DIRE

DAVID WOLF BOOK 8

JEFF CARSON

CROSS ATLANTIC PUBLISHING

Copyright © 2016 by Jeff Carson

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

CONTENTS

David Wolf Series in Order

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Acknowledgments

Preview of Signature (David Wolf Book 9)

David Wolf Series in Order

DAVID WOLF SERIES IN ORDER

Gut Decision (A David Wolf Short Story)– Sign up for the new release newsletter at http://www.jeffcarson.co/p/newsletter.html and receive a complimentary copy.

Foreign Deceit (David Wolf Book 1)

The Silversmith (David Wolf Book 2)

Alive and Killing (David Wolf Book 3)

Deadly Conditions (David Wolf Book 4)

Cold Lake (David Wolf Book 5)

Smoked Out (David Wolf Book 6)

To the Bone (David Wolf Book 7)

Dire (David Wolf Book 8)

Signature (David Wolf Book 9)

Dark Mountain (David Wolf Book 10)

Rain (David Wolf Book 11)

CLICK HERE to instantly add the audible version, read by Sean Patrick Hopkins, and keep the story going wherever you are.

Dedicated to my wife, Cristina, who was the first person to believe.

CHAPTER 1

“DID YOU SEE THAT?” Chief Detective David Wolf of the Sluice–Byron County Sheriff’s Department twisted in his seat and looked through the tinted rear window of the SUV.

“Whoa, you’re gonna slide off the mountain!” Detective Sergeant Barker reached a meaty hand toward the wheel.

Wolf corrected his steering and pumped the brakes, sliding to a stop in a foot of snow on the shoulder.

A pickup truck honked and slowed on the way by, the driver’s middle finger extended in the window.

They were driving in an unmarked department SUV, a dark-maroon Ford Explorer specially ordered for Wolf and his detective squad, which meant sometimes they received less than the normal law-enforcement respect afforded other cops with rooftop turret lights and fancy paint jobs.

“Move on, asshole!” Barker pointed out the windshield with teeth bared.

With tires spitting snow, Wolf ignored the blossoming road-rage incident and reversed up the shoulder. As they bounced in their seats, the front end fishtailed side to side.

Barker eyed the steep drop-off to the right that sloped down to the icy Chautauqua River. “I didn’t see anything, and you know we have a Situation in ten, right?”

Greg Barker was talking about the impending meeting in the Situation Room. It was the third time he’d mentioned it on their otherwise silent drive back from the resort, where they’d been at a Colorado State law-enforcement conference for most of the morning. Wolf had stayed late to speak to an old acquaintance from Glenwood Springs with whom he’d worked a case, and Barker had been left behind by his partner. And now they were stuck together, an occurrence made rare by mutual design.

“Christ.” Barker shook his head and pulled out his cell phone, probably preparing a text message to cover his ass.

Wolf jammed the SUV in park and stepped out just as an eighteen-wheeler rounded the curve behind them. Behind the oversized windshield, the driver’s eyes widened and he over-steered the wheel to avoid them, sending the truck into a sideways slide. Wolf tensed, watching the wheels catch on an exposed piece of blacktop, providing just enough traction to avoid a collision.

“Shit,” Wolf muttered as exhaust-laden wind whipped against him.

He jogged to the two slide marks and edged up to the crest of the ravine, seeing what he’d dreaded—an upside-down vehicle in the river below.

Wolf popped the rear hatch. “There’s a vehicle in the water.” He grabbed the Life Hammer out of his emergency kit, a twin-steel-point head designed to shatter car windows and a hook blade on the handle to cut seatbelts.

Barker twisted around. “What?”

“We have a vehicle down in the water!” Wolf slammed shut the hatch and went back to the side of the road.

Barker stepped out slowly and craned his neck over the edge, cell phone still in hand.

“Call it in!”

Wolf tucked the hammer into his jacket pocket and stood for a moment, picking the best line down. It was steep, with rocks and bushes covered by a few months of snowfall. There was no best line, just a fifty-degree slope that would’ve been designated double black diamond at the ski resort. Crouching and planting a hand in the frigid snow, he leaped over the side and slid down on his left hip.

It was soft for a few feet and then turned to pure ice. His legs kicked up and wind whistled past his ears. Twisting onto his stomach, he tried to dig his toes in and grab with his hands to slow himself, but the ice was impenetrable. The rock-solid nooks and bumps hit his kneecaps and scraped the skin off his hands, and then he hit the water and stopped instantly with a splash.

Shocking cold replaced the horror of the uncontrolled descent, because now he stood thigh deep in the rushing water of the Chautauqua. In late January. Not that there was ever a month when the water ran warm.

“You all right?” Barker yelled from above.

Wolf took stock of himself. He was fine from the waist up, and anything below that was too cold to feel.

He nodded. “Yeah!”

The car was a new-model SUV, upside down and pointing upstream, the passenger side completely submerged, the driver’s side angled out of the water. Inside, a male driver was hanging upside down in the seat, his bloody head tilted and bobbing with the movement of the vehicle itself. The top of the man’s head was submerged—if he was alive he was losing body heat fast.

There was no one in the seat directly behind the driver, and Wolf prayed that the front and rear passenger sides were empty too—they were completely submerged and any occupants had likely already drowned.

The vehicle moved with a scraping sound.

He waded forward, then stumbled as he stepped up onto an unexpected rock and splashed his arms up to his elbows into the icy flow. Straightening himself, he continued wading through shallow water until he reached a deep pool between himself and the SUV.

Hesitating, he looked left and right. The pool extended up and downriver, and there was no going around it without adding on several minutes of wading.

Barker was still up on the road, standing with a radio in his hand and watching with wide-eyed interest.

“Bring my sleeping bag and extra clothing in the back!”

Barker raised a hand to his ear and then shook his head. Then he shrugged and put the radio to his lips.

What the hell was he doing?

Wolf pulled his radio from his belt. Pressing the button, he said, “Do you hear me?” Wolf twisted the knob back and forth, getting nothing. Close inspection showed water streaming out of the speaker holes.

Barker clearly couldn’t hear him. The radio was close to his lips and he spoke excitedly, but he was looking away from Wolf, so it was probably something along the lines of “Get the Fire Department up here quick!”

Wolf chucked the radio to shore, fumbled in his jacket pocket, and took out the Life Hammer. Crouching down, he jumped as far as he could toward the upturned truck.

It was then, just barely over the biting, freezing numbness, that he felt the first shooting pain in his ankle.

A second later he was submerged completely, the water gurgling over his head. He resisted the overwhelming urge to inhale as the cold hit him like an electrocution.

His head popped out of the water and he sucked in a breath, grabbing for the roof of the car. He whiffed, then went back under. The angle of the car was such that the edge of the window was a few feet above the water. Bobbing back up, he kicked hard, his boots lead weights on his feet, and barely caught hold where the upper edge of the window met the top of the door.

The water cascaded off his face and stung his eyes as he pulled and brought up his other hand, ready to slam one of the needle-point steel tips into the corner of the window, but he slipped and submerging again.

He kicked harder, and then whiffed his hand-hold again, because this time the current had brought him downstream.

This is ridiculous! he thought as he went back under. He was going about it the wrong way. He needed to go around the car, climb up on the underside of it, then over the edge and to the driver’s side door.

He kicked and paddled, keeping a numb fist around the hammer. The current helped him to the edge of the deep pool and he scrabbled up a slick, algae-covered rock to shallower water.

Panting, he got to his hands and knees and stood.

He paused and did a double take when he noticed Barker still standing on the road. His red hair was like a flame against the snow-covered mountaintop behind him. His eyes were unblinking, his expression flat.

“I could use some help!” Wolf screamed at the top of his lungs.

Barker started descending the hill.

“Bring the sleeping bag in back!”

Barker stopped, nodded, and made his way back to the SUV. Taking his sweet time with every movement.

“And the extra clothes! Move!”

Barker moved.

“Shit.” Wolf was shivering uncontrollably now. Hypothermia’s first signs were coming on strong.

Moving on unsteady feet to the upturned guts of the car, he yelled, “Sir! Can you hear me?”

There was only the sound of rippling water and now Barker’s scraping footfalls finally coming down the incline.

Dropping to his belly, Wolf hung over the door and slammed the hammer into the window. It instantly shattered and the glass fell away. At the same time, the car creaked and dropped a few inches.

With relief, Wolf noticed there was nobody else in the car, but following the shift, the guy’s upside-down head was now submerged to his mouth.

He hooked the blade of the emergency hammer on the seatbelt and pulled back, cutting through the tough fabric and a piece of the man’s shoulder. With the seatbelt no longer holding the man up, his head dunked under the water completely.

Wolf dropped the hammer, grabbed hold of the man by his sweatshirt, and tipped himself over the side. His legs up to his torso splashed back in the water, but he had purchase on the man and wasn’t letting go.

“I gotcha,” Wolf said, his voice shaky from the cold.

Hooking his foot into the window, he did a push–pull–grunt ballet and finally got the man free. He rolled onto his back and balanced the reclined man on his chest. Thankfully the victim was young and slim, but Wolf’s limbs were slow now, and it seemed to take an age to swim the few feet back to the other side.

Wolf kept expecting Barker to appear with his strong arms, but the detective sergeant never came.

He continued his labored ascent over the rocks, collapsing in the shallow water, then hauling the man a little further.

“Get down here!” Barker was just a few yards away, on the shore of the river and yelling into his radio. “He’s out! Let’s go!”

With clenched teeth, Wolf dug deep to find his remaining strength and heaved the man up onto his shoulder. Staggering on the slick rocks, he watched in confusion as Barker stood up from the water, soaking wet.

Had he fallen? What the hell was he doing now?

With mouth wide, water dripping off his face, Barker came rushing over. “Careful, be gentle with him.”

The weight lifted from Wolf’s shoulders as Barker took the man and carried him to the sleeping bag at the side of the river. Wolf saw Barker had brought the dry exercise clothing, too.

The sirens were right above them now, and a line of rescue workers appeared at the edge of the ravine, springing into action.

Wolf unraveled the sleeping bag and watched Barker put his large muscles to use, ripping the guy’s clothing off like it was made of tissue paper.

Wolf stood hunched over, hands on his knees, still trying to catch his breath. If he moved, his wet clothing lapped against his skin, worsening his distress, so he tried to remain still, despite the wracking shivers making it all but impossible.

“He’s got a pulse,” Barker said, zipping up the bag to the man’s head.

Wolf nodded. He heard footsteps and yells behind him, and then there was a man crouching in front of him and looking up.

“Hey, Dave. You all right?”

Wolf tried to nod.

Living in the mountains of Colorado made one realize why people had worshipped the sun for millennia. Life-threatening cold was always an inopportune moment away. A broken-down car, an injured leg, a drink too many, a wrong turn on the walk home—people had died for all these reasons and more in the mountains of Colorado.

Wolf sat in the back seat of a fire truck and wondered whether there were any cultures that worshipped rapid-deployment heat packs. There should be because they were doing the trick right about now. He had six taped to his back, a further six on his chest, one for each foot, and one more balanced on his head. He was naked under two wool blankets, knees drawn in a cannonball position.

The diesel engine of the fire truck rattled underneath him while the vents howled, pumping out heat like dragon’s breath. He’d started out as a numb block of ice; then there had been a stinging sensation as his body had regained sensation; now the heat was almost unbearable. He also needed to take the biggest leak of his life, but that was going to be a whole other logistical problem without shoes or clothing, parked on the busy road with passersby slowing to a crawl and gawking at the flurry of activity.

A young firefighter came to the window and looked in.

Wolf nodded at him, giving him the okay to open the door.

The firefighter opened it, letting in a blast of cold air, and climbed inside. “The victim is stable and on his way to County.”

Wolf nodded.

“We need to get you in now. We have another ambulance on the way.”

Wolf shook his head. He had stopped shivering a few minutes ago and concentrated on keeping it that way as the cold from the open door bit into his face. “No need. I just need some dry clothes.”

“You sure? Give me your arm.”

Wolf stuck out an arm and the cold burrowed into the opening of the blankets, caressing his exposed skin. “I’m starting to sweat.”

There was no way he was spending the next thirty hours in a hospital bed for observation.

The firefighter ignored him, concentrating on his watch and Wolf’s pulse. After another few seconds of staring into Wolf’s eyes he said, “All right. You’re okay.”

“Damn right I am. I’ve got my exercise gear in the back of my SUV. You mind grabbing it? And I could use something to take a leak in.”

The firefighter nodded and left, and Wolf assumed his huddle position under the blanket.

Barker climbed out of the truck parked in front of Wolf’s current warming hut, looking refreshed and toasty in his stocking cap, fireman’s coat, boots, and sweatpants. He exchanged a few words with a fireman, shaking his head and thumbing over his shoulder.

The rescue worker, a guy Wolf recognized as Tim Dunlop, and one of Barker’s friends by the looks of it, stole a glance towards the fire truck Wolf was sitting in and shook his head.

Wolf narrowed his eyes, wondering what Barker had to bitch about, and why he was pointing toward Wolf.

Greg Barker was the only member of the detective squad that Wolf would’ve liked to see the back of. The other three—Rachette, Patterson, and Hernandez—were good deputies who had proven themselves good detectives over the past year and a half since the inception of Wolf’s team. Barker had not.

Not only that, but Barker hadn’t been appointed by Wolf, but rather by Sheriff MacLean as a favor to Barker’s father, a man who lived south of Williams Pass and owned one of the biggest cattle ranches in Colorado—by far the biggest in Sluice–Byron. Upon his appointment, MacLean had immediately promoted Barker to sergeant, presumably for the same reason.

Barker was the type of deputy Wolf despised: a ladder climber with aspirations of sitting in Sheriff MacLean’s office chair one day, stepping on any and everyone who was in his chosen path.

Which made the hesitation in Barker’s actions today even more puzzling. Normally, Barker showed over-the-top aggression during these types of scenarios, trying to outshine everyone—promotions, medals, and commendations first and foremost on his mind.

Wolf had never detected fear in the man, but Barker’s actions, if not motivated by crippling fear, had made no sense.

Once again, the door opened and cold air came in.

“Here you go.” The firefighter handed Wolf his clothing and an empty Gatorade bottle.

“Thanks. Hey, what’s your name?”

“Grenning, sir.”

“Thanks, Grenning.”

Grenning nodded and shut the door, then went to Barker and Tim Dunlop and joined in the conversation, like a freshman sidling up to the seniors in the high-school halls.

He, too, snuck a glance toward Wolf and shook his head.

CHAPTER 2

“HOT DAMN,” MacLean said, looking at Wolf and Barker with a wide smile and bouncing eyebrows. “You two just clicked us up a few notches. That’s what I call a newsworthy moment. One of the good kinds.”

Wolf crossed his left ankle over his knee, trying to ignore the throbbing pain.

Wolf and Barker were sitting in MacLean’s aquarium-like office at the western head of the squad room. Afternoon sunlight glared through the window behind the sheriff, silhouetting him as he paced back and forth.

“Good.” MacLean rubbed his silver goatee with thumb and forefinger, the satisfied smile going nowhere anytime soon. The man was easier to read than a Where’s Waldo? book. It was late January, and though elections were two Novembers away, a full twenty-two months, Sheriff MacLean was thinking of polls, voters and public perception.

Because MacLean had been shaken by the arrival of a man named Adam Jackson.

Adam Jackson was a former chief of police from Aspen, a smooth talker with an even smoother appearance. A real political powerhouse who had many high-up friends in government across the nation, he liked to present himself as a humble man who liked to mingle with the people. Adam Jackson had been putting MacLean in an unshakeable mood for the past five months. Because as first order of business after arriving in Rocky Points, Adam Jackson had announced to the local press his intentions of running against Sheriff Will MacLean during the next election.

MacLean’s ever-confident air had wavered as of late because it was clear that the Aspen Wonder, as the local paper was calling him, was more likeable. Even the county council was warming up to the newcomer, and MacLean was sulking like a jealous sibling.

Rescuing the man from the icy river was a piece of news that would be pasted on front pages, making the department look good. It was a moment of time that could bolster MacLean’s reputation if he used the news wisely, and there was no doubt in Wolf’s mind that MacLean had every intention of doing just that.

“So what happened out there?” MacLean asked, finally pulling his thoughts away from tomorrow’s newspaper headlines. “I want specifics.”

Barker twisted a thread coming off the seam of his sweat pants.

“Detective Barker and I were coming back from the conference at the ski resort when we saw some tracks going over the edge.”

MacLean raised his eyebrows. “And?”

“And we went down and pulled the guy out. The FD got our asses out of there and finished the job with the driver. We haven’t heard much else.”

MacLean nodded and crossed his arms. “The driver’s at County, just been downgraded from critical to serious condition. His family’s on the way up from Denver to see him, and so are all the news crews. You two did good.”

Wolf nodded.

Barker took to pulling on the thread.

“Something the matter, Detective Barker?” MacLean asked.

“Huh?” Barker looked up.

“I said is something wrong?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I want full reports on my desk, or emailed to me I guess, by tomorrow. In the meantime, why don’t you guys go get a warm shower and take the rest of the day off?”

Wolf and Barker stood and left the office. Wincing, Wolf let Barker take the lead as he limped behind.

Barker opened the door and walked out briskly, rounding the corner and disappearing into the squad room.

The room was bustling, as midday Fridays usually were. Weekend warriors from Denver would be funneling into town this afternoon for the ample snow on the mountain, which meant the full crew needed to be out patrolling and earning money for the county.

Patterson turned from her computer and stood at the sight of Wolf hobbling over.

She waddled over to him, both hands gripping the underside of her eight-month-pregnant belly. Passing Barker on the way over, she gave him a look. “What’s his problem?”

“I don’t know.” Pain shot up from Wolf’s ankle, and he fantasized about floating to his office and landing in his desk chair.

“You hurt?”

“So perceptive.”

“Geez, you’re beat up.” She walked next to him. “I heard what happened out there.”

Wolf considered putting an elbow on her shoulder—she was short enough that he just had to lean onto it—but she was carrying a baby so he refrained.

“Have you been to the infirmary?” she asked.

“No.”

She wrapped a thin, muscular arm around his waist. “Here.”

She tipped sideways and pulled his weight up. The relief was instant as he used her as a crutch on the right side. Her sturdy frame held solid, even when he accidentally stumbled into her.

“You need me to take over for the day?” She looked up with her glacial blues. Her face had swelled over the past few months, a side effect of the pregnancy, but with her freckles and youthful skin she was still her cute self. Her tenacious, fifth-degree black-belt self.

Her tenacity and devotion to her job had earned her a promotion to sergeant ten months ago, and even though her pregnancy had now put her into more passive duties, she was stepping up as sergeant deputy, seamlessly shifting into the role of a leader.

“Yeah, thanks. Taking over for me sounds like a great idea.” Wolf stared at his office door, now thinking about Advil. “We don’t have much going on. Just have Rachette file that paperwork on the Trenton property.” Wolf was referring to a “stolen” snow blower they’d tracked down by following footprints to the next-door neighbor’s house.

“You got it.”

The elevator at the end of the hallway opened and a tall, thin woman dressed in a tight skirt stepped out at full speed. Heels clicking on the terrazzo floor, her platinum-blonde hair blew back from her shoulders and the fabric of her borderline see-through white blouse pushed against her bouncing breasts. She sipped from a large to-go coffee cup and raised her eyebrows at the sight of Wolf.

“Your girlfriend at twelve o’clock,” Patterson said under her breath.

“Chief Detective, I was just coming up to see you.” Her smile was wide, revealing a straight row of ivory teeth, her mahogany eyes twinkling in the florescent lighting with unwavering confidence. Even in her fifties, Judy Fleming looked young and alive, and she was, by anyone’s standards, an externally beautiful woman.

“You want me to get you a cup of coffee?” Patterson asked him.

“I couldn’t possibly ask a woman who’s eight months pregnant to—”

“I’ll bring you one.”

“Thanks.”

Patterson let go of his waist and gave Judy a wooden smile. “Hello, Councilwoman.”

“Detective Sergeant Patterson. My God, you’re bursting at the seams. I could never get pregnant. I wouldn’t be able to have my coffee.” She made a humming noise that was supposed to pass as a laugh and looked at Wolf. “That reminds me, have you been to this new coffee shop down the street? This hippy-motif place?”

Wolf nodded. She was referring to Dead Ground, a new coffee shop on Main Street that had taken the two brilliant ideas of making coffee and playing jam-band music and slapped them together. He’d been there a few times and liked the brew.

“They play the loudest music I’ve ever heard in my life,” Judy continued. “I asked them to turn it down and they may as well have pissed in my face with their response.”

Wolf raised his eyebrows. “What was their response?”

“Nothing. They didn’t turn it down.” She sipped and took the opportunity to stare at Patterson’s belly. “Why aren’t you at home? Why isn’t she at home?”

“I go home next week,” Patterson said. “It was at my insistence that I stay on as late as I could. I have a phobia of watching daytime television.”

The councilwoman ignored her and bent down. Homing in, she outstretched two palms and went at Patterson’s belly like a basketball player going for a rebound.

Wolf cringed as he watched Patterson deftly block both hands and then stiff-arm the councilwoman back to a standing position.

“Oh …” Judy stumbled back a step.

“I’ll return with that coffee, sir.” Patterson turned. “Nice to see you, Ms. Fleming.”

“Geez,” Judy muttered. “Skittish much?”

“She doesn’t like people touching her belly. I think it’s a common thing for pregnant women.”

Judy ran her free hand along her side to her hip, striking a pose. She lowered her eyelids and said, “I wouldn’t know about that.”

Wolf twisted the knob and flung open the door to his office. He’d forgotten to lower the blinds again and it was blazing bright and hot inside. “After you.”

“Such a gentleman. Whew, hot in here.” Her hips swayed as she strode in. “May I take a seat?”

She sat and draped one leg over the other, then pulled up her skirt to check the condition of her stockings on her upper thigh, showing her black silk underwear in the process.

“Yeah, sure.” Wolf did his best to walk normally around his desk. He sat down, resisting the urge to sigh, and scooted the wheeled chair to the windowsill and propped his ankle. “What can I help you with?”

“Oh, poor baby. I heard about the rescue. You hurt yourself?”

Wolf gave a little shrug.

Standing up, she walked around his desk, trailing her fingers along the shiny surface. “What hurts?”

Wolf said nothing as she stepped in between his legs and put both hands on his knee.

Her glossy nails tickled and massaged gently over the fabric of his jeans.

“This?” She whispered, letting one hand wander up his thigh.

“It’s actually the ankle,” Wolf said.

She met his bored gaze and stood straight, her face cooling twenty degrees in an instant. “I came to talk to you about Adam.”

Wolf had a sense of where she was going with this. Judy Fleming was the chairwoman of the county council, which gave her a significant amount of clout in the political realm of Sluice–Byron County. She was also doubling as Adam Jackson’s campaign manager and staunchest supporter, according to what Wolf had heard from Margaret Hitchens, and Margaret rarely dispensed rumors. She had herself become a councilwoman and founder of the largest real-estate sales company in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, Hitching Post Realty, because she dispensed facts.

