Angels Fall

retrieve the water bottle that had gone flying when she dropped to the ground. "You want this? Your water?"
    "Yes. Thanks." She took the bottle, but her shaking fingers couldn't manage the cap. Saying nothing, Brody took it from her, unscrewed the cap, handed it back.
    "I'm fine. Just startled me."
    Startled, my ass, he thought.
    "I thought it was a gunshot."
    "You'll hear that kind of thing, too. Nothing in season—hunting, that is—but people around here target shoot. It's the wild, wild West, Slim."
    "Of course. Of course they do; it is. I'll get used to it."
    "You go walking in the woods, the hills, you're going to want to wear something bright. Red, orange."
    "That's right. Of course, that's right. I'll make sure I do next time."
    Some color had come back into her face, but in Brody's judgment, it was pure embarrassment. Even when she pushed herself to her feet, her breath remained choppy. She made a halfhearted attempt to brush herself off.
    "That completes the entertainment portion of our program. Enjoy the rest of your day."
    "Plan to." A nicer guy, he thought, would probably insist she sit down, or offer to walk her back to town. He just wasn't a nicer guy.
    She kept walking, then slowed to glance over her shoulder. "I'm Recce, by the way."
    "I know."
    "Oh. Well. See you around."
    Hard to avoid it, Brody thought, even when she walked fast and with her eyes on the ground. Spooky woman with those big, doe-in-the-thicket eyes. Pretty though, and she'd probably edge up to sexy with another ten pounds on her.
    But it was the spooky that intrigued him. He could never resist trying to figure out what made people tick. And in Reece Gilmore's case, he figured whatever ticked inside her had a lot of very short fuses.
    Reece kept her eyes on the lake—the ripples, the swans, the boats. It would be a long walk around the curve of it, but that would give her time to settle down again, and for the burn of embarrassment to cool. It was already transforming into a migraine, but that was all right, that was okay. If it didn't ease back, she'd take something for it when she got back to the hotel.
    Maybe her stomach was twisted up. but it wasn't that bad. She hadn't gotten sick and completely capped off the mortification.
    Why couldn't she have been alone in the woods when the stupid truck backfired? Of course, it she had been, she might still be curled up there, whimpering.
    At least Brody had been matter-of-tact about it. Here's your water, pull yourself together. It was so much easier to handle that than the strokes and pats and there-theres.
    Because the sun hurt her eyes now, she dug into her backpack for her sunglasses. Ordered hersell to keep her head up, to walk at a normal pace. She even managed to smile at a couple who strolled along the lake as she did, and lift her hand in a wave in answer to the salute from a driver in a passing car when she finally, finally reached the main road.
    The girl—Reece couldn't pull her name out of her pounding head— was on the desk again at the hotel. She shot Reece a smile, asked how she was, how she had enjoyed her hike. Reece knew she answered, but all the words seemed tinny and false.
    She wanted her room.
    She got up the stairs, found her key, then just leaned back against the door when she was inside.
    Once she'd checked the locks—twice—taken her medication, she curled on the bed. fully dressed, still wearing her boots and sunglasses.
    And closing her eyes, she gave in to the exhaustion of pretending to be normal.

Chapter 4
     
    A SPRING STORM dropped eight inches of wet, heavy snow, and turned the lake into a frothy gray disk. Some of the locals plowed through it on snowmobiles while kids, bundled into shapeless stumps in their winter gear, entertained themselves building snow peo-ple around the verge of the lake.
    Lynt, with his wide shoulders and weather-scored face, took breaks from his snowplowing duties to refill his thermos with Joanie's coffee and complain about the wind.
    Recce had experienced it herself on her walk to work that morning. It blew like wrath down the canyon, across the hike, sparking fresh snow as it burned ice through the bone.
    It beat at the windows, howled like a man bent on murder. When the power died, Joanie herself yanked on coat and boots to trudge outside and fire up her generator.
    The roar of it competed with the scream of the wind and the thunder of Lynt's snowplow, until Recce wondered why every mother's son and daughter didn't go