Tessa Stark: Desert Heat

Chapter Thirty Four

The shrill ringing of her cell phone brought her straight up off her pillow...and the first thing she set her eyes on was the sweep of vast desert and pale blue sky stretching out before her.  Panic, sharp and hard, lanced the center of her chest and skittered outward through her limbs and almost automatically, her mind raced backward in time---

"Tessa?" a gruff voice sounded out, startling her so that she gasped.

Whipping her gaze in that direction...she found Cole stretched out beside her.  Relief, hot and thick, surged over her, unclenching her muscles and drooping and her shoulders. Cole was there next to her...in the bed of his truck...miles out in the desert. 

So, she couldn't possibly have...hurt anyone.  Cole wouldn't have allowed that to happen.

Her cell continued to ring, prompting Cole to push himself up onto his elbows and fix her with a somewhat bleary, yet concerned look. "Tessa? What's wrong?" he rasped.

Trying to find her voice—and shake herself out of the fog—her body jolted into motion and she turned toward her bag, tucked beside her, pulling her cell out with an unsteady hand, finding that it was Zeb calling...and that it was pushing eight o'clock in the morning.

"Zeb? Wh-what's up?" she croaked out, feeling addled.

"Tessa, are you on your way into the station?" Zeb asked without any of the niceties.

"Uh...I-I...can be. Why?" she stumbled.

"We've had a slight development...or a slight situation develop this morning," Zeb stated, stiffening Tessa's spine. "I'm just now hearing about it, but I think you should know."

"What is it?" she asked, but almost didn't want to hear, owing to the tension in Zeb's voice.

"Well, a witness came forward this morning," Zeb began. "This witness is only willing to speak with the sheriff, but word is that they've put Nathan Rutherford in the parking lot of Cherry last night around the time of Etty Montrose's death."

Disbelief rolled through Tessa, pushing a breath out of her. "No. Zeb, that's not...that's not likely."

"There's more," Zeb went on. "The witness apparently signed a sworn statement, so the sheriff had to send officers to pick up Rutherford and haul him in to be held under suspicion."

"Zeb, what in hell! Why wasn't I notified! I could have refuted that before--"

"Tessa," Zeb cut in, "the witness didn't come here alone. They only wanted to give their statement to the sheriff, but they were brought in by Detective Rogers. And since he's the one who was working to pin this on Rutherford in the first place, he's raising a stink about having you tossed off the case for flagrantly disregarding a previous officer's investigation and wasting department resources."

"Wasting resources..."

"You need to hurry in, Tessa. You and Detective Dalton both."

"We'll be there as fast as we can," she said, disconnecting.

"What's going on?" Cole asked, sitting up and raking a hand over his face and beard.

Pulling in a breath, she looked over at the man, her mind reeling.  "I have no fucking idea..."

*  *  *  *  *  *

"Sheriff, this is absolute bullshit!" Cole bit out through his teeth. "We have Rutherford all but alibied out for the time of death! Rogers' witness is wrong!"

"The witness gave a sworn statement, Dalton. They came in voluntarily after they saw the story on some website called The Buzz. Overlooking that is dereliction of duty," the sheriff explained quietly.