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Case File: Canyon
Creek, Wyoming
Harlequin Intrigue - January
2010
Text Copyright © 2010 by
Paula Graves. Cover Art Copyright © 2010 by Harlequin Enterprises
Limited. Permission to reproduce text granted by Harlequin Books S.A.
Cover art used by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises Limited. All
rights reserved. © and ™ are trademarks of Harlequin Enterprises
Limited or its affiliated companies, used under license.
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The
flashing blue light in the rearview mirror came out of nowhere,
cutting through the cool shadows of the waning afternoon. Hannah
Cooper glanced at the rental car's speedometer needle, which hovered
just under sixty. The speed limit was sixty-five on this stretch of
Wyoming's Highway 287, so she wasn't speeding.
Maybe he just wanted her to move aside to make it easier to pass her
on the two-lane highway. She edged the Pontiac toward the narrow
shoulder, but the car behind her slowed as well, making no attempt
to go around her. The driver waved out the window for her to pull
all the way over.
Damn it. She released a slow breath and looked for somewhere to pull
to the side. The highway shoulder barely existed on this stretch of
winding road, the grassy edge rising quickly to meet the dense stand
of pines lining the highway. Hannah spotted a widening of the
shoulder a few yards ahead. She slowed and pulled over, cutting the
engine.
Tamping down a nervous flutter in her belly, she lowered the window
with one hand while pulling her wallet from her purse with the
other. Outside the window, footsteps approached. She turned to face
the lawman. "Is something wrong?"
She got a brief glimpse of weathered jeans and a shiny silver belt
buckle before the man's hand—snugly tucked into latex
gloves—whipped up into the window and sprayed something wet and
stinging in her face.
Her gasp of surprise drew a spray of fiery heat into her mouth and
throat, and her eyes slammed closed, acid tears seeping from between
her lids. Pepper spray, she realized, gagging as fire
filled her lungs with every wheezing breath. Coughing, she tried to
reorient herself in a world turned upside down.
She felt a rough hand on the back of her neck, pushing her forward
toward the steering wheel with a sharp thrust. She threw herself
sideways, avoiding all but a glancing blow of her cheekbone against
the steering wheel. The shock of pain faded quickly compared to the
lingering agony of the pepper spray. Panic rose as she felt the
man's hand groping for her again.
Don't ever let them get you out of the car.
The warning that filled her foggy mind spoke in her brother Aaron's
voice. Aaron, the cop, who never let pass any opportunity to give
her advice about personal safety.
If they get you out of your car, you're dead.
The man's hand tangled briefly in her hair then retreated. A soft
snapping sound outside the car made her jerk her head toward the
open window, and she forced her eyelids open, blinking hard to clear
her blurry vision. Through a film of white-hot pain, she saw her
assailant's right hand sliding something black and metallic from a
side holster.
Gun.
It snagged coming out of the holster, giving her the distraction she
needed. Spotting his left hand resting on the car-door frame for
balance, she rammed her elbow on to the back of his hand, crushing
his fingers against the door. Something hard and metallic cracked
against her elbow bone—a ring? It sent pain jarring up her arm,
but she ignored it as he spat out a loud curse and pulled his hand
free, just as she'd hoped.
She turned the key in the ignition. The rented Pontiac G6 roared to
life and she jerked it into Drive, ramming the accelerator pedal to
the floor.
The Pontiac shimmied across the sandy ground, the right back wheel
teetering precariously along the edge of the dipping shoulder, but
she muscled it back on to the highway and pointed its nose toward
the long stretch of road ahead.
She groped on the seat next to her for the bottle of water she'd
picked up from a vending machine at a gas station a few miles back.
Grappling with the cap, she opened the bottle and splashed water in
her eyes, trying to wash out enough of the burning spray to help her
see as she drove. It helped the stinging pain in her eyes but did
nothing to stop the burning on her skin and in her nose and throat.
Think, Hannah. Think.
She felt for her purse, which held her cell phone, but it must have
fallen to the floorboard. She couldn't risk trying to find it.
Though she could barely see, barely breathe, she didn't dare slow
down, taking the curves at scary speeds. There had to be
civilization somewhere ahead, she promised herself, shivering with
shock and pain. Just another mile or so….
