Page 10 of Ice Covered Heart

As he stood before her, Hunter blinked. Then he slowly smiled at her. Hunter McQueen. Former Ranger. Part-time Ice Breaker. New PI. He flashed a grin that made his eyes crinkle but still had him looking just as intimidating as ever. “I think I misunderstood.”

No, she did not believe that he had.

“Nate Shiloh was found guilty of the murders,” Hunter continued in his deep, rough voice. She liked his voice. It was so deep that it was very easy to understand. “He stabbed one cop in the stomach and was attacking another when you shot him. You testified in court⁠—”

“I testified that most of that night was blacked out for me,” she interrupted to say. It had been blacked out. Still mostly was. But a few things had changed since the trial all of those years ago. “Back then, I remembered flashes. Screams. The knife coming at me. A man’s voice, whispering. Gruff in the darkness.” Her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I remembered running. Then hearing a man yell my name. Over and over as if he was searching for me in the dark.”

“Yes, you testified that was Nate.”

He was very familiar with the trial. Even after all of this time? An alarm bell began to ring in her mind.

“You made the national news. You were on all the big channels, your story splashed across social media and the Internet,” he informed her, as if reading her fear. “While your trauma was playing out for everyone in the world to see—which had to fucking suck, by the way—I was…in a position where I could do nothing but watch.”

Her brows lifted. “I don’t understand.” And, yes, it had fucking sucked. A succinct summary.

“I was in a hospital bed, Shelby.” No emotion. “Not at my best. Understatement. So I saw your life because there was nothing else I could do but stay there and watch.”

I saw your life. No, correction, he meant he’d seen her life fall apart. No one really knew her life. People just knew about the bloody and gory parts that had been paraded in the media. She wanted to ask him about how he’d wound up in a hospital bed, but if she’d learned one thing over the years, it was that people hated for their darkest moments to be dragged into the light.

So she stayed on track. “I did testify that Nate was yelling my name.” Because she did remember that part. She remembered running. Finding the cops. Having an EMT try to pull her into an ambulance but…

But I broke away from him. Fear clawed at me. I had to go back. “I was supposed to get in an ambulance, but I didn’t. I broke away from the EMT, and I ran back into the woods. Out there, I found Nate, and he was about to kill a cop. The cop’s weapon was on the ground. I picked it up. I fired.” With hands that had trembled so hard.

“The bastard got sent to prison. Case closed.” There was a grim finality in Hunter’s voice.

Yet there was nothing final in her mind. “Nate was there that night. In the house. I have no doubt about that. But he has sworn, over and over again, that he wasn’t the killer. That he didn’t murder my friends.”

Hunter’s expression was full of doubt. “Guilty men don’t have to tell the truth.”

That was almost—word for word—what the DA in Florida had recently said to her. “But what if I’m wrong? What if it wasn’t him?”

“Why would you think that?” Hunter’s gaze swept over face.

“I’ve…had flashes lately. New memories.” Just spit it out, Shelby! “I-I think someone else was there that night.” She held her breath.

He didn’t laugh. Didn’t dismiss her. Just narrowed those dark eyes of his. “Who?”

“I don’t know. If I knew, I wouldn’t be standing in front of you right now.” Her words had turned ragged around the edges. “That’s why I need you.”

“You need me.” He nodded. “You need me.”

Hadn’t she just said that? “If Nate is guilty, then he’s exactly where he should be.”

Hunter did not even blink.

“But if I’m wrong, if someone else was there…” Her stomach twisted. “Then I can’t let an innocent man die.”

Still no blinking. How long could he go without blinking? And why did it feel like she was getting lost the longer she stared into his eyes?

Then…

He blinked. His head tilted to the right. “What, exactly, do you want to hire me to do?”

Several things, actually. But to start, “I want a bodyguard. I mean, I want to hire you to stay with me.”

He blinked again.

“That was the twenty-four, seven business I mentioned previously. I’m looking for someone to stay with me while I investigate.”