Page 4 of Outlaw Ridge: Ryker
The face was a mask. A disturbingly accurate replica of Ethan’s face stretched across the mannequin’s head. Not the clean-cut, smiling image used on the flyers. This one had closed eyes, ashen skin, and a dark smear of blood at the temple, as if he had been shot or struck. The detail was chilling.
Too precise.
Too intentional.
Emma stumbled back a step when she saw the rest. There was something scrawled across the bottom edge of the mask, just under the chin. Block letters, dark brown ink, jagged and angry.
Emma Bonetti is a killer. And she has to pay for what she’s done.
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Chapter Two
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Ryker stood beside Emma in Sheriff Hallie McQueen’s office, watching as she flipped through the photos on his phone. She didn’t say much as she scrolled. Just the occasional exhale, the hard set of her jaw sharpening with each new image.
The trampled weeds. The drag marks. The wallet. The mask.
Hallie stopped on the close-up of the message scrawled across Ethan Ross’s eerily lifelike face. Her thumb hovered over the screen, but she didn’t move to the next image.
Ryker flicked a glance at Emma.
She hadn’t said much since they’d left the Calhoun property. Neither had he. He’d driven back to the station as if he’d been on autopilot, barely speaking. But he could feel the storm of emotions in Emma, coiling beneath the surface. She was shaken.
Hell, anyone would be under circumstances like this.
But she was holding it together the way she always did, tight-lipped and squared up. All cop.
Hallie finally set the phone down on her desk, leaning back in her chair. “So, what’s going on here?” she asked, her voice calm but edged with steel. “Is this some sick gaslighting attempt? Someone with a grudge against you?” Her gaze slid to Emma. “Or is it Ethan, come back to threaten you?”
Emma didn’t move or respond for a second. She just stared at the edge of the desk like the answer might be hiding in the wood grain.
Then she said, quietly, “I don’t know.”
Ryker kept his voice steady when he added his two cents’ worth. “Whoever it is, they knew what they were doing. They staged that scene like a body dump. They wanted it found. They wanted it to shake her.”
“It worked,” Hallie muttered. She looked at Emma again, softer this time. “You think Ethan’s still alive?”
Emma’s hand flexed at her side, the only outward sign of what she was holding in. “I’ve always thought that. I just haven’t been able to prove it.”
Ryker nodded. “That wallet, it was his. Emma recognized it on sight. And the driver’s license is the real deal. Someone’s either got access to his personal effects… or he handed them over himself.”
Hallie leaned forward, elbows on the desk, fingers steepled. “All right. Let’s say Ethan’s alive and this is him. Why now? Why after four years?”
Ryker didn’t have an answer for that. But judging by the way Emma’s jaw tightened, she had some theories.
And none of them were good.
Emma’s silence stretched for a beat too long. Long enough for Ryker to shift his weight slightly, bracing for impact.
Then she looked up, her eyes hard but voice controlled. “It might have something to do with me moving back here,” she said.
Hallie’s brows lifted slightly. “You think that’s what triggered this?”
Emma nodded once. “Ethan always wanted us to come back to Outlaw Ridge. Thought it would be good for us. Slower pace. Closer to family, and we could maybe both work for my uncle.But I liked Austin. I liked the job, the pace, the challenge. He didn’t. He thought I was chasing something that didn’t matter.”
Ryker watched her carefully. Her hands stayed still at her sides, her posture straight. But he could tell every word cost her.
