Hot on the Trail. Vicki Tharp

returned with a basic first-aid kit. “Let me see that.”

      The blood had already started to coagulate, the rivulets making the skin on the back of his hand tight. “It’s okay.”

      “Sit.”

      “I said—” He looked at her, from the hand on her slim hip, to the tight purse of her lips, to the raised brow that asked whether he was up for a fight, because she most certainly was. He decided he wasn’t.

      “Fine.” He pulled out one of the two table chairs and plopped into it.

      Jenna took the other, cracked open the kit, and went to work. A scrub of peroxide, a dab of antibiotic ointment, a double wrap of rolled gauze, and he was ready to go.

      “Your arm,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “That from the crash?”

      “Yeah.”

      “And you’re still not flying after all this time?”

      He shook his head. “I thought you knew. I figured Kurt would have told you.”

      “I didn’t know it was that bad. When I asked, Kurt said you were okay.”

      “You could have called.” Quinn wanted the words back as soon as they’d left his traitorous mouth. They made him sound needy. He didn’t want false concern.

      Or pity.

      “Would you have answered?”

      He didn’t fight the thin smile. “Probably not.”

      She ran her fingernail along a dent in the tabletop, apparently at a loss for how to respond. The silence stretched out, except for the scrit-scrit of her fingernail on the wood.

      His knee started bouncing. “You really believe there’s nothing else to Kurt’s death? That it’s cut-and-dry?”

      Jenna took a sudden interest in making sure all the first-aid supplies were replaced in the box with exacting precision. You would think she was disarming a bomb.

      “Jenna?”

      She shrugged and said, “Why wouldn’t it be?” For some reason, she was now fascinated with a scratch on the edge of the table.

      “Jenna, look at me.”

      Glancing up, she met his eyes, and for the first time in a long time, he saw her. The fear. The uncertainty. The vulnerability—that had nothing to do with Kurt and everything to do with him.

      Maybe his heart wasn’t the only one that had been broken.

      He tried to suck in a deep breath, but his chest was too tight, and he might as well have tried to suck a thick milk shake through a thin straw for all the good it did him. But now was not the time to think about their past.

      “What aren’t you telling me?”

      “I don’t know. My head is saying suicide, and if not that, accidental overdose. Maybe he didn’t mean to die, maybe he’d gotten the dose wrong, or the stuff was bad, or, or…”

      “Or?”

      She thumped a fist to the center of her sternum. The sound rang hollow in the relative silence of the cabin. “There’s this feeling in my chest that I can’t describe. It’s like my heart—”

      Shaking her head, she thumped her chest again, only not so hard.

      “Doesn’t want to believe?”

      “More like can’t believe. But my head tells me it’s true. That I missed something, some sign, some warning. That if I’d only paid enough attention, I would have known something wasn’t right. But I wonder, do I think that because I just want to find someone else to blame besides myself?”

      “No,” he said. “I don’t believe that.”

      He picked up her hand and laid her palm over his heart. Her hand was warm in his as he rubbed his thumb over the callus on her right index finger where her reins always lay. “This beat is as doubtful, as wary to believe, as yours is that the sheriff’s narrative is right.”

      She fisted his shirt in her fingers. “So, what do we do?”

      “Prove the sheriff wrong.”

      * * * *

      Reluctantly, Jenna released the grip she had on Quinn’s shirt. “So, how are we going to prove our hearts right, and our heads—and the sheriff—wrong?”

      She wiped the sweat from her upper lip with the shoulder of her T-shirt. Kurt’s cabin was stuffy. While waiting for Quinn’s answer, she opened both windows and propped the front door open with one of Kurt’s boots.

      “I don’t know yet,” Quinn said. The words came out slowly and thoughtfully, as if he were trying to come up with a viable plan on the spot.

      “Check Kurt’s footlocker.” He stepped to the bunk, booted Dink off the bed where the dog had curled up, and stripped the covers and sheets from the mattress. Dink lay back down on the pile of sheets on the floor.

      Opening the lid of the footlocker, Jenna said, “What am I looking for?”

      “Anything. A clue. Something that gives us insight into his state of mind near the end.”

      It didn’t seem right digging through a dead man’s belongings. Even if he wasn’t there to protest, it felt like she was violating a trust. But that didn’t keep her from scrounging around.

      To be sure she didn’t miss anything, she took the items out one by one. Checked pockets of jeans, and shirts. The insides of his running shoes. She went so far as to pull out the insoles. But there was nothing there that shouldn’t be.

      Quinn moved on from searching the bed, and started in on the kitchen drawers and cabinets. He checked the refrigerator and freezer, then grabbed the Mustang’s keys from a tiny hook by the door and continued the search outside. She moved on to the bathroom.

      When she’d finished, she met him by the car. Both doors were open, the hood, the trunk. She found him at the rear of the car, pulling out the spare tire and jack. Quinn threw the tire iron on the ground and bumped the meat of his fist against the rear fender over and over again.

      “I’m missing something.” Quinn leaned his hands on the quarter panel, his head drooping down between his shoulders as if the exhaustion had finally won out.

      His head popped up. “Ha, that’s it!” A light shone in his brown eyes that hadn’t been there since he’d arrived. “Where’s his weapon?”

      “Weapon?”

      “He has a Sig Sauer P229.”

      “One of the program’s rules is no knives over four inches, and no guns.”

      “The Sig was his baby. A man like Kurt wouldn’t leave his baby behind.”

      “All program participants have a form they sign—”

      Quinn barked out a laugh. Only a fraction of it was amusement. The other part, she decided, it was best she didn’t know. “Ink on a piece of paper isn’t going to separate him from his weapon.”

      “If he had one, I never saw it.”

      “He would have kept it on him. The sheriff didn’t find one with his body?”

      “Not that they’ve said, but I doubt they’d have told me.”

      Quinn glanced around. He jogged back to the cabin, taking the two steps in one leap. He snagged the boot that held the door open and reached a hand inside.

      His hand came out with a magazine loaded with hollow point bullets. With Mac and Boomer living on the ranch, she’d spent plenty of time on the shooting range, learning to handle weapons. Under the bed, Quinn found the other boot, but it was empty.

      “He has a holster stitched inside his boot,” Quinn said.

      “Son