“No. Yes. Okay, maybe.” She huffed out a breath. “You’re making me crazy,” she muttered, but a smile escaped as she looked at him.
He grinned like an idiot but then sobered. What the hell are you doing, Tanner? He cleared his throat and turned the conversation to official business. “Tell me what happened in the forest today.”
Delilah’s faced paled, and wariness crept into her eyes. Her chin came up, and she asked, “What do you mean?”
He raised a brow, waited, but she said nothing. “I followed your trail from where we found a deceased individual. Who is he?”
Delilah squeezed her eyes shut as though blocking the image, then she shrugged and shook her head. When she looked up, her eyes were sad. “I don’t know.”
“Based on some evidence we found, it looks like he was here to study the monkeys, just like you. You haven’t run into him since you’ve been here?”
She shook her head no.
“Okay, walk me through it. Where did you go after you left the café?”
Delilah glanced away, and Josh couldn’t help admiring her profile. Between her high cheekbones and full lips, she really was beautiful, but he had the sense she didn’t realize it. Focus, Tanner.
She tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear and tugged on it as though surprised at how short it was. “I rented a kayak and went to study the monkeys like I’d planned, and afterward, I tried to connect with some friends. But they weren’t where I thought they’d be.”
“You mean the Atwoods?”
Her eyes flew to his, then darted away again. “Yes. Do you know them?”
“I know their campsite used to be in that general vicinity. But they moved on a couple of months ago.”
“Do you know where they—” She cut herself off. “Never mind.”
He folded his arms and leaned on the table, trying to figure out what she wasn’t saying. “What happened after you got to the campsite?”
She stared down at the table, fiddled with a napkin. “Since it was obvious they weren’t there, I headed back to my truck. That’s when I came across the, uh, the dead man.”
“He was already dead when you got there?”
“Definitely, as far as I could tell. The smell was terrible. When I heard the bear, I backed up slowly and slipped into the trees.”
“What did the bear do? Did he see you?”
Delilah squeezed her eyes shut again as though to block the memory. Josh couldn’t blame her. “I don’t think so. When he leaned over the man, I took off.” She wrapped her arms tightly around her middle, and he couldn’t help noticing they were toned and tan. “That’s all I can tell you. Do you know who the man was?”
“Not yet.” Josh studied her body language and all the things she hadn’t said. “Why didn’t you report a body?”
She blanched and chewed her lower lip, and he ignored the flare of heat that shot through him.
“I was pretty rattled. I hadn’t quite worked my way up to it yet.”
* * *
Delilah forced herself to meet Josh’s questioning gaze as shame washed over her. For the sake of the dead man, she should have called immediately. She’d been so worried about what to say, she’d hesitated. That wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to be.
When he’d shown up, she’d thought he wanted to finish their earlier conversation about the monkeys. The fact that he was FWC and would logically be investigating a bear attack hadn’t even crossed her mind.
She took a slow, calming breath, then another, until her brain got a tight grip on her panic so she could think. She couldn’t tell him who she was. Certainly not while she was trying to get Mary away from her family. Her identity would raise questions that would only muddy the waters.
Her imagination was running away with her, and she was behaving like her paranoid father. A bear attacking a man near where her family was transferring guns and money had to be an unfortunate coincidence. But in Delilah’s experience, things were never quite that simple. Though for her, like for the dead man, they were often that sad.
Josh was watching her, eyes intense. “Are you okay?”
She nodded and bit her lip again. When his eyes tracked the movement, she became acutely aware that her nervous tell had become something else. The familiar zip of attraction flared in her belly, but she ignored it. Those green eyes of his missed nothing, and she couldn’t risk him looking too closely, probing too deeply. She should have remembered John Henry’s number one rule: keep to yourself.
“I’m sorry. Seeing him really threw me. But I should have called someone.” She’d been equally shaken by seeing her brother. And father. And having them aim guns in her direction. She couldn’t conceal a shudder and jerked in surprise when Josh laid a comforting hand on her arm.
Delilah looked from his hand to his face and saw the concern there, the interest. For a moment, she wished they’d met at some other time, in another place. Josh Tanner seemed like every girl’s dream. But despite her research, she was here to rescue her sister. She couldn’t lose sight of that, not for a single minute.
“Besides the bear and the hunter, did you see anyone else in the area?”
Delilah kept her expression bland. She had been raised that it was none of the government’s business what she did, but her family had also been strict adherents to the Ten Commandments. The only exception to “Thou shalt not lie” was when it involved any kind of police or government authority. She couldn’t lie to Josh, but she couldn’t tell the whole truth, either. “Those two pretty much kept my attention.”
The thrift-shop clock ticked loudly while he studied her. She wouldn’t look away.
Finally, he said, “Is there anything at all you can tell me that will help us figure out who this man was? We need to notify his family.”
Delilah straightened her spine and met his eyes. “I’m sorry. I wish I could help you, but I didn’t know him.”
“Did you hear gunfire about the time you found the body?”
“I did, but that’s certainly not unusual out here.”
“Why did you try to hide your tracks?”
A trained investigator lived behind that easy smile, and she’d be a fool to forget it. She attempted a casual shrug. “Habit, I guess. I was raised to fly under the radar, not get involved in things that aren’t my business.” Lame, Delilah. More words wanted to tumble out, so she clamped her mouth shut.
“You know that makes it look like you have something to hide.”