“Adam is looking extremely good in the preliminary polls we’re running. But I’m sure you knew that.”

Wolf splayed his hands. “I couldn’t care less.”

She backed up and walked to the other side of his desk, leaving her strong, flowery scent behind. “You know which way the wind is blowing.”

“Out of the north,” Wolf said. “They’re saying a big storm’s coming after this weekend.”

She gave a close-lipped smile. “Adam’s going to win. MacLean’s a lame horse nobody wanted as sheriff in the first place. That’s why Adam’s here, answering the call from so many of us who are fed up with MacLean and his cronies.”

Wolf nodded. “He’s a savior.”

She narrowed her eyes and her smiled dripped with condescension. “Your naiveté is cute.”

Wolf flexed his foot back under his boot. The pain was getting worse by the minute. He needed pain killers.

“He’s going to be in that office down the hall pretty soon, David.”

“You and your cronies are pretty confident in your twenty-two-month forecast.”

“We could be that confident with the support of someone like you.”

Wolf tried to comprehend what she was saying.

“I’m serious. And after today?” She tilted her head. “With your support, we’re a lock.”

“I’m a detective.” He frowned. “I’m not a public figure. And even if for some godforsaken reason I decided to support Adam Jackson, publicly, how do you think it would go around here for me until the next election?”

She studied her nails. “You’re more influential in this town than you think. And we’re not talking about this second. We’re talking a year from now, and we would announce your support for Adam then. Of course, I’m sure you’re wondering what’s in it for you.”

Wolf closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, resisting the urge to throw her out of the office. The smell of her expensive perfume, which must have been applied by the tablespoon, was suddenly too much to bear. He thought of her legs wrapped around him, her nails digging into his back, her dispassionate grunts as she writhed underneath him. Faster! Harder! Come on!

“David?”

Wolf blinked and looked at her. “What?”

She smiled in that seductive way that worked on most men. “You would be undersheriff. First in command below Adam.”

“What would happen to Undersheriff Wilson?”

She flipped a hand, like she’d just backhanded Wilson into the trash.

“Undersheriff Wilson used to be my sergeant when I was sheriff. He’s an honest, good man. With a family.”

“There’re going to be cuts, of course. With the budget pressure, that’s inevitable. But if he’s such a good man, I’m sure Adam would be open to keeping him on in a different capacity.”

“That sounds like shit.”

Judy’s air of confidence disappeared. “What sounds like shit?”

“How about you just leave me out of all of this? And if Adam Jackson makes his way into the Sheriff’s Office, I’ll then have a conversation with him, not you, about my future in the Sheriff’s Department.”

“I’m just trying to look out for your interests, David. You like me looking out for you, don’t you?”

They stared at one another.

“I don’t want to get in bed with you,” he said, watching her face redden. “Or your buddy from Aspen. I want to do the job I was hired to do, and that’s it. Now if you don’t mind, I have to get to the infirmary.”

There was a soft knock on the door.

“Come in!” Wolf put his foot on the floor and stood. The blood rushed to his ankle, the pain increasing exponentially with each pound of pressure applied.

“Here’s that coffee, sir.” Patterson walked inside with a Styrofoam cup. “Sorry it took me so long. Had to brew some more.”

“Don’t worry about it. Thank you.”

Patterson handed him the coffee and glanced at Judy.

The councilwoman stared out the window behind Wolf.

Without another word, Patterson left and shut the door.

Judy stood and smoothed her skirt, then checked her diamond-encrusted watch. “You think it’s smart to antagonize your future boss?”

Wolf sipped his coffee. “I thought you were a real-estate developer who had a seat on the county council.”

She looked him up and down once again, and then stepped close, her breath hot and reeking of stale cigarettes. “I think I’ve figured out what makes you tick.” She pressed her breasts against him as she reached down and cupped his crotch. “Why you couldn’t get it up that second time. Why you brush me aside.”

Wolf sucked in a breath, spilling a dollop of coffee on the floor.

“It’s this, isn’t it?” She studied his face as she massaged him, and then she smiled. “Dick makes you tick?”

Wolf’s cheeks bloomed with heat. “Get out.”

She let go and walked to the door. “Whew. Now I’m hot and bothered.”

The door clicked shut, and all that was left was her cloud of perfume.

Patterson opened the door and poked her head inside. “You okay?”

“No,” Wolf said limping out of his office. “I’m going to the infirmary.”

“What’s with her?” she asked. “Did something happen between you two?”

“Mind your own business.”

“Right.”

Wolf limped down the hallway.

CHAPTER 3

“THIS IS JACK. LEAVE A MESSAGE.”

Cresting the summit of Williams Pass, Wolf pressed the call-end button and set his phone in the center console. He was glad his son was ignoring phone calls at 2:21 on a Friday afternoon, hoping it was a sign he was in class and not starting the weekend early.

The sky was cobalt and cloudless, the sun above the southern horizon, its rays streaming through trees frosted with snow that crumbled off branches in cascades of prism dust.

The dash thermometer read twelve degrees and Wolf shivered, thinking about the river. If he sniffed real hard, the fishy taste still ran down the back of his throat.

The phone rang and Wolf picked it up. It was Jack. “Hey.”

“Hey, you called?” His son’s deep voice was drowned out by a gust of wind on his end.

“Yeah, aren’t you in class?”

“Nope. Had two this morning. Then I have one at three.”

“Ah. Three classes. They’re piling on the pressure senior year, huh?”

“Fridays are different. We don’t have lab today for biology, and I’m at the library studying my butt off, if you must know.”

Wolf smiled. “With Cassidy?”

“Yep.”

Jack and Cassidy had been together now for over a year, their relationship enduring her father’s murder and a whole lot of personal turmoil that followed. Cassidy was a good kid and good for Jack, and Wolf had often marveled at the way they worked together, pushing each other to be bigger and better separate people and yet remain a solid team. Jack had apparently learned something about relationships by watching Wolf and Sarah’s mistakes.

“Tell her I said hi.”

“She’s inside. I had to go outside to call you back.” Another blast of wind hit Jack’s phone. “And it’s freezing out here. What’s up?”

“Nothing. Just wondering what you’re up to this weekend, then I’ll let you go.”

“I think Cass and I will go skiing tomorrow. Otherwise, I don’t know. What are you doing? You wanna go with us?”

Wolf frowned. “And be a third wheel? No thanks.”

“You wouldn’t be.”

“I tweaked my ankle. I’m on the way to the hospital now.”

“Really? That sucks. How?”

“Work. What are you up to tonight?”

“Cass and I are going to a party.”

“Be safe.”

“I will.”

Wolf smiled. “All right. I’ll let you go.”

“I’m serious, though, Dad. If you ever want to hang out with me and Cass, you’re not being a third wheel.”

Wolf narrowed his eyes. “No thanks.”

“It’s just … we’ve been talking … and we think that … I think that if you wanted to date, then mom would probably … I don’t’ know. You know what I’m saying.”

“Okay. Thanks, yeah. I know what you’re saying. I’ve gotta go.”

“All right. See you later.”

Wolf hung up and held the phone in his hand for a few seconds before dropping it in the center console. Shaking his head, he twisted the volume knob on the FM, filling the SUV’s cab with a Grateful Dead song playing on the local station, KBUD.

The song brought back memories of his own senior year of high school, when he enjoyed blue-sky days like this, when the only care in the world on a Friday afternoon was who was going to get the beer that night, and from whom, and where they were going to drink it, and then when he and Sarah were going to get some alone time.

The memories seemed of centuries past. Lately Wolf’s only alone moments with anyone were with Jet, the German shepherd Jack had adopted and left for Wolf to take care of most of the time, a dog who was probably lazing in a cloud of his own gas in the living room about now.

The Lone Wolf, Judy Fleming had called him. He was fine being alone if the alternative was aggressive, meaningless sex with a woman who had a hollow heart. He should have never agreed to that drink with her two months ago, and he definitely shouldn’t have drunk as much as he had, which had ended with him between the sheets with her.

That next morning, waking up in her over-soft bed, watching her study him with a triumphant smile while she slipped on her pantsuit, Wolf had never felt so ashamed of himself. Sure, he’d gotten laid, but at what cost? The woman was the town bicycle and she seemed proud of it, courting men in public like it was part of her job description. He deserved better than that.

Sarah smiled at him in his mind’s eye. It was a sad smile, like she felt sorry for him.

And what the hell was that? A year and a half of grief counseling at the community center and he gets a dead ex-wife taunting him every few minutes with a spike of shame?

He twisted the volume knob and let the reedy timbre of Jerry Garcia fill his ears.

CHAPTER 4

AT 3:30 Wolf had still not gotten the X-rays he needed. In fact, nobody had seen him at all. For all the millions of dollars pumped into the new county building down in Rocky Points, one would’ve thought they could’ve put in a measly X-ray machine. Instead, he was thirty miles south, sitting in the disinfectant air of the County Hospital, listening to the buzzing lights overhead.

He scraped the metal chair across the linoleum floor, took off his sock, and propped his foot up on the examination table. Folding his arms, he closed his eyes, and with a steady tingle the blood drained away from his ankle. Fatigue from the long day had fully set in and he was starting to rehearse fight moves in his head, a good sign that he was in a bad mood.

“Mr. Wolf?”

He jolted awake and his foot slid off the examination table. He stopped himself short of planting it on the ground and almost fell off the chair. The blood rush to his ankle sent a blinding wave of pain, making him clench his teeth and eyes.

“Oh, shoot. Are you okay?” The nurse bent down and put her hands gently around his lower leg.

“Yes.” He straightened in his chair and looked at his watch. He’d been completely out for fifteen minutes.

“I’m sorry for being so late. We had a … well, you don’t want to know what I just had to do,” she said.

Gently lowering his ankle, the nurse looked up with jade-colored eyes that were like twin cosmic events.

He stared—it was impossible not to—and before he could catch himself she swallowed and averted her gaze.

A strand of strawberry-blonde hair fell across the lightly freckled golden skin of her cheek. Hooking her hair back, she turned and Wolf just caught a glimpse of tattoo ink behind her ear, the specifics of the image blurred by her feline movements.

“Sorry,” she said with a reddening face.

“No, no problem.” He had no clue what the apology or the acceptance of the apology was for. He was speaking on autopilot.

She picked up a tablet computer from the floor and walked away, her legs and backside flexing underneath the loose-fitting scrubs. She was thin and athletic. Of course, the dark-blue nurses’ scrubs had Wolf’s imagination working overtime, but judging by the sinuous muscle of her arms around the elbows, he could imagine the subtle lines of her knees, her thighs, the crease of skin at the base of her buttocks.

“So it says here you have a bum ankle.”

“Yeah.” He blinked and cleared his throat. “What was that?”

She turned to him and smiled. “It says you have a bum ankle, I said. A sprained ankle?”

“Ah, yeah.”

“Or a broken ankle.” She set the tablet down and sat behind a desktop computer on a small table. Tapping the keys with her index fingers, she squinted and checked the screen after every few keystrokes, like she was either just getting used to a new system or was hopeless on computers. “We’ll find out for sure.”

He sat in the silence for a beat and then pulled the chair back along the wall and sat down again.

“Up on the table, please.” She kept her eyes on the monitor.

“Right.”

He limped over and hopped up, tearing the examination-table paper as he twisted into position. “Whoops. Sorry.”

She smiled briefly before pecking at the keyboard some more, her smile lingering for a few heartbeats until she looked stumped again by something on the screen.

The smooth lips, the slow squint when she smiled, the way her hair dropped in lazy corkscrews out the back of her ponytail—she was a beauty on all counts.

The room felt electric, the air charged, like he was standing on a treeless mountaintop during a lightning storm.

“Okay.” She stood up from the computer. “Let’s take a look.”

With another pause, she smiled and stared at him, this time showing a perfect row of white teeth. “Sorry. I just … I feel like I recognize you. How do I know you?"

“I’m a cop, a detective in Rocky Points. Do you live in Rocky Points?”

“Yes.”

He shrugged. “I guess you’ve seen me around. I don’t know.” He had never seen her around. He would have remembered seeing her around.

She tilted her head. “Oh, wait. I know where it’s from. You’re the cop on the internet.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I am?”

She smiled. “Yeah. You don’t know you are?”

“The cop on the internet … I’m panicking a little right now. Are we talking about the nude photos from college?”

She smiled wide, and it was like Wolf had been struck by lightning on top of that treeless mountaintop.

“You’re on the news sites. Fishing that guy out of the river?”

“Oh.”

She laughed for a few seconds and then pulled down the corners of her mouth. “Good job with that, by the way. I take it this injury happened during the rescue?”

He nodded.

With careful precision, she rolled up his pant leg. Cradling his foot with one hand, she gently began prodding his lower leg with her thin fingers. Her nails were unpainted, like she’d groomed them with her teeth, and she wore three silver rings on her right hand, none on her left.

“Does this hurt?” She felt a couple of inches up on his tibia, above the inside knob of his ankle. Professional movements. No eye contact.

He shook his head.

“And this?” She moved her hands to the exterior of his leg and felt along the fibula.

“No.”

“And can you put weight on it?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a lot of swelling. I talked to your infirmary nurse and I agree you’ll need some X-rays, but it looks like a sprain and not a break to me.” She walked back to the table.

Wolf noticed there were underwear lines popping through that dark fabric, so he studied them as she went.

She glanced back, catching him in the act, and a smile played at the corners of her mouth as she picked up her tablet.

“I’ll have the X-ray technician come in as soon as possible.”

Without hesitation, she walked to the door and twisted the knob. One second she was there, the next she ducked out of the room and the door clicked shut.

He stared at the door, breathing in the lingering scent of her shampoo and floral perfume.

The buzzing florescent lights seemed louder now, sounding like a wrong-answer buzzer on a game show. Then he heard her speaking to someone out in the hallway in a hushed, clipped tone.

She lived in Rocky Points. That was good. He would see her around. What was her name?

He was suddenly overtaken by an urge to know everything about this woman. It was more than an urge; it was a need.

Her voice was still there. She was right there on the other side of the door.

He slid off the exam table, this time ripping the paper all the way, and landed on his good foot. Just as he reached for the knob there was a booming male laugh and the doorknob twisted.

A black man dressed in splatter-paint scrubs came inside. “Whoa, hello.”

Wolf hopped back, just avoiding a collision. “Hello.”

“Mr. Wolf?” The man used a feminine, drawn-out “s” sound with the word mister. He set down his tablet on the counter and held out a stiff arm to Wolf, hand jutting down at a sharp angle. “I’m John. I’ll be doing your X-rays today.”

“Oh.” Wolf shook his huge warm hand. “Hi.”

“Did you need to pee or something?”

Wolf shook his head.

“It looked like you were leaving when I came in.”

“Uh, yeah. No, I was just … what’s that nurse’s name?”

“Lauren?”

Lauren.

John studied Wolf for a second and then gave a knowing smile. “She’s a knockout, isn’t she? Heartbreaker, that one.”

Wolf felt the heat rise in his face under John’s watchful eye.

The X-ray technician picked up the tablet and swiped a finger. “A cop? You’re a cop?”

He nodded. “Detective.”

“Is there a difference?”

“I don’t have to wear a uniform.”

“So, a huge difference.” John’s eyes widened. He was dead serious.

Wolf smiled, wondering if it was a good difference or a bad difference to the man. “Yeah.”

“I’m gonna go ahead and take you to the X-ray room. Are you fine walking or should I get a wheelchair?”

“I’m fine walking.”

John opened the door and walked out into the hallway. “This way.”

Wolf followed, catching a glimpse of the nurse named Lauren sitting behind a desktop computer inside the nurses’ station. She flicked a glance at him, and then went back to studying her screen and pecking her keyboard.

“Right over here,” John said, steering him with hand motions like he was a 747 jet.

Wolf pried his gaze away from Lauren and followed.

Thirty minutes later, Wolf was back in the small room where he’d started, John finishing a splint wrap on his ankle.

“Ice this sucker tonight for at least a half-hour. Twice. You got a heating pad?”

Wolf nodded. “I think so.”

“Well, get one if you don’t have one. Alternate heat and ice. Or you’re going to regret it in the morning.”

Wolf took the pain-medication prescription and an extra bandage wrap and shook the man’s hand. “Thanks for your help.”

“Don’t sweat it. Have a good one.” John left the room and quietly shut the door behind him.

Wolf loosened his work boot as far as possible and slipped his splinted foot inside. He tied it as tight as it would go with a double knot and stood up. Pushing more and more weight onto his left foot, he was surprised at how little it hurt now with the wrap and splint.

He took his time pulling on his jacket, rehearsing a conversation with Nurse Lauren in his head, and went out into the hallway.

She was gone.

Dammit.

And then there she was, walking right past him, leaving him in her swirling feminine scent.

“He didn’t give you crutches?” She sat behind her desk in the nurses’ station and studied the computer screen.

He cleared his throat. “No, he didn’t.”

“Lord knows, I tried.” John was standing at a counter, writing on a piece of paper. “Got us a strong, silent type. If you’re not going to use that prescription, at least take some ibuprofen. It’ll help with the swelling.”

John walked away with a pronounced swing of his hips and knocked once on the top of Lauren’s computer on the way by.

“Seriously, you need to be using crutches.” Lauren tapped her keyboard. “It’s best if you stay off that thing or it will never heal.”

“I’m in surprisingly little pain.” He limped over and stood next to her. “John is good at what he does.”

Now she was typing a thousand words per minute.

“Listen, uh, it’s Lauren, right?”

Another nurse came in and fake-smiled at Wolf. “Excuse me.”

He backed out of the way and she rushed by.

Lauren stopped typing and looked up at him. Her expression was unreadable.

The other nurse approached again. “Coming through again. This is the nurses’ station, sir.”

“Yes, sorry, I was just leaving.” He stepped up to Lauren’s desk again.

“Can I help you?” She wore a hint of a smile, bolstering his confidence just enough.

“You’re new here?”

She rolled her eyes. “This is the line you’re giving me?”

“No, I mean, I’ve never seen you around Rocky Points before, and I see a lot of people around Rocky Points. It’s kind of my job. So, I figured you must be new in town or else I would know you. You’re a … recognizable type.” Wolf had never heard so many words spew out of his own mouth at once.

She scrunched up her face. “I’m a recognizable type?”

He wondered if there was smoke coming off his face, which felt like he could have fried bacon on it.

She studied him for a few seconds and her lips curled into a tiny smile, like she was enjoying every second of his suffering. “I moved to Rocky Points two months ago from Denver.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “I guess that would explain it.”

“Why do you ask?” She raised her eyebrows, concentrating back on her computer screen.

At that moment, he realized this was the first woman he’d asked out on a date since he’d blurted “Will you go out with me?” to Sarah in the hallway in tenth grade.

Was that right? How could that be? He’d slept with women, been to dinner with them. Numerous women. How had the dates ever been instigated before now? That couldn’t be right. He’d asked them out, hadn’t he?

“Ex-cuse-me.” The nurse was back, this time bumping a roll cart into his leg.

Wolf stumbled out of the way, and then went back to Lauren again. “Would you like to get a drink sometime?” He felt like he’d lurched forward and jabbed her with the words, sounding worse than his tenth-grade proposition.

She gave a slow blink and her smile disappeared. “You have kids, David?”

“Yes. One.”

She gave him what looked like a suspicious look.

“How about you?” He asked.

“When?”

“When … do you have children?”

“No, when do you want to go out? I can’t today. I’m free tomorrow, but early evening, and I really can’t be doing anything for too long.”

“That’s perfect. How about the Beer Goggles Bar and Grill? You know it?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. How about 4:30?”

She nodded. Her lips parted as she lifted her gaze, the computer monitor’s glow reflecting off her eyes as she went back to studying the screen. She was beautiful in her utter indifference to the moment.

“Okay, I’ll see you then,” he said.

“See you then.”

There was a huff behind him. The annoyed nurse was returning with the roll cart, this time with bent elbows ready to absorb shockwaves.

He held up his hands and jumped to the side, pushing off his bad ankle and wincing in pain, just barely avoiding a collision. “I’m leaving, I’m leaving.”

“Already?” the nurse said, disappearing around the corner.

Lauren was back to a thousand words per minute, the smile pulling on her lips again.

He walked through the hall to the elevator, the pain in his ankle suppressed by a flood of endorphins.

CHAPTER 5

MATTHEW BRISTOL KNOCKED for the second time, this time with the side of his fist to give it a deeper punch. Maybe that would get the loser off the couch.

Still no answer.

Looking left and right, he kept his head angled low, his face out of sight beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. Normally he would never wear the hideous thing, but it was functional at times like this because there were cameras everywhere in this posh Denver high-rise condo building, including one at the entrance and two on the ceiling of the hallway he stood in now.

Bristol raised his meaty fist and was considering jamming his rings into the door when the lock clicked.

It opened and there was a black sliver with a bloodshot eye peering out at him.

“Rise and shine, princess.”

The door opened a few more inches and stopped as the chain went taut.

“Open the door or I’ll kick it into your face right now.”

“All right, all right.”

The door closed. There was metallic fumbling, and then it opened.

Bristol drove it open, pushing aside his client in the process, and strutted into the condominium.

The drapes were drawn tight, but enough daylight seeped through the cracks to reveal the dichotomies of money and shit on full display.

A granite and stainless-steel kitchen stood to his left. A big island for chopping and cutting ingredients while sipping wine and chatting with fellow fraud yuppies had been repurposed as the serving table for this lowlife’s many addictions. There was a mirror on which lay slashes of cocaine, one of his worthless credit cards, and a rolled-up post it note.

“You’re supposed to use rolled-up money for that crap.”

His client chuckled. “Yeah, right.”

This was not looking good.

Bristol stepped around the Crate and Barrel wood table that must have been brought in with a crane and pulled open the blinds, just about ripping them off their mounts.

His client squinted and crossed his arms in front of his pale face, like a vampire wilting from certain death.

“Jesus. Come here.” Bristol grabbed the man by the scrawny bicep and pulled him into the hallway. “Where’s your bathroom?”

“Ah, you’re hurting my arm. The other way.”

Bristol pulled him past his leather couch, past the open boxes of Chinese food and pizza piled on the glass table, and into a bathroom. Pushing him toward the mirror, he flicked on the light.

“You see this? Look at yourself.”

Bristol let go and watched.

His client’s hair was full of grease and sticking up on one side. The whites of his eyes were pale yellow, and one eyeball had blown a capillary, making half of it solid red. His pale skin was slick with sweat and tinted unnaturally yellow because of his sputtering liver.

The tangy smell of unbathed human mixed with alcohol leaching from every pore would’ve been enough to make lesser men vomit. But thanks to Bristol’s mother, who’d looked much like this for most of her life, minus a few teeth, Bristol had spent most of his childhood living in a filthy rat hole and had developed a strong stomach.

Bristol had risen far from those days, and now he looked like a god next to his client. His jawline was solid bone and muscle, further accentuated by his tasteful goatee, which looked like it had been shaped by a laser on his light-brown skin. Underneath the ridiculous cowboy hat, his eyes were bluer than the January sky outside, the whites like a fresh snowdrift. The suit jacket he wore emphasized the girth of his shoulders perfectly, and the tight shirt underneath hugged his rock-hard pectorals.

