Page 2 of Outlaw Ridge: Ryker
Ryker stood and slid his phone back into his coat pocket. “That we’re out here chasing a tarp someone probably tossed outwith a busted scarecrow.” He paused. “But I’ve also got this itch in the back of my neck I don’t like.”
She nodded once. “So, maybe a body.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe someone wanted us to think that.”
Emma didn’t answer. The tarp was only twenty yards away now, flapping with every gust.
They moved slowly, eyes scanning, staying off the path where the dirt was still soft enough to hold impressions. And Emma could see Ryker’s focus kick in. His gaze kept firing around them, his every movement deliberate.
He veered slightly left, knelt by the edge of the tall grass, and brushed aside a few brittle stalks.
“Tracks,” he said, his voice low. “Footprints, maybe. But look at this. Drag marks.”
Emma stepped closer, careful not to disturb the ground. The flattened path in the weeds looked fresh. Uneven. Like something or someone had been pulled.
Ryker snapped a couple of photos with his phone. “Doesn’t look staged. I haven’t heard about this place being used for pranks or high school dares. You?”
She shook her head. “No reason to come out here. Nothing to steal. And the house and barn would probably collapse if you breathed too hard near them.”
She scanned the horizon again. Nothing moved. The nearest neighbor was miles off, so whoever had been here didn’t want an audience.
“This spot’s just under five miles outside town,” she added. “Quarter mile more and the county would’ve been the ones responding.”
That suddenly didn’t feel like a coincidence.
Emma’s gut tightened, sharp and instinctive. Whoever left the tarp maybe knew the boundary lines. Knew just how far to gowithout pushing it into another jurisdiction. Which meant this wasn’t random.
She made another slow, sweeping glance around the field, eyes tracking the tree line, the barn, the overgrown fence posts. The wind stirred the tarp again, louder this time, as if it was daring them to come closer.
They kept moving, boots crunching frost, until Ryker stopped again. He crouched near another patch of flattened weeds and took a few more photos, angling his phone to catch the light.
“Something heavy came through here,” he murmured. “Not just a person walking.”
Emma scanned the field, her worry settling even deeper. They were almost to the tarp when Ryker stiffened and reached toward the ground near a half-buried clump of grass.
“Hold up,” he said.
She stepped closer and saw it. Something poking out of the dirt, edges curled and streaked with grime. Ryker used the corner of his glove to brush away the loose soil. It was paper. Old and water-stained.
A flyer.
He flipped it over.
And Emma’s stomach dropped to her knees.
She knew that flyer. She knew the exact photo on it. Ethan, smiling. His eyes as blue as the shirt he was wearing. The sheriff’s office had posted those flyers all over town four years ago.
Ryker looked up at her, the flyer still in his gloved hand, his expression darkening. There was a storm of emotion flickering in his face. Confusion, recognition, and something deeper that she couldn’t name.
He was nothing like Ethan, not in the ways that mattered. Ryker had black hair, darker eyes, olive skin that hinted at longdays under the sun. Where Ethan had been all charm and edge, Ryker was quiet strength and calm calculation.
But she saw it now. The brother-in-arms bond. The connection he and Ethan had once shared, forged in uniform and under pressure. That connection flickered behind Ryker’s eyes now, tangled up with everything else.
“I didn’t kill him,” she said.
The words came out flat, but her voice shook just enough to make Ryker’s head snap up.
He straightened and held her gaze. “I never thought you did.”
