She wasn’t older. And he was standing there staring like someone who hadn’t seen a woman from outside Evergreen in...he shook his head.

  “I’m Sheriff Jackson Redmond,” he said, regaining control of his senses, hoping his few-second lapse hadn’t been noticed. “You want to tell me about the gunshot you heard?”

  She nodded, opened the door, held it for him to enter and as he passed by her slim figure, he caught a whiff of something aromatic that ignited another part of him that had no business coming to life as he entered the small cabin’s one main room.

  So, yeah, she was pretty darn good-looking. Tall and slender frame visible in a tight black skirt, down to the bare, polished toes in sandals with glitzy junk on the straps.

  “I was several yards in from the road,” she started, standing just inside the door with him, and he felt another jolt. Her voice...it was a little deeper than the high pitch he’d imagined. And husky. Like she’d either just gotten out of bed, or had a cold, except that it was pretty clear it was just her normal voice. She wasn’t sniffling or red-eyed or red-nosed either, for that matter. And no one got out of bed with their makeup looking that good.

  And her words finally made it to his brain.

  “You were out of your car?” he asked, his gaze homing in on her expression, rather than her beauty. Her frown made her concern obvious. And then his cop instincts finally booted up. “What were you doing several yards in from the road?” He’d been told the shot came from the Evergreen estate. He’d assumed she’d been driving by.

  Lazy cop work, assuming things. Something he, like his father before him, didn’t abide.

  The way she immediately looked away put his cop senses further on alert. She was up to something she didn’t want him knowing about.

  So why call the police?

  “I found the address written down among my aunt’s things...wanted to know why she had it... I thought there’d be a house there or something. Who has an address just for a piece of land?” Pulling a piece of paper out of the back pocket of her skirt, she then handed it to him.

  He knew the road. Didn’t recognize the number. It fell right between two that designated Evergreen property. Which made it part of the Evergreen estate. There was no mistaking that. “This must be some mistake,” he said.

  Her shrug kind of left the question hanging there. Like she wasn’t arguing his point, but needed a more definitive answer.

  He’d get back to that.

  “Tell me what you heard,” he said. Get that out of the way, first.

  “I heard two shots,” she said. “One right after the other. I dove for the ground immediately, but one whizzed close enough by me that I was aware of it.”

  Frowning, he studied her. “You’re saying an actual bullet came close enough to hitting you that you felt it?”

  “Or heard it. It all happened so fast...”

  She was telling him he’d almost had a dead body on his hands? He scrambled for other explanations.

  “I wish I could tell you more, but I was...there was this tree...it reminded me of something and I was kind of caught up with that...”

  She met his gaze head-on. Held steady. And he still sensed hesitation about her.

  Which made him doubt her story. That and the fact that bullets flying on Boyd’s land made little sense. The man wasn’t a hunter. Nor did he allow hunters on his property.

  “And yet you drove here and checked in, before calling the police?” She’d said she’d been lost in a memory at an address that didn’t exist. Could she be imagining the shots she’d heard?

  “I drove away because I had to get out of there and I wanted to be inside where I felt safe. I made sure I wasn’t followed. And the key was waiting for me here. I checked in online.”

  She made good sense.

  “I figure someone didn’t want me trespassing on their land,” she offered. “I don’t want to press charges, because... I didn’t have permission to be there and should have thought about that instead of getting lost in my own needs. I just have to make a report because of the rental car.”

  “The rental car?”

  “Sorry, other than a couple of uncomfortable hours on the plane, I haven’t slept since I got up yesterday morning. A bullet is lodged just above the back wheel well of my rental car. I’ll need an offical report from the sheriff’s office for insurance purposes.”

  She had a bullet?

  She had a bullet.

  And that changed everything.

  Chapter 2

  She hadn’t expected the sheriff to arrive in person. Was flattered. Flustered. And feeling a bit like she might have wasted his time, too. Most particularly when he started talking about hunters and the mountain lions that were legal game year-round in Arizona. If she’d been caught by a stray bullet on private land, that was on her.

  And she told him so.

  At which time he informed her that shooting toward a road or a person unless in immediate self-defense, was illegal in Evergreen County, even on private ground. He was outside by then, heading toward her car. He took pictures of the bullet with his phone. Grabbed an evidence kit out of his cruiser and bagged it. A nine millimeter.

  And she stood back practically drooling. Like she’d stepped on set of one of her favorite cop procedurals and he was the star. He wasn’t her type. Standing six inches or more taller, than her, he was a bit overpowering. And the short shock of thick reddish hair, that looked like it would be permanently curly if he’d let it grow... She usually went for guys with short dark hair.

  She needed to sleep. To find her wits and wrap them firmly about her.

  She needed to find her answers and get the hell out of town. Back to Louisiana and the lucrative shop her aunt had so lovingly curated through all the years of single motherhood to Aimee. The one-of-a-kind art pieces they sold not only paid the bills, they brought joy to the world. And they were Aunt Bonnie’s legacy.