She peered blindly at the rearview mirror, trying to see if the car
with the blue light was following. She'd rounded a curve that put a
hilly stand of pines between her car and the waning daylight
backlighting the Wyoming Rockies. Behind her, night had already
begun to fall in murky purple shadows, hiding any sign of her
assailant from view. Maybe she'd bought herself enough time.
She just had to keep going. Surely somewhere ahead she'd run into
people who could help her.
She wiped her watering eyes, trying to see through the gloom. More
than once over the next endless, excruciating mile, she nearly drove
off the road, but soon the highway curved again, and the mountains
came back into view, rising with violent beauty into the
copper-penny sky. And just a mile or so ahead, gleaming like a
beacon to her burning eyes, a truck stop sprawled along the side of
the highway.
She headed her car toward the lighted sign, daring only a quick
glance in her rearview mirror. She spotted a car behind her, a black
dot in the lowering darkness. It seemed to be coming fast, growing
larger and more threatening as the distance between her and the
truck stop diminished.
Heart pounding, Hannah rammed the accelerator to the floor again,
pushing the Pontiac to its limits. It shuddered beneath her, the
engine whining, but the distance to the truck stop was yards now,
close enough that she could make out men milling in the parking lot.
Behind her, the pursuing car fell back, as if he realized the
foolishness of trying to overtake her so close to a truck stop full
of witnesses. Shaking with relief, she aimed her car at the blurry
span of the truck-stop driveway.
The sun dipped behind the mountains just as she made the turn,
casting a sudden shadow across the entrance. The unexpected gloom,
combined with her blurred vision, hid a dangerous obstacle until it
was too late. Her right front wheel hit the rocky outcropping that
edged the driveway and sent the car lurching out of control.
Fighting the wheel, she managed to avoid a large gas-tanker truck
parked at the far edge of the truck-stop parking lot, but a scrubby
pine loomed out of the darkness right in her path. She slammed on
her brakes, but it was too late.
She hit the tree head on, and the world went black.
IN CANYON
CREEK, WYOMING,
night had long since fallen in cool, blue shadows tinted faint
purple by the last whisper of sunset rimming the ridges to the west.
With sunset had come the glow of streetlamps lining Main Street,
painting the sidewalks below with circles of gold.
From his office window on the second floor of the Canyon Creek
Police Department, Deputy Chief Riley Patterson had a bird's-eye
view of the town he protected, though few people remained in town at
this time of night. Most of the stores had shut down a couple of
hours earlier, though a light still glowed in the hardware store
across the street. After a moment, even that light extinguished, and
Riley spotted storekeeper Dave Logan locking the store's front door,
his dog Rufus waiting patiently by his side.
Riley turned from the window and sank into his desk chair, his gaze
lifting to the large, round clock on the wall. At seven-forty on a
Tuesday evening, Riley was one of four people left in the building,
but up here on the second floor, he might as well be the only
person. The quiet was like a living thing this time of night,
unbroken for the most part, though a few minutes earlier he'd heard
the fax go off in the chief's office. He'd check it before he left
for home.
He worked late most evenings, in part because he liked the quiet
time to catch up on the paperwork that took up most of his time
these days, but mostly because the alternative was going home to his
empty house.
He worked his way through a handful of reports the day-shift
officers had left on his desk, making notes on interviews that
needed follow-ups and putting them in the outbox for his secretary
to file in the morning. Then he leaned back in his chair and stared
at the ceiling, willing himself to grab his jacket and keys and head
home before he started worrying himself the way he knew he'd begun
to worry his friends and colleagues.
His desk phone rang before he could move, shattering the quiet. He
dropped his feet to the floor and checked the number on the caller
ID display. It was Joe Garrison, his boss and lifelong friend. Riley
grabbed the receiver. "I'm about to head home, I swear—"
"Just got a call from the Teton County Sheriff," Joe
interrupted briskly. "Attempted abduction on Highway 287 late
this afternoon. Female victim, mid-twenties."
Riley felt a twinge of unease. "Deceased?"
"No, but I don't know any more details yet. It's Teton County's
jurisdiction, but the sheriff gave me a courtesy call. His
department should be faxing the details over any minute."
"The fax rang a minute ago. I'll check." Riley put Joe on
hold and walked into the chief's office. He grabbed the handful of
sheets from the fax tray and scanned them on the way back to his
office. Standard BOLO—Be On Lookout— notice, short on details.
