Set the Dark on Fire Read online

  His gaze followed her hand. It lingered there for a moment then wandered up to the shoulder he’d just touched.

  Shay felt her bra strap slip down her bare arm. Damned ill-fitting thing.

  Across the cab, their eyes met. Her heartbeat kicked up, throbbing hard and heavy against her ribs. Her fingers tightened around his cell phone.

  “Just let me know when you’re done,” he muttered, pushing away from the door.

  After his back was turned, she let out a deep breath, resisting the urge to fan herself. Had it gotten hot in the cab of the truck, or was it just him? While she’d slept, the morning sun had come out in full force, blazing through the front windshield. Her can of Coke was sitting in the cup holder where she’d left it, getting warm.

  No longer nauseous, she drank every drop.

  Luke wasn’t an easy man to read, but the look on his face just now had been clear enough. It was the same expression she wore when she saw leftover chocolate cake in the refrigerator.

  Disgusted with herself for wanting it.

  She didn’t know whether to feel flattered or insulted. Confused by his reaction, she stared at the phone in her lap. It looked harmless enough now. A moment ago its placement had seemed disturbingly erotic, an object he’d held to his mouth resting between her thighs. Was she just imagining that he’d thought so, too?

  Trying to dismiss the exchange as post-hangover hormones, she flipped open his cell phone and scrolled down to recent calls. Mike’s number was at the top of the list. Hoping Luke hadn’t said anything to her boss about her “illness,” she pushed Send.

  “Mike Shepherd,” he answered.

  “It’s Shay.”

  “Tell me what you’ve got.”

  Feeling way out of her league, she told him what little she knew, assuming he would think she was either blind or inept.

  “Meza said he didn’t see any sign either,” was his only remark.

  “Are you coming out?”

  “I can’t. Teri’s in Sacramento, and I have the girls.”

  “What about Jeff?”

  “I haven’t been able to reach him.”

  Shay experienced a twinge of panic. She knew as well as anyone else in the field what procedure to follow when a wild animal threatened or attacked humans. The Department of Fish and Game’s response to this kind of situation was to shoot on sight. She just hadn’t expected to be the one to pull the trigger.

  “I checked the GPS,” he continued. “Sign or no sign, one of our collared lions was in the area at approximately 2:00 A.M. I triangulated his position to the exact coordinates of the attack. Now he’s holed up at Queen’s Den.”

  Her grip on the phone tightened. “Who?”

  “Hamlet.”

  “Oh, no,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.

  “Shay, I know he’s special to you,” Mike said, his voice pained. “I was there when we found him. It kills me to ask you to do this.”

  “Then don’t.”

  He was silent for a moment. “The sheriff says his deputy has some experience with long-distance targets.”

  A flash of anger surged through her, replacing sorrow. Garrett had been a sharpshooter during his tour of duty in Iraq, and she didn’t doubt he could get the job done. He might also enjoy doing it. “No,” she said from between clenched teeth. “Deputy Snell is not going anywhere near my lion.”

  Mike sighed.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said, sniffling. “I want it done right.”

  “At least let Meza go with you.”

  “He volunteered?”

  “Well, yeah. He doesn’t want another incident any more than you do. And you know you can’t go alone.”

  “Fine,” she said, trying to get used to the idea. It was hardly the first unpalatable task she’d had to perform. “Fine,” she repeated, feeling the hot sting of tears anyway.

  Luke finished processing the scene for traces. In Vegas, he’d have had a team of investigators to collect evidence, but Tenaja Falls didn’t have the resources, or the corresponding crime rate, to justify such expenditures.

  When he checked in on Shay, she was wiping tears from her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. He rested his forearms on the open window jamb, trying to avoid the forced intimacy wrought by the close confines of the vehicle. He didn’t want to get caught up in her drama, or to repeat the mistake of looking too deeply into her sultry blue eyes.

  “So what’s it going to be?” he asked.

