Page 3 of Outlaw Ridge: Ryker
She blinked, startled by the certainty in his voice. “Well then,” she muttered, looking away. “You’re in the minority in Outlaw Ridge.”
Ryker didn’t speak. He waited.
She didn’t mean to keep talking, but the silence cracked something open.
“We argued,” she admitted. “In public. Loud. Ugly. Ethan said things he couldn’t take back. So did I.” Her jaw clenched. “That was two days before he disappeared. No note. No trace. Just gone.”
She crossed her arms and stared hard at the tarp in the distance. “And then people started whispering, saying that I snapped. That I buried him out in the middle of nowhere. That I was dangerous.”
Ryker stayed silent. It didn’t feel like judgment. It felt like he was processing.
He looked down at the flyer, then back at her. “We’re obviously going to need to have an air-clearing at some point,” he insisted. His voice was low and steady. “About Ethan. About all of it.”
Emma kept her arms crossed, her heart hammering harder than she liked. She gave a small nod but didn’t trust herself to say anything.
Ryker slid the flyer into his coat pocket and tipped his head toward the tarp. “But for now, we deal with that.”
Yes, they would. And she actually welcomed the change in subject. A possible dead body was better than thinking about the man so many people believed she had murdered.
Emma forced her feet to move. Ryker fell into step beside her, both of them drawing their weapons as they closed the final distance.
She kept her eyes on the tarp as they approached. She could see something now. Boots, scuffed and dirt-stained, sticking out from beneath the edge of the plastic.
Her stomach clenched.
Ryker stopped beside her. He crouched low, and he glanced up at her, no doubt to make sure she was ready. She was. Together, they gripped the corner of the tarp and lifted.
For one long second, Emma braced for the worst. Then she blew out a sharp breath. “It’s not a body.”
Ryker let out a breath too. “A mannequin.”
It was life-sized. Facedown in the dirt, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. Heavy enough to pass for human at a glance, especially with the way it had been half-buried and arranged. The boots were real. The weight and staging were intentional.
Emma crouched beside it, frowning. “Someone wanted us to think this was a corpse.”
Ryker nodded. “Mission accomplished.”
With his gloved hand, he reached out and turned the figure slightly. That’s when she saw it. A corner of worn leather sticking out of the back pocket.
Ryker spotted it too. “Wallet.”
He pulled it free, and she saw it. Not just any wallet. She knew the stitching. The frayed edge. The small burn mark near the clasp.
Her pulse jackknifed. “This belonged to Ethan,” she said. “He carried it every day.”
Ryker flipped it open. And she got confirmation of what she already knew. Inside was Ethan Ross’s driver’s license. The photo was old, a few years worn, but there was no mistaking his face. The name. The address they had shared at their Austin apartment.
“What the hell is going on?” she whispered.
Emma slipped on a glove and took the wallet from him. She couldn’t stop staring at the license. It felt like holding a ghost in her hand.
Ryker held out an evidence bag. “Let me take that.”
With her fingers stiff and cold, she passed him the wallet. He sealed the bag and tucked it into his coat pocket, then turned back to the mannequin.
“Let’s see what else we have,” he muttered. He shifted his grip and rolled the mannequin fully onto its back.
Emma could have sworn her heart skipped a beat or two.
