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disappointment surprised him. But on the other hand, he was glad she had gone.
    The torrent had begun again. David didn’t bother to make conversation with Isaiah, Cade and his younger brother Adam. Instead they trudged their way toward the trailhead.
    David tried to process everything they’d just been through, including Tracy’s reactions, which unsettled him in some way he couldn’t quite define. They just didn’t make sense. It was normal that she’d been shaken by the idea of an attempted murder, but there was more to it than that. David hadn’t been able to hear her conversation with Jay over the noise of the rain beating down on the tarp he’d held, but he was sure that whatever it was Jay had said had shaken Tracy. But what could it have been? David shrugged the question off. He wouldn’t be getting any answers to it out here.
    Finally the rain let up again. David hoped it would stay that way until he was inside his truck with the heat on.
    Isaiah stepped up next to him. “The police showed up and escorted Tracy and Heidi back. They were going to take Tracy’s statement about the fallen jogger and what she’d seen.”
    “Are you saying they didn’t search the woods?” David asked. “Just took a statement?”
    “I’ll talk to Terry and see what I find out,” Cade said.
    Terry served on the Mountain Cove PD. He and Cade had been close since grade school, though Terry was a friend to all the Warren siblings. David would ask Tracy what she’d told the police, as well.
    They made the trailhead where their vehicles were parked. Isaiah and Cade scrambled into Cade’s truck, Adam into his own vehicle, and David climbed into his shiny, brand-new, blue Ford Super Duty F-250 FX4 4x4. He loved his truck and was glad he’d special-ordered it, though that had required a wait. But if he’d been trying to fill the empty space inside with material goods, he knew he’d failed. For whatever reason, the incident this morning seemed to drive home his loneliness.
    He waved at his brothers then turned on the ignition and the heat. Dripping wet, he shivered and stared out the window, recalling what had happened.
    The fear he remembered from Tracy’s expression told him that something was terribly wrong.
    Considering the way their brief encounter had affected him the first time he’d met her, David had made it his policy to steer clear, never involve himself with her. He shouldn’t get involved now, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her reaction. Couldn’t stop thinking about her. He wanted her to be safe, but he knew it went much deeper than that.
    He was more confused than ever.
    * * *
    Finally at home, Tracy gave Solomon a much-needed bath and fed him. Then she took a hot shower to wash away the events of the day as well as the chill from her body, then put on a pot of coffee to brew. She needed to stop her shivering limbs. But as she slipped into her comfortable, warm sweats, she was still shaking. The real source of her trembling had nothing at all to do with getting chilled on the mountain.
    No. Her trembling had everything to do with the strong possibility that Carlos Santino had somehow found her.
    The tattoo that Jay had described was the tattoo worn by Santino and his gang members.
    Fear crept over her again as she recalled Jay’s words.
    “Numbers and a scorpion with flames on the wrist... I thought it was cool. Asked what the numbers—”
Tracy knew what those numbers meant.
She knew more about that particular tattoo than she’d ever wanted to.
Every kind of gang—ethnic or otherwise, street gangs or prison gangs—had their coded tattoo system and tattoos symbolizing membership.
    The scorpion and flames identified Santino’s gang, and the numbers identified how many kills. As that number grew, other tattoos would tell the story elsewhere on the body.
    But Santino was supposed to be in a prison in California—over a thousand miles away. As far as she knew, no one in this region of Alaska had