  Her lips twisted a little at his brusque treatment. “I need to get some stuff at headquarters before we go. My GPS tracker. The long-range rifle.”

  He felt his jaw tighten with annoyance. Deputy Snell wasn’t his favorite person, but Luke would rather go shoot a lion with him than an emotionally unstable female. Not that he knew anything about hunting. “What about Garrett?”

  She looked over his shoulder, assessing Deputy Snell’s less-than-svelte physique. “He’d slow us down.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Five miles, uphill.”

  She was right. Garrett got short-winded traversing the parking lot. Mike Shepherd better not have been lying when he claimed Shay Phillips could “track like an Indian and shoot like a white man.” “Give me a minute,” he said. Walking away from her, he instructed Garrett to take the trace evidence down to the sheriff’s office and catalog it.

  Not that Luke really expected him to comply.

  In the three days Luke had been acting as interim sheriff, Garrett Snell had called in sick, dozed at his desk, driven around aimlessly in his cruiser, and camped out in a booth at the local café. Luke suspected he took kickbacks from the casino for looking the other way when its patrons violated the speed limit. He may have been involved in some even darker dealings.

  Luke didn’t really care one way or another. Garrett was a problem for his successor; Luke had more than enough on his plate right now.

  Removing all thoughts of the troublesome deputy from his mind, he went back to the truck and got behind the wheel. Shay Phillips didn’t smell like cigarettes, he couldn’t help but notice. More like sun-warmed skin and sleepy woman and something faintly herbal, like wildflowers or handmade soap. In the short time she’d occupied the cab of his pickup she seemed to have transformed it into her own cozy personal space.

  Determined to steel himself against her allure, and ignore her tantalizing scent, he drove on in silence, doing a good job of blocking her out. Until her stomach growled.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  Shrugging, she hugged her sweatshirt to her chest in a forlorn, childlike gesture.

  Luke didn’t have much of an appetite, but if they were going to hike, they needed to eat. She’d probably been too sick to hold anything down earlier, and he’d been working almost eight hours without a meal himself.

  “I’ll stop by the café on the way out of town,” he decided. He didn’t need her getting weak or dehydrated on top of everything else.

  Bighorn Café was one of two restaurants along Tenaja’s main drag. The other was Esparza’s Mexican Food. Luke had patronized both and suffered no ill effects.

  In addition to these establishments and a couple of fast food joints, the sleepy little burg boasted an auto repair shop, a hardware store, and a grocer’s market. On the way out to the interstate, there was also a Super 8 motel, dueling gas stations, and a funeral parlor.

  From what he could gather, Tenaja Falls was a convenient place to stop if your car broke down or ran out of gas. While visiting here, you could eat, sleep, or die.

  After the frenetic pace of Las Vegas, Luke should have found Tenaja Falls restful and quaint. He didn’t.

  He parked outside the café and held the door for Shay on the way in. She arched a brow at him when he chose a booth, but he figured only truckers sat at the counter. When Betty Louis, the proprietor, came to take their order, he realized the error of his ways.

  The town was even smaller than he thought.

  “H
owdy, Sheriff,” she said. Betty was a tall woman, broad-shouldered and sturdy, with fading blond hair and sharp blue eyes. Yesterday she’d asked him if he was married, where he was from, and if he had a girl waiting for him back there, so he already knew she was an insatiable gossip. Or worse, a matchmaker.

  “Looks like you had a nice time at the party last night,” Betty said, giving Shay a sly wink. She had a full carafe of coffee in one hand and a bandage on the other, as if she’d burned herself in the kitchen.

  Cooking accidents and nosiness. Hazards of the trade.

  “No,” Shay said, darting a glance at him. Although he was in uniform and on officiâl business, Betty was implying that he and Shay had spent the night together. “I mean yes, the party was …”

  Betty smiled, delighted to watch her stammer.

  “Just bring me the special,” Shay said with a glare, handing back her menu.

