Page 17 of Outlaw Ridge: Ryker
“Probably,” he said, grinning. “But ladies first.”
She stood, slowly, as if her body was still trying to remember how to be upright. Her coat creaked with dried mud, ash smudged across one sleeve. As she moved past him, their shoulders brushed, barely a touch, but enough to send heat flickering through him.
It didn’t help that the idea of her in the break room shower flashed through his mind. Water sluicing down her back, hair darkened and slick, steam curling around her skin. He forced the thought out with a sharp breath, but his gaze had already lingered too long.
Emma paused at the door, giving him a look that said she’d maybe caught that flicker too. Or maybe she just felt it, thesame way he did, raw and unresolved, humming just beneath the surface of everything else they weren’t saying.
Before either of them could speak, there was a knock at the door.
Ryker blinked, the moment dissolving.
The door eased open, and Deputy Jemma Salvetti stuck her head in. “Sorry to interrupt. You’ve got a visitor. She asked for both of you. Says her name is Janette Ward.”
Emma stiffened.
Ryker’s memory clicked into place, Janette. The woman who’d sent Ethan that photo. The one who started the unraveling four years ago.
He crossed the room in two steps and shut down the digital evidence board with a tap. The glowing screen winked out, leaving only the overhead light and the shift in atmosphere behind it.
“Bring her back,” Ryker said.
But every instinct he had told him, this wasn’t going to be a social call.
Ryker stayed standing, arms loose at his sides but every muscle coiled with tension as Jemma stepped aside to let Janette Ward into the cold case office.
She looked exactly how he remembered from the photo Emma had shown him four years ago, just older, sharper around the edges. Long auburn hair pulled into a ponytail that was halfway undone. Faint smudge of mascara beneath one eye. A little too thin, dressed in black leggings and an oversized denim jacket like she’d left her house in a hurry.
But the confidence she’d exuded in that photo, the one she’d sent Ethan, practically smirking at the camera, was nowhere in sight now.
She looked frantic.
“Is it true?” Janette blurted, barely inside the room. Her voice shook. “The oil field, someone said there was an explosion. That you were shot at. It’s all over the news.”
Emma stepped forward, still rigid from the call with her mother, but she nodded. “It’s true.”
Janette’s breath hitched. Her eyes bounced between them, wide and searching. “Was it Ethan?” she asked.
The words dropped into the room like a live grenade.
Ryker’s pulse jumped. He hadn’t expected that, not from her, not that fast.
Janette’s voice trembled as she repeated, “Was it Ethan?”
Emma didn’t answer right away. Her eyes narrowed, her body still as stone. “What makes you think it was?”
Janette didn’t speak. Instead, she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her phone, tapping quickly before holding it out between them.
“I saw someone near my place last night,” she explained. “Didn’t think much of it at first, just a guy walking past the end of the driveway. But after what happened today…”
Emma took the phone, and Ryker stepped in close to look over her shoulder.
The photo was grainy, taken from a distance. It showed a man, partially obscured by shadow, standing near the tree line. He was wearing a dark hoodie, head slightly turned, face mostly in profile.
Ryker squinted. The angle was bad, the quality worse. But there was something in the jawline. The shape of the shoulders.
Possibly Ethan. Possibly not.
Emma zoomed in, slowly, her fingers tightening around the phone.
