Page 27 of Outlaw Ridge: Ryker
The morning light pushed weakly through the blinds, casting long stripes across the papers spread out on her desk. Emma sat in her office, fingers wrapped around a mug of coffee she hadn’t tasted in three sips. The scent of it filled the room, comforting, grounding, but it did nothing to settle the ache in her chest.
The CSI reports were on her computer screen, the black-and-white facts of Lionel Ruiz’s death laid out in stark, clinical detail. Photos, notes, timelines. No motive. No mercy.
She skimmed the words, but they all bled into each other.
Everything felt as if it were bleeding together.
Ryker was in the guest bathroom down the hall, the sound of the shower faint behind closed doors. She was glad he hadn’t been in the kitchen yet when she’d gone in for coffee. Glad he was still starting his day. She needed this moment alone, even if it felt like she was unraveling in the quiet.
She hadn’t slept. Not really. Maybe an hour here or there, but mostly, she’d just laid in bed, eyes open, brain churning.
The guilt was sharp and steady.Lionel Ruiz was dead. And part of her couldn’t stop replaying that courtroom moment when he’d walked free. When he’d looked at her and thanked her like she’d saved his life.
She had.
Only for someone else to take it.
She pressed the coffee cup to her lips again, trying to focus on the warmth.
But it wasn’t just Ruiz’s death keeping her up. It had been the adrenaline still surging through her system, leftover from the explosion, from the shots fired at them. From the raw edge of being hunted.
And then there had been Ryker.
Right across the hall.
She’d felt him there, solid, close. Safe. That knowledge had curled around her in the worst of her grief, a tether when everything else felt like it was slipping away.
There’d been a moment,several moments, where the ache in her chest had threatened to pull her right out of bed and into his room. Where the loneliness and the grief had twisted together so tight that reaching for him had felt like the only thing that might break it.
But she hadn’t.
Because it would’ve been a dangerous move. Too much emotion. Too many cracks.
She didn’t want to lay all that weight on him. Not when everything inside her still felt like it was breaking.
So she’d stayed in bed. Alone. Awake.
And now, morning had come. And Ruiz was still dead. And the only thing she could do now was figure out who was going to pay for it.
Emma heard the soft thump of a door closing and the faint creak of floorboards as Ryker moved through the house. The water had stopped running a few minutes ago, and now it sounded like he was heading for the kitchen.
He didn’t come into her office, which was fine. She needed a few more minutes of pretending she could focus.
She tried to read the CSI report again, started from the top, hoping maybe something would hit differently the third timethrough, but the words still refused to stick. Her eyes traced the paragraph describing the blast radius, the condition of Ruiz’s remains, the partial fibers found under the body. She flipped a page and stared at a grainy overhead shot of the oil field. It felt like looking at someone else’s nightmare.
She hadn’t even heard him approach, but a few minutes later, Ryker walked into the room carrying a tray like it was a peace offering.
He set it gently on her desk and gave her a look that was somewhere between casual and calculated.
“Pickings were slim,” he said, “but here are your breakfast options: one bowl of cereal, expired but probably still edible, coffee, which you already have and are clearly not drinking, two crushed Pop-Tarts I found in the back of your pantry, and… a pint of ice cream.”
Emma stared at the tray, then at him. And despite the grief pressing hard against her ribs, she smiled. Barely. But it was still a smile.
She reached for the ice cream without hesitation.
“Solid choice,” Ryker said, dropping into the chair across from her. “Stress tastes better with chocolate chip.”
Emma dug into the pint of ice cream, the cold hitting the back of her throat like a shock, but it was the good kind. Temporary relief. A distraction. The sugar chased back the hollow ache, at least for a moment.
