Her pitiful rebellion fizzled as quickly as it had flared, and she even felt an odd sense of relief as she got into the SUV, pulled the door shut and clicked her seatbelt into place. The thought flashed into her mind: I’m safe now.

“That’s better,” the sheriff said, sounding almost as if he were purring. He glanced at her as he put the SUV in gear. “Did you sleep well?”

Mary looked back at him and thought the gleam in his eyes seemed more amused now than dangerous. “Please don’t try to pretend this is a just a friendly favor,” she said evenly, though her heart was still beating hard and fast. “At least respect my intelligence enough for that.”

A wry smile tilted his lips and deepened the dips in his cheeks as he transferred his narrowed gaze to the road ahead. “Fair enough,” he said.

The SUV pulled into the street, and Mary rode to work in a tense and humming silence.

Throughout the rest of that day, as she was cutting someone’s hair, dabbing on color, sweeping the floor, answering the phone or ringing up someone’s check, and happened to look out the window or catch the street’s reflection in a mirror, more often than not she’d notice a sheriff’s department patrol vehicle cruising by. Her heart would quicken, her stomach clench and the sour taste of fear rise into her throat, but she would only return a serene gray gaze to whatever client she was working on at the time and murmur a reply to whatever had been said, as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place.

I’ll be watching you…

Her clients, too, seemed anxious to maintain the myth that nothing had changed at Queenie’s “We Pamper You Like Royalty” Salon and Boutique…that the quiet and retiring lady wielding scissors and pouring noxious chemicals on their hair hadn’t just been charged with committing a cold-blooded murder. Mary had dreaded going into the shop, had wondered whether she’d have any clients show up at all, but to her surprise, not a single person cancelled her appointment that first day. In fact, as the week progressed she seemed to have even more business than usual. She suspected Ada Major of having a hand in that; it was a small county, and virtually everyone in it had served on Miss Ada’s juries at one time or another and could probably expect to do so again.

Mary thought she also had Miss Ada to thank for the fact that almost no one stared at her openly or whispered when her back was turned-although some did try too hard to be upbeat and cheery, and her older clients-those of Miss Ada’s generation-did tend to give her motherly little pats of sympathy. Mary didn’t mind. She was grateful to have people around, work to do, to keep her from thinking about what lay ahead.

The sun hadn’t set when Roan turned his department SUV into the alley behind Queenie’s Salon and Boutique, but at that time of year it was already well into the dinner hour and the last patrol car to drive by the front of the beauty shop had reported its owner appeared to be closing up, getting ready to leave for the day.

He pulled up beside the back door of the salon and turned off the motor and keyed his radio mike. “Donna, this is SD Mobile One, I’m gonna break for dinner. Call me if you need me.”

“What do you mean, ‘dinner,’ Sheriff?” the dispatcher’s scratchy voice came back. “Don’t you think you oughta go home?”

Roan chuckled, signed off and settled down to wait.

Sitting alone in his car as the evening quiet nestled around him, he began to feel a peculiar sense of restless anticipation that had nothing to do with the possibility the woman he was waiting for might try to escape his jurisdiction. The way it felt to him was more like the first time he’d asked Erin out on a real date, when he’d knocked on her door and was standing there on her front porch where he’d stood a hundred times before, hearing Boyd’s heavy footsteps coming across the hard pine floor. A hundred times before he’d stood there, but this time his heart was beating like a tom-tom, his belly was quivering, his palms were wet and his mouth was dry, and he’d kept telling himself, Man, what’s wrong with you? It’s just Erin, we’ve known each other since we were babies! Only he’d known good and well the way he felt inside was trying to tell him something he needed to listen to, which was that it wasn’t just Erin anymore, and never would be again.

He knew it was one thing, though-feeling like that over a girl he’d known all his life and had known he was going to eventually marry for about half of it, and who was his best friend besides-and that it was something else entirely to be getting a quiver in his belly over a woman he’d just arrested and seen charged with murder, and who he was going to be expected to do his best to help convict.

He knew all that and it didn’t change a damn thing, so he was feeling less than pleased with himself by the time the back door of the salon opened and the cause of his frustration appeared, looking like a mouse venturing out of her hole.

