Page 16 of Love Me Fierce

Did she recognize the driver of that car If so, why wouldn’t she tell me?

Hutch raises an eyebrow. “Is it?”

“Of course.” I should try harder to put Vivian out of my mind. She either has an aversion to the law, or to me. Both spell trouble.

The kind I’ve sworn to avoid.

Tuesday morning,I’m out patrolling, my mind chewing through the latest dead end in our two open murder cases, when a maroon car flies past me going sixty-eight in a forty. After checking both directions, I pull a U-turn, then call it in and flip on my lights.

Accelerating, I try to identify the car’s make and model and how many occupants, but thanks to our leaden skies and the fall morning’s lingering fog, I only get the color—a deep maroon—and that it’s a wagon.

At Thrasher’s Corner, the guy barely slows down before careening left through the four-way stop. It gives me a better view of the vehicle—it’s a Ford Taurus station wagon. One occupant.

Shit. Is this the same guy I chased from Glory Holes parking lot last Saturday? I’ve been on the lookout for him ever since.

I follow the Taurus through the four-way stop, finally gaining on him.

“Suspect is driving a maroon Taurus wagon heading east on Route ten,” I relay to dispatch.

Is he trying to get to the river?

“Same Taurus as last Saturday?” my dispatcher, Gerry, asks as the Taurus accelerates.

“It’s possible,” I say.

“You need backup?” Gerry asks.

“Negative.”

The Taurus wagon banks a sudden right, disappearing down a spur that dead ends at a boat ramp popular with fishermen in the summertime. I relay this to dispatch as I follow, the thick cottonwoods and tall pines edging the road making it impossible to see what I’m heading into. The fine mist falling doesn’t help, either.

The gravel road is potholed and littered with fallen leaves in a patchwork of red, yellow, and brown, probably scattered in last night’s windstorm. The one that woke me at four a.m. Instead ofrolling over and going back to sleep, my thoughts turned to Vivian, and Hutch’s comment.

Is she in trouble?

Or isshethe trouble?

Then I relived that little spark between us when our eyes locked. If she can’t stand being near me, why did she blush like that? It’s like she wants me but wants to hate me, too, which should not have gotten me hard.

I round the long curve to the small parking area for the boat ramp, empty except for the Taurus wagon parked at an odd angle.

There’s no movement from inside the car. No silhouette either.

I scan the surrounding woods, but the mist makes everything hazy. Where in the hell is this guy?

I pull close to the back of the Taurus, my senses on high alert. The parking area is framed by thick forest on three sides, with the steely blue river running swiftly past the high banks. Did the driver make a run for it into the trees and is hiding, watching? Or did he have a boat stashed, and he’s already downriver?

I raise dispatch to relay this development and ask Gerry to run the plates. Because Idaho’s license plates use a code system linked to location, I already know the car is from Bonneville County, in the southwest corner of the state. Or at least that’s where the vehicle was most recently registered.

“Reported stolen a week ago from a supermarket in Rigby,” Gerry replies.

Rigby’s northeast of Idaho Falls on the 20, down in the Snake River Plain. That the vehicle is stolen doesn’t surprise me considering the driver fled and is now MIA. But it means I will be spending my lunch hour doing paperwork.

“I’m going to take a look.”

I give the forest and the opposite riverbank another sweep, making sure I haven’t missed a rifle pointing at my head, then grab my Stetson and step from my rig. The steadyshushfrom the river rolling past and the chill of the mist on my fingers crowds mysenses.

I pause in the space created by my open door and the side of my rig and scan the woods and the river’s banks once more, this time tuning in with all my senses. But there’s only mist dripping from the trees and the damp air on my skin. No faint whine of an outboard motor downriver that would indicate the driver fled by boat.

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