The agent was looking at him in that funny way. Lucas didn’t know what he was thinking. “Alone? All of them?”
“Yes.”
The agent was quiet for a minute. He nodded. “All right, Lucas, thank you for your time. We’ll be out to talk to you if we have more questions. And of course, to return your property once it’s been tested.”
Lucas had no idea what they were testing for, but he nodded. I want to go home. But even as he thought it, his heart dropped. Because the forest was no longer the place that made sense. Everything was different now.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Agent Gallagher opened the door and smiled. “Ready to go if you are.”
She nodded, getting up from the chair where she’d been sitting as she’d resisted turning on the monitor again, and followed the agent out of the room. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the man—Lucas—being led out of the holding cell by Dwayne. “Sorry for the holdup,” Dwayne was saying. “Thanks for answering our question
s. You’re free to go.”
Dwayne turned and Lucas followed, swiping a magazine out of the holder on the wall outside the restroom door as they walked by, and quickly sliding it under his coat. Harper blinked. Had he just stolen a magazine right behind the sheriff’s back?
Dwayne stepped aside and Lucas looked up and met Harper’s eyes. For a frozen second, their gazes locked, and Harper felt trapped in his stare. Spellbound. She wanted to shake her head in amazement at seeing him in the flesh. As though he might have only existed inside that screen in the room she’d just exited, and the reality of his three-dimensional presence in front of her was almost . . . shocking.
And God, the way he was looking at her—the animosity she’d seen when he’d stared up at the camera gone, replaced only by . . . deep curiosity and that same keen intelligence. She’d never felt so completely captured in someone’s gaze. She swallowed. He was big. Bigger than he’d appeared on the small screen. At least six four and muscular. Completely overwhelming.
“Harper is going to give me a ride to Driscoll’s,” Agent Gallagher said as Dwayne approached them, Lucas trailing. The agent’s words—thankfully—snapped her from her trance before the older men noticed.
Dwayne looked pleased, shooting Harper a smile. “Excellent. Glad it worked out.”
Lucas stopped a few steps behind Dwayne, his gaze not having left Harper. He stared, his eyes moving over her like he was trying to figure something out. She stared back, and after a beat, Lucas looked away, his gaze roving the room, stopping quickly on this or that, and then moving on to something else. He was cataloguing as though he had just landed on some alien planet. Or stepped out of a time machine. Maybe he did. Maybe he’d recently come from the Cretaceous period and was experiencing civilization for the first time. Then again, the Levi’s he was wearing sort of disproved that theory.
“I’m going home now,” Lucas murmured, and even in that low tone, his voice was surprisingly smooth and expectedly deep. He looked at Harper again, and she saw that his eyes were blue with gold surrounding his iris. Sunset eyes, she thought. They were especially extraordinary in the otherwise rough-hewn lines of his face.
He turned toward the door, and Agent Gallagher stepped forward, halting him. “Deputy Brighton will give you a ride. It’s a long walk, and we’ve inconvenienced you.”
Lucas glanced out the window where large snowflakes were drifting past the glass, the sun already low in the sky. He paused for a second and then said simply, “Thank you.” He looked back at Harper again, and she switched from one foot to the other.
For a moment there she had wondered if they’d ask her to drive Lucas home too since he lived near Driscoll. Maybe the men were being cautious with her safety, or maybe they had another reason pertaining to protocol that called for Paul to transport him. Whatever the reason, she felt slightly relieved and slightly . . . disappointed. “Harper Ward,” she said, thrusting her hand in front of her.
“Harper Ward,” Lucas repeated, his gaze held steady on her face. He dropped his eyes, staring at her outreached palm for a moment before raising his own hand and wrapping it around hers. His hand was large and warm and calloused, and the feel of it made her breath catch, part thrill, part fear. He was all man, every bit of him, and never in her life had she felt another person’s presence so keenly. Never had she been stared at with so much intensity. It unsettled her. It intrigued her.
Mostly it unsettled her.
Maybe.
Deputy Brighton appeared from the front of the office, glancing at Lucas. “All ready?” he asked. But he looked like the one who was unsure. Lucas nodded and they all left the station together, a blast of icy snow hitting them in the face, causing Agent Gallagher to draw back and raise his hood. “Damn that’s cold.”
“Welcome to winter in Montana.”
Agent Gallagher gave Harper a rueful smile, squinting against the flurry. “Is this a welcome or a warning?”
Despite the heightened awareness of Lucas trudging next to her, she managed a laugh. “Maybe a little bit of both.”
Harper glanced at Lucas and saw that he was looking around, his gaze moving from the lawn and garden shop across the street—closed for the season—to the distance where a few homes could be seen among the bare trees, smoke spiraling lazily from the chimneys. He looked her way, and, for a fleeting moment, she swore she saw grief on his face. But why? She shook it off, focusing on her boots stepping through the snow in the parking lot. She had to stop trying to read that man. He sent her mind spinning.
And he might be dangerous.
Even Deputy Brighton was glancing at him suspiciously like he’d been assigned to transport a wild animal. But what? Was Lucas supposed to walk twenty miles home in a snowstorm just because he’d had the bad luck to walk in front of a sheriff’s vehicle and knew the murder victim? Okay, there was the bow and arrow too—but they were different, and didn’t it stand to reason that if one person hunted that way, others did as well?
She had no idea why she was trying to justify anything on his behalf.
They got to her truck next to Deputy Brighton’s SUV, the words Helena Springs Sheriff Department plastered across the side, and Harper turned at the same time Lucas did.