Free Finger Prints by Barbara Delinsky

again. His grin, a generous slash of white through his beard, was so hopelessly boyish that, quite against her will, her wariness seemed to lessen. Tearing her eyes away, she sought the path once more.
    “You must run often yourself,” he speculated.
    “When I can.” It was evasive enough, she mused, yet not far from the truth. She’d been running since Matthew’s death, when she’d wanted nothing more than to exhaust herself into oblivion. It had worked at first, until she’d built up her strength and discovered the sheer exhilaration of the sport. Now she ran as often as possible. Since fall had come, though, the opportunity had grown progressively more elusive. She didn’t dare run in the dark, thus precluding most school days. Which left the weekends.
    Ryan was silent for a time, wondering how much he dared push. Arbuckle had said she was quiet. Ryan might use the words private, or aloof, even distrustful, or skittish, from the looks of the tightly clenched fists that moved back and forth with her steady stride. Somehow he didn’t want to think she was simply disinterested. “You always run by the river?” he asked.
    Carly looked up and around. The sky was a pale shade of blue, even paler where the sun skipped over the skyline of Boston, seeming to jump from building to building as her own perspective changed. “It’s open here. And peaceful. I leave the cars to battle one another.”
    Ryan smiled his satisfaction. “I was counting on that. For a while I thought you’d turned off on a side street.” At her look of puzzlement, then alarm, he quickly explained. “I saw you leave the building just as I was getting dressed.” A slight fabrication, he reasoned, but harmless. “When I got outside, you’d disappeared. I thought that if I could catch up with you, you’d show me the best place to run.”
    “You found it yourself then, even before you saw me again. Your instinct was good.”
    He wouldn’t tell her about the more lascivious instinct that had set him running double time. His thighs and calves would be telling enough later. For now, he simply wanted to get her talking.
    “Do you ever race?” he asked.
    “Running?” She crinkled up her nose and he felt a corresponding tickle inside him. “No. I’m not that good. I just do it for fun. You know, exercise, fresh air, ‘sweeping out the cobwebs’ kind of thing.”
    “How far do you go?”
    She cocked her head toward the buildings rising ahead. “Boston University. I’m almost there.”
    “What is it…four miles round trip?”
    Her ponytail slapped her neck with each stride, mirroring the gentle bob of her breasts. “I think so.”
    He focused on the ponytail. “You can do more, you know.”
    “Oh?” A smile played at the corners of her mouth.
    “Sure. You’re barely winded. Why not try for another mile?”
    “There’s still the return trip to make.”
    “You can do it. Come on.”
    She looked up at him. His good-natured smile egged her on. “What if my legs give out on me three-quarters of the way back?”
    “I’ll carry you.”
    “You’re that strong?”
    “You’re that light.”
    When she would have asked him how he knew, she blushed and looked down. Not much was hidden by her running shorts, certainly not the slim, bare lengths of her legs. And she was indeed far shorter then he was. Oh, yes, he could easily carry her. Without the slightest effort, he could toss her over his shoulder and cart her to a van waiting somewhere ahead. Her blush washed out and disappeared.
    Ryan instantly sensed the change. “Are you all right?” he asked, with the same soft concern in which he’d intoned those very words the day before.
    Struggling against the silent demons that seemed to have struck again, Carly reminded herself of Sam’s phone call. Ryan was honest. Safe. “Straight as an arrow,” were Sam’s precise words. It was time she stood up to her insidious suspicions.
    “I’m fine,” she murmured, forcing a