Not even Lucy was this big a slob.

Mari’s pulse picked up the rhythm of fear. “Lucy?” she called, the tremor in her voice a vocal extension of the goose bumps that were pebbling her arms. The only answer was an ominous silence that pressed in on her eardrums until they were pounding.

She stepped over a gutted throw pillow, picked her way around a smashed terra-cotta urn, and peered into the darkened kitchen area. The refrigerator door was ajar, the light within glowing like the promise of gold inside a treasure chest. The smell, however, promised something less pleasant.

She wrinkled her nose and blinked against the sour fumes as she found the light switch on the wall and flicked it upward. Recessed lighting beamed down on a repulsive mess of spoiling food and spilled beer. Milk puddled on the Mexican tile in front of the refrigerator. The carton lay abandoned on its side. Flies hovered over the garbage like tiny vultures.

“Jesus, Lucy,” she muttered, “what kind of party did you throw here?”

And where the hell are you?

The pine cupboard doors stood open, their contents spewed out of them. Stoneware and china and flatware lay broken and scattered, appropriately macabre place settings for the gruesome meal that had been laid out on the floor.

Mari backed away slowly, her hand trembling as she reached out to steady herself with the one ladder-back chair that remained upright at the long pine harvest table. She caught her full lower lip between her teeth and stared through the sheen of tears. She had worked too many criminal cases not to see this for what it was. The house had been ransacked. The motive could have been robbery, or the destruction could have been the aftermath of something else, something uglier.

“Lucy?” she called again, her heart sinking like a stone at the sure knowledge that she wouldn’t get an answer.

Her gaze drifted to the stairway that led up to the loft where the bedrooms were tucked, then cut to the telephone that had been ripped from the kitchen wall and now hung by slender tendons of wire.

Her heart beat faster. A fine mist of sweat slicked her palms.

“Lucy?”

“She’s dead.”

The words were like a pair of shotgun blasts in the still of the room. Mari wheeled around, a scream wedged in her throat right behind her heart. He stood at the other end of the table, six feet of hewn granite in faded jeans and a chambray work shirt. How anything that big could have sneaked up on her was beyond reasoning. Her perceptions distorted by fear, she thought his shoulders rivaled the mountains for size. He stood there, staring at her from beneath the low-riding brim of a dusty black Stetson, his gaze narrow, measuring, his mouth set in a grim, compressed line. His right hand-big with blunt-tipped fingers-hung at his side just inches from a holstered revolver that looked big enough to bring down a buffalo.

He spoke again, his voice low and rusty, his question jolting her like a cattle prod. “Who are you?”

“Who am I?” she blurted out. “Who the fuck are you?”

His scowl seemed to tighten at her language, but Mari couldn’t find it in her to care about decorum at the moment. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of a foot-long heavy brass candlestick lying on its side on the table. She inched her fingers down from the back of the chair and slid them around the cold, hard brass, her gaze locked on the stranger.

“What have you done with Lucy?”

He tucked his chin back. “Nothing.”

“I think you ought to know that I’m not here alone,” Mari said with all the bravado she could muster. “My husband… Bruno… is out looking around the buildings.”

“You came alone,” he drawled, squinting at her. “Saw you from the ridge.”

He’d seen her. He’d been watching. A man with a gun had been watching her. Mari’s fingers tightened on the candlestick. His first words came back to her through the tangle in her brain. She’s dead. Terror gripped her throat like an unseen hand. Lucy. He’d killed Lucy.

With a strangled cry she hurled the candlestick at him and bolted for the door, tripping over an uprooted ficus. She heard him grunt and swear as the missile hit. The candlestick sounded as loud as a cathedral bell as it met the pine floor. The scramble of boots sounded like a herd of horses stampeding after her. She kept her focus on the front door, willing it closer, but as in a nightmare, her arms and legs weighed her down like lead. The air around her seemed to take on a heaviness that defied speed. She scrambled, stretched, stumbled, sobs catching in her throat as she gasped for breath.

He caught her from behind, one hand grabbing hold of her vest and T-shirt. He hauled her backward, banding his other arm around her waist and pulling her into the rock wall that was his body.

“Hold still!”

Mari clawed the beefy forearm that was pushing the air from her lungs. Wild, animal sounds of distress mewed in her throat, and she kicked his shins with vicious intent, connecting the heels of her sneakers with bone two swings out of three.

“Dammit, hold still!” he ordered, tightening his arm against her. “I didn’t kill her. It was an accident.”

“Tell it to a lawyer!” she managed to shout, pushing frantically at the big hand that was pressed up against her diaphragm. She couldn’t budge him. She couldn’t hurt him. He had her. The panic that thought bred nearly choked her.

“Listen to me,” he ordered sharply. Then he gentled his tone as skills from other parts of his life kicked in. He knew better than to fight fear with force. “Easy,” he murmured to her in the same low, soothing voice he used with frightened horses. “Listen to me now. Just take it easy. I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Yeah? Well, you’re doing a pretty damn good imitation of it,” she snapped, squirming. “You’re pushing my spleen into my lungs.”

Immediately he loosened his grip but still held her firmly against him. “Just settle down. Just take it easy.”

Mari craned her neck around to get a look at his eyes. Men could say anything, but their eyes seldom lied. She had learned that in the courtroom and in the offices of countless lawyers. She had taken down testimony word for word, lies and truths, but she had learned very early on to read the difference in the witness’s eyes. The pair boring down on her were tucked deep beneath an uncompromising ledge of brow. They were the gray of storm clouds, and slightly narrow, as if he were permanently squinting against the glare of the sun. They gave little away of the man, but there was nothing in them that hinted at lies or violence.

She relaxed marginally and he rewarded her by easing her down so that her feet touched the floor. Air rushed back into her lungs and she sucked it in greedily, trying not to lean back into him for support. She was already too aware of his body, the size and strength of it, the heat of it. His left hand encircled her upper arm, the knuckles just brushing the outer swell of her breast. The fingers of his right hand splayed over her belly, thumb and forefinger bracketing the inner and under contours of the same breast.

He smelled of hard work, leather, and horses. Concentrate on that, Marilee. He smells like a horse.

As he murmured to her in his low, soothing voice, his breath drifted like a warm breeze across the shell of her ear and the side of her face. Butter mint. She couldn’t think of a single psychopathic killer who had been described as having butter mints on his breath.

“You gonna be still?” he asked softly.

Her body was pressed back into his, reminding him just how soft a woman could be. His line of sight down over her shoulder gave him an unobstructed view of the rise and fall of her breasts as she struggled to slow her breathing. The loose vest she wore had slipped back during the struggle. The outline of a lacy bra was unmistakable, reminding him just how delicate a woman’s underwear could be.