His client stared at the granite countertop as if afraid to look himself in the eye.

“That’s why I don’t touch any of that shit you have in there.” He pointed at his client, then straightened his jacket, swiped a finger along his own cheek, and walked out into the living room.

The television was muted, showing the news running a clip of an upside-down SUV in the middle of a river. He picked up the remote control and jabbed the power button, then went to the windows and opened the rest of the vertical blinds.

Mount Evans stood proud in the distance. The entire northern half of the Colorado Rockies was right there, frosted solid white by the recent storm. There was a temperature inversion outside, and a brown cloud spewing upward from Denver’s ever-growing sprawl hung low against the hogbacks.

“Nice view. I’ve gotta tell you, I’m more than a little confused as to how you can still owe me so much money, having a place like this.”

The client scratched his arm, like there was a burrowing insect in it trying to get out. His eyes were lazy slits.

“Never mind, it’s pretty obvious.”

The stench brought back too many memories. He opened the door to the wrap-around balcony outside and the glass slid like wet ice on one of the granite countertops in the kitchen. Cold fresh air and city sounds flowed inside.

“I’m just in a little transition period now,” the client said. “I can get it by next month, I’m sure.”

Bristol smiled. “That’s what you said last month. That’s why I’m here again. Don’t you remember?”

The client’s eyes darted.

“What’s your plan here?” Bristol asked. “How are you going to pay me ninety thousand dollars by next month? That’s six days away, and I know your next paycheck is going to be thirty-one thousand and change. So, where’s the other sixty going to come from?”

“Okay, I can pay you twenty-five next month.” The client crossed his arms, hiding the multicolored stain on the chest of his white T-shirt. His eyes narrowed and he tilted his head, like they were in a serious negotiation now. “I’ll get you twenty-five the next month, and then pay off the rest the next two months.”

Bristol pulled down the corners of his mouth and nodded. “So you give me twenty-five thousand, and you’ll have six grand to pay for this place, and to fund your coke, alcohol, and weed fixes. That sounds like an interesting proposition.”

The client picked up his remote control from the table and pointed it at the television. With a creak of leather, he sat down and propped up one knee, giving Bristol a view down the leg of his boxer shorts he could never un-see.

The television speakers expelled bass-filled sound.

His client switched it to ESPN and tossed the remote control on a pizza box. “Three months, and you’ll have all the money.”

Bristol would probably be long dead if that was the case.

Grabbing the remote control, he shut off the television and dropped it on the box. He reached in his suit-jacket pocket and thumbed open his Gerber switchblade knife.

“Whoa, whoa.” The client slid to the ground at the foot of the couch and put his hands up.

Bristol bent down and yanked the heavy glass table back, toppling beer cans and a pizza box. Kneeling, he planted a palm on the client’s clammy forehead, pushed his head back into the couch, and pointed the knife at an eyeball.

“Look at me.”

The client’s eyes were wide, his breathing shallow and rapid.

“I want ninety thousand dollars in six days or else I’m going to take you up to the mountains, kill you, and dump you in a mineshaft. You’ll be the fourth person I’ve done that to in two years. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.” The client held frozen. The tip of the blade was a hair’s width from his eyeball.

Bristol pulled back the blade and stood. “Six days. Do you understand?”

The client exhaled and deflated like a balloon, sagging further onto the floor. “Yes.”

Bristol studied the lowly form of life below him. Despite the threat, there was a shifty twinkle in the client’s eye, like he was already figuring out a way to bilk him.

Bristol slammed his fist down, connecting squarely with the client’s open eye.

“Ahhh!”

The shifty twinkle disappeared behind a clenched eyelid.

“Six days.”

“Okay!”

Bristol walked to the entrance hallway, stopping at the client’s wallet on the kitchen counter. He took the wad of cash— eleven ones—and grabbed the key fob to the client’s luxury SUV. Winding up like a major-league pitcher, he threw it as hard as he could out the open sliding glass door. It skipped across the concrete balcony and disappeared off the twenty-fifth floor of the condo building, hopefully down onto someone’s head below.

“Six. Days.”

CHAPTER 6

AT 4:30 on a Saturday afternoon, the tap houses, bars, and restaurants in Rocky Points were swollen with après-ski crowds, and it was only by sheer luck that Wolf was now sitting in a booth at the Beer Goggles Bar and Grill, having arrived at the table just as a couple was getting up.

He craned his neck and tried to get a glimpse of the front door as it smacked shut on its springs again, but throngs of people in their swishing ski gear blocked his view, each bellowing louder than the next as the music pumped out of the speaker above Wolf’s head.

“Hey, there you are!”

She stood right next to him.

“Hey, hi.”

She smiled and upturned her hands as if to say, Here I am. Her eyes were wide with what looked like excitement, maybe from the chaos of the room. Maybe she felt as nervous as he did.

She wore a red sweater and jeans that radiated cold. Her scent was just like he’d remembered—flowers and shampoo—but this time fresher. She’d slung a nylon purse over her shoulder and had a fleece jacket draped over the crook of her arm.

“May I?” she said, sitting across from him.

He shuffled out of the booth, stood, and held out a hand.

“So gentlemanly,” she said, sitting down across from him.

Her hair was pulled back loosely and strands dangled on her face as she slid onto the bench. In the fading light near the window, it looked more brown than red, and after studying how her eyebrows matched the chameleon tones, he decided it could only be natural in color.

He sat and watched her get situated. He was surprised to see her in such a plain get-up, probably because of the tattoo behind her ear that he’d noticed yesterday. What had he expected? Something less ordinary, he guessed. Not that it was a turn-off. It was actually quite the opposite to see her dressed in such simple attire and looking so vibrant.

“What? You’re staring.”

“Oh, you just look good out of your scrubs. Not that you didn’t look good in your scrubs.”

She smiled and unshouldered her purse, and then tucked some hair behind her ear.

“Hey, Sheriff!” Jerry Blackman appeared at their table. The man had shaved his beard, but the black and gray ponytail was longer than ever, reaching most of the way down his back. “Who’s this beauty?”

“This is Lauren Coulter,” Lauren said, outstretching her hand.

“Nice to meet you Laura Keller. I’m Jerry. Jerry Blackman. I own this joint.”

Wolf and Lauren exchanged a glance as she shook hands.

“What can I get you two to drink?”

“I’ll take a Dewar’s and water,” she said. “Rocks.”

“I’ll take a Newcastle.”

“Sure thing.”

“And can you turn this down a bit?” Wolf pointed to the speaker above his head.

“What?”

He leaned forward to repeat himself.

“Ha! Just kidding. Yeah, it’s way too loud back here. I’ll be right back with those drinks!”

Jerry whistled through his teeth, turning heads and halting conversations, and then mimed for his bartender to turn down the volume. The music dissipated to a backbeat just below the murmur of the crowd.

“That’s a relief.” Wolf gestured to the crowd. “I guess I didn’t think through my choice of venue.”

She shrugged and smiled. “It’s all right. I kind of like it. I haven’t been out in quite a while so it makes me feel like I’m back at college or something.”

“And where was that?”

“College? CU Boulder. You?”

He upturned his hands. “Fort Collins.”

“Oh no. You guys paid off the refs this year.”

He smiled, remembering the holding call that had led to the winning touchdown run in the last few seconds of the annual CU versus CSU rivalry game.

“Do you ski?” He gestured to the crowd.

“I do. Used to a lot more than I do now. I hope to change that now, though. I mean, now that I live up here.”

“How do you like it so far?”

She nodded and smiled. “I like it. I love it, actually.”

The music switched to a bluegrass song.

“So.” She folded her hands and put her elbows on the table. “Tell me, Detective David Wolf, why did that guy just call you sheriff?”

“Oh yeah, that. I used to be the sheriff a couple of years ago. And I suspect Jerry doesn’t know what year it is because he inhales marijuana smoke more than oxygen.”

She leaned her head back and laughed. “Aha. Okay, that would explain it. Did you hear him? He called me Laura Keller.”

“And that’s your name to him now.”

She smiled, flashing those perfect teeth and narrowing her eyes to slits, and it was enough to raise his pulse into the target zone for an aerobic workout.

“What about you?” she asked. “Did you ever used to partake in … the pot? Or have you always been the healthy, muscular, clean-guy type?”

“Is that how you see me?”

She tilted her head and made a show of appraising him. “Tall, dark, and handsome. Short hair, shaved with … what, a number four?”

“Good guess.”

“So, you don’t like combing your hair,” she said.

He scoffed, like she was way off. But she was spot on. He’d never liked the concept of having a hairstyle, so he’d never had anything but a shaved head or one that needed shaving.

She tilted her head the other way. “You’re muscular, but not hulking. Which is good. You like exercise, but don’t spend much time in the gym. Am I right?”

“I could hire you onto my detective squad tomorrow.”

“What is that, a two-day beard?”

“Five o’clock shadow.”

She raised her eyebrows. After a few seconds, she gave up the act and smiled. “I would have to say, yes, I see you as a healthy, muscular, clean-guy type. I mean, you’re a cop, right?”

Jerry Blackman came back and gave Wolf the Scotch and Lauren the Newcastle. “Just holler if you need me. You know where I live. Nice to meet you, Laura.” He left, pointing at Lauren with a wink.

“Told you,” Wolf said.

She laughed again and they switched drinks.

Her laugh was a genuine reflex, and each time Wolf heard it, it became his mission to hear it again.

They sipped their drinks.

“I have to pee,” she declared.

“Okay.”

“I had to go into work for a few minutes this afternoon, so I’ve had a long drive.”

Wolf nodded. “You aren’t going to leave and send John back to finish our date are you?”

Her smile dropped from her lips for the first time and with the look she gave him, he may as well have just passed gas. “Oh … you … think we’re on a date?”

His face went slack, and then it burned hot.

“Just kidding. I’ll be right back.” She smiled with delight and disappeared into the sea of ski-gear-clad patrons.

He watched her go as long as he could and took a deep pull of his draft beer. After the jolt she’d just given him and the alcohol warming his skin, he could scarcely remember feeling so alive.

Of course, he could if he really thought about it. Which was exactly what he was trying to avoid at that moment. Sarah might as well have been sitting next to him the way he carried around her memory.

He took another swill. The sky outside was fading orange, reflecting on the Chautauqua River underneath the window. Pillows of snow and sheets of ice lined the river’s edge, water bubbling beneath.

There was a lot for skiers to celebrate this winter, with an above-average snow pack leading to excellent conditions on the mountain. Wolf had been skiing twice so far in the year, both times with Jack and Cassidy over Christmas. He wondered how long it would be until the ankle healed and he could go again. And maybe this time not as a third wheel.

“Okay, all better.” Lauren slipped into the booth in front of him. “And, yes, perhaps I was a little hasty yesterday in leaving you with John. But you were in good hands.”

“They were strong, warm hands.”

She buried her smile in her glass of Scotch and took a big pull. “Ah, that’s stiff.”

Wolf lifted his glass. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

She stared at him as she took another sip and Wolf followed her lead.

“So how’s your ankle doing?”

“It’s better, thanks.”

“Did you ice it last night?”

He nodded.

“You should probably put it up on the bench next to you.”

He slid his back against the chilled window and propped his leg next to him. “Yes, ma’am.”

“So, we were talking about you being sheriff a couple of years ago, and now you’re not?”

“Yes.”

“So what happened? If I may ask.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t really like the position I’d gotten myself into.”

“So you quit?”

“Something like that.”

She looked down and ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “And now you’re a detective.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I never told you that.”

“Maybe I’m a little bit of a detective, too.”

He nodded. “That’s a smart thing for a woman to do—check out the man before she meets him out on a date. First impressions can be deceiving.”

She twisted her glass. “I did some checking, and my first impression of you was right.”

They sat in silence for a few seconds and sipped their drinks.

“You’re wondering, Why the demotion?”

She pointed at him. “Yes. Why the demotion?”

He shrugged. “There’s less ass-kissing involved now, more the job I want to be doing.”

She lifted her chin and squinted, as if peering into his psyche. “So, you have a problem with authority, yet you gave up your position of authority. Interesting.”

“Not necessarily. I’m just not interested in playing games … Ms. Freud.”

She smiled. “You don’t like politics.”

He shook his head.

“They suck.”

He nodded.

“Speaking of, they’re talking about this new guy a lot lately. Adam Jackson? The Aspen Wonder. Who comes up with this crap?”

He shrugged. “The people who want him elected in two years. Or he did himself. I’m not sure.”

“Okay, the self-imposed demotion is making sense to me now.”

He smiled, liking her exponentially now.

She looked at him with a serious expression. “I did check you out. And I read about what happened to your wife.”

He nodded. “We don’t need to talk about it. It was a long time ago.”

“Not that long.” She gave him an unreadable look and took another slug of her Scotch.

They rode out an uncomfortable silence for a while and he asked, “So why Rocky Points?”

“My mother started the company Luanne’s Sweets and Treats.”

His eyebrows shot up.

“What? You didn’t Google your date before the date?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Have you heard of it?”

“Luanne’s Sweets and Treats? I think my brother and I lived off nothing but Pudding Pods through elementary and middle school.”

She laughed, and then she upturned her hands and looked out the window. “There you go.” Her expression darkened a shade, as if an unpleasant memory had surfaced.

“So you went from making Pudding Pods with your mother to nursing in Rocky Points.” He shook his head. “I’m not connecting the dots.”

She smiled toothlessly. “My mother died. And then my father died. And I helped with the company for a bit, but I was tired of doing what other people wanted me to do. So I did what I had to do, then I did what I wanted to do.”

He kept his face impassive as he let the onslaught of information settle in. “You want to help people.”

She nodded. “I want to make a difference in people’s lives each day, you know? Not sit around and exchange emails and sales reports, my happiness tied to the ups and downs of a stock price, and all that crap. I enjoy nursing. I’m glad I got into it.”

“Good. And I prodded John a bit when I was getting the X-rays. You have a daughter, right?”

She nodded and a fire ignited behind her eyes. “I have a daughter. She’s five.”

“Five. So life is all about princesses at the moment?”

“Oh yes. It’s all princesses. And your son? He’s in high school?”

“Yes. A senior.”

“Wow. You don’t look like you have a son who’s a senior in high school.”

“Thank you?”

“I mean, there’s a little gray here”—she reached across the table and ran the tips of her fingers over his closely cropped hair—“and here.” She touched the stubble on his chin and his body shuddered. “But otherwise you look like a pretty young man.”

“You don’t look old either.”

She slapped down her drink and pulled her sweater off, revealing a tight gray T-shirt that had a Grateful Dead Steal Your Face logo on it. “It’s hot in here.”

He stared at the logo on her chest, then couldn’t help but appraise her perfect, smallish breasts.

“Get a good look?” She gave him that facetious smile again.

He shut his eyes. “Sorry, I just heard a Dead song today. On the way to the hospital.”

“Really? Must be … never mind.”

“Must be what?”

She hesitated. “I was going to say fate. But I didn’t want to creep out the whole situation here. But … too late, I guess. And, besides, I don’t believe in that sappy crap. I think you have to fight for what you want and take it.”

He thought about the terrible way his Friday morning had started—the icy water, the twisted ankle—and how it had led him here. “I’m not so sure.”

She stared at him a beat. Another unreadable look, like she was staring five feet past him. More memories?

They sat in silence for a while as the music switched to a down-tempo mandolin song.

“You know about my ex-wife. Your daughter … is that an ex-husband or …”

She gripped her drink and held her breath. “Maybe some other time.” She dug next to her, pulled out her cell phone, and looked at it. “I’m not going to start looking at this thing, I swear. I just want to check the time and I don’t wear a watch.”

He cursed himself for ruining the moment. That had to be a rule in every dating handbook ever written—don’t bring up the ex!

“I understand. You have to get back to your daughter,” he said.

She put her phone down and looked at him. Leaning forward on her elbows, she said, “It is my daughter, and I do have to get back to her.”

She sat motionless, her eyes darting up and down, back and forth across his face.

He froze, as if she was conducting a medical test that required he hold still. He stared back, locked on the green-blue sprockets mounted around her pupils.

When their eyes finally met, a warm sensation lapped up and down his spine.

“I have to work a shift on Sunday night,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of schedule you have, or if it’s even possible for you to do, but would you like to come to my house for lunch on Monday? It would be like my evening meal, so you’d actually be coming over for dinner.”

He raised his eyebrows and pulled down the corners of his mouth, delaying his reaction, trying to see whether he could get her to squirm for once. “Hmm.” He clucked his cheek.

Her face dropped and went bright red. “Oh, I see.” She grabbed her sweater and purse and scooted to the edge of the bench.

He watched in confusion for a second, then launched forward and caught her arm just in time, toppling his beer in the process.

The mug smacked on its side and beer spread over the table.

“Wait.” He ignored the cold liquid as it cascaded onto his outstretched thigh. It pooled underneath his leg and crept up toward his crotch. “I was just … yeah, I would love to.” The beer reached his groin and he winced. “This is really wet.”

She put her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God. Just a second.”

She vanished into the crowd of people.

Wolf hovered above his seat, ignoring staring patrons as the beer dripped from his jeans onto the bench.

A few seconds later she came back with a roll of paper towels. Already armed with a wad in her hand, she carefully held up his splinted ankle and wiped underneath his leg.

“There. I think you can sit.”

He lowered his foot underneath the table and sat with a cold squish, then grabbed a handful of towels himself and pushed back the lake of brown beer on the table.

“You’re soaked.” She sat down next to him. Then she grabbed another wad of paper towels, pressing them against his leg, his inner knee, and then his inner thigh as if it were a clinical thing.

She smelled of coconut and flowers, and the Scotch on her breath, and despite deep breathing, Wolf failed to slow his arousal, something that had to be obvious to somebody spending as much time as she was down there. Then she put the paper towels on the table and leaned to her left, pressing the length of her leg against his. “What’s your phone number?”

He told it to her.

She produced her phone and dialed, and he flinched as his phone vibrated in his pocket.

“There.” She pressed the call-end button and typed with her thumbs. “De-tec-tive-Da-vid.” She put the phone back in her purse and turned to meet his gaze.

It was all he could do to resist kissing her then. Instead, he swallowed and said, “I’ll call you.”

“If I don’t answer at first, I’m probably busy putting a catheter in an old man who’s pinching my butt or something.”

“That’s specific.”

She put her hand on his leg again and a shudder ran through his entire body. Then she pushed off and stood.

“Walk me out? Oh, wait. Here. I’ll pay for my drink.”

“I’ll buy,” he said, looking up at her from his seat. “I have a tab with Jerry.”

“Thank you.”

A waitress showed up with a couple of rags and began cleaning the mess. Wolf dropped a few ones. “Thanks.”

Lauren walked through the crowd, which had swollen considerably since they’d arrived, and Wolf followed her, nodding to Jerry to put the drinks on his tab as he peeled the wet fabric of his jeans from his skin.

She turned and smiled at his wet crotch and the streak that ran down the length of his thigh. “It looks like you peed yourself.”

“Yes, thank you. It does.”

Staring at her butt as they moved, he looked forward to the relative secluded silence of the parking lot outside. The memory of her breath, the handful of paper towels on his thigh, the warmth of her leg pressed up against his, all of it had his pulse racing.

She pushed open the door and hesitated for a moment, and he almost crashed into her back as they stepped outside.

“There he is,” someone said.

Wolf brought up his hands to shield his face from blinding spotlights. Instinctively grabbing for Lauren’s shoulder, he pulled her by her coat and stepped around the front of her.

“Chief Detective Wolf, do you have a moment to talk about today’s rescue?”

Three reporters stood with foam-covered microphones in front of men carrying blazing cameras.

He froze and instinctively looked down at the glistening dark spot on his crotch, feeling like he was lined up against the wall, waiting for the firing squad to shoot.

Lauren grabbed his shoulder and pulled herself up to his ear. “I’ll talk to you later.” She pecked his cheek, then let go and ducked away, disappearing into the dark parking lot beyond.

“Do you have a minute?” a female reporter said, thrusting the microphone in his face. The cameraman angled round to the side, warming his cheek with the powerful light. “We’d like to discuss the rescue on the Chautauqua River yesterday. Would you speak with us?”

He swallowed, “Uh … sure.”

CHAPTER 7

SUNDAY at the ranch house had been uneventful. A slow but determined walk in the woods with Jet had aggravated Wolf’s ankle, but overall the day off was exactly what he’d needed to recharge.

He’d spoken to Lauren for ten minutes in the afternoon to confirm their lunch date for the following day. She’d been driving to work to start her night shift, her signal cutting in and out, making the conversation lack rhythm. But even if the cell service had been crappy, it was clear that the personal connection between them was still there.

First, she’d given him flak for the television interviews, playfully ribbing him about a few of his stammering answers, but somehow ended up making him feel better about his on-camera performance at the same time. The way she’d said goodbye to him was still fresh in his ears. Her lilt, the playful tone in her voice—it had ramped up his anticipation higher than he liked to admit. Now that it was Monday morning, he was more excited than ever to see her.

He looked over at the bouncing pink gift bag in his passenger seat, a transparent bribe for a five-year-old girl’s acceptance that seemed more pathetic every time he thought about what was inside—a princess doll.

Of course, all the hand wringing was on hold for the moment, because he was an hour south and west of town, approaching Cold Lake to meet the Aspen Wonder.

Adam Jackson’s meeting request had come promptly and predictably after Judy Fleming’s visit on Friday. Wolf had initially decided to blow the man off and not return his phone call, but something was telling him that this man really was going to be the next sheriff and it would be smart not to ignore him.

Jackson had been in town for months now, but Wolf had only officially met him for the first time on Friday. It had been a passing conversation at the law-enforcement conference, a quick handshake and Jackson’s open-ended invitation to come up ice fishing with him sometime. But now, after the meeting with Judy Fleming, Adam Jackson had extended a formal invitation.

So here Wolf was. Officially, he’d assigned himself to Cold Lake beat patrol, which gave him an excuse to be here, pulling into the marina parking lot. The dash clock said 9:55 a.m.—five minutes early.

Shutting off the engine, he zipped his coat to his chin, put on his stocking cap and gloves, and stepped out.

His boots dove into five inches of fresh snow. The showers had ceased for the time being, but there was an approaching white curtain at the other end of the frozen lake.

Snakes of snow slithered on the wind across the gleaming ice, and even with his neck-to-foot long underwear underneath multiple layers, he still felt the cold needle its way into his skin.

The windows of the Tackle Box Bar and Grill, the only watering hole for miles, were darkened and would remain that way until later tonight, but a single car was parked in front, suggesting that the owner, Maureen McKenzie, was inside.

The snow was crusty on the lake’s edge and Wolf favored his right foot because the long drive had pooled the blood into his ankle.

Eleven fishing huts littered the immediate vicinity. Four of them matched the description Wolf had been given—painted brown and on wooden sleds.

Pulling off his glove and keeping his back to the wind, he took out his cell phone and unlocked the screen. Just then a fierce gust of wind hit and he fumbled it into the snow.

“Shit.”

