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He needed a drink. He needed to sleep. He needed a warm body.
He needed Scarlett Easton.
* * *
“HE WAS KILLED somewhere else?” Scarlett cupped her hands around her mug of tea and inhaled the fragrant steam as it rose to meet the cool morning air. “I suppose that’s...a relief.”
Deputy Collins, from the county’s homicide division, nodded. “We’re thinking maybe someone stabbed him in a car or even before, and then loaded him up and dumped him out on the side of the road. There were some blood spots on the asphalt. Then he dragged himself through the woods. Maybe he was heading toward your cabin to get help.”
She shivered. “He didn’t have a cell phone on him?”
“No, and he didn’t have a wallet.”
“You haven’t identified him yet?” She laced her fingers around her cup.
“Not yet. The coroner’s doing an autopsy this morning, and we’ll get his prints and DNA. Nobody’s reporting anything yet—no missing persons, no accidents, no barroom fights.”
She didn’t know why she wasn’t telling this nice deputy all about the tattoo the dead man shared with Jim Kennedy. Why hadn’t Jim said something? Maybe he hadn’t seen the man’s tattoo emblazoned on his neck. But why did he have the same one?
How could that possibly be a coincidence? It had an L and a C. It’s not like it was the tattoo of a hula girl. It meant something.
She kicked the toe of her boot against the planter on the corner of her porch, the same one Jim had tripped over in the dark.
What had happened to his leg?
The man was as full of secrets as the boy had been—and just as dangerous. She’d been as drawn to him last night as she’d been in high school, but this time she’d sensed an answering spark of interest.
She hadn’t been alone in her feverish daydreams about Jim Kennedy during high school. Lots of the girls at school—even the popular ones—had whispered and giggled about Jim, but none of them, including her, would’ve been allowed to go out with him. He was every parent’s nightmare—long hair, motorcycles and a bad, bad family.
It had just been Jim, his older brother and their father. They all rode motorcycles, and the older brother and Slick had been hard drinkers and hard partyers. She had no idea what had happened to his mother.
Deputy Collins glanced at his notepad. “A Mr. Kennedy was with you when you discovered the body?”
“That’s right. He lives in the next cabin up the road.”
“Thanks for your help, Ms. Easton. We’ll contact you if there’s anything else or if we think you might be in some kind of danger.”
“Danger?” Her pulse jumped. “You mean if the man’s death was some random murder and there’s a killer on the loose?”
“I don’t think that’s the case. He looked like a rough customer, probably ran with a rough crowd. Once we ID him, we might be able to put your mind at ease. You probably don’t have anything to worry about.”
Yeah, except for her attraction to Jim Kennedy, who had the same tattoo as the dead man. That worried her.
“Well, I’ll be here if you have any more information for me.”
He tipped his hat, and the copse of trees ringing her property swallowed him up as he made his way to his car.
Through narrowed eyes, she watched him get into his car, the last of the emergency vehicles that had been out here all night.
If this rough customer had died in the woods beyond her cabin as a result of a fight, she had nothing to fear. She hadn’t seen anything. She couldn’t point the finger at his killer, and she didn’t know the dead man.
But if someone was running around Timberline stabbing people and dumping them on her property, then she had plenty to fear.
She snorted and took a gulp of lukewarm tea. Why would someone want to do that? She knew nothing about anything—no more dream quests for her, no more psychic mumbo jumbo, as her cousin Jason called it.
Except that she did know something. She knew Jim Kennedy and the dead man shared the same tattoo, and Jim hadn’t said a word about it to anybody.
She retreated to her cabin and slammed the door. She’d come back to Timberline to work, and she planned to keep her head down and do just that.
