Waking Nightmare (54 page)
She eyed Rollins. “One of yours?”
Looking uncomfortable, the sheriff shook his head. “Now, Ramsey,” he started, as she turned toward the stranger. “Better let me handle this.”
But she was already striding away. “Hey. Hey!”
The man raised a hand in a lazy salute, but it was clear he was much more interested in the reading on the instrument he held than he was in her. Ramsey waited while he lowered the tool to jot a notation down in the notebook open on his lap then looked up and shot her a lazy grin. “Afternoon, ma’am.”
“Interesting thing about that yellow tape all around you,” she said with mock politeness. “It’s actually meant to keep people out of a crime scene, not invite them inside it.”
The sun at her back had the stranger squinting a bit at her, but the smile never left his face. And it was, for a man, an extraordinarily attractive face. His jaw was long and lean, his eyes a bright laser blue. The golden shade of his hair was usually found only on the very young or the very determined. Someone had broken his nose for him, and the slight bump in it was the only imperfection in a demeanor that was otherwise almost too flawless. Ramsey disliked him on sight just on principal.
“Well, fact is, ma’am, this isn’t an active crime scene anymore. Hey, Mark.” He called a friendly greeting to the man behind her. “Kendra May know you’re out walking pretty girls ’round the woods?”
“Dev. Thought you’d be finished up here by now.”
Ramsey caught the sheepish note in Rollins’s voice and arched a brow at him. The sheriff intercepted it and followed up with an introduction. “Ramsey Clark, this is my cousin, Devlin Stryker. He’s uh . . . just running some tests.”
“Your cousin,” she repeated carefully. “And does your cousin work for the department? If so, in what capacity?”
Rollins’s face reddened a little. “No. He’s a . . . well, he’s sort of a scientist, you could say.”
Stryker rose in one lithe motion and made his way carefully back to the rest of his belongings, which included, Ramsey noted, a large duffel bag with unfamiliar-looking instruments strewn around it, along with a couple cameras, a night vision light source, and—she blinked once—a neatly rolled up sleeping bag.
“Odd place to go camping.”
“Can’t say I used the sleepin’ bag much last night.” He unzipped the duffel and began placing his things inside it. “Too worried about snakes. I thought I’d stick around a while to compare last night’s readings with some from today.”
With quick neat movements, he placed everything but the sleeping bag in the duffle and zipped it, standing up to sling its strap over his shoulder. “I’m done here for now, though.”
“Done with what, exactly?”
Devlin sent her an easy smile that carried just enough charm to have her defenses slamming firmly into place. “Well, let’s see. I used a thermal scanner to measure temperature changes. An EMF meter to gauge electromagnetic fields. An ion detector to calculate the presence of negative ions. Then there’s the gaussometer, which . . .”
Comprehension warring with disbelief, Ramsey swung back to face Rollins, her voice incredulous. “A
ghost hunter
? Are you kidding me? You let some paranormal quack compromise the crime scene?”
ghost hunter
? Are you kidding me? You let some paranormal quack compromise the crime scene?”
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