Bear Claw Lawman by Jessica Andersen

Author:Jessica Andersen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Nick figured it would be weird going back to Jenn’s apartment for the first time since he’d moved out. The sadness caught him by surprise, though, hitting him the moment he came through the door and caught himself starting to shrug out of his jacket and hang it on the curved coatrack.

Instead, he kept it on and pulled his piece.

“Close the door and wait here,” he said quietly, and moved into the apartment, senses on high alert. The apartment was under full surveillance, but he still wasn’t willing to trust that the bastard hadn’t slipped through the perimeter.

As he crossed the living room, scanned the open-concept kitchen and headed for the two bedrooms and a bath that opened off the back, he had a hell of a time staying professional when just about every damn thing he touched or even saw triggered memories.

There was the couch they had spent countless hours on together, cuddling while watching the TV, or just talking; there were the pillows and blankets they had tossed on the floor one night, so they could have an impromptu picnic in front of the fake fire crackling from the flat screen; and the surviving lamp of a pair still sat next to the sofa, alone now because they had broken its mate when their lovemaking had spun them off the couch and they knocked over an end table.

And everywhere he looked, he saw puzzles. Huge, glossy two-dimensional puzzles with intricate designs and thousands of pieces hung on the walls, sealed and framed. Smaller 2D designs stood in boxy frames on the mantel and bookcase, while other flat surfaces held beautifully detailed three-dimensional puzzles—a ship in a bottle, the Eiffel Tower, the skeleton of a horse suspended in midgallop.

They weren’t just puzzles Jenn had completed, either, though that was what he had assumed at first. He’d been blown away to learn that she’d designed and made them, then sold the plans to a boutique company she’d been working with for years.

She had told him—during a rare moment when a conversation over buffalo burgers and beer had gone deeper than their usual surface chats—that she had taken up the hobby when her husband had been working the late shift, giving her something to do that was hers. She hadn’t told him that the projects reflected her mood, but he had guessed as much when he’d seen that she had gone from family scenes to bleak black-and-white photos of windswept mountains and empty skies, and from there, more recently, to pictures taken in and around Bear Claw.

Now, seeing a half-finished 3D prototype on the dining table, he tried not to wonder what it meant that she was working on a small, exquisitely detailed cottage with a cute yard and picket fence, but nobody home.

Body tight, he moved into the second bedroom, which she used as a home office. The texts, journals and forensic reference books should have reminded him of the case, but the desk and its swivel

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