  “Can you tell me where I go to look up tax records and land parcels?” she asked as he finished up, back on track and needing to take charge of her life.

  “The courthouse is just down from the sheriff department,” he told her while taking more pictures of the car with the bullet removed. “But I can probably just as easily tell you whatever you want to know.” He turned to glance at her. “You aren’t from Arizona, are you?” His grin melted her knees a bit. She shook her head. Squinted at him in the sunlight.

  “I’m from Louisiana,” she told him. “New Orleans.” And then stopped herself. “Although, actually, I am from here,” she said, looking around. “Technically.”

  “From Arizona?” He seemed surprised. She didn’t ask why. Maybe Arizonans had some secret code that distinguished them to each other. The fanciful thought wasn’t all that far from some of the stuff she’d read about the rugged, mountainous state in the past month. The numbers of people in the state—Phoenix in the winter and northern Arizona in the summer months—were double and sometimes triple the state’s registered, full-time population. And apparently those who were residents did seem to have some kind of bond with one another.

  “From Evergreen,” she told him, still thinking more about her reading than about her current surroundings. The things she could see...they’d have changed greatly in thirty years’ time. And have looked vastly different from a three-year-old perspective.

  Sheriff Redmond straightened. Was staring at her. “You’re what now?” He shook his head. “I was born and raised in this town, as was my father before me. I’m fairly certain I’d remember you...”

  She actually felt heat coming up her neck at the tone of his voice in that last comment, though he really didn’t appear to be flirting with her in any way.

  “I was born here. But I...left when I was three.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Nearly thirty years.”

  He nodded, watching her with more than just interrogation in his gaze. “I’d have been three thirty years ago,” he told her, sounding almost as much as though he was talking to himself.

  “Which explains why you don’t remember me any more than I can remember a damned thing about this town.”

  “So why are you here?”

  With a long glance at him, she turned and headed back toward her door. She needed to be inside, away from...she didn’t know what. Prying eyes.

  Whatever was threatening her peace of mind.

  Whatever had driven her to trespass on private property and maybe get shot at. Unless the sheriff’s theory was right and the bullets had been meant for prey of the animal variety and not human. Still, she’d been trespassing without a thought to breaking the law. And could have gotten herself accidentally killed.

  He followed her to the door. Inside the door. She shut it behind him. He was law enforcement. Technically, she’d broken the law. If he had questions, she’d be wise to answer them.

  And...maybe he’d have some answers for her, too.

  The thought took root and flourished quickly. He’d have access to records. Car accidents. Maybe going back thirty years. Maybe he’d share them with her? It would be a better start than she’d envisioned, not having a plan beyond checking the address out at the courthouse.

  And hoping something triggered enough of a memory to make sense of the dreams she’d been having. There was always the same big boy crying. The one who’d been pushing her on the swing in her vision earlier. Only in her dreams, there’d been no swing. Or anything else. It had always just been him. Or the two of them. It was always about his dirty hands. He didn’t like the smears of dirt. Sometimes he was trying to get it off.

  Sometimes she was.

  Neither of them ever succeeded. She always woke up first.

  And she had absolutely no way of knowing if the dream even had anything to do with Evergreen.

  “Why are you here?”

  Sheriff Redmond repeated his earlier words, only this time there was no walking away from that intent gaze. Or the interest he was showing.

  It was unbelievable, but she felt like she knew him.

  Because they’d both been born in the same town at about the same time?

  Had her parents known his father? Seemed likely.

  Had she and the sheriff ever played together? Maybe in a day care? If there’d been one. And she’d attended.

  “My parents were killed in a car accident when I was three,” she told him. “My only known living relative was my mother’s sister, who came and got me and took me to live with her in New Orleans. She was wonderful to me. I adored her...” She paused, managed not to tear up.

  She hadn’t known until she was in elementary school and started asking why she didn’t have a father, that her Aunt Bonnie wasn’t her birth mother. It was as though she’d wiped away any memory of the parents who’d given her life. Once they’d had the talk, her aunt had made her start calling her Aunt Bonnie instead of Mommy. So many times after that she’d wished she’d never asked questions.

  And had felt horribly guilty for wishing that her aunt had been her real mother. That guilt was part of the reason she’d traveled to Evergreen.

  “What were your parents’ names? I can look them up for you.”

  Way beyond the scope of her plans. And the quickest way out of town—except...she needed her psyche to cooperate, too. To let her know its secrets.

  “I’d like that. Their last name is Cooper. Adele and Mason Cooper. Mom’s maiden name was Barker. Mine was changed when Aunt Bonnie adopted me.” So there wouldn’t be questions about them belonging together, her aunt had explained. “My aunt never met my father. All she knew was that he’d grown up in foster care and there’d been no one but her with legal claim to me.”

  “So that’s why you’re here? To find out about him?”