He picked it up and swept it off, and in that instant watched the two bars of reception go to nothing, replaced by the words No Service. He pocketed the phone and shoved his frozen fingers back inside his glove. He knew there was no getting the hand warm again.

The bastard better have a heater.

Wolf stepped out onto the ice, staying on packed snow where he could for traction, walked for a minute, and stopped in the center of the huts.

“Adam Jackson!”

Jackson poked his head out of a hut on the perimeter of the cluster. “Here!”

Wolf should have guessed. The structure was made of corrugated metal, painted matte brown with a red roof. A chimney pipe snaked up the side and on one exterior wall hung a satellite dish. A cooler was perched on an external shelf. Next to the get-up was a top-of-the-line snowmobile.

Tucking his chin into his coat, Wolf leaned into the wind and made his way over.

“How are ya?” Jackson asked with a beaming grin, his teeth stark white against his neatly trimmed black beard. “Come in, come in.”

Wolf nodded and stepped inside. He took off a glove and shook Jackson’s hand; the man’s skin was hot and sweaty, matching the air billowing out of the hut.

The interior shelves, cabinets, and benches were built from pine, the craftsmanship worthy of a Margaret Hitchens listing. The wood’s fragrance mixed with the rich aromas of a gurgling coffee maker. Wolf followed the electrical cord from the small appliance to a socket in the wall, then noticed a muted television mounted on a corner cabinet behind him.

“Solar power,” Jackson said. “Running on battery power today, of course, with so many clouds. Got a small generator, too. Take a seat.” Jackson gestured to one of two cushioned, lounger-style chairs also made of pine. “This one here.”

Wolf sat. “Not bad. Microwave, satellite.”

Jackson stood with his arms out in the middle of the room. There were six circular holes cut through the floor, each with a still pool of lake water beneath its lip.

Pictures adorned the walls. The most prominent depicted Jackson arm-in-arm with the president of the United States. They were both dressed in tuxedos, both smiling wide as if they’d just finished laughing.

Today the Aspen Wonder wore Levi’s and a black turtleneck, the sleeves rolled up on hairy forearms. Affixed to his belt was a silver buckle and a bloody Leatherman multitool. On his wrist and fingers gleamed more gold than most banks had on hand in their vaults.

To finish off his wealthy-outdoorsman look, he wore a clean mesh trucker hat that sent wings of graying hair sweeping out above his ears.

“I like it in here. I had to kick out four guys a few minutes ago. Most days I got a line ten-men deep at the door, wanting to get into the Jackson Fish Hut.”

Wolf took off his hat and gloves and unzipped his jacket. A bead of sweat ran from his armpit down his torso.

Jackson walked to the coffee maker, poured a mug, and handed it over.

“Thanks,” Wolf said, wishing it were an iced tea.

“Cream and sugar’s over there. That’s my favorite hazelnut blend. I hope you don’t mind the sweetness.”

Wolf sat, set down the mug, and stared expectantly.

“Right. David Wolf, the man of few words. I like that. The people of Sluice–Byron County like that. They respect you, and I respect you. Of course you deserve it, pulling off stuff like what you did on Friday.”

Wolf sipped his coffee, scalding the tip of his tongue.

“Which is really why I’ve asked you here today.”

“I’m not following.” Of course, Wolf was following, now expecting a rehash of Judy Fleming’s proposal.

“Friday,” Jackson said. “I hear there’s some dispute as to what exactly happened.”

Wolf frowned. “What do you mean?”

Jackson waved a dismissive hand and poured himself a cup of coffee, leaving Wolf contemplating what the man had just said.

“I’m fifty-six years old. I know I don’t look it.” Jackson sipped his coffee and winked over his cup. “And I plan on retiring when I’m sixty-five. That calculates out to two four-year terms in Rocky Points as SBCSD sheriff. That means I’m going to have to do a good job in office, which means I’m going to have to surround myself with good people.”

“What dispute are you talking about?” Wolf asked.

“Then I’m going to retire.” Jackson pointedly ignored him and sat down. He picked up his fishing pole and dropped his line into the hole at his feet. A dollop of water came out onto the carpeted floor. “You know, after that case you guys had a few years ago up here, I keep expecting to pull up a human head every time I drop my lure in.”

Wolf checked his watch, already sick of the man’s games.

“So,” Jackson exhaled and twisted his reel. “I know you talked to my campaign manager, but I figured we needed to talk this out man to man.”

Jackson smiled at him, letting his gaze linger.

“I’ll cut to the chase here,” Jackson said. “I’ve showed you my finish line, and now we can go two different ways. Right here and now we’re at the starting line. Option number one: You endorse me as the next sheriff and I hire you as the next undersheriff. When I’m elected, we skate through the next eight years and come out the other side happy campers, one of us further in our careers, making more money, the other sitting in a fishing hut, living out the rest of his days a contented retired man in the beautiful town of Rocky Points, Colorado. What do you think about that?”

Wolf nodded. “I’m flattered by your interest in me, sir. But I’m a little taken aback by the … earliness of the request from you and Ms. Fleming. The election isn’t for two years, and I’m not willing to do that kind of thing to my sheriff, and I’m sure you would be grateful for the same loyalty from your detectives if you were to be elected the next sheriff.” He paused and put down his coffee. “Secondly, I’m not good behind a desk.”

Jackson raised a single eyebrow. “I’m not understanding your answer.”

“I guess the answer is, you got an option two?”

Jackson looked away, clearly disappointed. “Option two is you tie yourself to MacLean’s ship. And we both know MacLean’s ship is taking on quite a bit of water at the moment.”

Wolf stared at the muted television. Aunt Bee was yelling at Barney Fife for something.

“Right, I’ll let you think about it.” Jackson stood and slapped Wolf on the back. “Don’t twist another ankle stepping in one of those holes on the way out.”

Wolf pulled on his stocking cap and stood.

Jackson’s eyelids dropped. “Two options, David. Choose wisely, okay?”

Wolf looked at the man’s cocksure grin, felt an unwelcome squeeze on his shoulder.

He pulled on his gloves. “I’ve made my choice.”

“You have? Great.”

Wolf pushed the door open and stepped out into the sideways snow.

“Well?” Jackson asked.

Wolf tucked his chin into his coat.

“Option two it is!” Jackson’s voice echoed between the fishing huts.

Wolf sat inside his SUV and fired up the engine. Cranking the heat to full howl, he pulled out his cell phone from his breast pocket and stopped the recording session.

The conversation went as he’d suspected it might, and he’d learned long ago that nothing covered his ass like a good piece of audio.

He pressed the button and listened. There was a rhythmic rustling of fabric and wind, and then it stopped for a second.

“Adam Jackson!” Wolf’s voice was muffled. And he’d yelled the words. Not a good sign.

“Shit.” Wolf’s thumbed the volume three times to maximum.

Fast-forwarding another minute, Wolf pressed play.

“... …”

There was mumbling, but that was it. No intelligible words at all. It was like Wolf’s phone had been buried in snow when as it was recording.

He checked the microphone holes in the bottom of the cell and sagged in his seat. He had a heavy-duty plastic case on his phone with an oval hole for the mic—an oval hole that was packed solid with snow. He must have dropped it just right to plug it.

He flicked the snow out with the end of a key and blew out the water.

He pressed stop and saw there was a bar of reception, so he scrolled to Lauren Coulter’s phone number and hovered his finger.

He tapped it.

It rang once and went to voicemail.

“Hi, this is Lauren Coulter. Leave a message,” she said, her high-pitched voice adding a shot of adrenaline to his bloodstream.

“Hi … it’s me, David. It’s now 10:25. I’m about an hour and a half away with good roads, and now it’s starting to snow … again. Just letting you know I might be a few minutes late to our lunch–dinner, but I’m on my way. I’m looking forward to it. See ya.”

CHAPTER 8

ROCKY POINTS SITS in a valley with a sagebrush-covered high plateau to the north and the heavily forested Williams Pass to the south, hemmed in by pine-covered mountains to the east and west.

In 1974, Rocky Points Ski Resort was gouged out of the tallest mountain on the western side of the valley, with ski runs like veins that had grown into the neighboring mountain to the north as the resort expanded.

On the east of the valley stood the gentler-sloped, forested hills, backdropped by thirteen- and fourteen-thousand-foot peaks. Since Rocky Points’ mining days, the east side had been nicknamed Sunnyside because of the afternoon sun it received. It was how the breakfast café in town had gotten its name.

From Sunnyside, western views of the resort and the waves of mountains beyond it were spectacular. Since the amount of sunlight was greater by a full hour or more, real-estate prices were accordingly high.

It was where Margaret Hitchens had built her home, where many prominent figures of county government called home, and it was where Wolf was driving now to find Lauren Coulter’s home.

Sun streamed through a crack in the clouds and into Wolf’s windows, flickering behind trees as he drove along a well-plowed road. He was still driving in an unblinking daze, his earlier enthusiasm to see Lauren Coulter dampened by his visit with Adam Jackson.

Checking the GPS unit, he slowed and turned at the next driveway. A mailbox designed to look like a log cabin, with a snow ski for the mail flag, said Coulter on the side.

The single-lane road was paved and well plowed, covered by an inch of snow that had fallen earlier in the morning. If the forecasters were right, there was an approaching storm, and it would be a steady and raging snow by the end of the day.

He pulled around a corner and the ground leveled off while the forest broke into a clearing. Lauren Coulter’s house stood proud in a snow-covered meadow, a wide single-level structure that was shaped like an L.

It was much like Wolf’s house design but built with sturdier lumber. A walkout basement stood to the rear, and a high roof promised vaulted ceilings inside and huge gleaming windows. This and the secluded surroundings, all in prime Sunnyside territory, pointed to a price tag in the millions.

Rounding the traffic circle in front of the house, he swung to the west and the valley below came into view. A veil of white snow was now passing over Rocky Points, obscuring the sun and darkening the landscape outside.

He parked at the front of the house, at the end of a walkway to the porch. Checking the mirror, he picked a piece of lint off his eyebrow, grabbed the half-dozen roses for Lauren and gift bag for her daughter, and stepped outside.

Cold wind swept up from the valley below, breathing softly through the trees that bordered the clearing behind and to either side of the house. Crows cawed overhead, joining another noisy group that had gathered somewhere in the forest. There were no visible neighbors in any direction. Quite a piece of property.

Taking Luanne’s Sweets and Treats’ earning power into consideration, a company whose products were in every gas station and grocery store Wolf had ever set foot in, the house was rather modest in size compared to those erected elsewhere on Sunnyside. Understated. Overall, he judged, the land and house were a tasteful extension of the woman named Lauren he knew so little about.

The sun flickered and disappeared behind the clouds, dropping the temperature immediately.

As he walked to the door, he tried to remember the last time he’d spent any sort of time with a five-year-old. It had been years. The girl probably already had ten versions of the doll in the bag dangling from his hand. Probably had an exact replica.

He pressed the doorbell and stood back.

Now the wind sounded like a jet engine as it rolled through the trees up the mountain. Snow from the front yard skated and swirled past his feet.

No answer.

He leaned to the side and glanced in the window—not a face-press, but a squint at a respectable distance from the glass—and saw no movement.

A few moments later he knocked.

There was no response, no sound from within, so he did the face-press. A gleaming wood-floored hallway led to what looked to be a kitchen table backed by some windows. There was a bowl on the table with a spoon in it.

Just beyond the glass in front of him was a darkened dining room, and to the left a sparsely decorated room with an electric keyboard against one wall.

Snooping for another five seconds, he pulled back and studied the footprints along the walkway. There were at least three sets, not including Wolf’s. His were fresh, showing tread, and, at first glance, looked to be the only ones that led to the house. The others led down the path, away from the front door. They were shallow indentions, covered by a half-inch of snow in some places, or blown away altogether by the wind in others.

He pressed the doorbell one last time and walked down the walkway toward his SUV, not bothering to wait. They were gone, and had left about an hour ago. The footprints said as much.

Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed Lauren. It rang once and went straight to voicemail, like her phone was off. Like it had done earlier.

Unlocking his passenger door, he opened it and put the flowers and gift down on the floor. Turning back to the house, he wondered what his next move was. Had he just been stood up? Maybe there’d been an emergency at work and she’d had to stay late. Then why not call him? She hadn’t seemed the flaky type but, like he’d told her, first impressions could be deceptive.

He pressed the digital-assistant button on his phone.

“How can I help you, David?” the phone said in a female voice.

“Call County Hospital.”

“Calling … Sluice–Byron County Hospital.”

Propping a butt cheek onto his passenger seat, he waited while it rang.

“Sluice–Byron County Hospital, how may I direct your call?”

“Could I please speak to the second-floor nurses’ station?”

“One moment.”

A tinny saxophone wailed in his ear. The car door started to blow closed so he swung his legs inside and let it shut, relishing the weight-release on his ankle.

“Nurses’ station, this is Nurse Johnsfield,” a woman’s voice answered. “How may I help you?”

“Hi, I’m looking for Lauren Coulter.”

“Not here.”

He waited for more explanation but none came. “This is Detective David Wolf with the Sheriff’s Department. I was—”

“Oh yeah, annoying guy standing in my way. I remember you.”

“Yeah. Listen, did she say where she was going?”

“Nope.”

“Okay.”

She chewed some food into the receiver.

“Could I speak to John?”

“Nope. Not on duty today.” She exhaled like she was already on her last nerve. “Lauren left this morning. Check that, she disappeared this morning. Four hours before she was done she upped and left, which left us a nurse short, and she didn’t even try to get anyone to cover for her.”

“Did she say why? Like it was an emergency or something?”

“Nope. Just walked out.”

He opened the car door, letting the cool air inside again.

“So, I’m not too happy with your little friend Ms. Lauren Coulter right now. I hope you see her first, because if I do I’m going to kill her. Well, if I did that I guess I’d have to see you again … maybe I won’t kill her. But I’m gonna do something. That’s for sure.”

He pulled the phone away from his ear and pressed the call-end button. Staring through the windshield, he watched three more crows disappear over the top of Lauren’s house. He reached into his glove compartment, retrieved his Glock in its paddle holster and stepped outside.

Snow caressed his face now, dropping from the leaden sky.

Two more crows flew in from the north. Another twisted on the wind to the east.

He walked to the single-lane driveway branching off the traffic circle, which led to a three-car garage on the side of the house.

Tire tread marks, thinly veiled in snow but still visible, backed out of the garage and left down the driveway past his feet. Swiveling around, he followed the treads with his eyes until they merged with his SUV’s on the approach road and disappeared into the woods toward the main county road below.

His boots squeaked on the snow and as he stepped to the garage doors and the back corner of the building. The land sloped down around the rear to the walkout basement, which was capped by a deck off the rear main level.

A short distance from the rear stood dense woods. And inside the woods there was a party going on and only crows were invited. Black forms flapped and flitted in and out of view, cawing like mad.

He stepped onto a mound of snow at the edge of the driveway to get a better view.

The wind was sharp as a knife, but that’s not what sent a chill up his spine. Two sets of footprints came out of the noisy part of the forest and converged, and then they led to the rear of the house. Either that or two people had left the back of the house and split just before the trees.

The crows in the trees let out a blast of excited caws, and the sound of flapping wings echoed in the air.

Gingerly, he stepped down the other side of the mound, favoring his weight on the right foot.

The snow was cold on his shins, coming up to his knees and burrowing into the top of his boots as he made his way down the slope to the back of the house. His left ankle ached from the movement.

The air got colder as more flakes started falling. The clouds thickened and the light flattened, making the contours of the land disappear, and he felt a pop in his ankle, then hot pain as he stumbled in an invisible rut underneath the snow.

“Shit.”

Baring his teeth, he limped downward, then finally reached the lower rear corner of the house where it was sheltered from the wind.

He walked along the back of the house, past a window to the sliding glass door and to the footprints, which led to the door.

Under the overhanging deck, the prints were relatively untouched by the elements, and they told the story clear enough: two people had come out of this door, out into the yard, into the trees. One had come back.

His gut wriggled as he gazed down the line of tracks to the tree line, which was now barely visible behind a veil of sideways-blowing snow.

Pulling his gun, he grabbed the handle of the sliding glass door with his coat sleeve and pulled. It slid open and hot air billowed out as he stepped inside.

He shut the door and the world went silent inside the basement level of Lauren’s house. He held his breath and stood motionless, trying to listen past the blood pounding in his ears.

There were no steps, no creaking. Nothing.

The walkout basement was one large carpeted room, cordoned off into different zones by the furniture placed there. A recreation zone had a ping-pong table and dartboard. One corner had couches, a coffee table, and a wall-mounted television, all of it taken over by princesses and long-haired dolls strewn about.

Ahead and to the left, a carpeted stairway led up.

Letting his muzzle lead the way, he walked silently to the stairs, using his ankle as if it were uninjured, ignoring the shooting pain that came with each step.

Pausing at the bottom of the stairs, he pointed his eyes and his Glock up at an open doorway on the main floor. A soft natural light painted the wall beyond.

There were no shadows or movement, so he climbed.

With each left step his ankle ached, and with each right step his kneecap cracked like a dry twig, the sound echoing off the walls and vaulted ceiling.

He stopped at the third to last step and pressed his back to the right wall. As he leaned forward, the hallway to the left came into view, and then the front door. Nobody.

He looked right, keeping low to the floor, jabbing his head out and back like a snake’s tongue. There was the kitchen table, the chair, the spoon in the bowl, the glowing overhead light.

Stepping out into the hallway, his wet boots squealed on the hardwood floors.

To the right, the kitchen opened up. There was a large sub-zero refrigerator, two side-by-side wall-mounted ovens, a large gas range, an island in the middle with copper pans dangling from a black metal rectangle, which itself hung from heavy chains attached to the ceiling. It was a space designed for someone who knew what they were doing in the kitchen.

On the table next to the bowl, a box of crayons spilled over a piece of construction paper. Lauren’s daughter had been drawing mountain scenery, and by the looks of it she had more artistic talent at the age of five than Wolf would ever have.

A sliding glass door led to a deck outside. Beyond the deck, he could see the line of footprints behind falling snow. Past it all, a crow perched in a high bough before diving down.

Apple slices that had browned over time sat on a cutting board. A Disney lunchbox on the counter sat open with a bagged sandwich inside.

To the left stood a family room with shining hardwood floors and dark furniture, lit by a row of windows that continued along the rear of the house.

“Lauren!” His adrenaline made his voice louder than he’d intended.

There was no answer, only a low whoosh as a new wave of wind and snow hit outside.

He raised his gun and limped silently through the living room to a darkened hallway and pushed open the first door on the right, revealing a plain bedroom with a made bed and drawn shades.

Moving further down the hall, he pushed open the next door. Inside it looked like a retail art store had exploded. Easels, paints, markers, pens, pencils, chalk, paper, and other art supplies littered every inch of space.

The easel near the window drew his eye and held it, because on it perched a pencil sketch of him.

Even from a distance he could see the uncanny resemblance. Flipping on the light switch, he could see it was more than that—it was like he was looking in the mirror. The shape of his face was spot on, and she’d included all the details, from the mole on his upper right lip to the scar above his eye from the cliff incident a couple of years ago. She’d added his five o’clock shadow, including the silver streak that was becoming more prominent on his right cheek.

He remembered the way she’d studied his face on their date. The way she’d run her finger along his jawline.

Guilt welled up inside him. He felt like he was looking at something deeply personal, like he was rifling through her diary. What if they drove up and found him inside? What would he say?

A crow flew past the window outside.

He moved to the room across the hall—a home office with windows that looked out the front of the house. Outside, his SUV had acquired a full coat of snow in the past few minutes.

One wall of the home office consisted entirely of bookshelves, and in the center a safe door hung open. Inside sat a thin folder and nothing else.

Behind him stood a heavy wood desk with a computer.

He exited the room and took a left toward the two rooms at the end of the hallway. To the left was Lauren’s daughter’s room, with the name ELLA painted on the wall in a style and with a talent that only her mother could have pulled off. To the right was Lauren’s room, which was just a bit bigger than modest, decorated with paintings he now recognized as Lauren’s, each just as impressive as the next.

The sheets on her king-sized bed were flung to the side and a pair of jeans had been laid out over the sheets. The room swung left to a passageway to the master bathroom. Inside, a wall of frosted-glass cubes doused the room in subdued light.

The shower was all glass with a bench inside it, and he had a brief vision of Lauren standing naked inside.

There were two sinks below a wall-to-wall mirror. One was cluttered with hygiene debris. He noted just the one electric toothbrush still in its charger. The one tube of toothpaste. The one bath towel. The feminine shampoo, the feminine body wash, the feminine face lotions, deodorants, perfumes. If a man had ever set foot in this bathroom he’d left no trace behind.

With a deep breath, he made his way back down the hall and through the front rooms of the house—the sparsely decorated room with the electric piano on one wall and then through to the dining room, where the only thing amiss was a single dining-room chair pulled out from the table.

Entering the kitchen through a doorway, he hung a right down another hallway, which led to a door.

He opened the door and light spilled into a darkened three-car garage. He flicked the switch and bright floodlights blazed from the tall ceiling. The furthest parking spot from the door was dedicated to Ella Coulter’s wheeled toys. Next to those sat a black Mercedes SUV, a newer model covered in winter road grime. The spot next to that stood empty, the concrete wet from recent use.

He shut off the lights and went back into the house and to the kitchen. With more than a little reluctance, he gazed through the flying snow outside to the tree line.

CHAPTER 9

THE SNOW PELTED the side of Wolf’s face as he trudged toward the trees. It was slow-going because he’d decided to break fresh ground and not destroy the tracks, although the rapidly falling snow was doing a good job of that anyway.

Reaching the tree line, he turned and looked back at the house from the rear, half expecting to see the lights switched on and Lauren walking around inside. But the house was still lifeless, the windows dark.

As he passed into the trees, the snow thinned and walking became easier, though the dense foliage needled his face. He moved on, the pine branches sparser now, and then there was a cacophony of flapping black wings as he broke into a clearing.

And there was a smell.

And the dead body of a woman.

He froze in mid-stride, letting the initial shock dissipate as he stared at the mangled corpse. It was clearly a woman because her button-up shirt was open, revealing large breasts that fell to either side as she lay flat on her back.

The crows had done a number on her exposed flesh, pecking it into a bloody pulp, but he could tell she was heavyset, and therefore not Lauren Coulter.

She wore jeans and socks, no shoes, and her legs were spread apart, as if she’d been making a snow angel as she’d died.

He walked nearer, keeping a close eye on the surrounding woods, which was teaming with cawing crows perched in the trees.

The snow around the woman was trampled red, impressions painted by birds’ feet soaked in blood.

Since it was not Lauren, and it was clearly not her daughter, it left one likely candidate: the nanny.

Visual identification was going to be tough, though. The eyes were eaten out. The upper lip was gone, twisting her mouth into a grotesque smile. Her neck had been sliced from ear to ear, the wound widened then some by the crows. And then there was the rest of her face, which had been pecked, leaving little of the ghostly-white skin untouched.

The snow fell harder than ever now, covering the body with a lace veil.

Something glinted near his foot, drawing his eye. A knife.

