Run Wild (17 page)

“Huh?”

“That’s just it.” She donned the latex gloves she’d worn while handling the money and picked up the first evidence bag. “None of these bills have been in circulation for sixty years.”

“Really?” He picked up the other evidence bag full of money and stared at the stack of twenties inside. “Can’t tell you when I’ve last seen a twenty from the forties,” he commented. “Did you count it?”

“Forty-five hundred dollars.” She dropped the bag she’d been holding. “This stack of bills is mostly one-hundred-dollar bills. I haven’t entered every serial number, but all of the bills were printed before 1950.”

Trent stared for a long time at the bag in his hand. She wondered what he was thinking.

“Forty-five hundred bucks was a lot of money that long ago,” he said.

“Not a bad stash by today’s standards, either, but definitely not enough to kill someone the way Carl Williams was murdered.”

“If the two are even connected.” He looked at her, searching her face. “These things haven’t been stashed in the wall of that cabin for sixty years. Someone put them there recently. There were no cobwebs or dust on any of them.”

Natasha looked at the bags with the cash in them. Maybe her computer skills ran circles around Trent’s, but he had spotted something obvious, like no cobwebs, and in the dark. She was a long way from being the investigator in the field that her uncle and cousins, and Trent were.

“I didn’t even notice that,” she mumbled.

“I was moving spider webs and layers of dust off the walls and in the corners all over the place in that cabin.”

She nodded. She had been, too.

“When you spotted the section of wall that was hollow, the first thing I noticed were no cobwebs or dirt along the panel we pulled out.”

“I’d been wiping dust off the walls, too,” she admitted, and had still missed the obvious.

“You aren’t at a lot of crime scenes.”

He didn’t sound accusatory but more as if he defended her missing an obvious clue.

“We don’t really have that many crime scenes. They are more like manhunts.”

She looked at him, and his attentive expression almost made her lose her train of thought. Before she looked away, his focus dropped to her mouth. She looked at her computer screen, then at the other evidence bags on the coffee table.

“I don’t know what to think about the teddy bear, but I can probably find out who currently owns the land if you’ll help me by saying exactly where the land is.” Natasha flipped over to another screen she’d opened earlier, a site for Trinity County. “You can find any property owner here.”

“I already found that out. It’s Piney land.”

“Piney land?”

“Ethel Burrows used to be Ethel Piney.”

“Jim and Ethel Burrows own Trinity Ranch.” She flipped to another screen and pointed, showing him where she’d confirmed the owners of Trinity Ranch.

Trent glanced at her screen and nodded, then leaned back, stretching his legs so they were on top of her feet under the coffee table. He made no attempt to adjust his position, nor did he seem overly interested in her ability to learn who owned what property in his county. Natasha flipped to another page, determined to prove her usefulness and keep her mind off the long, muscular body threatening to distract her until all she would be able to think about was how soon, and where, they would have sex.

“When was she Ethel Piney?”

“Her maiden name was Piney. Ethel was married to one of the Popes, a ranch hand on a ranch south of here. She hooked up with him shortly after high school,” he said in a slow, lazy drawl, sounding as if explaining all this to her didn’t bother him. But he didn’t sound as if any of it mattered, either.

Natasha frowned, trying to follow what he’d said. “So Ethel was a Piney. She married and her last name became Pope. But she left that guy. Now she’s a Burrows and lives on Trinity Ranch and apparently owns it along with Jim Burrows.”

“That’s right.”

“So she wouldn’t have any connection to that land we were on today.”

“It’s not her land. The deed isn’t clear which Piney owns it and they’re a fairly reclusive family. I don’t know any Pineys around here but I’m going to look into it.”

“Oh.” Maybe there was a connection between the items in the cabin and Carl Williams’ murder. At the moment Natasha didn’t have a clue what, or how any of this tied in with her father. “We need to find out what this key is. My aunt and uncle have a safe-deposit box at their bank. I’ve accessed it before. Their key looks like this. But I guess if it’s as old as everything else here, it could be for something else.”

