She tried to fix her mind on the mundane tasks of getting back to town and finding a hotel room, tried to forget the residual feel of J. D. Rafferty’s hands on her, his big body pressed against her back, his rawsilk voice murmuring indecent proposals. But the sensations lingered disturbingly, adding a vague, grimy film of guilt to the complex layers of emotion. Feeling a need to wash both physically and psychologically, she went in search of a bathroom, finding one on the second floor.

It had fared no better than the rest of the house. The lid from the toilet tank had been smashed. It looked as if someone had taken a jackhammer to the shower stall, then broke up the tile floor into rubble and dust. The faucets still worked, and she filled the sink with cold water, bending over to bathe her face with it. She pulled the bottom of her T-shirt out of her jeans and used it as a towel, then stood, staring for a moment into the cracked, gilt-framed mirror that hung above the vanity.

The woman who stared back was pale and dark-eyed with pain. She looked like the survivor of a hurricane, ravaged by wind and elements that had roared so far beyond her control that she felt as insignificant and powerless as a gnat. She had packed up her life and run to Montana, to a friend who had been dead more than a week. Lucy would have seen a bitter, ironic humor in that.

She thought of her friend, of what Lucy would have had to say about the way things had turned out, and tears swelled over her lashes and slid down her cheeks.

It started out as a bad hair day and went downhill from there.

He watched her through a Simmons Silver 3¥9 wide-angle Prohunter scope. Not his favorite, especially not for this time of night, but it was all he had with him. He came here nearly every night, not because he expected to see the blonde, but because he wanted to draw her down off his mountain. She lingered there, a pale apparition among the dark trees, a phantom carried on the wings of owls. She haunted him. Too many things did.