He backed up, then walked to the woods and snapped two branches off a tree.

“Get out of there!”

Three crows hopped off the dead body and up into the trees as he returned. He crossed the branches over the knife, sheltering the evidence from the relentless snow.

With new urgency, the crows cawed, this time all at once like they were readying their attack.

He puffed his chest and outstretched his arms. “Ahhh!” He charged at the most populous tree and smacked the branches with his arms. As his shout rolled through the forest, the crows reluctantly took to the sky.

He took out his cell phone and dialed the station.

CHAPTER 10

LAUREN COULTER FUMBLED and dropped the tiny lockbox key onto the ground of the bank vault.

“Dammit,” she whispered, plucking it from the carpet.

When she stood, she was overtaken by a wave of dizziness. She put a hand on the wall of lockboxes, waiting for the sparkles at the edge of her vision to disappear.

It was always difficult for her to sleep during the night shifts, so she’d only racked up fifteen minutes or so last night, and now this. How long could one person go before they just collapsed?

She twisted the lock and the top of the box popped open. The small door swung up, revealing a black velvet bag with gold string.

Lauren had been a teenager the first time she’d touched the piece of jewelry. She remembered the way her mother had placed it on her palm, the cold weight of it pulling down as she recounted the history of the piece. Something to do with her grandfather from Minnesota, who’d made a fortune selling bricks? Lauren had never been a good listener growing up.

The only other time she’d seen it was six years ago. Then it had been smothered in her father’s blood. Now she loathed the thing and genuinely wondered if it held a curse.

With a quick movement, she loosened the bag and poured the pendant onto her palm. It was shiny and clean, the blood gone, professionally buffed away by her lawyer’s jeweler.

The pendant cage was a hexagon within a hexagon, within it mounted a blue diamond of exquisite quality and cut. The gold was so smooth it looked liquid, and the diamond sparkled like a wet eye in the overhead light.

Right after her father’s death, the jeweler had appraised it at $1.8 million, but Lauren had never had any intention of ever seeing or touching the thing again. Unless she had to.

Quickly she dropped it back into the bag and shoved it into her inside jacket pocket. Then she reconsidered and put the bag down the front of her jeans, just inside the top elastic band of her underwear.

Closing the lockbox, she pushed it back into its slot, shut the small door, and locked it. With a deep breath, she straightened her jacket and walked out through the thick steel vault door.

The bank manager made a show of gazing out the window up at the looming buildings of downtown Denver. “Oh, finished already?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

The bank manager pursed his lips and nodded. “Very well. Follow me and I can take care of your withdrawal personally.”

Ken Brewer, the bank manager, eyed her warily, and then plastered a desperate-looking smile on his face. “I hear it’s snowing pretty good up in the mountains. You’re living in Rocky Points now, correct?”

She nodded. “Hmm.”

“They’re saying feet of snow for the mountains. Have you been skiing yet this year?”

When Lauren had first taken over the company six years ago, Mr. Brewer had treated her like a fourteen-year-old child that had just picked the car keys out of her father’s pocket. Lauren was her father’s daughter, however, and was never one to take shit from men who puffed their chests, so without batting an eye she’d told him to close the accounts and Luanne’s Holdings would do their banking elsewhere. His condescending tone had instantly shifted to sniveling wimp and had been unwavering ever since. In truth, the guy aggravated her even more now. Dealing with chameleon yes-men was of the many reasons she’d gotten out of the family business in the first place.

She followed Brewer out into the bank lobby, past a line of patrons staring at their cell phones.

“We’ll go into my office where it’s quieter.”

Lauren nodded.

Bubbles of glass hung from the ceiling, the cameras behind them catching her every move. She wondered whether David had gone to her house even though she hadn’t answered his call. If he had, what were the odds he would search the woods in back?

“Could I get a bottle of water, please?” she asked.

“Yes, of course. Linda!” Brewer snapped at a woman walking past and whispered the order to her in a threatening tone, all but slapping her to get her moving as fast as she could.

Brewer smiled and walked to his corner glass office, stopping just inside the propped door. “Please. Take a seat.”

She walked in and sat on a cloth chair, and the office went silent as he pulled the door shut.

The manager walked to his chair with swishing pants and sat. Then he folded his hands on his desk and stretched his mouth in a fake smile. He wore frameless glasses that magnified already bugged eyes, and now she wondered whether he was focusing on the makeup she’d caked underneath her eye to conceal the fresh bruise.

“Please, tell me about your withdrawal,” Brewer said, leaning back and crossing his legs. “Ah, your water.”

The woman came in and gave Lauren a bottle.

“Thank you,” Lauren said.

“You’re welcome.”

“That’s all, Debbie.”

The woman rolled her eyes on the way out.

Brewer fished in his drawer and pulled out a pad of withdrawal slips. “I thought about your father the other day. You know what he used to say to me?”

Lauren cracked open the bottle. “I need to withdraw ten thousand dollars.” She gulped down half the bottle.

The manager blinked and took off his glasses. “Of course. Of course.”

She offered a toothless smile. “And I need it now.”

“I … we certainly will, Ms. Coulter.” His eyes shifted like he was tracking an invisible mosquito. With a lightning move he picked up the phone and lifted a finger in her direction. “One moment please.”

She stood and walked to the ground-floor window. A stream of people walked past along 17th Street. The Denverites wore ski hats, their faces buried in the necks of their puffy coats.

She failed to hear the details of what Brewer was saying behind her, but the man was hissing and squirming more than usual, which escalated her pulse.

She turned at the sound of the phone dropping in its cradle.

Brewer wrung his hands.

“What?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Coulter. We … don’t have the funds to honor your withdrawal.”

“What?” Her forehead broke into a sweat. “I need it,” her voice cracked.

“I’m terribly, terribly sorry. Usually we would. On any given day, the bank has ample cash circulating between the reserve vault and the tellers. But we had another client come in this morning and clean out the reserves with his own withdrawal. When we have a large withdrawal like that, we have for branch headquarters to replenish it.” He looked at his watch. “Which is in Kansas City, Kansas. And it’s almost the end of the business day, which means we won’t be taking on those reserves until tomorrow morning.”

Her breathing went into hyperdrive. “So I could go to another branch.” Her voice sounded muffled behind the blood rushing in her ears.

Brewer swallowed. “Yes. But it’s 5:45 … the nearest branch is in Englewood. Driving in rush-hour traffic, it’s going to take you more than fifteen minutes to get there.”

“You can call them. Keep it open for me.” She lifted her chin.

“I’m sorry, we can’t. It’s not that simple. The computer systems wouldn’t allow it.” He held up his hands, as if she were holding a pistol on him. “First thing in the morning, we can have it.”

A tear fell from her eye, and she caught it before it ran the length of her cheek. Pulling her hand away, she noticed the skin-colored makeup on her palm.

Brewer’s bug eyes narrowed and widened, then he straightened, his face a mask of concern.

Shit.

“Ms. Coulter, I’m going to be blunt. I can’t help but notice the bruise you have concealed with makeup under your eye.”

Lauren grabbed her purse off the chair. “Never mind. Just forget it.”

“Ms. Coulter,” he stood. “The trip to the vault, the withdrawal. Are you doing these things under duress?”

“What? No.” Her voice sounded unconvincing.

Brewer’s eye twitched. “We’re trained under circumstances like these to call the police. Do you want me to call the police Ms. Coulter?”

Lauren’s thoughts traveled to Rocky Points and back, and her blood cooled. “Do you remember when my father died? What I told you?”

Brewer’s eyes narrowed.

“If you call the police then my earlier threat stands—you’ll no longer be doing business with Luanne’s Holdings, and I’ll close my personal accounts and go elsewhere. It’s enough that you can’t do the basic service of giving me my money when I want it. It’s a whole other thing that you’re threatening to call the police on me now.”

“Call the police on you?” Brewer stammered. “I was just asking if you wanted me to call the police. I’m asking if you’re in trouble.”

She waved a hand and turned to leave. “I’ll be back tomorrow at 10 a.m. to make my withdrawal. Either have my money, or have the paperwork drawn up to transfer a hell of a lot of money to another bank.”

“Will Mr. Lourde be coming with you to execute that paperwork?” Brewer lifted his chin and put his hands to his side.

She blinked first. Keith Lourde was Lauren’s successor and current CEO and CFO of Luanne’s Holdings, and they both knew that a decision like moving all the assets from this bank would have to be signed off by the man.

Brewer’s eyes never wavered. “I’ll see you at 10 a.m. tomorrow, Ms. Coulter. I hope we have your money by then. If not, I’ll have Debbie draw up the necessary paperwork.”

On legs that felt disconnected from her body, she walked out the door, through the lobby, and back into the frigid, smog-laden air. She stopped amid the throngs of people rushing past. The tall buildings seemed to be falling in on her, her entire world crushing under the impossible weight of the circumstances.

She drew the smart phone from her pocket. With fumbling fingers, she scrolled to the number and then hesitated. This was not going to go well.

No, she thought, gritting her teeth. She had to fight. She had to turn this around in her mind. She took a steely breath and pushed the call button.

Her confidence ebbed with the first piercing trill in her ear.

“Yes?”

She closed her eyes. The man’s cult-leader-like tone made her squirm.

“I can’t make the withdrawal. They don’t have the funds on hand, and they can’t bring in the money until tomorrow.” Her heart stopped as she listened to a long drawn-out breath in her earpiece.

“That’s disappointing,” he said.

A man bumped her. “S’cuse you.”

She bared her teeth and gripped the phone so hard it hurt. “Listen, you ever made a large cash withdrawal from a bank? If they don’t have the cash on hand they don’t have the cash on hand. And second of all, your piece-of-shit sidekick up there screwed everything up by punching me in the eye. Now I have a bruise and bank managers are looking to call the cops. They’re asking if I’m okay, if I’m under duress.”

The silence that followed was scarier than anything the man could have said.

“But I have another place I can get the ten thousand,” she said. “I’ll have it in a couple of hours. Then I’ll be on my way back up.”

“You have until midnight.” The man’s voice had an edge.

“Is she there?” Tears flowed down her cheeks, and she made no effort to wipe them this time. “Is she okay?”

No answer.

“Is she there?” Drool dripped from her chin. She had just about screamed the words, but had restrained herself at the last second.

“Relax, Lauren.”

“You have to put her on.”

“Mommy?”

“Hey, baby.” Lauren smiled desperately. People were slowing, watching her momentarily as they passed by. “How are you doing?”

“Good. When are you coming back?”

“I’ll be back soon, honey.” She failed to keep the shake out of her voice.

“Good. Mommy, they have chocolate-filled Oreos here.” Ella sounded genuinely happy. That she was so oblivious to the danger ripped Lauren’s heart out of her chest.

“See?” The man said. “She’s doing great. Watching SpongeBob right now. I think … what’s that, honey? I’m talking to your mommy right now. Please be quiet.”

Lauren stared at nothing through pooled tears.

“So, midnight tonight.” He adopted his smooth tone again. “I guess that will have to do.” He used a fun, G-rated tone. “Better not keep us waiting longer than that, or else.”

The line clicked.

Lauren closed her eyes.

“Excuse me.”

A woman was trying to get by with a suitcase on wheels.

Lauren stepped to the side, feeling more in the way as she stopped a stream of people moving in the other direction. They stared at her with no sympathy, no understanding of the lake of fire she stood in right now.

She remembered the way her nanny had squealed outside, then the blood on the man’s hands and arms as he walked back to the house. The way he’d wiped it on the snow, painting it bright red. The way he’d walked straight up to her and punched her, like he was possessed by the most malevolent soul ever made by God.

Her daughter’s voice echoed in her head. When are you coming back?

She steeled herself and got her bearings. She was on 17th and Champa and needed to run five blocks west to catch the man she needed to talk to. She didn’t have his personal number because she didn’t have her own cell phone. She had this godforsaken burner phone that felt like a blood-soaked murder weapon in her hands. It was 5:55 p.m. on a Monday. Late stragglers would still be in the office, but probably not him. After a few seconds of staring at the display on the cell-phone screen, she remembered the company number, a pattern burned into her brain from years of calling her parents at work in an era when nobody had cell phones.

The phone rang for six, seven rings. No answer. Finally, there was a click and a voicemail greeting. “You’ve reached Luanne’s Sweets and Treats corporate office. Our normal office business hours are …”

She hung up and ran.

CHAPTER 11

WOLF TAPPED the mouse and the screen on Lauren’s home-office computer crackled to life, the image of a smiling girl with a chocolate-smeared face glowing bright. She had snow-white hair down to her shoulders with a ribbon on one side. Her eyes were the same greenish-blue and had the same squint as her mother’s.

“Money?” Rachette was pointing his flashlight into the open wall safe. “Looks like there was a stack of money or something in here. I can see the dust mark.”

“You seen this?” Hernandez was next to the wall, looking up at a hanging frame.

It was a weathered pencil sketch set in a wooden frame. Much like the drawing across the hall of Wolf, this was an exquisite representation of human form—a man and a little girl. The man was laughing, his arm around the girl. The girl leaned into the man with closed eyes. The two subjects were father and daughter—it was impossible to think otherwise. Whether it was Lauren or her daughter, Ella, in the picture was impossible to tell.

Unlike the drawing across the room, the piece of paper in this frame was weathered, stained with a brown geometric pattern, splotches of dried liquid that sat atop and surrounded it. There were creases in the paper, like it had been folded and opened a million times.

In his mind, Wolf folded the paper along the lines, spilled brown liquid on it, then opened it up and framed it— that’s what must’ve happened. The splotches matched up on all four corners.

“You think she drew this?” Hernandez asked.

Barker stood watch in the corner of the room, his eyes flicking between them.

Wolf eyed him. The man had turned into a mute these past few days and it was starting to get on his nerves.

“Looks like that one of Wolf across the hall,” Rachette said, now appraising the picture. “She’s like a savant with the pencil.”

Wolf’s phone rang. It was Patterson.

“Hey.”

“Sir,” Patterson said in his ear. “I called Ella Coulter’s school. She was never there today. She usually goes in the morning from 8:30 a.m. to noon.”

“Okay, what else?”

“The Mercedes SUV in Lauren’s garage is the nanny’s. I got her name and address and just forwarded it to your email. I saw Lorber’s photos, and I think it’s definitely her out there in the trees. Her name is Barbara Lingmerth. Has a green card, splits her time between here and Australia. While she’s here she lives in those apartments north of town next to the river.”

“Okay, and?” When Wolf had called up the cavalry after discovering the body, he’d told Patterson to stay put at the station, knowing her quick work on the computer would be just as valuable as anything they’d find on scene.

“I just got the first batch of phone records,” she said. “Lauren Coulter got one call this morning at 7:40 a.m., then another at 10:26 a.m. The first call was from a burner phone. The second call was from you.”

“First batch of phone records?” Wolf asked.

“I’m in the process of checking the records of the burner phone that called her. Those may take an hour or so. Freakin’ guys at Summit Mobile. But as for Lauren’s, she just received the two calls this morning, then her phone shuts off.”

“Where?”

“The map is showing she shut it off at her house.”

Wolf clicked the email icon on Lauren’s computer and the program opened, revealing a list of mostly unread emails. He scrolled to the first one that caught his eye. It was marked with today’s date and already read, received at 7:37 a.m.

“Sir? You there?”

“Yes. Just a second.”

The subject of the email read: Hi Lulu.

The sender was a bunch of random-looking numbers and letters.

He clicked.

Hi Lulu. I hope you and Ella are doing great. I think I might come see you, whether you want me to or not. Whether you think it’s even possible or not. I need what’s rightfully mine.

“Lauren received an email this morning at 7:37 a.m.,” Wolf said. “It looks threatening.”

Rachette, Hernandez, and Barker stopped what they were doing and crowded next to Wolf.

“Interesting,” Patterson said. “That’s three minutes before she got her call. What does it say?”

Wolf read it aloud.

“Let me know Lauren’s address and the address it’s from,” Patterson said, keyboard keys clacking in the background.

Wolf gave her the two email addresses.

“I may need the computer, too.”

“Okay.”

Wolf pointed at the computer and walked away. “Let’s bring this in. What about Lauren’s credit cards?”

“She bought gas at 11:13 a.m. this morning at the Mackery,” Patterson said. “Grocery shopping yesterday afternoon. Other than that, not much out of the ordinary.”

Wolf remembered the tread marks coming out of her garage and the footprints coming out the front door. “What kind of car does she drive?”

“Audi Q7 SUV. This year’s model.”

Wolf said nothing.

“The more I dig into Lauren Coulter,” Patterson said, “the more interesting it gets. She has a rather tumultuous past, to say the least.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Well, I don’t have all the details yet, other than a few archived news articles. I’m waiting for the official police report from Denver now, which—”

“What did you find out?”

“Six years ago her husband murdered her father. Her ex-husband now.”

Wolf paused in front of the sketch hanging on the wall. The drawing was so old it had to be a picture of Lauren and her father. He leaned close, studying the brown spots. There was definitely a hint of red in the faded stains.

“How was he murdered?”

“Beaten to death with a baseball bat.”

“Ella Coulter is five years old. Is she the ex-husband’s kid?”

“Lauren was pregnant when she was attacked. So, in theory, it would make sense that Ella is the ex-husband’s kid.

“I’m also finding scores of articles about Lauren Coulter taking over the family business afterwards. Apparently, there was something of a media scandal after her father’s murder because the ex-husband was raving that she, Lauren, was behind the whole thing and got off scot-free while he was put in jail. It’s not quite clear yet, but it looks like there was speculation that she might’ve been behind the murder herself, in order to take control of the company or something.”

Wolf walked to the window, where snow danced against the glass. It was almost 5 p.m., just about sunset, but due to the storm the darkness had long set in. Everything outside flashed blue and red from the turrets crowding the circle drive.

“The ex-husband’s in jail, I take it?” Wolf asked.

Rachette, Hernandez, and Barker were staring now.

“Yep. Out east in Sterling.”

“And you’ve checked on him?” Wolf asked.

“Checked on him?”

“I need you to make sure he’s still in jail.”

“Versus … he broke out?” she asked.

“You heard what the email said.”

“Okay. I’ll make sure,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“Rachette and I will stop by the nanny’s apartment, then the Mackery to check surveillance footage. After that we’ll meet up back at the station. When did you say Lauren’s last credit-card purchase was?”

“11:13 a.m. The charged amount tells me she filled up a full tank of gas.”

They ended the call and Wolf pocketed his phone.

“What’s going on?” Rachette asked.

“We’re going to check on the nanny and the gas station where she made her last credit-card purchase.” He nodded to Barker. “You two get this computer to Patterson as soon as possible.”

Barker put his hands on his hips. “Hernandez and I will go to the gas station while you and Rachette go to the nanny’s place.”

Barker’s despondence was replaced with anger for being left out. At least that was something. But the last fiber of trust Wolf had ever had in the man had been severed Friday morning.

“No,” Wolf said. “Head to the station.”

Barker narrowed his eyes.

Hernandez pulled the power cord to the computer monitor and the image of the little girl vanished.

I need what’s rightfully mine.

Wolf looked at the safe on the wall.

I need what’s rightfully mine.

“Let’s go.” He limped as fast as he could out of the room, ignoring Barker’s icy stare on the way by.

CHAPTER 12

“DAMN, IT IS DUMPING.” Rachette leaned toward the windshield.

“You already said that,” Wolf said.

“Yeah, right. Well, it is. They’re saying a couple of feet on top of the mountain.”

Wolf concentrated on the swirling white in front of him. Another reflective post slid by on the right, telling him he was still on the road. He rubbed his hand on the inside of the windshield, then cranked the defrost dial to high.

“I think the entrance is coming soon.” Rachette leaned back and consulted the GPS on the laptop. “Says a few hundred yards. But it gets screwy in weather like this, though.”

“All right.”

“So, what’s the problem with Barker?” Rachette asked. “I mean, besides the fact that he’s an asshole meathead with no penis.”

Wolf offered an eyebrow raise in response.

“He’s been acting weird all weekend, ever since the rescue on Friday.” Rachette faced him. “All weekend he hasn’t said anything to me or Patterson.”

“Isn’t that normal?”

Rachette shrugged. “Actually, we almost got in a fight because he was typing up the incident report about the river rescue, and I went up to him and started reading over his shoulder and he shut off the monitor and got in my face.”

Wolf said nothing, concentrating on the road through the blizzard. He saw that Rachette was still staring at him in his peripheral vision.

“What happened up there?” Rachette finally asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I just get the sense that something happened between you two.” A floodlit sign came up on the left and Rachette pointed. “Here, here.”

“I see it.” Wolf slowed and pulled into the Chautauqua Pines Condominiums complex.

“So?” Rachette asked.

There were three directions Wolf could have gone so he came to a stop. “So, which way?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry … Patterson said number 314, building W. So … that sign says take a right.”

Wolf cranked the wheel and they followed the signs to building W. There was a single parking spot available so he took it.

“Probably her parking spot,” Rachette said.

They stepped outside into the whitewash. The wind battered Wolf straight in the face and he tucked his chin against the biting cold and pulled his cap down on his forehead.

“Damn!” Rachette’s voice was barely audible.

Wolf pointed up the steps and Rachette took them three at a time.

Wolf followed much slower, limping his way up. By the time he’d reached the top, Rachette already looked ready to leave.

“Nobody’s home!” Rachette raised his hands.

Wolf believed him. There was a single window next to the front door and it was completely dark inside.

Ten yards down the wooden walkway a porch light shone next to a lit window, revealing three young men inside playing darts and drinking beer.

Wolf nodded. “After you.”

Rachette marched to the door and knocked.

Wolf watched inside as the men stopped and turned to the window, their faces dropping at the sight of Wolf and Rachette with their SBCSD jackets and winter caps.

Two of the guys retreated into the kitchen and folded their arms while the third came to the door.

“Hello?” the man said. A cloud of marijuana smoke billowed out while a cloud of snow billowed in. “Wow, really coming down out there.”

“Hey, you mind if we come in and ask you a few questions?” Rachette pushed a hand on the door and took a step inside. “Nothing bad about you guys. We just have a few questions about your next-door neighbor.”

The man held his ground, blocking the entryway, and then eyed Wolf. “Okay. Come in. Can you keep on the rug, though, please?”

Rachette stepped into the warm condo next to a kitchen table and Wolf piled in after him.

The man closed the door and put down three darts next to a bong on the coffee table. A television was turned way up, golf commentary competing with music blaring from a stereo in the corner of the room.

“What can I help you guys with?”

“You know your next-door neighbor, Barbara Lingmerth?” Wolf asked.

“Yeah, I guess. Kind of a crazy old Australian lady.”

“What do you mean, crazy?” Rachette asked.

The man shrugged. “I don’t know. Just … with the accent. The intensity, I guess.”

Rachette nodded. “Okay.”

“Does she live alone?” Wolf asked.

“Yes.”

“Ever have any visitors?”

“No, not that I’ve ever seen. I guess she has a son and three grandchildren in Perth, I think it is. They don’t come here. She goes there every few months.”

Wolf nodded. “Have you seen her today?”

