Ranger's Justice. Lara Lacombe

mouth.

      The woman was on her back, impossibly still, her arms bent at the elbows and hands resting over her heart. Her knees were bent and the soles of her feet were pressed together, leaving her legs splayed out in a grotesque parody of a yoga pose. She looked almost peaceful, except for the horribly tangled hair arranged across her face, obscuring her features. One cloudy blue eye was visible in a gap between the strands, staring lifelessly at the sky.

      Quinn’s heart pounded in his chest and blood thundered in his ears. For a moment, all he could do was stare at the body and try to comprehend what he was seeing. Working as a park ranger, he was no stranger to death—he’d come across the carcasses of animals from time to time, but that was just a part of nature. This—this was something else entirely.

      He reached out and touched the side of her neck with his fingertip, feeling for a pulse he knew wasn’t there. Still, he had to be sure.

      Her skin was cold to the touch, her flesh unnaturally stiff under his finger. He snatched his hand back and rubbed it over his pants, trying to erase the feeling of death before it could fully take hold of him.

      He closed his eyes as a memory assaulted him, filling his senses.

      Ashley. His wife. Her body lying twisted on a different trail, bones broken from the fall that had taken her life.

      A wave of helplessness made his knees buckle, and Quinn fell to the ground, tears streaming down his face. He had arrived too late to save Ashley. And now it seemed history was repeating itself.

      Except... He frowned as his whirling thoughts began to settle. Ashley had fallen over the edge of a trail while hiking in Yosemite National Park, landing on a small outcrop twenty feet below. That didn’t seem to be the case here. While the woman’s body lay in a small declivity in the land, there was no overhang nearby, no cliff she might have tumbled off. It was as if she’d dropped from the sky, placed here by some unseen hand.

       Murder.

      The word appeared out of nowhere, a shout in his mind that cut through the fog of his shock and memories. He forced himself to really look at the body, searching for signs of injury or foul play. There was nothing obvious to see, but he knew without a doubt this woman had been killed.

      His hand shaking, Quinn reached for his radio and called back to base to report this sad discovery. Given his position on the trail, it was going to take a couple of hours before anyone could reach him. Dispatch assured him the police were on their way, and Quinn resigned himself to the fact he was going to have to stay on the scene until they arrived. He moved back to the trail and hiked down to the closest switchback, then draped a rope across the trail and affixed a small Trail Closed sign to it. His fellow rangers would close off the trail at its start, but he wanted to make sure any hikers who had already set out wouldn’t stumble across the scene.

      With a sigh, he returned to the body. He didn’t want to stay nearby, but it felt wrong somehow to leave her alone. He debated draping his light jacket over her face—he wanted to give her some dignity—but in the end he held back. If he touched her again or interfered with the scene in any way it would make it harder for the police to do their job.

      Not knowing what else to do, Quinn sat a few feet away in the paltry shade of one of the bushes, keeping company with a dead woman and the ghost of his wife.

       Chapter 1

      Two weeks later

      “Do I need a lawyer?”

      Rebecca Wade paused in the doorway to the interrogation room, taken aback by the question. As a psychologist in the FBI’s famous Behavioral Analysis Unit, she’d interviewed all sorts of men and women over the years. She had dealt with any number of threats, both overt and subtle, lies, tears, accusations, claims of innocence and a few attempted seductions during these conversations. Rarely were the people she talked to so direct right off the bat.

      She closed the door behind her with a soft snick. “That depends,” she said.

      The man stiffened at the sound of her voice, and he turned around to face her. His eyes widened when he saw her. “You’re a woman.”

      Rebecca lifted one eyebrow. “Is that going to be a problem?” Her mind was already whirring with possibilities. She was here to talk to him about the deaths of two women in Big Bend National Park. This ranger had found their bodies a week apart, making him a potential suspect in the murders. And if he was such a blatant misogynist, maybe this conversation wasn’t going to take as long as she’d estimated.

      “No, ma’am,” he said. “Not a problem. Just a surprise.” He pushed back the chair and stood, and Rebecca’s body tensed. Was he going to attack? It wouldn’t be the first time a suspect had come after her, and while she was confident in her self-defense skills, she didn’t want to test them against this man. He was taller than her by a good six or seven inches, and he likely outweighed her by about forty pounds.

      He must have read the tension on her face because he took a step back and gestured to the chair across from him. Rebecca kept her gaze on him as she took the long way around the table. Only when she had taken a seat did he sit back down, and she realized with a small shock that he had jumped to his feet in a display of manners rather than an attempt to scare her.

      Interesting.

      “As I was saying, Mr. Gallagher, you’re not under arrest. You are free to have a lawyer present during our conversation, but if you elect to do so, I won’t talk to you until your counsel arrives.” It made no difference to her what he decided. She’d talked to plenty of guilty men who had rejected an attorney because they thought they were smarter than her. Conversely, the innocent often asked for a lawyer, just to make sure they didn’t get into unnecessary trouble. Either way, she couldn’t read too much into his choice.

      He was quiet, his expression thoughtful as he considered her words. She took the opportunity to study his face. He was handsome, she could say that objectively. Long, straight nose, tousled hair and brown eyes that looked like twin pools of melted chocolate framed by long lashes. The dusting of stubble on his cheeks kept him from looking too boyish. There were faint lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes, indicating he probably smiled a lot. She was willing to bet he had dimples when he did.

      Yes, a handsome man. One a woman wouldn’t think twice about talking to, especially if he turned on the charm. It would probably be easy for him to gain a woman’s trust.

      But did that make him a killer?

      Finally, he shrugged. “Let’s just get this over with,” he said. “I have nothing to hide.”

      That’s what they all say, Rebecca thought.

      “My name is Rebecca Wade. I’m an agent in the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, and the Alpine police have asked me to talk to you about the women you found in Big Bend.” Alpine was a decent-sized city about a hundred miles from the borders of the park. The Alpine police was taking point on the investigation because its members had resources some of the smaller, closer towns lacked.

      He nodded, as if this was information he already knew. “You already have my name. But I’ll introduce myself anyway. I’m Quentin Gallagher. Call me Quinn.”

      “All right.”

      “How does this usually work?” He shifted in the chair and it rocked a little in response, indicating the legs were not all the same length. Shortening the legs was a classic interrogation technique designed to keep the suspect uncomfortable and literally off balance. Rebecca wasn’t convinced it worked all that well, but she wasn’t going to argue with the Alpine police department about their methods right now.

      “We’re just going to talk,” Rebecca said. “I have a few questions for you, but I’m mainly interested in hearing your story in your own words.”

      A shadow crossed Quinn’s face, as if he was remembering something especially troubling.