Countdown. Lindsay McKenna

two rounds near her.”

      “Near or at?”

      He scowled. “I don’t know.” With a sigh, he tossed the pen aside. “Captain Ramsey wants us to go check out the general area where it happened.”

      Annie’s heart rose with hope. “Both of us?”

      “Yes,” Donnally said irritably, rising. “The captain seems to think you walk on water, so let’s see if you do. Come on.”

      Annie could think of nothing she could say to defuse his anger. She pointed to her uniform. “Could I change into my brig uniform before we go out?”

      “This isn’t going to take long.”

      She held his stare. “If we’re going to be out in the boonies of Reed, I’ll change. It will only take me a minute.”

      Holding onto his patience, Joe knew he’d overstepped his bounds. “Yeah, go ahead. I’ll meet you at the HumVee parked out front. It’s the vehicle we use for base investigations.”

      She offered him a slight smile of thanks. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

      * * *

      Joe was surprised when Annie emerged from the main brig building much sooner than he’d expected. Sourly, he admitted he was being hard on her. He was wrestling with so many stored feelings, and he had to stop being so nasty. She had changed into typical marine utilities, with the standard webbed, olive green belt around her waist. Ordinarily, a brig marine wore a pistol when on duty, but she hadn’t been issued one yet.

      Annie opened the door to the HumVee and climbed in. She felt lighter and happier than she had since her arrival—at least she was getting to work on a case right away. Maybe it would help keep her mind off Donnally’s angry attitude. “I’m ready,” she said a little breathlessly as she shut the door.

      With a grunt, Joe pulled the HumVee out of the parking spot. “Just to catch you up to speed, Libby Tyler is one of the base riding instructors, as you probably noticed in the file. According to Captain Ramsey, who had gone down to meet her for lunch, she was out riding roughly three miles northeast of the brig area when two shots were fired. Her horse reared up and she fell off, hitting her head on a rock. The captain is with her now—she’s still at the hospital getting fixed up.”

      “Will she be okay?”

      “I think so. The captain said he was going to be taking her to his apartment, because she can’t stand staying in hospitals and she’s in no shape to take care of herself.”

      “I don’t blame her,” Annie said wryly.

      Joe gave her a questioning look.

      “My mother is a medicine woman for our people. I never saw the inside of a hospital until I entered the Marine Corps.” Her voice lowered and she looked away from the eaglelike intensity of his blue gaze. “I had a bad experience with a hospital recently. I can’t say I like them, either.”

      “You were injured?”

      “Uh, no….” Annie prayed that Donnally wouldn’t ask any more questions. Her heart couldn’t stand to open up the very painful past before his glowering dislike.

      Joe turned onto a dirt road that meandered into the desert. “I’m not a great fan of hospitals, myself,” he growled, and left it at that, his attention temporarily focused on driving the big, clumsy vehicle across the rolling landscape of sagebrush, sand and cactus.

      The silence was a familiar friend to Annie as they bumped their way along the road’s uneven surface. Donnally seemed to know every inch of Camp Reed. He followed increasingly narrow and more rugged roads deeper and deeper into the inhospitable terrain. Off to the left, Annie could see the brig growing smaller. Finally, Joe pulled the vehicle to a halt and shut off the engine.

      “Well, this is roughly three miles northeast of the brig.”

      “What are we looking for?”

      “Where the horse reared and threw Ms. Tyler. That,” Joe said as he climbed out of the HumVee, “and maybe the rocks where the bullets hit.”

      “So we’re searching for the scene of the accident?”

      “Yes.”

      Annie climbed out and began to look around. She could feel Donnally watching her as she moved slowly around to the front of the vehicle. He had his hands on his hips, surveying the terrain with a scowl. He was handsome in a rugged kind of way, Annie thought—if only he didn’t frown all the time.

      “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

      Joe barely glanced in Annie’s direction, all too aware of her quiet, gentle presence. “You’re the world-famous tracker. You tell me,” he snapped.

      Annie knew better than to fall into that trap. Donnally was a sergeant, she a corporal. She was below rating and, therefore, the assistant, not authorized to make command decisions. “I can’t tell you anything until you give me an idea of the framework of this investigation. You’re in charge,” she reminded him calmly.

      Joe stiffened and turned toward her. He saw that her cinnamon eyes had gone hard and challenging again, and it surprised him. But why should it? Belatedly, Joe knew he’d overstepped his bounds with her. “You’re right. I want you to search this half of the area, maybe a quarter of a mile in diameter. I’ll search the other half. If you come up with something, give me a holler.”

      Annie gave him a slight nod and pulled the brim of her soft uniform cap, traditionally called a “cover,” farther down over her eyes to shade them from the intense sunlight. “Okay.” She turned and began an automatic perusal of the terrain, still feeling Donnally’s gaze burning into her back. Maybe he needed to be reminded that she wasn’t always going to take his anger. At least he’d backed down and started behaving in a correct manner with her. As Annie moved carefully through the brush, she admitted she didn’t want to fight with anyone. At heart, she considered herself a peaceful warrior, certainly not someone who relished violence.

      For more than an hour they searched the area, looking for any kind of evidence of the episode. Finding nothing at all, Joe was disgusted and finally called Annie back with a wave of his hand. As he stood by the HumVee waiting for her, he tried to ignore the delicate way she made her way between the sagebrush and avoided a prickly pear cactus. She moved with such natural grace that she looked more like a deer than a woman, he thought wonderingly. Then, angry at himself for his unbidden interest, he turned away from her approach.

      “I didn’t find anything,” Annie told him as she arrived on the road beside him.

      Joe nodded and gestured to the HumVee. “Makes two of us. Get in. When I get back to the office I’ll call and tell Captain Ramsey we need more specific directions. It was a wild-goose chase, anyway.”

      On the way back to the brig office, Annie remained silent. She wanted to like Joe Donnally—at least as her superior. True, he was gruff and abrupt, but she’d worked with marines like that before. She just hoped that his attacks would stop seeming so personal. If she could figure out why he was like this, she thought, maybe she could understand the basis of the anger aimed at her. Maybe something was causing him a lot of stress right now. She took a deep breath.

      “How long have you been here at Camp Reed, Sergeant?” she asked, struggling to keep her tone conversational.

      Joe shrugged. “Too long.”

      “Are there a lot of transition pressures on you right now?”

      He stared at her momentarily, then concentrated on navigating the dirt road. Once again, her astuteness surprised him. “Why would you want to know?”

      “I’m just trying to get a feel for what’s going down here. A new base always has its own set of rules.”

      “Isn’t that the truth.” Joe gave her an oblique look and was struck again by Annie’s earthy beauty. Her high cheekbones made her eyes look