She hesitated when she saw him waiting there, looking for a moment as though she wanted to slip back into that hole and close the door. Then, darting a desperate look around as if searching for a new place to hide, or run to-or hoping there’d be somebody else there to rescue her-she came slowly toward the car. Roan rolled down his window and she halted, looking now like someone about to meet the hangman. She drew a shaky breath and said, “Okay, what now?”

Blame guilt, or his grouchy mood; he snarled back at her, “What do you mean, what now? I’m here to take you home, dammit.”

And instantly her shoulders got hunched up and she seemed to flinch. “You don’t need to do that.”

He couldn’t seem to stop himself from scowling at her. “Look, are we going to go through this again? I brought you here, I’ll take you home. Get in.”

Still she hesitated, and he said impatiently, “For God’s sake, Red, you don’t need to look at me like I’m the Big Bad Wolf. I’m just giving you a ride home.”

He didn’t know what to think when she went pale and jerked back as if he’d slapped her.

Chapter 8

Her eyes, framed by those godawful glasses, reminded Roan of terrified wild critters cowering in the shadows. “What…what did you say?”

Watching her narrowly, he said, “Uh…Big Bad Wolf…Little Red Riding Hood? You know-”

“Oh-of course.” A smile blossomed, misty with embarrassment and relief.

“What the hell did you think?” He still felt wary, and oddly shaken. But there was a new tingle of alertness running through him, too…a feeling there was something important in this little misunderstanding, if he only knew what it was.

She tried her best to divert him with a nervous laugh and a not very convincing gesture. “I thought-you reminded me of something, that’s all.”

Something? Or…someone? But he didn’t see any point in pursuing the issue. Not then.

Gathering up his patience, which he seemed to have been losing his grip on a lot lately, he said in a weary voice, “Well, all right, Miss Mary, but do you think you could get in the damn car? I’m not gonna eat you, you know.”

She threw him her vivid green glare and muttered, “You might not believe that either, if you could see your face.” But she trotted around the SUV and opened the passenger-side door.

While she was doing that, Roan had a chance to look at himself in his rearview mirror. What he saw made him snort, then laugh silently. He was smiling when she slipped in beside him, fingering back a lock of limp brown hair that had escaped the confines of the ponytail she’d clipped haphazardly to the back of her head. Watching her, his smile grew broader.

“What now?” she demanded, instantly suspicious again. “Why are you smiling?”

What was he going to say? He couldn’t tell her he was thinking how he’d like to take that damn clip and pitch it out the window, then slip his fingers into the silky softness of her hair…and that he was smiling the same way he would if he’d just set eyes on a meadow full of wildflowers, or a wild red sunset, or a nice piece of horseflesh running free. For no other reason than to acknowledge and thank God for the beauty of it.

And he didn’t want to ask her why she was trying to hide how beautiful she was, either-not then…although he did file that question away for a future time and place, along with the others he’d collected. Because he was more and more certain the dowdiness she put on with those ugly glasses and oversized clothes wasn’t ignorance or bad taste. Considering the woman made her living making other people beautiful, it was hard for him to believe she wouldn’t know how to recognize it in herself.

Which meant… his pulse quickened as his mind tripped quickly along the path that thought opened up for him. Say she’s a protected witness, but a new identity, a new location, aren’t enough. Say she’s recognizable whoever or whatever she is. If she’s trying to hide it, could it mean it’s the fact she’s beautiful that makes her recognizable?

He put on an expression of mock bewilderment and adopted a wounded tone that wouldn’t fool Susie Grace. “Hey, a minute ago you didn’t like my face because I wasn’t smiling, now you don’t like it because I am? I just can’t win with you, can I?”

She didn’t answer that, but busied herself fastening her seatbelt, then turned her head and studied him thoughtfully while he started up the SUV and checked his rearview mirrors. When they were headed down the alley, she shifted to face forward and said conversationally, “Don’t you have anything better to do than chauffeur a murder suspect around town? Like…a department to run? Criminals to catch?”

“See, that’s the good thing about being the boss,” he said cheerfully. “You get to delegate. Happens I’ve got a whole bunch of good people working for me. Amazes me, sometimes, how much they can get done so long as I stay out of their way.” His eyes slid past her as he made the turn onto Main Street, and he added softly and without a trace of humor, “The fact is, Miss Mary, right now you’re my number-one priority.”