Smokies Special Agent. Lena Diaz

that the cell phone is what you saw in his hand, not a pistol.”

      “You’re wrong.”

      He held his hands up. “I want to believe you. I want to be wrong. Convince me.”

      She tapped her fingers against her leg. “I agree that Vale didn’t have the opportunity to go hide his gun somewhere. After I shot him, and he fell to the ground, it must have come loose. The momentum of his fall could have knocked the gun into the woods. That’s exactly what happened when you knocked me down. My pistol flew into the bushes.”

      “True. It did. But only a few yards away. And I ran at you, trying to reach you before you pulled the trigger. I’m a big guy. The force of me hitting you and falling to the ground with you is more force than if Vale simply dropped where he stood after being injured. Don’t you agree?”

      Reluctantly, she nodded. “Agreed.”

      “And yet your gun only flew about six feet away. Wouldn’t you expect Vale’s gun, if he had one, to have gone only a few feet, given that set of parameters? Therefore easily found by either me or the crime scene tech team later?”

      She didn’t answer. What could she say?

      “After taking your gun, I was with Vale the rest of the time. I was there with the medical team. I escorted them down the mountain to the waiting ambulance. At no time did I ever see a gun.”

      He waited. Again she said nothing.

      “This might be a good time to tell the truth,” he said.

      She was starting to regret apologizing for punching him.

      “I am telling the truth.”

      He sat back in his chair. “So the gun just, what, walked away on its own?”

      “Maybe Vale threw it.”

      “Sure. Okay. When he was lying on the ground bleeding out?”

      “At any time when he was on the ground when you were on top of me. He could have tossed it away.”

      “The crime scene techs would have found it.”

      “Not if they didn’t know to look for it. You never spoke to me after the shooting. You didn’t ask me why I shot Vale. You didn’t know he had a gun, so you wouldn’t have told the techs to look for one.”

      “Valid point. Rangers McAlister and Grady took you into custody before I went down the mountain with the medical team. Did you mention at any time to either of them that you thought Vale had a gun?”

      Once again, he found the hole in her argument. She clenched her jaw in frustration. Of course she’d told them that Vale had a gun. She didn’t want someone to think that she’d just arbitrarily shot an unarmed man.

      “I’ll take that as a yes,” he continued. “I’ll be sure to verify that with the rangers. But I imagine it will be in McAlister’s report. He’s the one who would have sent the crime scene guys up there, too. And I’m sure he would have told them to perform a thorough search for a second gun. Again, I’ll happily verify that when I read their reports. Just to be extra certain, I’ll ask them, too. But we both know what they’ll say. They looked for a gun. They didn’t find one. Again, this would be a really good time to come clean, to dig yourself out of the hole you’re getting into.”

      She shook her head.

      “Let’s start again with why you’re here.”

      “I told you. I’m hiking.”

      “In the winter.”

      “In the winter,” she snapped.

      His brows rose. “Okay. So you like the cold. You like treacherous, slippery trails with snow and ice. Not my thing. But I can see the appeal for some people. The mountains are definitely beautiful with their snowcaps.”

      He was going somewhere with this. She decided not to help him by rising to the bait. She sat back and waited.

      “So you’re out hiking, enjoying the frigid weather. You heard someone else on the trail, behind you, so you—a trained FBI agent—whirled around and shot him. Do I have that right?”

      “I told him to freeze. He didn’t.”

      “Right. Left that part out. You heard someone behind you, whirled around, yelled for him to freeze, then you pulled the trigger.”

      “After he pulled a gun out of his pocket, yes.”

      “Because you thought he was walking on the same trail as you? You assumed he was following you?”

      “Yes. No.” She shook her head in frustration. “It’s more complicated than that.”

      He rested his forearms on the table again. “I’m all ears.”

      She really, really wanted to punch him. “He wasn’t simply following me. He was stalking me through the woods, for quite some time. At least half an hour.”

      His brows rose. “Stalking you?”

      “Hunting me. Matching me stride for stride. When I took a step, he’d take a step, echoing me so that it was difficult to be sure if someone else was out there, following me.”

      “Following you.”

      “Would you quit repeating everything I say?”

      He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “How long have you known Kurt Vale?”

      “Known him? I’ve never met him.”

      “But he’s been stalking you. I think you used the word hunting.”

      “Yes. Exactly. He was hunting me. That’s how it seemed. I could hear footsteps—”

      “Echoing yours.”

      “You’re being condescending.”

      “My apologies.”

      He wasn’t sincere and they both knew it. He was tripping her up, making what had happened seem...trivial. She tried again to explain. “I was scared, okay? I believed he was after me.”

      “Why would he be after you if he didn’t know you?”

      “Because...” She hesitated. Would he believe her if she told him? Things weren’t going so well. If she was on a jury listening in on this conversation right now, she’d lock herself up and throw away the key. Duncan certainly didn’t believe her. That was obvious. He wasn’t likely to believe her wild theories, either, as her boss in Denver called them. Instead of telling Duncan her latest theory, her reason for being here, she tried again to stick to the facts of what had happened. What she needed to do was make him understand her fear, that she’d felt threatened. She would never shoot someone otherwise. She wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer.

      “You’re a man,” she said. “An intimidating one, sizewise, especially to a woman who is half your height, like me.”

      He smiled. “Half might be stretching it.”

      He was back to playing good cop, trying to charm and disarm her with those smiles of his. She cleared her throat. “My point is that even though I’m trained in self-defense, I know my physical limitations. I had a gun with me for protection—”

      “You expected that you might end up in a confrontation and need your weapon?”

      She’d not only expected it. She’d hoped for it. But telling him that would seal her fate.

      “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. I took my gun with me just in case. This morning, when I was walking the trail, I heard sounds—”

      “Sounds?”

      “Rocks pinging against other rocks, like someone’s feet had accidentally kicked them. A coat or jacket brushing against a tree.”

      “The