Nightfall (2 page)

Blood.

He scanned the area, feeling
both annoyed and worried. He should be tracking down his informant
right now, not looking for a missing woman. But he couldn’t just
leave her alone out here. Wherever she’d gone, she hadn’t bothered
to take her purse—which meant she was either disoriented from her
injuries or lacking common sense.

He combed the area with the
flashlight beam and spotted a blue baseball cap on the other side
of the ditch. Beyond it were some broken branches, as if someone
had crashed through there in a hurry. Colin picked his way over the
ravine and studied the trail, frowning. It didn’t make sense. Why
head into the woods when the chances of flagging down help were
much better on the roadside?

Colin’s voice shattered the
silence as he called out her name. No answer. He trekked deeper
into the trees and called it again. The trail was erratic, zigging
this way and that, and the snow accumulating on the forest floor
made it even tougher to follow. He remembered the Kaplan place
about a mile back and wondered if she’d noticed it, too, and gone
for help. Would have been easier if she’d stuck to the highway, but
maybe she’d been dazed from a head injury. The thought chilled him
as he moved deeper into the woods.

“
Holly!”

A faint rustle as something
scampered up a tree. Colin pushed on, plowing through branches
until he entered a clearing. He moved the flashlight beam around,
trying to pick up the trail.

The phone vibrated in his
pocket. He pulled it out.

“
Denton.”

“
Was it him?” his boss
demanded.

“
Negative.” The skin at the
back of Colin’s neck prickled. He glanced around. “Just a disabled
motorist. Looks like she hit a patch of ice.”

“
Are you sure it
isn’t—”

“
Yes. Lemme call you
later.”

He stuffed the phone in his
pocket and stood perfectly still, listening.

“
How do you know my
name?”

He pivoted in the direction
of the voice. He swept the light around, but saw only
trees.

Movement behind him. He
turned around as a woman stepped out from behind a tree.

Colin skimmed the light over
her and did a quick assessment: five-eight, medium build, brown,
blue. Blood trickled down her face from a gash on her
forehead.

He stepped toward her. She
stepped back. The fierce look in her eyes made him think of a
cornered animal. He glanced at her side and noticed the rock
clutched tightly in her hand.

He slipped her phone from
his pocket. “I found this by your van.”

He stepped toward her. She
took a wobbly step back and he saw that she was trembling. This
woman wasn’t just disoriented—she was terrified. The accident must
have been worse than it looked.

“
You need a bandage on that
cut,” he said.

“
I need to call the
sheriff.”

“
We can do that.” He lowered
the light so it wasn’t shining in her face. “But you know, this
county’s the size of New Hampshire. There are four deputies. Odds
of anyone getting out here in the next hour are pretty slim.” He
held the phone out to her. She studied his face. Then she dropped
the rock and stepped forward.

“
Thank you.” She glanced
down at her phone and then up at him again.

Colin shrugged off his
jacket, taking care to pull his shirttail over his holster. No
point in scaring her more than she already was.

“
You need a bandage for that
cut,” he repeated. “I live just up the road.”

He held the jacket out and
saw the longing in her eyes. It was freezing out here and getting
colder by the minute.

“
Come with me,” he
said.

For a moment, she just stood
there. A shudder moved through her as she looked at him. Colin
waited.

She took his jacket and
slipped it on.

Chapter Two

Holly struggled to keep her
teeth from chattering as they bumped along the gravel road. Just a
few minutes in the truck, and already she felt the ache of
circulation returning to her fingers and toes. She pulled the
jacket tight around her to hoard every possible bit of
heat.

Snowflakes whizzed against
the windshield and she watched them numbly. Stumbling around in the
woods as the temperature dropped had been terrifying. The
combination of darkness and cold had given rise to a bone-deep fear
unlike anything she’d ever experienced. How long could she have
lasted out there on her own?

Holly’s teeth chattered, and
the man behind the wheel pretended not to notice. She glanced over
at him. She’d never taken a ride from a stranger before. Probably
not a smart move. Then again, it was smarter than cowering in the
forest and dying of hypothermia.

She looked out the window as
he pulled up to a small A-frame cabin. As promised, it wasn’t far
from the crash site. But the house wasn’t quite what she’d expected
when they’d passed through fancy electronic gates to enter the
D&D Ranch. The massive ranch had been purchased recently by
some rich software exec, and Holly had heard about the deal all the
way in Bozeman.

A yellow light glowed from
the front porch. He parked alongside a neatly arranged stack of
firewood and cut the engine.

“
Gonna get cold tonight,” he
said as they climbed out. He grabbed a few logs before tromping up
the stairs.

“
Wait.”

He turned to look at her. In
the porch light, she saw that he was tall and broad-shouldered. He
could overpower her in a heartbeat if he wanted to, and she was
about to enter an empty house with him.

“
I don’t even know your
name,” she said.

“
Colin Denton.” He gave a
slight nod. “I’m the caretaker here, case you were
wondering.”

She hadn’t been. That’s how
frozen her brain was. It hadn’t even occurred to her to wonder what
this man did for a living or why he happened to be out on the
isolated stretch of highway where she’d crashed her van.

He arched his brows at her.
“And you are…?”

“
Holly.” Well, duh. He
already knew that. “Holly Henriksen.”

The corner of his lip curved
up. He stood there on the porch, not even shivering, in only a
flannel shirt and jeans. He had brown-black eyes and a two-day
beard, and it suddenly struck her how attractive he was—in a
scruffy, lumberjack kind of way.

