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mountain man who’d helped the sheriff find his father’s killers.
    â€œJoe?” Pulling the thin, short-sleeved button-down over the top of her shorts, Ellen climbed out of the SUV and stood.
    Ellen was a trained social worker. Joe needed to be socialized in the worst way.
    â€œJoe?” she called again. She wouldn’t go any farther, take another step, until the fiftysomething bearded man appeared. If this wasn’t a good day, she’d come back.
    Joe knew that. He knew he could stay hidden.
    He never had before.
    They had something in common, Ellen and Joe. A shared awareness of the tragic effects of inexplicable violence against women.
    â€œI’ve got your syllabus and textbooks,” she called. Joe had a thirty-year-old degree in engineering. Once Ellen had discovered that fact, she’d started planting the seeds of him upgrading his courses with the hope that a love of learning would be able to do what five years of visits had not—get him out of the hell he’d thrown himself into after his wife’s death.
    She had bags of groceries, too, as always.
    â€œWhere’s the sheriff?” Joe’s gruff voice came from somewhere behind the one-room log cabin he had built by hand over thirty years ago.
    Ellen and Greg usually made this trek up the mountain together. But not always.
    â€œThere was a traffic accident out by the highway.”
    â€œYou shouldn’t be here without him.”
    â€œOf course I should be,” she called, completely without fear. “Sheriff Richards knows I’m here. And you need your groceries.”
    Besides, Joe would never, ever do anything to hurt Ellen. Ever.
    Now if she had been meeting Black Leather, as she’d come to think of the man she’d seen roaring through town the other day, she would have—
    She simply wouldn’t have done it. Period.
    â€œCan I come sit by the window?”
    He’d built a seat for her there when she’d first started visiting him. Greg would sit in the cruiser and Ellen would counsel with Joe in plain sight but out of hearing range of the sheriff. Then somehow things had changed and Ellen and Joe had been more friends than social worker and hermit.
    â€œWait.”
    She heard a rustle of grass then saw the thin, slightly stooped man, dressed in baggy overalls and a flannel shirt, skirt around the front of the house and inside. He promptly latched the door with the board Ellen knew he used to lock himself in.
    â€œâ€™Kay.” She only heard the word because she’d been waiting for it. Listening.
    Leaving the cooler in the back of the Escape, Ellen grabbed the blue book bag she’d purchased at Walmart the same day she’d bought Josh’s and headed to the house.
    With her back to the building, she pulled out a folder of papers and rested them on the windowsill.
    Joe’s fingers didn’t come close to brushing hers as he gently tugged the folder away from her.
    â€œIt’s all there. Dr. Sheffield is glad you’re in her class. And she hopes she gets to meet you before the semester is through.” Classes didn’t officially start for another couple of weeks, but Phyllis had agreed to send along Joe’s work early. Ellen figured her mother’s friend shared her wish that the studies would interest him enough to get him off the mountain and into the classroom.
    â€œIf it was anyone else but you, I’d think there was a trick here. Psychology class. Like I need psychological help.”
    â€œYou probably do.”
    â€œNot up here, I don’t.” It wasn’t the first time they’d had the conversation.
    â€œI have an ulterior motive, Joe,” Ellen said, as honest with him as always.
    Their ability to speak openly was one of the things she valued most about their peculiar relationship. Conversation with Joe was stripped of most social graces. Or pleasantries.
    â€œI hope that you love the class enough that