  “Same for you, Sheriff?” When he nodded, Betty filled both their mugs from her carafe. “And all the coffee you can drink, on the house.”

  Luke took a sip of coffee, which was nothing fancy but tasted a lot better than the swill at the station. Out of habit, he’d chosen a booth in the corner, and from that vantage point, he could see both exits while keeping an eye on his pickup through the fine coat of dust on the windows.

  Bighorn Café was like a hundred other roadside diners in a hundred other podunk towns. From its worn vinyl booths and chipped Formica tabletops to its old-fashioned cash register and laminated menus, everything was outdated.

  On the wall behind the counter, a single dollar bill had been framed.

  “Sorry,” Shay said when Betty was out of earshot. “I would have told her we were working together, but I thought you might want to keep things quiet.”

  “I do,” he admitted. “At least until the coroner releases a report.”

  She hunched her shoulders a little, as if trying to make herself smaller, and wrapped her hands around the steaming mug. “I’ve been thinking it could have been kids. Maybe they found her on the dunes and took her to the Graveyard. They didn’t report the body because they’d been out after curfew, drinking and driving or whatever, so they brought her to a place where she was sure to be discovered.”

  He’d thought of that, too. It was far-fetched, but possible.

  “Or migrant workers,” she ventured. “We’ve got plenty of those around here. In the country illegally, afraid to call the police, that sort of thing.”

  She seemed to be awaiting his response, so he said, “You may be right.”

  “I mean, this is Tenaja Falls, not Las Vegas. The circumstances are strange, but people just don’t … off one another around here.”

  He made a noncommittal murmur, sipping coffee. Unless he could prove the scene had been staged, there wouldn’t be much to investigate. “When a body has been moved or tampered with, procedure dictates we assume a homicide has occurred. Burial in an unmarked grave, for instance. That usually doesn’t happen when a person dies of natural causes.”

  “Were you a homicide investigator in Vegas?”

  “No. I was on a task force for organized crime.”

  Luke was saved from her next question—what brought him to Tenaja—when Betty laid down hot, heaping plates. Eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast. It was typical small town fare, and even he could take comfort in that simplicity.

  Shay picked up her fork and dug in, so she must have been feeling better. She ate with economical efficiency, apparently not interested in starving herself skinny or affecting dainty mannerisms. Her unself-consciousness amused him until she noticed him watching her.

  She looked from her plate, which was almost empty, to his. Something like hurt darkened her eyes, and he understood the reason for it. She thought he found her provincial. And of course, he did.

  Setting her fork aside, she picked up her coffee mug and drank from it, daring him to comment on her appetite. He wisely refrained. Nor could he think of any way to smooth things over, or understand why he wanted to.

  His attention was drawn away from her a moment later when a cocky-looking young man came through the front door. Luke evaluated him the way he did everyone, with an instinctive assessment of height, weight, age, and attitude. His dark hair was slicked back, his Levi’s were rolled up at the cuffs, and his plain white T-shirt fit him more snugly than current fashion dictated. He moved like a man who could handle himself in a fight but wasn’t expecting one, and as he looked in their direction, his surly mouth went slack.

  One glance at Shay, who had grown tense in the seat across from Luke, revealed the young man’s identity. Well, well. It was the infamous Jesse Ryan.

  Jesse must have come to the same conclusion as Betty, which Luke found even more ridiculous the second time around. On-duty police officers weren’t supposed to parade around with female conquests. But maybe any man with Shay Phillips was considered guilty by association.

  “Excuse me,” she said, sliding out of the booth and retreating to the ladies’ room.

  Jesse’s eyes followed Shay until she disappeared. When they returned to him, narrowing with animosity, Luke amended his impression of the local Lothario. Maybe Jesse was spoiling for a fight.

  Shay had told him that Jesse lived above the auto shop down the street. What she’d left unsaid was the relationship between them. Jesse stared after her like she was his unclaimed possession.

  “You want a booth, Jesse?” Betty asked, because he was just standing there.