Trent leaned forward on the couch. He took the bag she’d lifted with the key in it and placed it back on the coffee table. “Give it a rest for now,” he said, his voice turning soothing.

Natasha didn’t want soothing. She wanted answers. If Trent turned gentle on her, she quite possibly would melt in his arms. And God, she wanted to feel his muscular arms wrapped around her. She wanted to know what his naked body would feel like pressed against hers. She wanted him buried so deep inside her the pressure that wouldn’t quit swelling, and throbbing, would finally go away.

Fucking Trent would be pointless. As soon as she figured out how to get her father out of this mess she would be returning to her life in L.A. Trent would continue his life here. They would never see each other again. As much as hot, mind-blowing sex with Trent sounded wonderful, he wasn’t the one-night-stand type. Or maybe she couldn’t be with him.

“No. I can’t,” she snapped, snatching the bag up again.

“We’ll think better if we take a break.”

“I’m here for one reason, and one reason only,” she informed Trent, moving so she faced him, and put distance between them. “I’m going to prove my father’s innocence. Even if that was him at that cabin, he’s probably hiding only because you think he committed murder.”

“Natasha.”

“No,” she yelled, letting the one word slice through the air between them. She jumped off the couch, putting her laptop on the coffee table, then moving around it, needing away from that virile body so she could think.

Trent moved just as fast, coming around the coffee table from the other side and cutting her off in the middle of his living room. When he gripped her arms, his touch created a heat too strong to ignore. She damn near sagged against him from the affect of it.

“Your father’s fingerprints were found all over Carl Williams’ body.”

She couldn’t have heard him right. Natasha lifted her gaze and stared into eyes so beautiful, at features so perfectly chiseled, at black hair that bordered his manly features, and wished they could go back in time just a few moments, to just before he’d uttered those words and ruined the perfect man for her.

“All over Carl Williams’ body?” Her voice didn’t sound right, as if her vocal cords had constricted too tight in her throat. Tears she wouldn’t ever allow to fall for her father again had receded and left her eyes dry. Her eyes burned.

Trent nodded, sucking in a breath. His thumbs rubbed against her bare arms. Moments ago his touch made her sizzle with need. Now she felt empty, unable to feel a thing.

“Williams was found spread-eagled, bound—”

“I saw the pictures.” She wouldn’t cringe against the image of the dead young man when he appeared in her mind. Her father wasn’t capable of such a horrendous act. He wasn’t.

“King,” Trent began, and the pained look on his face, as if it hurt him as much as it did her to lay the facts out before her, made his expression darker, almost vulnerable looking. “Your father,” he amended. “His fingerprints were around the man’s wrist, on his torso, his neck.” Trent shook his head. “I know how to do my job, darling,” he said, lowering his voice until his words were a rough whisper, brutally honest and at the same time brushing over her like pin pricks against her skin. “The positioning of fingerprints, where the pressure points are, show how a person grabs something, which direction his hand is coming from. I’ll show you.”

Before Natasha opened her mouth to tell Trent she knew how to read fingerprints, he’d left the room. His solid footsteps seemed to match the heavy beating of her heart. He was next to her again in a moment, holding a file. Suddenly he was willing to tell her everything.

What had changed? Natasha wouldn’t let her thoughts go there. Not now. Not when it didn’t matter if anything had changed between them or not. This man standing next to her was definitely the sexiest, most perfect man she’d ever met—yes, she’d admit it. Why the hell not?—and was also as wrong as a man could be for her. She wanted him more than she’d ever wanted another man in her entire life. Yet he was telling her that her father had committed a heinous crime. Worse yet, he would be the man who would arrest her father and make sure he was sent to prison, or worse.