“
You want to come in, Holly
Henriksen, so I can see about that cut? Or we gonna stand here all
night freezing our tails off?”

His tone was teasing, and
something told her he was using it to relax her. It worked. There
was something about his posture, his mannerisms, and his decisive
response to everything that made her want to trust him. She climbed
the steps and waited with her hands stuffed in the pockets of his
jacket as he unlocked the door.

The cabin was dark inside.
It wasn’t freezing, though, and she guessed he must have had a
heater going earlier in the day. He flipped on a light and she
looked up to see a chandelier made of deer antlers. She surveyed
the layout. A small living area, a large fireplace. At the top of a
ladder was a sleeping loft, where she noticed a rumpled bed. Tucked
beneath the loft was a kitchen with outdated appliances.

“
It’s small, but it heats up
pretty quick.” He switched on a space heater and then knelt beside
the fireplace to stack the logs. “Hand me some of that newspaper,
would you?”

She glanced at the wooden
coffee table, where a paper was spread out beside an empty coffee
mug. It was open to an article about drug trafficking along
Interstate 15. It was the Missoula paper—Holly recognized it
because she’d read the same article over breakfast with her sister.
Was it really just this morning? It seemed like weeks
ago.

Holly handed him the paper,
and he made brisk work of getting the fire going. She edged closer
as it crackled to life.

“
Thaw out,” he said. “I’ll
be right back.”

She held her hands near the
flame and closed her eyes as tingly warmth seeped into her toes and
fingers. Even her nose stung. God, she’d thought she’d never get
warm again, and the feeling of heat on her face now brought tears
to her eyes.
What is wrong with me?
She never cried. But something about the events of
the past hour had her emotions bubbling to the surface.

Someone tried to kill
me.

Holly stifled a shudder and
opened her eyes. She heard cabinets opening and closing, and soon,
he was at her side again with a red first-aid kit and a wooden
stool.

“
Sit.”

She sat, which immediately
seemed awkward because she was at eye-level with his waist. He
crouched down and opened up the kit.

“
Nasty gash,” he said,
tearing open an antiseptic wipe. “There’s a cut on your lip, too.
You hit the steering wheel?”

“
I guess.” She reached up to
touch her mouth. It felt swollen, and she remembered tasting blood
as she’d climbed from the van.

“
Fair warning—this’ll
sting.”

Holly’s stomach fluttered as
he rested his hand on the side of her face and tilted her head back
slightly. She looked into the fire to distract herself.

“
Your van doesn’t have
airbags?” he asked, going to work on her injury.

“
It pre-dates airbags. We
call it the brontosaurus because it’s so old.”

“
Who’s ‘we’?”

She shifted her gaze to his
and something sparked between them. She glanced away. Was it her
imagination, or was he asking about her marital status? Probably
her imagination. She had to look like roadkill. She tucked a
wayward curl behind her ear.

“
My sister,” she told him.
“We’re in business together.”

“
A flower shop,
huh?”

She smiled. “Heather prefers
‘floral studio.’ I guess you looked in the back?”

“
Yep.” He dabbed the
cut.

“
Ouch!”

“
Sorry.” His gaze met hers.
“You’ve really got some dirt in here. You fall on a
rock?”

“
I’m not sure. I couldn’t
see, really.”

He looked concerned now.
“Can you tell me what day it is?”

She took a deep breath.
“Friday, November fifth.” It was engraved on her brain. The day she
was supposed to collect the check that would save her floundering
business.

“
Count backward from a
thousand.”

She shot him a glare. “I’m
not drunk.”

He waited patiently until
she complied. After about ten seconds, he gave a nod. “Bend your
head forward,” he said. “That hurt?”

“
A little sore.”

He settled his hands on the
back of her head and palpated her skull, right through all the
tangles and leaves in her hair.

“
Look at me.”

She did. His irises were
nearly black and she could see the fire reflected in them. The
moment stretched out. Holly’s chest tightened and her heart started
to thud.

His gaze shifted to her cut.
“You could probably use a few stitches. I’m not equipped to do it
here, but I could run you to Bozeman.”

She just stared at him. She
was new to Montana, but even she knew that would take at least two
hours, given the weather.

“
Ah, probably not worth it,”
he said, rummaging through the kit. “It’ll heal up pretty good if
you keep a butterfly on it.”

“
Where’d you get your
medical training?”

He looked at her. “The
Army.”

Ah-hah. It made sense now.
The posture, the mannerisms. Something about him had made her think
cop, but now she realized it was the military
background.

“
You served in
Iraq?”

“
Afghanistan.”

“
And you came
home…?”

“
Two years ago.” He snapped
the kit shut, and his tone told her he didn’t want to talk about
it. Maybe the transition from soldier to ranch hand hadn’t agreed
with him. Holly could relate. She’d always pictured herself a
painter, not a florist. But as an artist, she’d been starving, and
flowers paid the bills.

Most of the time.

A wave of anxiety hit her.
“Listen, does your phone work out here? Because I really need to
call the sheriff.”

“
Like I said, they’re
stretched thin tonight.”

“
I need to call my sister,
too.”

“
Soon as I’m done, you can
call whoever you want. You should use the landline. Cell phone
coverage is spotty out here.” He dabbed at her face some more with
the antiseptic and she watched the muscles of his neck move as he
worked. She smelled wood and leather and a hint of male sweat. The
combination was making her a little lightheaded. It had been ages
since an attractive man had put his hands on her for any reason at
all, and even though the reason was accidental, the situation was
making her antsy.