He shook his head. “What happened to her?”

“We’re not able to comment on that right now, sir,” Rachette said.

Wolf eyed the two men in the kitchen.

One of them shook his head and said something to the other.

“What’s that?” Rachette asked, nodding to the two men.

The man raised his eyebrows and looked back at Rachette. “Nothing.” He mumbled something to the man next to him and shook his head.

“You got a problem over there?” Rachette asked.

The man looked at him. “You mean, do I have a problem with county employees who steal the hard-earned money I gotta pay in taxes and use it for their personal use?” He shrugged. “I guess I got a problem with that.”

Rachette’s face went sour, and Wolf barely managed to keep his face expressionless. It was the last thing either of them expected to hear.

“Yeah, better lay off the doobie, man.” Rachette put his thumb and finger next to his lips. “Got yourself a nice case of paranoia going there.”

“Oh, really? So you’re saying that news story isn’t true? I don’t think it’s paranoid to agree that it’s corruption when law enforcement siphons off public resources from elsewhere, like public schools, to pay your overstaffed department with over-the-top wages.”

Rachette looked stumped. “What news story?”

Wolf steered Rachette toward the door. “Thank you, gentlemen. You can get back to your game now.”

They walked out the door and into the raging blizzard again.

CHAPTER 13

“WHAT NEWS STORY?” Rachette blew on his hands and shook the snow off his hat, sending a flurry of ice chunks skating across the dashboard.

Wolf brushed the ice back at Rachette. “I have no idea.”

“What time is it? It must have been on tonight, on the local channel. What was that guy talking about?” Rachette wiped some fog off his window. “Freakin’ hippies.”

Wolf pulled out of the condo complex and back onto 734 southbound toward town.

“What news story is this guy talking about?” Rachette asked.

Wolf was ready to tell Rachette to shut up but realized his sergeant detective was talking into the phone.

“Yeah?” Rachette nodded and looked at Wolf. “What? Are you serious?”

Wolf concentrated on the road, which was elusive behind the raging snow. The night sky ahead glowed, telling him they were close to the edge of town now.

Rachette hung up. “Charlotte says they ran a whole story on the Sheriff’s Department tonight on Channel 11. They had pictures of MacLean’s house.” Rachette eyed him. “And I guess they were showing pictures of your ranch property, talking about how you’re paid more than the county allows. They were interviewing Adam Jackson about it. It’s stupid. Gary Connell gave you that property. You didn’t buy it.”

Wolf said nothing, thinking about Judy Fleming and Adam Jackson. They’d proven they had plenty of media contacts over the past few months, as evidenced by Jackson’s loud entrance into town. Was this retaliation against MacLean’s play of using Wolf’s rescue incident to make the department look good?

They drove in silence for the rest of the way, and Wolf tried to keep his mind off the ensuing political shitstorm. Instead, he concentrated on the mystery of what had happened to Lauren Coulter and the real storm outside.

It was 6:30 p.m. by the time they reached the Mackery gas station, which was ablaze with lights and visible from a good distance.

Pulling in, Wolf edged up to the windows of the convenience store and parked, noting the one vehicle covered in snow around the corner.

“What kind of car is that?” Wolf asked.

Rachette leaned forward. “I’ll be damned. Looks like an Audi SUV under that snow. Black. Just like Lauren Coulter’s.”

They got out, and then trudged to the side of the building through a drift that reached to their shins.

“Howdy,” Zack, the son of the owner, Ruth Beal, poked his head out of the jangling door. “What’s happening?”

“Hi Zack. We’ll be in in a second,” Wolf said. “Why don’t you go back in and get warm.”

Zack nodded and let the door close.

“Looks like it’s been here all day.” Rachette swiped the snow from the driver’s-side window and peered inside. Lifting the handle, he said, “Locked.”

Wolf tried the rear door, then swiped off the hatchback window and pressed his face to it.

The car chirped and the lights flashed.

“Whoa. Got us an alarm.” Rachette backed away with both hands raised.

Wolf went around the passenger side and checked the doors there too.

The car chirped again with another flash of lights.

Less snow had built up on the passenger side, and he could peer in without brushing any away. A child’s booster seat in the rear with a juice bottle in its cup holder. A doll in a dress and tiara sat discarded in the seat next to it. A set of blue scrubs were crumpled on the floor.

Wolf shone his flashlight into the front seat, which was empty shining leather.

“Call a tow-truck,” Wolf said. “Let’s get this into the station.”

“All right.” Rachette pulled out his phone and huddled next to the building for shelter.

“I’ll see you inside.”

Wolf walked into the convenience store. A strand of sleigh bells and a whirling flurry of snow announced his entrance.

“Hell, if it isn’t the sheriff!” Ruth Beal stood from behind the counter and smiled, revealing a fidgety tongue behind her one good tooth. Hair looked more like something from a science lab than a salon, and her body was thinner than ever.

“He’s a detective now, Mom. Come in before you freeze,” Zack said.

Wolf took off his hat and shook it by the door, then brushed some snow onto the welcome rug and walked in on squeaking boots.

“Nice to see you.” Wolf shook Zack’s hand.

“What’s going on out there? You here to see the black Audi we have for sale? Just kidding. It’s been here all day. I figure after another day it’s ours and we’ll get to sell it. I could use a winter condo down in Arizona, Mexico, or something. Get the hell away from this snow.”

Wolf nodded. “Did you see the car come in earlier today?”

Zack shook his head and turned to Ruth. “Ma.”

Ruth smiled at an episode of Friends playing on a tiny television.

“Ma!”

“What?” She looked up at Wolf. “Hey, there’s the sheriff! How the hell are you?” She stood and coughed, and then sat back down, her eyes drawing back to the television.

Zack looked at him and shrugged, his eyes a roiling sea of resentment and sadness.

“Don’t worry about it. What about your video surveillance? You guys installed a few cameras outside when you did the remodel, right?”

The Mackery had the most prime piece of real estate when it came to catching visitors streaming in from Denver. It was situated on the right side of the road on the northern end of town. Anyone and everyone coming from Denver to ski had to pass the business, a positive asset that had been ignored by Ruth Beal for the last ten years due to declining sanity.

When Zack Beal had moved up from Colorado Springs to look after his mother, he’d secured a loan and remodeled the place to a modern convenience store with two banks of brand-new pumps—a move that had at least quadrupled yearly business, according to Zach.

“Yeah, we got all sorts of cameras out there,” Zack said. “Each pump is monitored.”

“I’d like to look at footage between 11 and 11:30 this morning, if you don’t mind.”

Zack waved Wolf around the counter. “No problem. Come on back.”

Rachette walked in with a clank, bringing a blast of cold air with him.

“Hey, Tom.”

“Hey, Zack. How’s it hangin’?”

Zack smiled, like he wanted to answer with an inside joke but was refraining.

Wolf knew these two frequented the same bars and were good friends.

Rachette smacked the snow off his clothes, slapped his hat against his jeans and walked to them. “What’s going on?”

“We’re looking at the security footage for this morning,” Wolf said.

“Yeah, back here.”

Ruth was standing again, giving Rachette a suspicious eye.

“Hey, Ruth,” Rachette said.

“Who are you?”

Zack led them to the office and a kiosk with a keyboard and dial. The monitor was the size of a respectable TV set. It showed the falling snow outside from the vantage point of six different pump stations represented by six separate squares on the screen.

He typed and clicked for a few seconds, and then with an expert hand he twisted the dial to a certain spot and punched the Enter key.

“Here’s 11 a.m. on the dot.”

Three panels on the screen had vehicles at it. All beat-up trucks being filled by men with a lot of facial hair.

“Take it to 11:12, please.”

“Why 11:12?” Rachette asked.

“Patterson said that was her last financial charge time.”

Zack looked at him. “Whose last financial charge?”

Wolf pointedly ignored the question.

“Right. Sorry.” Zack put the time stamp at 11:12 and pecked Enter again.

Two of the pumps were occupied this time—a blue BMW SUV on one and an old Chrysler sedan on the other. No black Audi SUV.

The man with the Chrysler sedan tapped his foot impatiently, holding the gas nozzle as if he was going to stop it at a certain dollar amount. The guy with the BMW stood staring at the pump, also looking agitated as the gas funneled into his tank.

“What gives?” Rachette asked as the time stamp rolled closer to 11:13 a.m. “Do the time stamps on this footage exactly match the those on credit-card transactions?”

Zack shrugged. “I have no clue about that.”

Wolf watched the screen patiently.

The man with the BMW stepped over the hose and made his way to the passenger-side door. After a quick knock on the glass, the window rolled down and he held up a credit card. A slender right hand reached out and grabbed it, flashing silver rings on three fingers.

“Can you figure out the amount and cardholder for that charge?” Wolf asked.

“Yep. Pump three, 11:13 a.m.? No problemo.” Zack got up and walked out of the cramped office.

Wolf watched the man walk away and the window roll back up. The glare obstructed a view of the person inside, and there was no discernable reflection in the side mirror from the camera vantage point.

The man pumping the gas wore a black winter hat pulled down over his ears. It was difficult to see his face from the overhead angle, but Wolf caught a brief glimpse and thought he looked familiar. “Write down that license-plate number.”

“Already got it.” Rachette held up a notepad.

The man hung up the nozzle, jogged around the back of the car and got into the driver’s seat like he was late for an appointment. The brake lights depressed, exhaust fumes billowed, and the car sped off out of the shot.

“Okay, looks like the transaction was by a credit card owned by a Lauren S. Coulter.” Zack handed Wolf a piece of paper.

Wolf nodded. “Thank you.”

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed, then ripped the notebook from Rachette’s hand.

“Patterson here.”

“Hey, I need you to check on a plate.”

“You got it.” The phone rustled. “Shoot.”

“It’s a blue BMW SUV.” Wolf gave her the model and license number.

“That’s Michael Coulter. Lauren Coulter’s brother’s car,” Patterson said without hesitation.

“That was fast. How’d you know?”

“You guys need to come back into the station.”

CHAPTER 14

LAUREN STOPPED and put her hands on her knees outside the revolving-door entrance to Rodham’s Pub. Catching her breath, she scanned the patrons through the tall windows in front.

They were scrunched together, standing like cattle at a watering hole. There were women in pantsuits with jackets opened, showing skin under unbuttoned blouses. They all smiled, listening to loud men with loosened ties and jackets slung across their arms. A veritable meat market on a Monday night.

It took a few seconds to spot him. He was standing, smack dab in the middle of three women hanging onto his every word.

Keith Lourde.

Her skin crawled as she looked at him. The CEO and CFO of Luanne’s Holdings, the umbrella company that included Luanne’s Sweets and Treats and a commercial real-estate portfolio, looked healthier than the last time she’d seen him, which had been three years ago at her own going-away party. His hair was shorter, clipped neatly, framing a thinner face. There was less chunk and more lean muscle.

She hesitated, thinking of his bared teeth and hot alcohol-stench breath on her face, the way she’d closed her eyes and endured as his strong hands had explored her body, the pain as he’d thrust his fingers inside her.

Inside, he leaned back and laughed at a joke the blonde told him. The bimbo looked proud and pressed her tits into his arm.

Lauren thought of Ella again. She straightened her jacket, wiped the sweat off her forehead, and entered. The air pressure cupped her ears as she entered the revolving door, and then she was inside the hot, sweaty, noisy place.

A bubbly early-twenties woman stood behind a podium. “Hi. Check your coat?”

Lauren took off her jacket and handed it over. “Yes, please.”

The hostess’s eyes explored Lauren’s outfit, her after-work attire—worn jeans and a tasteful flannel shirt—meant for impressing a mountain detective on a lunch date at her house and not a singles cosmopolitan crowd.

The hostess smiled and grabbed it. “Sure.” Handing over a ticket, her eyes lingered on Lauren’s cheekbone.

“Are you looking for a table in the restaurant? Or …”

“No thanks,” Lauren said with a confident smile. “Just meeting someone in the bar.”

She walked past the hostess and into the sea of sweat, spray-on smells, and hormones. Finding Keith Lourde again, she walked by, close enough to pick up the tang of his cologne.

“… and I said screw him, I’ll buy him if I need to. You know …”

Keith was spewing his bullshit all over a brunette.

Lauren walked by without stopping and went to the back of the room. It was tough-going, rubbing up against women who eyed her with distaste and men with other things in mind.

The music was loud and bumping in back, and the people screamed at the top of their lungs in each other’s faces.

“Hey, how are you doing?” A tall man in a suit and tie stepped in front of her. He was young and dumb, with an awe-shucks smile and a bucket of gel on his sculpted hair. His golden drink tilted to one side.

“Not interested.”

His eyes went mean. “Yeah, okay. Nice flannel, dyke.” He remained where he’d blocked her, his attention searching for the next piece of ass.

She raised her eyebrows and squirmed around him, then went into the ladies room.

Four women were at the sinks, leaning into the mirror, plastering makeup on their faces.

She arched her eyebrows in a non-threatening way and approached the herd. “Hi. Sorry, can I get in here?”

Three of the women gave her a glance and ignored her, and the fourth backed up, opening a spot at the second sink. “Sure, here. Sorry, we’re like hogging this entire bathroom.”

“Thank you.” Lauren ran the hot water and splashed her face. Grabbing a wad of paper towels, she wiped off most of her makeup. She looked in the mirror and touched the blackening bruise under her eye.

The four women froze, staring at it with gaping mouths.

“Oh my God,” the girl who’d moved for Lauren said, “are you okay?”

Lauren rolled her eyes and nodded. “Yeah, good as I can be, I guess.”

“How did you get that?”

Digging into her purse, Lauren pulled out her foundation and put a bit on the purple skin. After a quick coat of blush, the bruise had disappeared. “According to him, I did it to myself.”

Their jaws might as well have bounced off the counter.

“Are you kidding me?” one of them said.

“Do you think I could borrow some mascara?” Lauren pointed at a bottle one of the women held.

“Yeah, of course. Here.”

Lauren applied some, and then borrowed some of their lipstick. In two minutes she looked like a new woman, like jeans and a button-up micro-flannel were the new chic.

“Here? You want some of this?” The brunette of the bunch pulled out a bottle of perfume.

“Yes, thank you.”

They giggled as Lauren squinted and lifted her chin, taking the spray on her neck. “Thanks. Okay, how do I look?”

They looked her up and down. The brunette looked unconvinced. “Gotta put your hair down.”

Lauren pulled her hair out of her ponytail and ruffled it onto her shoulders.

The brunette smiled. “Baby, you look hot. Go get ’em.”

Lauren slung her purse over her shoulder and left. Oh, was she ever glad she was done with this scene.

Stepping out into the loud bar again, she tiptoed and craned her neck, spotting Keith at eleven o’clock. Pushing her way through, she had to wave off two more men, but eventually made it.

Keith Lourde loomed feet ahead of her, looking ever the impressive businessman, ever the terrible man. His wedding ring was conspicuously missing. Out of sight, out of mind, apparently.

Lauren watched him work, leaning into the ear of a young woman next to him. His dark hair was cut short, spikey on top with distinguished graying on the sides. His skin was tanned, like he’d just gotten off the plane from someplace warm. His smooth jawline was taut, muscles rippling where his neck met his shoulder. His sleeves were rolled up, displaying his browned forearm skin. Clearly he’d been keeping up with an exercise routine the past few years.

Her plan was simple—extract money from the guy or she was going to end her three-year silence. Ruin his family life, or at least put a major dent in it. How he’d managed to keep a family this long was beyond her.

“… so I say, if it’s a good deal, then jump on it. You remember that, okay? You have to know when to spot a good deal. But more importantly, you have to—”

“Be willing to act on it.” Lauren poked her head in. “Isn’t that how that bogus crap line goes?”

Keith Lourde’s face twisted in utter annoyance, and then he recognized her and smiled like someone was holding a gun to his head.

“Lauren Coulter,” he said with a laugh. “Wow, you’re the last person I ever thought I’d see here.”

“Here I am.” Opening her hands, she could tell he was remembering the last time they’d seen one another. “How’re your wife and kids doing?”

Keith’s eyelids lowered halfway and he stared at Lauren with undisguised contempt.

“You have a wife and kids?” One of the three women backed up a step.

“Used to,” Keith said, beaming a winning smile. “I mean, I still have the kids. The wife and I broke up two years ago.”

This was news to Lauren. Bad news. Because three years ago, Lauren had been attacked in her office by Keith Lourde, barely escaping his clutches when an overnight janitor had heard her cry for help and knocked on the door. Bad news because Keith Lourde was an eligible bachelor with a cushy job and no family left to lose.

She could still threaten to go to the cops, though. And if he called her bluff?

Shit. Her tenuous plan was unraveling.

“Can I help you?” Keith smiled at her, like he sensed the news of his breakup with his wife somehow bothered her immensely.

“Could I speak to you for a few moments, Keith?” She looked at the three women in turn. “I’m sorry. I’ll only steal him for a few seconds, I swear.”

The three women looked at each other, then back at Keith.

Keith was in heaven. Four women fighting for his attention. He put a manicured paw on the tall one’s shoulder. “I’ll be right back. Don’t you go anywhere.” He looked at Lauren with a this better be good expression and led her by the elbow to a round table near the mahogany-paneled wall.

Like someone had laid a deadly python on her shoulders, Lauren cringed at Keith’s touch and had to force herself to move normally.

“Here okay?” Keith sat down on one of the stools.

“Sure.” Lauren rounded the table and sat next to him.

Keith noted her proximity, and then caught a waitress’s arm on the way by.

“Yes?” The waitress looked down at his hand, playfully pretending to care that he’d invaded her personal space. “Oh, it’s Mr. Lourde. What can I get my lord?”

Keith smiled.

Watching him work made the imaginary snake on Lauren’s shoulders slither and contract.

“I’ll take the usual. Make it a triple, please.”

“And what about that?” The waitress pointed at the honey-colored liquid nearly topping the glass in his hand.

“This is what I’m drinking now. When you get back I’ll be drinking what you bring.”

The waitress smiled and rolled her eyes, then looked at Lauren like she was a hooker. “And for you?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

Keith watched the waitress’s ass leave the vicinity.

“Enjoying bachelor life, I take it?” Lauren asked.

Keith sucked down a third of his Scotch—and she knew it was a Scotch, and she knew it was at least his fifth of the night by the way his eyes were darting all over her body—and then set it down with a smack of his lips.

“I am.”

“How’s the company doing?”

“I’ve pretty much reversed the downward slide you put us in. We’re on the way back up.”

Lauren nodded, pretending she was impressed. The “downward slide” he was referring to was the across-the-board changes she’d made to the ingredients of every Luanne’s Sweets and Treats product—switching artificial sweeteners and preservatives to all natural ingredients.

A year before her father had passed, her mother had died of cancer. There was no way she was going to peddle products to children across the world with ingredients that caused the very disease that had killed her mother. The changes had meant that some products had become unviable, rotting on the shelves within a few days after delivery rather than lasting months or even years like before. Those products had to be cut, and with them a few hundred employees and a lot of the company’s bottom line.

She would’ve done it the exact same way over again.

“Hasn’t your brother told you about our fourth-quarter results this year?”

She shook her head.

“Oh, that’s right. You don’t”—he raised the pitch of his voice in a mockery of Lauren—“want anything to do with Luanne’s Sweets and Treats anymore.”

She blinked, and then plastered a smile on her face. “No. I’m happy up in Rocky Points.”

“Is that where the hell you went?” Keith looked around the room and sucked another third of the glass down. “I thought it was Vail.”

“Nope.”

“What do you want?” Keith sucked on an ice cube and looked her in the eye. There was a demon lurking there, she knew. She’d met it, and now she was going to have to risk meeting it again.

“I need some money.”

Keith looked at her like she was putting him on, and then shook his head and sipped his drink.

The waitress came up and put the fresh Scotch down.

“Yes! There she is! Perfect timing, my love.”

“Twelve bucks.” The waitress held out a hand.

Keith whipped a twenty out of his wallet and gave it to her. “Keep it. Make sure you use it to re-up that gym membership of yours. Your ass is perfect.”

“So you told me last time.” The waitress disappeared into the crowd.

Keith made love to the first sip of Scotch, and then with just a millisecond’s hesitation, like he’d misjudged it by an inch, he put down the glass.

Lauren’s watch said 6:25, but it felt much later. She’d been running continuously for the past twenty-five minutes, first from the bank to her first guess around the corner, then straight here in a full sprint. Her legs ached. Her body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

She did some quick math. It would take at least three hours to get to Rocky Points, probably four or more if it was snowing a little. And if it was snowing a lot like the radio was saying it was? How long would that take? Would they close I-70 at Eisenhower Tunnel or Vail Pass?

“Listen,” she said, “I’m dead serious. You used to always talk about how you keep money in your office safe. I’m desperate for some cash.”

He glared at her. “What the hell? What are you even doing here? Why are you in town?”

“Visiting my brother.” The words just popped out of her mouth.

“Oh, yeah. I wondered why he called in sick from work. Just assumed he was on another bender.” He did some thinking and tilted his head. “Oh, I get it now. Why don’t you just give him the money? Wait a minute, you’re out of money too?”

She studied Keith’s face. Out of money too? What did that mean? Was her brother out of money?

She recovered and grabbed his glass. Taking a sip, she shrugged. “It’s after bank hours.”

“And you need it now?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Jesus. He needs to run with better people. If I didn’t have a contractual obligation with the board to keep him on as my underling I would’ve fired him the day I stepped into your office.”

Weaseled your way into my office, she thought.

“How much do you need?” he asked into his glass.

“Ten thousand.”

He shook his head, studying the ice. “I’ve missed you, you know.”

She tried to keep her breathing normal. “Really.”

“Yeah, really.” He looked at her with a hurt expression.

She pulled her eyebrows together. A sudden thought came to her. “Do you even remember the last time we saw each other?”

He tilted his head and looked up at the ceiling. “Of course. Your going-away party at the office.”

She studied his face. Had he been too drunk to remember what he’d done?

“I was shitfaced … but I meant what I said that night.”

She studied his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“About loving you.” He looked at her, his eyes twinkling with sincerity. “I meant it. I know it was stupid to say, and sudden, and … shit, my wife had been at the party earlier in the night. I was married, for God’s sake. With two kids. I shouldn’t have pulled you aside like that. But I just had to tell you. I mean, you were leaving, right? Off to nursing school in Boulder, out of my life. Out of everyone’s lives forever.”

She froze, studying his eyes. He was serious. “You don’t remember later that night?”

He furrowed his brow, as if searching his memories, and then gave an embarrassed grin. “No. I … woke up in my office the next morning with my pants around my ankles and a splitting headache. I do remember that, but not much else about the night before. Why?”

Her watch said 6:31.

When are you coming back, Mommy?

She swiveled toward him and put a hand on his thigh. “Please, Keith. I’m asking you as a friend. I need this money. I can pay you back within a couple days. But this is really important.”

Keith straightened his posture and looked down at her hand.

“You do still keep that kind of cash in your office safe, don’t you?”

He nodded. “I’m in your old office now. It’s a bigger safe.”

She waited for him to think it through.

“All right. I’ll give you the cash.” He rolled his eyes and gave her a genuine smile.

