Born to Be Wylde by Jan Irving

Chapter One
    D EPUTY K EN I TO gave a soft groan as someone put a cup against his split lip. It bled as he pursed it. Hurt. Every part of his five-foot-seven-inch frame felt bruised; his forearms and hands burned, shredded from being dragged over sand and rock.
    He shook his head, trying to turn away, but a gentle hand was implacable, holding him steady, lifting him so he could swallow without choking.
    The water felt like life, cool and soothing. He licked his lips and then drank thirstily.
Life. Bring me back to life.
His body, his thoughts were weighed down like a rock resting on a note with his name on it. He couldn’t shift the stone to read the writing, to grasp…. Why was he hurting? Where was he?
So hot…. His hands and feet were swollen from the fever, so they felt huge and pulsing. When the shadow caring for him eased him back onto a hard pallet, Ken groaned at the pain from his bruised ribs creaking together like shredded rattan.
A hand as easy on his flesh as the water he’d tasted smoothed over his bare chest. “Sleep,” a voice ordered him. “You sleep.”
Before his eyes closed, Ken felt the brush of something silken against his lips. Long black hair that smelled like cedar-wood smoke.
    K EN dreamed. At first he dreamed he was in his studio, creamy porcelain clay foaming under his hands as the wheel turned. Although at heart he was a craftsman, a simple potter, he had taken the job as a county deputy to support himself and he liked being of service to others. Doing the work wasn’t especially demanding since the part of Washington State he patrolled was pretty deserted, yet not long after he’d begun doing his circuits of the lonely stretch of woods on his route, he’d heard of several people who had disappeared in the area over a ten-year period.
    So there was a mystery.
Cracked asphalt and cedar and fir trees and tall grass flashed past him in a cop’s vigil, the yellow line blurring the many days he’d mulled over this mystery. After talking to people in the two small towns connected by Forest Grove Road, he’d discovered that the missing people had all hitchhiked. Excepting the case of one woman three weeks ago, teacher Andrea Harper, who left her vehicle because it ran out of gas. Presumably she’d tried to walk back to town, but no one knew for sure as she’d not been seen since.
After talking to her sister at the diner in April Falls, Ken wanted more than ever to find her. He’d taken to driving extra hours on his patrol, stopping places near where Andrea’s Buick Regal had been found.
N OW he shifted, uneasy, and the dream shifted with him, like an hourglass tilting…. Dizzy…. Yet he could hear the regular drum of a heartbeat against his cheek. When he flicked his tongue, he tasted firm skin. A hand in his hair, stroking him…. Reassured, he floated back to his studio in the woods, pressing down with his thumbs, forming a pot, watching it rise like yeast making bread rise, elemental magic…. His studio door was open, and the cool spring air came inside like a draft of clean pine-needle incense, and he was focused and serene.
Safe.
But then he saw her. He shook, sick, chilled by the vision. Andrea Harper, it had to be. Just twenty-three years old. Her body in gravel and thick clay mud, set in a shallow grave, pale, bloated face, white skull, blond hair wet against rock. Please bring her home to me, Deputy Ito, Andrea’s sister Karen Harper had pleaded, reaching out to grip his hand over the Formica diner table. I know she’s dead, she has to be dead, but I need to bring her home.
Heart thudding, primal awareness tickling his back like a sodden feather, because he could almost feel the miasma of the killer lingering like oily smoke at the scene. Grief moved in his gut as he crouched beside her body. Ken had to fight to remain composed—he’d dealt with his fair share of the aftermath of accidents, but this was different.
Someone had murdered Andrea.
He had to call it in, so he