The victim apparently hadn't gotten a good look at her attacker.
Riley reached his desk and picked up the phone. "Still
there?"
"For the moment, although Jane's giving me come-hither looks
that are getting a little hard to resist," Joe answered,
laughter tinting his voice. "Anything on the BOLO we need to
worry about?"
"According to the victim, the assailant was driving a police
car, although she doesn't seem sure whether it was a marked car or
not. The guy had a blue light on the roof, but it might have been a
detachable one." Riley scanned further. "Not much in the
way of a description, either, beyond what he was wearing."
"Odd," Joe said.
The next words Riley read made his blood go cold. A faint buzzing
noise filled his ears as he read the information again.
"Riley?" Joe prodded on the other end of the line.
Riley cleared his throat, but when he spoke, his voice still came
out raspy and tight. "She was pepper-sprayed. In the
face."
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line while the
implications sank in for Joe. A second later, he said, "I'll be
there in ten minutes." He hung up without saying goodbye.
Riley put down the phone and stared at the BOLO, rereading the
passage one more time to make sure he hadn't misread. But the words
remained unchanged—oleoresin capsicum found on the victim's face,
clothing and in her mucus and saliva.
He sank heavily into his desk chair, his hand automatically reaching
for the bottom drawer to his right. He pulled it open and took out a
dog-eared manila folder, the only thing that occupied the drawer. He
thumbed through the familiar pages inside the file folder, searching
for the three-year-old Natrona County coroner's report. His breath
caught when he read the decedent's name—Patterson, Emily D.—but
he dragged his gaze away from the name to the toxicology report on
the pages stapled behind the death certificate.
Oleoresin capsicum. It had been found in her eyes, nose, throat and
lungs, preserved, ironically, by the plastic sheeting her killer had
wrapped her in before sinking her body in a lake off Highway 20.
He heard footsteps pounding up the stairs outside his office. Joe
burst through the doorway, his wife, Jane, right behind him. Joe
grabbed the fax pages from Riley's desk while Jane crossed to put
her hand on Riley's shoulder, her green eyes warm with compassion.
"You okay?" she asked.
He nodded, putting the coroner's report back into the file folder
and sliding it into the open drawer.
"This is six," Joe said, settling on to the edge of
Riley's desk with the fax pages in his hands.
"Six that we know of," Riley added grimly. "And we're
not sure about a couple of them." The plastic sheet wrapped
around the bodies of two of the victims hadn't protected them from
the water where their bodies had been dumped.
"The plastic sheeting was enough of an MO for me," Joe
said firmly. "If this one hadn't gotten away, she'd have shown
up in a lake or river somewhere around here, wrapped in plastic,
too. Maybe this time, the FBI will finally see the pattern."
The FBI didn't want to see the pattern, Riley knew. He'd tried to
get the feds involved the minute he'd started piecing together the
murders three years ago, when Emily had become one of the killer's
victims. They hadn't been interested. "The connection was too
nebulous" or some such B.S.
"I'll give Jim Tanner a call in the morning," Joe said,
referring to the Teton County Sheriff. "He owes me a
favor."
Jane put her hand on Riley's shoulder again. "Come home with us
for dinner," she said. "It's nothing much—just some
leftover barbecue, but we have plenty of it."
"Even with her eating for three," Joe added with a smile.
"Two," Jane corrected with a roll of her green eyes,
"although one of us is half cowboy, so you may have a
point."
Riley tried to smile at the banter, but it stung a little, even
though he was happy as hell that his old friend had finally found a
little happiness in his roller-coaster of a life. Seeing Joe and
Jane so clearly happy, so clearly in love, was a reminder of all
he'd lost three years ago when Emily had died.
"Actually, I think I'm just going to head home and try to get
some sleep so I'll be fresh in the morning," he lied, even as a
plan began to form in his restless mind. He gave Jane a quick kiss
on the cheek and nodded toward the door. "Let's get out of here
and I'll talk to you both tomorrow."
He could see a hint of suspicion in Joe's expression as the three of
them walked out to the parking lot, where Joe's dark-blue Silverado
was parked next to Riley's silver one. But his friend just gave a
wave goodbye as Riley slid behind the truck's wheel and backed out
of the parking lot.
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