“Oh, thank you so much.” She looked at her watch again. “We need to go now.”

“All right, all right.” Keith set down the glass, then thought better of it and drank down the rest of the liquid.

When he stood, Lauren pretended not to see the erection tenting his pants.

“I need to get my coat from the hostess.” He adjusted his crotch and headed back into the throng of people.

For an instant she held back, frozen, watching him go. Then she followed, past the three women, who looked at him with disappointment and at her with scathing hatred, and up to the bubbly hostess at the entrance.

Keith handed her a ticket from his pocket and Lauren passed over hers.

They stood in awkward silence, all the while Keith staring at her body like it was something he desperately wanted to eat.

“Here you are, sir. Ma’am.”

Keith grabbed his jacket and nodded, then walked to the revolving door.

“Aren’t you going to put on your coat?” Lauren asked, donning on her jacket. “It’s freezing out there.”

He stopped and smiled at her, and she saw the demon dance behind his eyes. “Oh yeah. I completely forgot.”

She let him lead the way out the door, out into an evil world that was conspiring against her every move.

CHAPTER 15

“PATTERSON’S ON HER WAY,” Rachette said as he walked down the aisle through the stadium seats of the situation room.

Wolf stood at the front of the college lecture hall-like space, sipping his cup of burnt coffee as he stared out the western windows. The lights on Main Street lit cones of angry, sideways-falling snow.

Rachette sat down in a seat next to Hernandez and blew on his coffee. “Have you seen that news story yet?”

“No. What story?” Hernandez asked.

“There was some—”

Wolf spun around. “Where was she?”

Rachette froze with his coffee to his lips. “Patterson?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. I just saw her. Maybe takin’ a leak or something?”

“Not taking a leak,” Patterson said as she entered the back of the room, talking as if to a two-year-old. “Getting my laptop.”

Rachette sipped his coffee.

Behind her, Sheriff MacLean strode in with Barker on his heels. MacLean looked at Wolf with what looked like trepidation, Barker with a shit-eating smirk.

Wolf remained at the window while they sat, MacLean separating himself by taking a second-row seat.

Patterson made her way to the desk at the front of the room and hooked cables into her computer.

“How about Lorber?” Wolf asked.

Patterson looked up. “He and his team are still up there. We’ve been talking, and he’s sent me all he has so far.”

“All right,” Wolf said. “So let’s have it.”

Patterson clicked her keyboard and a picture flashed on the projector screen at the front of the room. It was the dead nanny, sheltered beneath a canvas tent and brightly lit by overhead floodlights.

“We have Barbara Lingmerth from Perth, Australia. Lorber sent me a scan of her prints, and we’ve confirmed her identity with the Department of Immigration. She lives alone, no next of kin here. Her son and three grandchildren live back in Perth.”

Patterson clicked the keyboard and another picture flashed up, this time a close-up of the mutilated body from the breasts up.

“Damn.” Rachette squirmed in his chair.

“According to Lorber, the tracks in the back of the house, the blood spatter the dogs found, and the injuries and blood spatter on her lower body indicate that she was marched out into the woods by a man wearing boots—she in only her socks—where her throat was slit from ear to ear, severing every artery and vein you can think of in her neck.”

A picture of the knife flashed up.

“Here are some photos of the knife, which is now in our lab. Lorber’s assistant was unable to get any full prints off it. Only a couple of partials that are not matching anything in the databases. As you can see, it’s a kitchen paring knife. Two-and-a-half-inch blade. It’s impossible to make a cut that deep with one pass. The trachea has three separate cut marks.”

Hernandez made a disgusted sound and shook his head.

“What about the open shirt?” MacLean asked. “Sexual assault?”

“Lorber thinks the crows did that,” Patterson said. “There was no bra found. She must not have been wearing one.”

“We’re going with a male did this, correct?” Wolf asked.

“Considering the size of the footprints taking her out there and the severity of the injuries, definitely.” Patterson clicked again. This time it was a close-up of the knife handle. “This is a knife from a Katsaki Chef series. I looked it up on the internet. But here’s the set of knives found on Lauren Coulter’s kitchen counter.”

She clicked her button and a knife set came up on the screen.

“The handles aren’t the same,” MacLean said. “It didn’t come from that set.”

“These are Cutco knives.” Patterson looked at Wolf. “Someone brought their own blade to the scene.”

“But a kitchen knife?” Wolf frowned. “You’re sure?”

“I talked to Yates. He says there are no other Katsaki brand knives in that kitchen. Online, I found the murder weapon/paring knife as part of a complete set, but you can’t buy it separately. The odds that she only had that particular knife, and none of the others of the same brand, are pretty slim.”

“What about other prints?” Wolf asked. “On the front door, the sliding door downstairs, the knobs, kitchen counter, on chairs?”

Patterson looked at MacLean.

“I’ll figure out where we’re at with that,” MacLean said. “We expedited the knife, but I’ll get the rest of it on the front burner.”

“Then there were the footprints out front.” Patterson eyed Wolf, referring to how they’d already been erased by the time Wolf had returned to the front of the house after discovering Barbara Lingmerth’s body. “Are you sure about those?”

Wolf nodded. “I saw two sets of adult prints and one child’s. I remember thinking that they’d left, and I assumed it was Lauren and somebody else with the daughter.”

“Large prints? Small prints? Male? Female?” MacLean asked.

Wolf gave it some thought. “Male.”

“You’re sure about that?” MacLean asked, his tone accusatory.

Wolf narrowed his eyes. “I can’t say for sure. Let’s hear what you have on Lauren Coulter.”

Patterson slid forward off her chair, then twisted, leaned, and finally teetered to a standing position. With one hand, she picked up her laser pointer and cradled her belly with the other. “I learned that Lauren Coulter’s father was killed six years ago by her ex-husband. This guy.”

She clicked the pointer and a prison headshot of a man flashed on screen.

“Ryan Rome. Serving a life sentence in Sterling, Colorado for the murder of Phillip Coulter, Lauren’s father. According to the police report, our prisoner, Mr. Ryan Rome, hit Mr. Coulter with a baseball bat over thirty times. The murder happened at the family estate in Greenwood Village, Denver. Lauren happened to be in the neighborhood and stopped by, apparently entering the estate a short while after the murder occurred. In her statement, she said she caught Ryan Rome rifling the place, with her father’s dead body on the floor. Then he took the bat to Lauren, hitting her once on the temple, knocking her into a two-day coma.”

Rachette whistled.

From the screen, Ryan Rome smiled pleasantly in his orange jumpsuit, like he was resigned to prison life and rather enjoying it. He was handsome, and without the prison outfit Wolf could picture the man as a successful politician. Or maybe it was the attire that gave him that impression.

“Lauren was six months pregnant at the time,” Patterson said. “The baby was fine and grew up to be her five-year-old daughter, whom we know today as Ella Coulter. And, yes, I confirmed that Ryan Rome is the father.”

She pressed the pointer button and then there was a photo of Lauren father’s dead body lying on a Persian rug covered in blood, his head turned into road kill. Blood spatter painted the walls, the mahogany desk, the bookshelves, and the surrounding furniture.

“Okay, we get the point. Sheesh Patterson.” Rachette looked out the window behind Wolf.

“Just showing everyone what kind of guy I’m talking about.”

Patterson clicked the button and a close-up picture of a piece of jewelry came up on screen. It was a hexagonal cut stone that looked like blue glass, surrounded by a doughnut of diamonds.

“This is the Coulter family heirloom known as the Glacier, a pendant rumored to be worth more than two million dollars. It’s a blue diamond surrounded by more than a few karats of smaller blue diamonds. All set in twenty-two-karat gold. When they found Ryan Rome, this was in his possession.

“The police report has Ryan Rome stating during his arrest, quote: ‘That bastard crossed the wrong guy, and I was just taking what was rightfully mine.’” Patterson looked at Wolf. “Exactly the terminology that was used in the email Lauren Coulter received this morning at 7:37 a.m.” Patterson pushed her button.

“Which brings us to our email in question.”

The email flashed on screen.

Hi Lulu. I hope you and Ella are doing great. I think I might come see you, whether you want me to or not. Whether you think it’s even possible or not. I need what’s rightfully mine.

“Aha. Whether you think it’s even possible or not,” Rachette said. “He’s talking about how he’s in jail and it’s impossible to see her but he’s gonna anyway.”

“Rightfully mine—same terminology that he used when he was arrested for the dad’s murder,” Hernandez said. “Sure sounds like Ryan Rome.”

“Despite the claim in this email, Ryan Rome is in Block C, cell 41, in the Sterling Correctional Facility right now,” Patterson said. “And, yes. I checked.”

Rachette shrugged. “So he’s pulling the strings from inside. He has a contraband cell phone and he’s using it to run a crew out here.”

“The safe door in Lauren Coulter’s study was wide open today,” Hernandez said. “Emptied of everything but the deed to the house. It’s not a bad theory.”

“See?” Rachette said. “There’s a crew on the outside coming after this piece of jewelry inside her safe. Worth two mil? It’s a good motive.”

MacLean cleared his throat. “All right, reel it in. Let’s get all the facts here before we start spouting off theories. What’s this about Lauren being involved with her father’s murder? Is there validity in that?”

Wolf bristled at the insinuation that Lauren could be involved in killing somebody, but held his tongue. Because it was becoming clear that he knew almost nothing about this woman.

Patterson gestured to Rome’s picture. “According to the Denver PD report, Ryan Rome made assertions at the time of his arrest that Lauren Coulter had put him up to everything. He stuck to a story that they were working as a team and were going to take the jewels, steal a bunch of money from the family company, and run. Ryan Rome stuck with this story through the court proceedings, too.

“Lauren Coulter painted a completely different picture, though, reporting that Ryan Rome had been cheating on her with various women. Ryan Rome worked for the family business as operations manager for the eastern US. He would go on business trips for weeks on end, and Lauren said there was more hanky-panky than work being done on those trips.

“She said that Rome had been cheating on her. Her father, Phillip Coulter, had found out through a whistleblower at one of their eastern offices. Phillip Coulter then hired a PI, who followed Rome and got plenty of photo evidence of him with another woman. Her father took the evidence to Lauren. Lauren filed for divorce, citing said evidence of adultery as grounds.

“Lauren said in her statement that her father was going to fire Rome the day of her father’s murder. She thinks that’s what must have set Ryan Rome off.”

“And the email that Lauren got today?” Wolf asked. “Can you trace it back to Ryan Rome? Sterling Correctional Facility?”

Patterson pointed at the screen with a green laser. “This email Lauren received yesterday looks like it was from Ryan Rome. But it’s untraceable. Could have been routed through a masking service online. It’s impossible to figure out where it originated.”

“Yeah, but it’s him,” Rachette said. “He’s using the same terminology that was in the police report. He’s pissed. He wants that medallion. Wants what’s rightfully his.”

“Pendant,” Hernandez and Patterson said in unison.

“Whatever.”

“Why? What use is the pendant to him?” MacLean asked. “The guy’s rotting in jail.”

Rachette shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he owes a favor to someone on the outside. Has some outstanding debts, and some bad guys want him to pay or else they’ll take out someone he cares about on the outside. Or maybe the bad guys are threatening to take him out on the inside. You know, there’ve been six inmate murders in Sterling in the last, what, three years? I got a Nebraska buddy who works there. Place is one of the deadliest prisons in North America.”

They stared at him.

Rachette sipped his coffee and sat back.

“And why telegraph what he’s going to do before he does it?” Wolf turned toward the window again. “Why send the email?”

“The only reason would be to instill fear in Lauren,” Patterson said. “To let her know who she’s dealing with.”

“Then why make it untraceable?” Wolf asked.

The room went silent for a few moments.

Flakes whipped past the lights outside. The curbs had disappeared, covered by a smooth blanket of snow.

“The phones,” Wolf said, turning back to the room. “Let’s go over the phones.”

“As I said earlier, I ran Lauren Coulter’s phone records.” Patterson picked up a packet of printed sheets. “She received a call from a burner phone at 7:40 this morning.”

“Three minutes after the email she received?” MacLean asked.

“Right. The call lasted thirty-four seconds.” Patterson glanced at Wolf. “Then Chief Wolf called her at 10:26 a.m.”

“She let the call go to voicemail,” Wolf said.

“And that was it for her phone activity,” Patterson said. “I can infer from the next ping cycle that she turned her cell off before 10:28, which was two minutes after your call. There’s been no activity since.”

Wolf nodded for her to continue.

She pulled the elastic band of her pants up onto her belly. “I took the burner number that called Lauren at work at 7:40 a.m. and then checked those records. That phone, the burner phone, made two other calls in its entire history. And those calls were made this morning to Michael Coulter, Lauren’s brother—one at 9:05 a.m. and one at 10:31 a.m.—which led me to look into him.” Patterson pushed the pointer button again, and a picture flashed up.

The man was dressed in a suit and tie, like it was a company headshot. Wolf recognized him from the Mackery gas-station footage. His smile, the squint in his eyes, the facial features, the reddish tint to his brown hair—he looked very similar to his sister but his face was well weathered, looking at least ten years older.

“Michael Coulter is four years Lauren’s senior,” Patterson said. “Works at Luanne’s Sweets and Treats as the chief operating officer. And his DMV file shows he drives a blue BMW SUV. The car in the footage of the Mackery gas station.”

“Okay, tell me about his phone calls. Did you learn anything from those?”

Patterson took a deep breath and picked up a piece of paper from the table.

“Michael Coulter was in Denver when he received the 9:05 a.m. call from the same burner phone that had called Lauren earlier. Then he called his work. I talked to his secretary. She says he called in sick. Right after Michael Coulter received that call he must have started driving up here, because at 10:31, an hour and a half later, we have him just south of Vail when he receives the call. After that, he has no activity, but his latest ping was up here in Rocky Points at 1:10 p.m. this afternoon. According to the ping cycles, his phone was shut off shortly after.”

“Where did he shut it off?” Wolf asks.

Patterson walked to her computer and clicked the mouse. A map flashed on the projector screen. “Here.”

A red shaded circle overlaid a satellite view of a wooded canyon with a single road.

“They filled up at the gas station and went up Rainbow Creek Canyon,” Wolf said.

“That’s a quarter-mile-radius circle,” Patterson said. “Luckily there’re not many houses that far up the road. Only two houses fall into the zone, here and here.”

“Rachette, you’re coming with me.” Wolf walked up the side aisle of the room.

“Whoa, what about me?” Hernandez twisted in his chair.

“I need you and Barker cracking the whip on that crime scene. Go up there, get any print samples they’ve lifted, and bring them back. You and Patterson keep us posted on what you find. Let’s move.”

MacLean was out of his seat and coming up behind. When they reached the doors and went into the squad room, MacLean grabbed his shoulder. “I need to speak to you.”

Wolf rolled his eyes. “Yeah, about the news story? We’ll have to deal with that later.”

“No.” MacLean closed his mouth as Rachette came walking up.

“What’s up?” Rachette looked at them.

“Detective Rachette, we need a moment.”

“No,” Wolf said. “We don’t need a moment, Detective Rachette. We need to stop wasting time and go right now.”

Wolf grabbed Rachette by the sleeve and led him out of the squad room.

CHAPTER 16

LAUREN REMEMBERED how the elevator’s excruciatingly slow pace had bothered her all those years ago. Now it was worse than torture, watching the lights climb their way toward the twenty-third floor while cooped in the tiny box with Keith Lourde. She could feel his gaze crawling up and down her body.

“Geez, you’re really in a hurry, huh?”

She nodded. “Kind of.”

“Well, almost there. I swear there’s an army of goats in the basement that powers these things.”

She managed to eke out a smile.

Finally, they reached the twenty-third floor. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open.

“After you.” Keith waved a hand.

She hesitated for a moment and then stepped forward into the elevator lobby. Swinging right toward the glass-enclosed offices of Luanne’s Sweet’s and Treats corporate, she felt a strong déjà vu sensation, like she’d made the walk thousands of times before. Of course, that was because she had made the walk thousands of times before. First as a daddy’s-girl underling, then as a woman who’d worked her way into senior management after her mother’s cancer, and finally as CEO of the company, taking over in the wake of her father’s murder.

She hated the place, and given the circumstances, had the overwhelming urge to get the hell out and never look back.

But Ella’s beautiful, smiling face kept her feet moving.

Lauren waited while Keith swiped his magnetic card.

The doors clicked and she pushed inside. It was just as she’d remembered it—a maze of low cubicles in the center ringed by glass-enclosed offices, only those on the west side having windows that looked out onto the world.

“Same office, right?” she asked.

“Of course. I’m not going to give up a corner office if it’s handed to me.”

She’d vowed to never again set foot in this office as long as she lived. But now she was here and the terrible memories were flooding back. She relived those final moments in the board meeting when she’d quit. That group of chauvinist assholes couldn’t have looked happier if she’d stripped naked and danced on the table for them.

“There’s nobody here.” Lauren held out her hands.

“Nope. The company has been frowning upon overtime nowadays.”

“That’s good. Better for people to get home to their families,” she said, hiding her disappointment. She’d assumed there would be late stragglers in the office.

They walked in silence and she checked her watch for the fiftieth time—7:03. “So how are your two boys doing?”

“Eh.” Keith shrugged.

Lauren got the uneasy feeling she was being marched to a torture chamber.

Keith pulled ahead as they neared the big wooden door to the corner office. The blinds on the windows were closed, blackness bleeding through the slats.

With another electronic chirp, his door clicked and he pushed it open.

Taking off his coat, he walked in first. “Come on in.”

He disappeared into the darkened interior.

She watched his black silhouette appear against windows that looked out onto the skyline of downtown Denver. He flicked on his desk lamp, and the tiny pool of light gave her enough courage to enter.

Stepping inside, she flinched at the wooden door clicking shut behind her.

“So?” Keith had miraculously produced a raised glass of Scotch in his hand. “What do you think of your old office?”

Lauren made a show of looking around. The décor was over-the-top masculinity. Her hardcover and paperback collection had been replaced with leather-bound volumes. Her white glossy table with four thin chairs had been replaced with a thick, wood version surrounded by leather seats. A matching leather settee sat against one of the windows. His desk was solid and heavy-looking, and she pitied the men who must have gotten hernias moving it in here.

“You want one?” Keith raised his drink.

“No, thanks.”

“Come in. Take of your jacket. Sit.” He walked to a pair of leather couches.

Lauren fixed her eyes on the safe, which she knew to be behind the painting of her father on the south wall.

“Oh, right.” Keith threw the liquid down his throat and put the glass down on the table between the couches. “The money. I forgot, you’re in a hurry.”

“You didn’t change the portrait,” she said.

“Nope.” He walked to the painting, swung it out, and fiddled with the dial behind it.

Lauren stared at the smiling portrait of her father, wondering whether he was watching from somewhere right now. She decided he was, because the thought gave her strength.

Keith opened the safe and backed away. “There. Take what you need.”

She hesitated for a second, and then walked to the open lead door.

There was nothing inside.

Crushing arms wrapped around her body, pinning her own to her sides.

“Oh, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.” He bit her ear and moaned, and hot breath shot out of his nostrils.

She stiffened every muscle in her body, thinking only of the teeth clamped on her ear lobe.

Groping one breast, then the other, he bit down harder on her ear.

“Stop biting me,” she said, trying to sound more annoyed than alarmed. “Jesus, let’s start gentle and then get to the hard stuff.”

Keith hesitated, letting go of her breast, and then opened his mouth and ran his lips down her neck. “Ha … you’re playing with me.”

She put her head forward, approximated where he was, and then wrenched it back as hard as she could. There was a thud and a sharp pain, and she realized it was his teeth digging into her skull.

He let go.

She turned around with bared teeth, her hands pulled into fists, her arms tense and shaking.

Blood gushed through his fingers as he staggered back. “Ah, you bitch! You fucking bitch!”

With ferocious speed she stepped forward and kneed him in the crotch, just below his bulging erection. To lose this battle was to lose her daughter. And that wasn’t an option.

“Ungh.” Keith doubled over onto his knees and rolled onto his side.

She lifted her foot and stomped on the side of his head. His skull thumped against the ground, sounding like she’d dropped a bowling ball on the short pile carpet.

He lay still, then stirred, slowly at first. Then he shook his head as if he’d momentarily blacked out and was waking up. He bared his teeth and put both hands on the carpeted floor.

Again, she kicked him. The top of her foot connected upward against his face and she stomped down with her heel on his temple. Then again. And again.

Better not keep us waiting longer than that, or else.

The words repeated in her head, and the hatred boiled over—for the man in Rocky Points, and for the man at her feet.

After Keith Lourde had attacked her that night three years ago, she’d taken her two-year-old daughter and slunk away from her life. Along with nursing school she’d taken self-defense classes, picturing this very moment three nights a week for two and a half years.

And here she was, getting her revenge.

The thought stopped her, and she backed away from Keith, who was now motionless and bleeding from every hole in his head.

“Shit.” She bent down and felt for a pulse.

It was there, rapid but weak under her fingertips.

She turned to the safe, staring into the vacant space for a few precious seconds.

Pulling out the burner phone, she closed her eyes and steadied her breath. She dialed.

“Yes?”

“Hi. It’s me.”

“I know. I’m not expecting any other calls on this phone but you, Lauren.”

“Right. Listen, I got the money and I’m on my way up.”

“You’re stationary at 17th and Curtis Street in downtown Denver. A big difference from being on your way up.”

Her nerves fired all at once.

“That’s right, Lauren. I can see exactly where you are.”

“I’m leaving now. It might take some time with the snow.”

Silence.

“Hello? Are you there?”

“Call the phone number the second you get into Rocky Points. You’d better drive fast.” The line clicked dead.

She took off running, out the heavy door of her old office, which used to be her father’s, which now had a dying man lying on the floor.

“Dammit.” She stopped at a cubicle and picked up a phone. She dialed 91 and hesitated. How fast would they get here? Seconds? Would the security manager in the lobby be alerted and stop her if she called 911? But if left untreated Keith Lourde might die.

She hovered her finger over the 1, and then pushed down on the plunger. Dropping the phone back in the cradle, she ran back to the slowest elevator on earth.

CHAPTER 17

“DAMN, THIS GUY IS CRAZY.” Rachette gripped the ceiling bar.

Wolf watched the twirling red lights of the snowplow pull ahead and disappear into the swirling mist.

“He’s my kind of crazy,” Wolf said, watching the needle pass forty-five miles per hour.

They were on their way up Rainbow Creek Canyon and had recruited the help of Greg Nanteekut, a Rocky Points resident who had gone from local plowman in a beat-up truck to official plow driver for the local division of the Colorado Department of Transportation.

At least a foot of snow had accumulated on the road over the course of the afternoon and evening, and with the twists and turns, many of which had hundred-plus-foot drop-offs into a shallow rock-strewn river, Rainbow Creek Canyon would have been impassible without Nanteekut’s help.

The dash clock said 7:35 p.m. and Wolf had a nagging feeling that Lauren Coulter and her daughter’s lives depended on his pushing the envelope. Then there was the niggle in the back of his brain that they were already too late.

