Pulling the Trigger. Julie Miller

jumped inside her skin at the sound of Ethan’s deep voice from right behind her. How could such a big man move without making a noise?

      Martinez nodded to him over her shoulder. “Good. I’m gonna need you with me, big guy.”

      “Sheriff.” Joanna ignored her erratic pulse and insisted on an explanation.

      “You might as well come, too, Rhodes. Watts isn’t at his trailer. The rat must have gotten wind we wanted to talk to him and skipped town. He’s cleared out his stuff and gone to ground.” His blue eyes shifted back up to Ethan. “I need you to track him for me.”

      “My gear’s in my truck.” A hand at the small of her back guided Joanna into step behind the sheriff as they headed for the exit. “You think we had another info leak?” Ethan asked.

      “Who knows?” Martinez paused just inside the doorway. “He probably knows that once we bring him in and he starts talking about Julie Grainger’s murder, he won’t be going back home for twenty years or so. Maybe his survival instincts kicked in.”

      Joanna took an extra step to move beyond the distracting brush of Ethan’s hand. “You don’t believe that.”

      “No. But I like the idea of having a mole on my team even less than I like the idea of Watts’s dumb luck keeping him one step ahead of us.” The sheriff pulled his hat low on his forehead before pushing open the door. “Makes me think he doesn’t want to answer your questions.”

      Ethan’s growly protest didn’t matter. The rain hitting her face didn’t matter. Joanna hurried out to the Suburban she’d arrived in, purposely choosing the sheriff’s ride over Ethan’s pickup.

      “He’ll answer them,” she vowed.

      Her ability to leave Mesa Ridge once and for all, knowing Sherman Watts and her past no longer had any hold over her, depended on it.

       Chapter Three

      Ethan knelt at the edge of the road to study the two smears of black rubber marking the bump where Sherman Watts’s yard met the asphalt. A quick analysis of the tread pattern in the mud matched the new, allterrain tires Watts had been sporting on his beat-up black truck the past couple of weeks. Their suspect had been gone for several hours now.

      But Ethan’s thoughts had drifted back several years.

       “So how do you know it’s a buck that left these tracks?” Joanna asked, her knees down in the dirt on Ute Mountain, right beside his. “And not a doe or even a mountain sheep or elk?”