“Take a look at the fingerprints found on Williams’ body.” Trent opened the file and positioned a couple printouts but then slapped the file shut and pressed one hand in the middle of her back. “It will be easier to see here.”

“I know what you’re talking about.” There wasn’t a lot of protest in her voice and her legs were wobbly when he walked with her into his kitchen.

“I want you to understand why I’m taking the angle I am on this case.”

Natasha looked at him as he focused on the contents of the file, spreading them out on the table and positioning them where he wanted them. There was strength in his profile, in the way his jaw was set with determination, in his incredibly focused nature. She imagined Trent to be the type of investigator who when he took on a case lived, breathed, and slept it until he had the thing cracked wide open and solved. Uncle Greg was the same way. God, was that why Trent seemed so perfect to her? He was just like Uncle Greg, like the man who’d raised her. She was falling for this man because he was just like the man who raised her.

The thought was so incredibly warped she almost laughed, which was insane. She should be crying. Yet she couldn’t cry.

“Here are prints on Carl’s wrists,” Trent told her, and angled his hand on top of the photograph to show how the aggressor’s hand would have been positioned. “Those prints were made before Carl was spread-eagled and bound to the poles.”

“How do you know they weren’t after?” Natasha studied the gruesome pictures. They weren’t as gory as the full-body shots had been. These pictures had been altered to show the fingerprints on Carl’s skin. “It looks like he was gripping Carl’s wrist, which he couldn’t have been doing if Carl was hanging. In order to hold his wrist the way this picture implies, the person would have had to have been standing on one hell of a ladder. You showed me the other pictures. He was up in the air. Maybe my father was trying to get him down.”

“Natasha,” Trent began, and faced her. His hands were on her arms, caressing them before he started speaking. “Carl was hanging, his wrists and ankles bound to those two poles when I showed up at the scene. He remained in that position until the medical examiner arrived at the ranch; then we cut him down. Once he was down, he was in the ambulance and removed from the property. I promise you, no one touched him once he was cut down without wearing gloves. The ladder used was cast to the side of the barn by the house. There was blood on it but no prints. The only way those prints could have been put on Carl’s body was before he was hung on the posts, or as he was being hung on those posts.”

She stared at Trent, managed to nod, then lowered her attention to his chest, unwilling to lose herself in his compelling gaze. His palms ran up and down the outside of her arms, brushing over her skin, consoling and arousing but, worse yet, distracting.

Her world was crashing in around her. The constants she knew in life were dissipating before her eyes, with the simple validation of where fingerprints were found, in what position, pressing down from what angle. She could see the forms on the table Trent hadn’t bothered pointing out to her. Natasha had printed off fingerprint analysis before many times. The printouts at the edge of the table were the damning evidence that the person who’d grabbed Carl Williams while he’d still been bleeding, held on to his wrist firmly, and pulled upward, as if lifting the blood-drenched hand up into the air to that post, had been her father.

“Natasha, it’s all there.”

She backed away from him and he let her go. Natasha didn’t shake from anger, pain, or regret. All the emotions that should be bombarding her simply weren’t there.

Turning, she returned to the living room, picked up her shoes and socks she’d taken off earlier, once the fire had warmed her, then sat stiffly at the edge of the couch and put them back on. Her luggage was in the corner and her laptop on the coffee table. All she had to do was gather her few belongings and head out the front door. This wasn’t her world. Trent Oakley would never be her man. She didn’t belong here.

My father isn’t a murderer!

The small voice screaming at the back of her head was easily ignored. Natasha wouldn’t endure any more pain because of her father. All her life she’d adored the man who helped give her life. Her mother had given up on the both of them when Natasha was four. Natasha had told herself, and her aunt and uncle told her the same thing most of her growing-up life, that her father adored her, loved her with all his heart, but wanted her growing up in a family environment. She grew up with her cousins, in their home, with Uncle Greg and Aunt Haley as parents because Natasha’s father couldn’t be both mom and dad at the same time.