  She shrugged, not sure how much to tell him. “I’m here to find out about them,” she settled with. What else could there be calling her back to a town she didn’t remember? She’d been too young to have any life of her own there. “My aunt said no one knew where they’d been heading the day they died. Only that they’d left me with a sitter to go to some meeting that was supposed to last no more than two hours. They never made it back. I don’t know what happened to the car. If anyone was ever charged. I’m ashamed to say I never asked some of those details. I don’t know if Aunt Bonnie knew them. She, um, just died...a few weeks ago. She drowned...and...”

  “I’m sorry...”

  She nodded, her head tilted a little to the side. She’d been receiving condolences every day since her aunt had dived off the side of the boat, hit her head, and not come up. Love and well wishes had come from strangers and friends, in the store and out. She couldn’t get distracted down that road at the moment.

  “I found a key to a safe deposit box at the bank and when I went to open it, one of the things I found there was that address,” she nodded toward the front pocket of his shirt where he’d stashed the piece of paper she’d given him. The original was back where she’d found it. Locked safely away. Until she knew why it had been locked away to begin with.

  And then there’d been the dreams...but she was keeping those to herself.

  “So...let me do some checking. I’ll look up records for the address, though I can tell you that plot of land has been just as it stands now for as long as I can remember...”

  She didn’t doubt him. “I was thinking maybe it was where the accident took place, though why county developers would have given a separate address to a blank plot of land in the middle of an estate, I don’t know...” she continued, thinking about what he’d told her.

  He nodded. “I agree—the address is perplexing. I don’t expect to find anything on the books, which won’t help you a bit. But it makes sense, about it being the site of the accident. That road gets more than its share, being two lane, and largely out in the middle of nowhere, which prompts people to drive at high rates of speed.”

  Good, then. Maybe her grief really was just making mountains out of molehills and she’d only be using a day or two of her month-long lease.

  “I’ll stop back by with an update this afternoon,” he told her, “if that’s okay?”

  She nodded.

  He nodded.

  And was gone.

  Leaving her with the sense that she was actually making progress toward the next phase of her life.

  Because there were going to be answers, or because the man had ignited a spark in her, letting her know that she was still alive, she couldn’t say.

  And she damn sure wasn’t going to make another mountain out of figuring it out.

  * * *

  Jackson sent one of his four full-time deputies out to four wheel around the more than five hundred acres, before heading over to the courthouse himself.

  As he’d expected, Jackson didn’t find any tax documents at the assessor’s office in the basement of the courthouse for the address Aimee Barker had given him. He didn’t find any listing at all of the address in permits to build, or in deeds recorded.

  But what he did find, what he noticed, because he was that kind of precisionist guy when it came to his job, was that the hard copy page he held, taken straight from the folder of planning/developer listings for that zip code, was printed on different paper than the pages directly before and after it. And while the format was exactly the same—a format that had been changed roughly five years after Aimee’s parents had been killed—the line listings for the page that denoted Evergreen family property was one line shorter than the rest, leaving a noticeable, to him at least, larger space at the bottom of the page.

  Feeling pretty certain that his discovery meant absolutely nothing, he made a copy of the page, as well as the ones directly preceding and following it, and headed to a different portion of the courthouse—the room holding all of the microfiche of birth and death records dating back to the time he was born. He didn’t have to get access permission, or even explain himself. Being the sheriff in a small town had its advantages.

  Because he’d lived in town his entire life, the only child of a tough, disciplinary sheriff, people were used to him and his penchant for crossing every t. His digging around rarely raised notice, let alone a curious eyebrow.

  Looking felt different that day. He couldn’t say why. Just didn’t have a good feeling about what he was doing.

  Maybe because he wasn’t completely sure that he was doing it with good purpose. If Aimee Barker had been a man, rather than a strikingly different and noticeable woman, would he be digging around trying to find something that didn’t exist just to please a summer visitor?

  He wanted to think so. He called Sandra Philpot, Evergreen’s one detective, and asked her to do a search of Arizona Department of Transportation records for cars titled to either Adele or Mason Cooper.

  And felt a bit more justified as, sitting alone in the little room in a deserted corner of the basement, he found no death records for Aimee’s parents. Frowning, he scrolled back in the film to the Bs and checked for Adele Barker. And then checked the As for Adele, the Ms for Mason and even tried the Ds for Dooper in case there was a typo. Two other microfiche rolls later, the years directly previous and following the year Aimee said they’d been killed, he checked all the same letters of the alphabet and still found nothing.

  Not sure what to think...wondering if the intriguing woman visiting his town was more than a little confused—maybe the bullet he’d pulled out of her car had come from some other event that had scared, harmed or shaken her to the point of lying to the sheriff in a small town in the middle of miles of uninhabited desert and mountain terrain—he moved on to the locked metal container housing birth record microfiche dating back thirty-five years and working forward. Just in case of timing incongruities.