“You okay?” Sam Bridger, Kade’s best friend, stood beside him, a tall blond man Kade had known for years. Kade had been too lost in thought to hear him approach.

“She’s been dead eight years, Sam. So yeah, I’m okay.” But the rage he felt had never lessened. It should have. At the time of her death, their marriage was already on the rocks. The second time Kade had caught Heather cheating, he had filed for divorce.

“Maybe they’ll find something in the car that’ll give them a reason to reopen the case,” Sam said.

“Maybe.” Kade hoped so. He wanted Heather’s killer to be found and punished. No matter how things had turned out between them, he owed her that much.

His gaze went back to the car being lifted onto the flatbed of a diesel truck with an Eagle County Sheriff’s emblem on the side. The truck pulled away from the edge of the lake, tires churning through mud made worse by last night’s rain. The motor groaned as the vehicle slogged along the little-used, rutted lane to the asphalt road leading toward Eagle, the county seat.

The last time Kade had seen the dark green SUV was the night Heather had left him. That night, she had packed her things, taken the car, and driven away without a backward glance. Kade had never seen her again.

At the time, like half the residents of Coffee Springs, he’d believed Heather had run off with one of the men she’d met in the town’s only saloon, or maybe a guy in Vail, the ski area frequented by the rich and famous only an hour’s drive away, where Heather sometimes went to ski with her girlfriends.

Kade had believed it too. For a while. Then, two years later, a couple of hikers had found a body in a shallow grave, the dirt washed away by a recent storm. The victim, a female, turned out to be Heather Logan, a shock that had sent Kade into a tailspin.

By then, he’d accepted the likelihood that Heather had been a victim of foul play. She hadn’t left with some big spender from Vail and simply started a new life, as she had threatened to do. She had been murdered.

Since then, Kade had been tormented by guilt. He lived each day with a terrible sense of failure that he had let Heather down. At the very least, he should have found the man responsible for her death.

And made the bastard pay.

“I’ve seen enough,” Kade said. “I’m heading back to the ranch.”

“That’s it?” Sam asked, a blond eyebrow edging up. Sam and Kade had gone to school together, worked side by side during the summers when they were kids. Sam knew Kade well enough to know it was far from over.