Page 19 of Crosshairs

She pressed the button to unlock the doors. “And not yours.”

“Evidently the color has grown on me,” he said, nodding toward his SUV.

How had she missed his vehicle was maroon? He’d surprised her again. “You’ve changed,” Ainsley said as she climbed into the truck.

“You haven’t?”

She’d changed, all right, in a lot of ways. Ainsley wasn’t that naïve young girl who thought she had the world on a string. She backed out of her grandmother’s drive. “Everyone changes.”

“Ainsley,” he said softly, a tremor in his voice. “I, ah—”

“Why’d you leave the FBI? Gran said you loved it.” If he was about to get personal, she did not want to hear it. She glanced at him as she turned right. His face was unreadable.

“It was time.” The finality in his voice said “Don’t go there.”

She heeded the warning and fell silent as she drove to the Trace. Once she’d turned off Liberty Road onto the southern terminus, she tried again. “Since you’re along, maybe you’ll have some insight on the case.”

He hesitated. “It’s one reason I wanted to tag along.”

His answer confused her. He didn’t want to talk about why he left the FBI, but he was willing to help her out on the investigation? “I thought you were along to clear any trees out of the way ... although I don’t see any damage so far.”

“When I talked to Sam Ryker, he said there was a tree across the road about a mile past Mount Locust.”

“When did you talk to Sam?” Linc was on the interpretive side of the park service and normally had no reason to talk to the district law enforcement ranger. Sam investigated crime on the Trace, even murder, but he was shorthanded since his field ranger, Brooke Danvers, was on her honeymoon with Ainsley’s fellow ISB agent, Luke Fereday. Luke had been the one who recommended bringing her in on the case.

“Before I left the Waffle House.”

Sounded fishy to her, but she let it pass. “How about the campground? Any damage there?”

“The storm didn’t hit that far north. The tree fell across theroad at Mount Locust because of rain, not the tornado,” he replied. “Sam said to meet him at the campground.”

“Oh?” It made sense to meet at the crime scene, but why had he told Linc and not her? “You and Sam talk about anything else?”

When his reply wasn’t forthcoming, she took her gaze off the road long enough to shoot a glance at him. “Did you call Sam ... or did he call you?”

The pinched expression on Linc’s face was answer enough. “Does he want you to take over the case since you’re ex-FBI?”

“No.” He swallowed hard. “He asked if I would help out on the investigation, though, and he sent me a copy of the report, which I’ve read.”

She didn’t breathe for five seconds. The district ranger didn’t think she could do the job?

“It wasn’t that he didn’t think you could do a good job.”

Linc was a mind reader now?Think it through before you shoot off your mouth.Her grandmother’s voice echoed in her head.

“I do have eight years’ experience as an investigator for the FBI.”

As opposed to her almost eight years as a law enforcement ranger, four investigating as an ISB ranger, but in some minds that might not compare to the FBI. “It’s not my first murder case.”

“I know.”

She blinked. He’d checked up on her? This she wanted to hear. “And you know this how?”

“Your grandmother has kept me up to date on your life—especially how you walked away from a very promising singing career to become a park ranger. I never understood why.”

Leave it to her grandmother to twist the story in Ainsley’s favor. It’d been the story her agent-until-he-wasn’t put out at the time, and maybe she’d let Linc believe it for a little while longer. “Like you, it was time.”

9

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