I mean. I’m not finding fingerprints or stray threads. No footprints or tire tracks around the car. Not much of anything.”

      Eric scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “What’s more, anything we do find is gonna be hard to pin to whatever happened here. God knows how many people have been in this car in the past month.” He motioned to the bag in her hand. “That hair could belong to a schoolteacher from Dallas who rented the car two weeks ago.”

      Tamara sighed. “Exactly why it doesn’t feel right. Even with the rental agency’s regular maintenance, we should be finding at least traces of evidence. I think someone wiped the scene.”

      “You’re sure?” Her boss adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses.

      “The evidence—or lack of evidence—seems to point that way.” She frowned. “Which tells me something bad happened here. Something someone doesn’t want anyone to know about.”

      “Wouldn’t be the first time. Well, keep looking. Maybe whoever wiped the scene missed something.”

      Tamara nodded. “Got it.”

      Clay tensed as the lanky man with glasses who’d been speaking with Tamara walked up to Jericho and shrugged. “My team isn’t getting much for you to build a case on, Sheriff. In fact, our professional opinion is the scene has been wiped clean.”

      Jericho furrowed his brow and stroked his mustache. “Nothing?”

      Clay turned his attention back to Tamara as he listened to the exchange between the crime scene investigator and the sheriff.

      “Well, we found a partial print on the trunk. A hair on the front seat. A scratch on the front fender—but it looks old. There’s already a little rust formed.”

      “No signs of foul play or a struggle?” Jericho asked.

      “Not yet. But we’re still looking.”

      Clay watched Tamara comb the Taurus with a calm, methodical gaze. She moved like a cat, her movements graceful, strong and certain as she inched through the interior, pausing long enough to bag tiny bits of God-knows-what and securing the evidence. Her professionalism and confidence as she processed the scene was awe-inspiring.

      He remembered her awkwardness during her first weeks on the ranch as she learned to use the equipment and handle the horses. Though she soon picked up the finer points of ranching—he didn’t know of much Tamara couldn’t do once she set her mind to it—she’d never had the passion for the daily workings of the Bar None that he’d hoped.

      Today, as she scoured the stolen car, her love for her job was obvious. She had been flustered when she questioned him, but seeing her again after five years had thrown him, too. Despite the awkwardness, she’d rallied and fired her questions at him like a pro.

      “I did an initial survey of the area and didn’t find much either,” Rawlings said.

      “Have you found anything that’d tell us what happened to the driver? Tracks of a second car for a getaway? Footprints leaving the scene? The fact that the money is still here bothers me.” Jericho shook his head. “Who’d leave that much money behind unprotected?”

      The crime scene investigator with the wire-rimmed glasses gave Clay a wary look then glanced to Jericho. “Good point. And, no. No footprints or tire tracks.”

      “It’s been too dry,” Clay volunteered. “Only rain we’ve had in weeks was a couple nights ago. A squall passed through. Hard and short. Any surface impressions that might have been left in the dust would have been washed away.”

      “I’m sorry, who are you?” the investigator asked, sending Clay a skeptical frown.

      Clay offered his hand, choosing to ignore the man’s churlish tone. “Clay Colton. You’re on my ranch. I found the car. Reported it.”

      The man shook his hand. “Eric Forsyth. San Antonio CSI. I believe you already met my assistant, Tamara Brown?”

      “Yep. Met, married and divorced.” He gave the man a level stare. “She’s my ex.”

      Forsyth arched an eyebrow. “Oh? She failed to mention that.”

      Clay quickly squashed the disappointment that plucked him. Apparently she’d cut him cleanly out of her new life. Setting his jaw, he angled his gaze to watch Tamara again. She was giving the driver’s door a thorough go over, her jeans hugging her fanny as she squatted to study the contents of the map pocket. “She had no reason to mention it. It has no bearing on anything related to this case.”

      “We’ll see about that.” Forsyth turned to the sheriff, effectively dismissing Clay.

      Clay ground his teeth and did his best to ignore the affront.

      “Colton is right,” Sheriff Yates said. “About the dry weather and the brief rain on Tuesday night. Whatever slight impressions might have been around before that storm were almost certainly lost to the rain.”

      Forsyth crossed his arms over his chest and grunted. “Yeah. There’s a puddle of water in the trunk with the money. If the hood of the trunk was ajar, we can assume it’s rainwater that leaked in.”

      “Which helps establish a time frame. If the car sat out here in the rain, we’re looking at events that happened before Tuesday night.” Jericho rubbed his jaw as he thought. “The car was reported missing Wednesday morning when the first shift arrived at the rental place and checked the inventory.”

      “I’ll call the rental agency and ask them to send copies of the images from their security cameras for Tuesday. Maybe the theft was caught on tape,” Deputy Rawlings said.

      “Good thinking,” Jericho said.

      “You oughta talk to my neighbor, Samuel Hawkins, too.” Clay crossed his arms over his chest as he spoke to Rawlings. “He came out here Tuesday evening to investigate a commotion he’d heard and found one of his longhorns tangled in that fence I was working on.”

      “Could the commotion have been something besides the steer?” Rawlings asked.

      Clay СКАЧАТЬ