Throat tight, he asked, “Was she hit?”

“No. But Taos is pretty upset. There were plenty who didn’t approve of an outsider being hired, and he thinks this might be the work of one of them. He doesn’t want any more bad publicity about this project, so we’re to get on it right away and report back to him immediately. He asked specifically that you be the one to check it out.”

“Me?” Wariness mingled with surprise. “Why me?”

Impatience flickered in the captain’s eyes. “Your grandfather is going to be working closely with her, Taos said. She’s even staying at one of his houses, right? Seems logical he’d ask for you.”

Logical. It was the last word he’d use, given his own feelings about her hiring. Or his reaction to the woman herself.

Tapahe’s attention was drifting back toward his paperwork. “Is there a problem?”

Joe smiled grimly. “No problem. I’ll check it out and get back to you.”

Delaney reluctantly shut off the water. The house wasn’t equipped with air-conditioning and the fans didn’t do much more than stir the warm air inside. But there was plenty of cold water, and the pressure was good. The pounding shower had gone a long way to restoring her rattled equilibrium.

She stepped out and dried off briskly. Lying to herself had been one of the habits she’d kicked in the last couple years. So she could admit to the mind-numbing fear that had encased her at the cliffs, even as her mind had gone into survival mode. But greater than the natural fright of the circumstances had been her fear of its aftermath.

But the flashbacks, while present, hadn’t left her huddled and shaking, struggling to differentiate between the past and the now. She hadn’t had a panic attack or been left with that unquenchable desire to dive into the bottom of a bottle of Absolut.

And that felt like a victory of sorts.

She’d known she was getting stronger, closer to the woman she’d once been. But it was one thing to think it, and another to have that belief put to the test. Someone had tried to kill her. She still shuddered at the thought. But she hadn’t broken down and she hadn’t given in to the fear that had lived like a sharp-fanged beast in her mind for too long. She was entitled to feel just a little cocky about that.