  Jesse mumbled something about not being hungry anymore and went outside. Leaning his back against the building, he took a pack of smokes out of his pocket, struck a match on the heel of his black motorcycle boot, and lit one up.

  He looked just like James Dean.

  Luke threw a couple of bills on the table and rose to his feet, walking outside to grant the younger man’s unspoken invitation.

  Against the brick wall, Jesse continued to smoke, feigning indifference.

  “Jesse Ryan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Sheriff Meza.”

  His expressive eyebrows rose. “So?”

  “Can you answer a few questions about Yesenia Montes?”

  Those words seemed to penetrate his cool façade. “What about her?” he asked, meeting Luke’s gaze for the first time.

  “Did you leave the Round-Up with her last night?”

  Jesse opened his mouth to say no, but at that moment, Shay came through the double glass doors. Luke couldn’t have timed it better. Standing in front of them, she moistened her lips in a nervous, provocative gesture both of them were intensely aware of.

  “Go wait in the truck,” he said. Although she didn’t appear pleased by his tone, she complied, so the gamble had paid off.

  Jesse threw his cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it under his boot heel. He didn’t like the way Luke talked to Shay either, and Luke enjoyed needling him a bit more than he should have. He’d been a young, jealous fool himself, once upon a time, and knew from experience that it was always better to be the cause of envy than the source.

  “I left with her,” Jesse muttered.

  “Where did you go?”

  “We walked to my place.” He indicated Tenaja Auto, a few doors down.

  “What time?”

  He shrugged, leaning his back against the brick siding. “A little after midnight, I guess. She bummed a cigarette. I went on up.” He paused for emphasis. “Alone.”

  “Why didn’t she stay?”

  “I didn’t invite her to.”

  “Why not?”

  He looked past Luke’s shoulder, to where Shay was sitting in the truck. “She wasn’t the one I wanted.”

  3

  Dark Canyon State Preserve, where Shay did her field research, was a mixed chaparral and live oak woodland a few miles west of Tenaja. Its northern border skirted the edge of the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation, the Anza-Borrego Desert stretched far and wide to the east, and to the south, there was only Mexico.r />
  Mountain lions inhabited all of those areas. According to Mike Shepherd, the one they were after was on the preserve.

  Dark Canyon was in the rain shadow of Palomar Mountain, so what few storm fronts rolled in from the coast rarely climbed past the summit. Tenaja Falls and its environs received more uninterrupted sunshine than the beach. The canyon was situated between the mountains and another low-lying ridge, so it also got plenty of shade, and Deep Creek ran through the center, so it had water, too. A break from the relentless heat and a little extra moisture gave the land a fresh, verdant look the rest of the area lacked.

  It was a pleasant place to hike, picturesque and invigorating. Shay would have enjoyed herself if she were alone, unfettered by a job she didn’t want to do and a man she didn’t want to be with.

  She set a grueling pace, wanting to test Luke’s city-boy limits and punish him for the way he’d looked at her in the diner.

  Shay had grown up dirt poor, right here in Tenaja Falls. She may have a college degree and a career that supported her family, but she was only one step away from white trash, and she resented Luke Meza for making her feel like it.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t have any difficulty keeping up with her. She was sweating like mad and dizzy from exertion, while he’d yet to utter a single complaint. Exercise and a good meal were the best cures for a hangover, in her opinion, and she felt better for having both, but she needed a break.

  Conceding her defeat, she slowed to a stop, resting her back against a smooth sycamore. Taking small sips of water from her pack, she closed her eyes and concentrated on regulating her breathing.

  When she was cooled down enough to speak, she focused her attention on him.

  He was leaning against a tree, sweating as much as she was, if not more. The sight would have pleased her except that he also looked fit and virile and alarmingly sexy.

  “Are you trying to kill me?” he panted.

  She chuckled weakly. “You should have said something.”

  He only shook his head, telling her he’d been too proud to do so. “Didn’t you hear me whimpering a mile back?”