Army Ranger Redemption. Carol Ericson

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СКАЧАТЬ to wait for the county guys.”

      “Okay if I leave, Unger?” Jim shoved his hands into his pockets where he must’ve still had his weapon stashed.

      If the man had been shot instead of stabbed, would Jim have told Unger about his gun? If he had a gun, maybe he had a knife.

      Scarlett closed her eyes and dragged in a deep breath. Nothing about Jim screamed cold-blooded killer, but she couldn’t shake the coincidence of his appearance followed by the discovery of a dead body on her property.

      “You can leave. Again, just be available in case anyone wants to ask you any more questions.”

      Scarlett pivoted on the gravel. “Hope you can figure out what happened to that poor man.”

      Jim drew up beside her with his flashlight. “I’ll walk you back to your place, if that’s okay.”

      “If you want, but I think I’ll be fine with half the Timberline Sheriff’s Department on my property and the county sheriffs showing up in a few.”

      “I can take a look around and check your doors and windows—for when all those deputies leave.”

      A little chill zapped the back of her neck, and she hunched her shoulders. “That’s a creepy thought.”

      “Not my intention to scare you, but sometimes a little fear is a good thing.”

      They returned to her cabin and Jim flicked the broken dead bolt. “You can start here by getting this replaced, and you might want a peephole in the door so you don’t have to look out that window.”

      “Funny enough, I noticed those deficiencies myself when you banged on my door.”

      “Why don’t you give me a tour?”

      She spread her arms. “This is the great room, perfect for entertaining three guests at one time.”

      His lips twisted as he checked the front window. Then he moved to the other two. “At least they all have working locks.”

      “At least?”

      “Anyone can smash a window.”

      “Thanks for that.”

      “But then you’d wake up and the intruder would lose his advantage, and you could always come at him with this.” He strolled to the fireplace and replaced the poker she’d snatched for her defense when he’d first come to her place. “Do you have a gun?”

      “A gun? I hate guns.”

      He pulled his own gun from his pocket and caressed the handle. “You hate guns because you’re afraid of them. If you learned how to take care of a gun and all the safety measures associated with gun ownership, you might feel differently.”

      Shaking her head, she gritted her teeth. “I doubt it. Almost everyone around here has at least a shotgun and spends a lot of their time hunting defenseless animals.”

      “I agree. You don’t have anything to fear from a wild animal.” He returned his gun to his pocket. “I spent my time in the army hunting a different kind of animal—definitely not defenseless.”

      “You used to hunt, though, didn’t you?” She snapped her fingers. “That’s why you became a sniper. You were a great shot.”

      “Something like that.” He pointed toward the kitchen. “Do you have a back door?”

      “Two of them—a side door off the kitchen and then a back door from the addition. That’s another thing I liked about this cabin. The Butlers had added a room to the back of the house, which made a perfect studio.”

      He checked the kitchen door and tapped the wood. “You need a dead bolt on this door, too.”

      “I’ll get someone out to do both doors, same key.”

      He stood in the middle of her kitchen, dwarfing it. He’d even been buff as a teenager. Instead of playing team sports for the high school, Jim had spent his time working out and lifting weights.

      From the way his shoulders filled out his jacket, he hadn’t given up the weights.

      “You know what you need in this kitchen?”

      “Besides a twenty-four-hour chef?”

      “A landline telephone. You can’t keep running to the end of the road in an emergency.”

      She hunched over the kitchen counter, planting her elbows on the tile. “I came back here, bought this cabin to get away from it all, to work, not to get all plugged in.”

      “After what just happened out there—” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder “—you need to think about your safety.”

      She widened her eyes. “Why? Do you think there’s a serial killer on the loose or something? I’m not happy that someone died outside my cabin, but I don’t think it has anything to do with me. From the looks of the guy, it could’ve been a bar fight or drug related.”

      Jim straightened up so fast from where he’d been bent over looking for a phone jack, he almost hit his head on the bottom of the cabinet.

      “Why would you say that?”

      “I don’t know. He looked a little rough around the edges, could’ve been using.”

      “The point is, we don’t know his story.” He limped from the kitchen and tipped his chin toward the short hallway. “Okay if I take a look in the other rooms?”

      “There are just the two bedrooms. You already visited the one bathroom, and then the room at the end of the hall—my studio.”

      He pushed into the bathroom and placed his palms flat against the small, beveled-glass window. “Someone can slide this up and out. You can buy a rod to put across the top of the slider to prevent that, or you can even use a pencil.”

      “Good idea. I never realized how unsafe I was before.”

      “You never found a dead body on your property before—have you?”

      “That was a first, although I guess it’s not all that rare for Timberline cabins to be housing dead bodies. Did you hear about Jordan Young killing his mistress twenty-five years ago and stuffing her body in the chimney of his cabin?” She sucked in a breath between her teeth and shivered.

      “I read about the whole thing online when I got here. So much for peaceful little Timberline.”

      He checked the windows in the guest bedroom, and then she led him to her own room. As he took a turn around the bedroom, she actually blushed—not out of modesty but because she’d just had a sudden vision of this man spread out on her bed.

      “You should keep these closed at night.” He yanked the curtains together and she jumped. “Are you still nervous?”

      “It’s not every day someone is murdered in your neighborhood.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. She should be feeling more СКАЧАТЬ