Outside, an angry blur of snow had been kicked up by the plow ahead. Any gains from the cleared roads were lost in poor visibility, so all Wolf had to follow were the cut marks on either side of the road and the flashing red lights. Dangerous, to say the least, but he kept his foot placed firmly on the accelerator.

“Okay, we should be coming up on a gradual right turn.” Rachette’s face glowed from the display monitor of the on-dash computer, which he’d commandeered and swiveled toward himself.

“Shit, wait. It just, like, skipped. It’s gonna be a left.”

The red lights stayed directly in front of them.

“What the hell? But it looks like he’s just going straight, so just—”

Wolf reached over and slammed the laptop lid shut.

Rachette lifted his hands.

The red lights of Nanteekut’s plow veered right and disappeared.

“Whoa.” Rachette pressed his back into the seat.

Wolf let off the gas and pumped the brakes.

Keeping his eyes on the left side of the cut, he turned the wheel gradually, then cranked it hard right to keep off the deep stuff.

The rear end slid out and he let off the brake and corrected the slide.

“Shit … There he is.” Rachette pointed at the windshield.

Wolf pushed the accelerator and the engine revved, all four wheels slipping on the thin layer of snow before catching.

The radio crackled to life. “You still there, Dave?”

Wolf grabbed the radio off the dash. “Yep.”

“You sure you don’t want me to slow down?”

“Nope. Not unless you want to.”

Greg laughed heartily through the tiny speaker. “I’m already going slower than usual. So, I guess I’ll just keep it pegged where I’m at. There’s a real drop-off to the left now, so keep in my path.”

“Got it.” Wolf put down the radio.

Rachette was leaning forward, looking past Wolf. “Drop-off? I can’t see shit out there.”

“That’s kind of the point of having Greg lead the way.”

Rachette leaned back again with a sigh. “Just let me know when we get there.”

It took another twenty minutes of sprint-and-crawl driving to get to the first house, and Greg was idling in the center of the road just past the mailbox marking the property.

The place was on the right, a short drive away from the edge of the road. A jacked-up pickup truck sat parked lengthwise in front of the house, indicating a traffic circle in front, but it was impossible to tell where it began or ended with the smooth layer of snow.

Wolf pulled up behind the plow and put his SUV in park. They donned their hats, zipped their jackets all the way, and stepped outside.

Greg climbed down from his rattling dinosaur of a truck and waded through the snow toward them. “Here’s the first house you were talking about!”

Wolf nodded. “Why don’t you hop back inside and we’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Greg spat through his teeth and nodded. “You got it.”

Wolf eyed the walk from the edge of the road to the front door of the house and twirled his left ankle inside his boot.

“You all right?” Rachette squinted against the flakes, his face red from Nanteekut’s brake lights.

“Let’s go.”

They marched through the snow, keeping their heads low and chins tucked.

A window in front was ablaze, its shades drawn. Wolf and Rachette could just make out the silhouette of a figure looking out. As they reached the covered porch, the front door opened a crack, emitting a slice of light.

Wolf stepped up and pulled his face out of his coat. “Hello, my name is Chief Detective David Wolf, and this is Detective Tom Rachette. We’d like to have a word with you.”

The man was young, early twenties, and looked like he hadn’t showered in a week. His hair was shoulder length and greasy, uncombed with dreadlocks. His pupils were pinpoints, despite the fact that he was looking out into the dark, which told Wolf he was on something.

“A-hey-uh!” The man’s chin bounced like he was shivering when he talked.

Rachette and Wolf exchanged a glance. Rachette took the cue and stepped forward with his hand extended, taking charge of the talking while Wolf stepped back and observed.

“A little cold up here tonight, eh?” Rachette asked with a chuckle.

“Yeah. No crap. It is really dropping out there, sir.” The kid was really pouring on the kiss-ass, trying to direct their attention away from the telltale crystal-meth cat-urine stench flowing out of the front door.

The house was of quality construction, well-maintained outside, treated wood on the front porch. The back of the leather couch on the other side of the window looked expensive. Beyond the furniture, a large television spewed light, a paused video game on the screen. Muffled explosions blasted out of tall speakers.

“This your house?” Wolf asked.

“No, sir. My parents’.”

“Are they here?”

“No, sir. They’re in Arizona. I’m caretaking for the winter.”

“Have you had any visitors today?” Rachette asked.

“No. No, sir. Just me.”

Wolf caught movement at the edge of his vision, in the lower corner of the window. “And what about now?”

He shrugged. “No.”

“Excuse me.” Wolf pushed past Rachette and stiff-armed the door open.

“Hey.” The kid’s protest was weak. He held up both his hands and backed up, letting him inside, not that he had a choice.

Wolf pushed the door all the way and lifted his pistol out of the holster.

“You don’t move a muscle now.” Rachette was behind Wolf and in the kid’s face.

The living room came into view as the door swung open, revealing a coffee table strewn with marijuana clippings, overflowing ashtrays, empty cigarette packs, and a bong. On the leather couch an old black Lab lifted his head and looked at them with red eyes. It slumped back down and dozed, probably sleeping off a contact high.

The man stood frozen with his hands up, his eyes darting between Rachette and Wolf and the paraphernalia on the table.

Wolf pushed his Glock back in the holster. “Have you seen a blue BMW SUV come up here today?”

“A blue … what was that?”

“A blue BMW SUV,” Rachette said. “Got a hearing problem?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Then why don’t you answer the man’s question?”

“Uh, no. I haven’t seen a blue BMW. I’ve just … been playing this video game all day.”

“I’d like to check your garage, please.” Wolf pointed to the left, then right.

“The garage?”

“The garage,” Rachette said.

“Yeah, sure. I guess.” He walked through the living room, waving his hand for them to follow.

The kid padded on his socks through the living room into a large kitchen.

Wolf and Rachette followed, their boots squeaking and leaving chunks of snow in their wake.

“It’s … it’s just through here.” The man pointed at a door off the back of the kitchen. “Garage is in there.”

The kitchen matched the rest of the house—nice, relatively modern, but with the wrong tenant living inside of it. Every piece of countertop was strewn with food wrappers, stacked pizza boxes, and empty beer bottles.

Rachette walked to the kitchen table and pointed at a blackened pipe with a small bag of white crystals next to it.

Wolf nodded and followed the kid to the garage door.

“Please step back,” Wolf said.

The kid did as he was told, keeping his mouth shut, unaware that Wolf and Rachette were well beyond the line of legal entry into the house, and too scared or high to start thinking straight about it.

Wolf twisted the knob and opened the door, letting cold air seep into the kitchen. The garage was a neatly organized two-car space, with a Ford Explorer parked nearest and an empty space next to it.

“That’s my mom’s truck.”

Wolf nodded and let the door shut. “That your truck outside?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s your name?” Wolf asked.

“Gabe. Hunsaker.”

“Gabe, we’re going to let you off this time. You’re lucky we’re not looking for junkies tonight. But if you’re lying to us, and you know about the blue BMW…” Wolf let the words hang in the air.

“No, I swear. I haven’t seen a BMW. I’ve been just sitting here, chilling all day. Nobody came up in a blue BMW. I’ve just been playing video games like I told you.”

It was always tough to read a tweaker. The telltale movements of drug addiction sometimes superseded the telltale movements of lying, or sometimes a tweaker’s interpretation of truth was something else altogether.

But Wolf believed him.

“You know the neighbors up the street?”

Gabe pulled his eyebrows together. “The Mackennas?”

“Yes, the Mackennas.”

Gabe nodded. “Known them all my life. They’ve been our neighbors since I was born.”

“Have the Mackennas had any visitors today?”

Gabe frowned in thought. “I don’t know. I’ve been—”

“Playing your video game.” Wolf nodded. “I know.”

Gabe nodded.

“How far is the Mackennas’ house?”

“Just a quarter-mile or so. You can see it from here. Well, when it’s not a blizzard outside.” Gabe’s lungs rattled and he coughed like he was hacking up an animal.

Wolf waited for him to finish and walked out of the kitchen. “You can carry on, Gabe.” He walked past the sleeping dog and back to the front door again.

“Better stay off the streets when you’re putting all this shit in your body,” Rachette said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m serious.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wolf and Rachette went back outside and high-stepped it to the road, their tracks already smoothed over with freshly fallen powder.

Wolf went around to the driver’s side of the plow truck, hopped up onto the metal-grate step, and knocked on the window.

“Oh, shit!” Greg mouthed as he looked up from a video game on his phone. He rolled the window down. “You scared me.”

“Let’s head up to the next house.”

“You got it.”

Wolf hopped down. By the time he was back in his SUV, Greg was already driving.

Gabe Hunsaker was right; the Mackennas’ house was about a quarter-mile up on the left side of the road, situated on a flat piece of land.

Greg plowed up to the house and then a few yards past. He stopped and Wolf parked, blocking the driveway.

Wolf had been up here before. A mile away was a gate arm that closed off the road ultimately leading to Aspen during the winter months.

If it had been daytime, and clear rather than a blizzard, Wolf knew they’d be looking at a sweeping three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the mountains right now, and Rainbow Creek would be meandering through a flat, snow-covered meadow behind the house.

The house was a single-level affair, more beat up and sagging than the previous residence. The windows were dark.

A sedan was parked out front, covered in a foot of snow. To the left of the house stood a single-car garage and a carport partially shielding an old-model Jeep Wrangler.

“How accurate do you think that cell-phone ping was?” Rachette asked.

Wolf shrugged.

“Because it sure looks like nobody’s home here. If this isn’t the place, then what?”

“There’re two cars,” Wolf said.

“I guess they could be sleeping.”

He zipped himself up and pulled down his hat once again. He stepped out onto the plowed road, then up and over the pile left by Greg’s plow blade.

The sedan in front looked like an eighties- or nineties-model Chrysler or Oldsmobile by the marshmallow silhouette. Not exactly the best car for the conditions in these mountains.

A covered porch with an A-frame portico sheltered the front door somewhat from the elements.

Leading up to the door was a flurry of footprints, well snowed over hours ago, but still apparent.

Wolf pulled out his flashlight. Flipping it on, he swept the beam side to side.

The windows to the right were covered by dented and discolored aluminum blinds. To the left was a stretch of beat-up siding, the single-car garage, and then the carport. The garage was closed and a drift had been sculpted a few feet away, but right near the door the wind had carved down to the ground, revealing two tire tracks in the snow—barely even noticeable.

Wolf knocked on the front door and stepped back.

“Looks like there’re some footprints here,” Rachette said.

Wolf nodded.

“Probably a few hours old. Crap, I don’t know. Can’t tell how many people.”

There was no movement within.

Rachette looked at Wolf, then flicked on his own flashlight and shined it on the window. “Can’t see anything through those blinds.”

Wolf eyed the twin impressions near the garage door again. It was a small garage, but generous enough to hold a BMW SUV.

“What’s up?” Rachette asked.

“There’re tire-tread marks going in … or coming out of the garage.”

Rachette leaned over and put his flashlight beam on the tracks. “Yeah.”

Wolf reached out and twisted the front door knob. Locked.

He went back down the way he’d come and trudged through a foot and a half of snow to the garage door. He gripped the handle and it rolled up easily.

Rachette joined him and flashed his light inside the yawning garage.

It was empty inside—just a piece of cardboard in the center of the concrete floor with a blotch of oil on it. The walls were covered with hanging tools. A riding lawnmower was parked at the rear next to a door that looked like it led inside the house.

“Should we check that door?” Rachette asked.

Wolf stepped onto the concrete and stomped the snow off his boots and jeans, barely feeling any pain through the numbness. He should’ve worn heavy-duty snow boots—the leather of his work boots was fully soaked through, his feet wet and toes starting to freeze.

The inside door was locked too.

Rachette blew on his hands and crossed his arms. “What now? Patterson said Lauren’s brother’s last cell ping was here. We need to figure out how accurate those things are. Way up the canyon from town like this? Probably got an inaccurate reading.”

Wolf stared out into the swirling storm and felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

He pulled it out. “Patterson. Hello?”

“ … sir …” Wolf heard the one word and that was it. The connection sounded like a dial-up modem trying to make a connection inside a jet engine.

“Hello?”

The call dropped so he pocketed his phone. “Let’s get to the truck, get on the radio.”

They closed the garage door, checked the front of the house once again, and made their way to the truck.

Greg was near the back of the plow, smoking a cigarette. “We ready to roll?”

“One minute!”

They sat inside the SUV and Wolf lifted the radio off the receiver. “Dispatch, do you copy?”

“Dispatch, go ahead.”

“This is Wolf, Tammy. Can you please patch us through to Patterson’s phone?”

“You got it. One sec.”

A few seconds later Patterson came on. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s us. What’s going on?”

Patterson’s reaction time was delayed a second longer than normal conversation. “We found a match for the fingerprints on the paring knife.”

“Yeah?”

“Two matches actually. One set is a man named Zeke Jacoway. Lives in Denver, some place in Five Points. Has a rap sheet longer than a roll of toilet paper. Aggravated assault, robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, drugs. Lots of drug charges. Did three years in State in the early two thousands. Been in and out of the system plenty of times since.”

Rachette leaned toward the radio. “Did you say drugs?”

“Yep. Looking at his picture now. Real junkie. Skin and bones. Crazy eyes. He’s been busted for meth, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. Real career type.”

“Long brown hair?” Rachette asked.

“Yeah. You can pull up the picture on the dash computer,” she said.

Wolf was zoning out on the sedan parked in front of the house.

“They found a second set of prints on the blade of the knife. Another partial underneath the blood. This one came up with an immediate match.”

Wolf looked at the radio.

“Michael Coulter,” she said.

“Lauren’s brother?” Wolf asked. “But he was driving toward Rocky Points from Denver when the murder took place. Had to have been.”

“The print wasn’t in blood. It’s a normal oil print, underneath the blood. They found it with the scopes.”

They sat in silence, digesting the information. “So, it’s Michael Coulter’s knife,” Wolf said. “But this Zeke Jacoway guy used the knife to kill the nanny.”

“Looks like it,” Patterson said.

Wolf went back to eyeing the sedan out front.

“Can you send us a photo of this Zeke Jacoway guy on the laptop?” Rachette asked.

“Yeah,” Patterson said. “Already did.”

Rachette gave Wolf a look and opened the laptop. The screen flickered to life and he pressed some buttons. “What the hell? It froze.”

Wolf shook his head and opened the door.

“Where you going?”

“I’ll be right back.”

Wolf followed the previous tracks through the snow and made his way to the sedan. With his forearm, he brushed the snow off the driver’s-side window—it dropped with a whoomp, leaving clean glass beneath it.

He flicked on his Maglite and shone it inside.

The two front seats were ripped, the dark fabric stained. Fast-food wrappers and pop cans littered the floor, a forty-ounce beer bottle joining the pile of trash.

Angling the light to the back seat, Wolf froze the beam on a doll wearing a tiara.

CHAPTER 18

WOLF HELD the flashlight steady as Rachette jimmied open the front door of the house. It cracked and snapped, and then squealed in protest before finally swinging open on its hinges.

Warm air flowed out of the darkness, on it a familiar stench.

“Ah shit.” Rachette covered his nose and backed up a step.

Wolf aimed his Glock and flashlight and stepped inside, breathing through his mouth and readying himself to see more of Zeke Jacoway’s handiwork.

It only took a second.

An elderly couple, both dressed in flannel pants and sweatshirts, were sitting on the couch. The man sat straight, his head back as if sleeping, his mouth agape and eyes closed. The only thing off about him was the neat hole in his forehead, a single stream of blood running out of it, a crimson bolt down his face that disappeared into the neck of his sweatshirt. The elderly woman, Mrs. Mackenna, lay face down in her husband’s lap.

“Damn it.” Rachette flicked a wall switch.

Wolf squinted against the bright overhead light and took in the details. “Careful. Don’t be touching anything.”

“I used my sleeve.” Rachette’s final word sounded like a dry heave.

They’d been executed at close range. The bullets had exited from the back of their skulls, leaving spatter on the velvet couch and wallpaper.

Wolf turned at a cracking noise behind him. A blackened log smoldered inside a fireplace.

“Fire’s not quite out,” Rachette said. “How long can a fire go like that?”

Wolf shrugged. “Long.”

“Look at that.” Rachette pointed at a shattered cell phone on the brick hearth.

A hammer sat conspicuously on the mantel at eye level.

“Looks like someone smashed it,” Rachette said.

Wolf nodded. “Michael Coulter’s phone.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it led us here. And they knew it would.”

“They?” Rachette asked.

Wolf made his way further into the house.

“Ah, they smell.” Rachette kept close to Wolf as they passed the two corpses.

The kitchen was the first room directly off the family room. It was small, the floors linoleum and the walls painted light blue. The pine cabinets were old and saggy but clean and neat. It looked relatively undisturbed, the countertops nice and neat save two water glasses next to the sink.

Rachette stood next to him, looking blanched and deciding whether or not to breathe into the sleeve of his jacket.

Making his way back out of the kitchen, Wolf walked down a darkened hallway and found a light switch. He flicked it on and opened the first door on the left, then flipped the switch there too.

An overhead light illuminated a tiny guest room with a twin bed on one wall and a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor. A few feet away, a box television sat on a chair—a chair matching the ones around the kitchen table. A glass had toppled to the floor, an orange stain darkening the carpet.

A paper plate peeked out from under the bed.

Wolf bent down to get a better look. “Crackers and a square of American cheese. Looks like chocolate-cookie crumbs.”

“Looks like the little girl was in here, right?” Rachette asked. “They have snacks, TV, drinks.”

“Look at this,” Wolf said, pointing at another plate further under the bed.

There was white powder on it, remnants of lines. Next to the plate sat a credit card and a rolled-up one-dollar bill.

Wolf scraped the card closer with his flashlight. “Michael Coulter’s.”

Rachette frowned. “So … Michael Coulter was doing drugs with the little girl in here?”

Wolf shined his flashlight on the pillow. Reaching down, he pinched a long strand of hair between his thumb and forefinger. It was blonde, and straight.

“Looks like Ella Coulter’s hair. Definitely not Mrs. Mackenna’s.”

Wolf nodded.

“So, Ella Coulter was in here,” Rachette said. “And so was Michael Coulter. Sitting on the floor and watching television, snorting lines in front of your five-year-old niece? That’s a good uncle.”

Wolf set the hair back down on the pillow and moved out of the room.

The next room on the left was a small home office, strewn with overflowing boxes of paper and books.

“Looks like the Mackennas were hoarders.” Rachette shined his light inside.

Wolf pushed open the door across the hall and flicked on the light. A queen-sized bed filled most of the space. Framed photographs, looking to be the Mackennas’ grown children with their families, hung on the wall.

“More drugs.” Rachette walked to the bed and bent over a matching dinner plate on the bedspread. “So … Zeke Jacoway is in here doing his drugs, and Michael Coulter’s in there doing his drugs with the girl?”

Wolf stared at the plate.

“What are you thinking?” Rachette asked.

“I’m not sure.” He pulled out his cell phone. There was no service. “Except, it’s going to be a long night.”

CHAPTER 19

THE RADIO SCRATCHED in Wolf’s hand.

“She didn’t answer again,” Tammy said.

“Keep trying.” Wolf turned up the heat a notch, wondering when the warm air coming out of the floor vents of his SUV was going to penetrate his boots.

“All right. I’ll try her office again.”

Tammy went silent. A line of flashing lights materialized down the road. Greg Nanteekut was back, this time leading a line of SBCSD vehicles that included MacLean, Lorber, and some more already cold and tired people whose night had just become a marathon. Hernandez and Barker were helping at the other crime scene and Patterson was still manning her post at the station. They were stretching thin, so Wolf was on the radio, trying to get hold of some help.

“There’s the cavalry,” Rachette said, putting on his gloves and hat again.

“I’ll wait for this call to go through. You go ahead and show them what we’ve got.”

Rachette took a shaky breath and nodded. “All right.” He opened the door and climbed out, letting in a small flurry that settled on the passenger seat.

“Wolf?” a familiar female voice came through the tiny radio speaker in his hand.

“Where the hell have you been?” Wolf asked.

“Well, hello to you too!” Special Agent Kristen Luke of the Denver FBI field office said, her voice dripping with malice. “Doing great, thank you.”

Wolf waited for her to finish a rant he knew was far from done.

“I was taking a shower. Just got home from a fifteen-hour day and I have twenty-two missed calls in the span of seven minutes. What the hell’s going on?”

“We have some missing persons up here and I need your help.” Wolf let off the thumb button and waited for a response that never came. “Hey, you there? Can you hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Sounds like you’re in an airplane hangar or something, but I hear you. I was really looking forward to some shuteye. Can it wait until tomorrow morning?”

“No, it can’t.”

Luke sighed. “What’s going on?”

“We have two missing persons, a nurse and her five-year-old daughter, three dead bodies, and a murder weapon that points to two men from Denver. Normally I’d just drive down there, but it’s an Armageddon snow storm up here and they’ve just closed Vail Pass.”

“So … these two men from Denver have these two missing persons in custody? Or they’ve killed them?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

She sighed again. “Okay, what do you need?”

“The missing nurse and little girl are Lauren and Ella Coulter. You writing this down?”

“No. Just a second … Okay go.”

“We have reason to believe that Lauren might be driving her brother’s vehicle, a BMW SUV.” Wolf gave her the details and license plate. “It’s a new model and satellite navigation comes as standard with it.”

“Okay …”

“So can’t you find it using the satnav in the car?”

Luke gave a lengthy pause. “Yeah. I’d have to call a guy, and then we’d have to go back into work.”

“Good.”

“Good?” Luke snorted. “Damn it. Okay, what else?”

“I want you to go to Lauren Coulter’s brother’s place and check it out.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Says 9:03 here on my dashboard.”

“Thanks, smartass. Address?”

He gave it to her.

“You know you’re going to owe me big time after this, right? You know you already owe me big time.”

Wolf pushed the button again. “Please track the BMW first. I need to know where it went. And I wouldn’t be asking any of this if I didn’t think it was important. Something tells me lives depend on us moving fast.

“All right.”

“How fast can you get back to the office?”

“Give me a half-hour. Assuming the other agent can get there at the same time, I’ll have the location of the BMW shortly thereafter.”

“Thanks. I’ll call you in forty-five minutes.”

“I can’t wait.” She hung up.

CHAPTER 20

LAUREN’S STOMACH dropped to the floor when she read the flashing sign that hung above the highway as she entered Eisenhower Tunnel.

I-70 closed at Vail Pass until tomorrow morning.

“Shit.”

She slapped the wheel and screamed at the top of her lungs as she entered the brightly lit tube. She felt like the granite mountain above her was crushing down, squeezing the air from her lungs.

What was she going to do? This guy would understand, wouldn’t he? She had no control over this situation.

Things had already gone to hell by not getting the ten thousand dollars. Now the chances that she and Ella would survive this whole ordeal were slim to none.

She had gotten the pendant, though. Surely the guy would overlook the measly amount of cash in comparison. What was ten thousand dollars when he had a 1.8 million dollar pendant? Was the money for some sort of broker fee that he needed or something? It made no sense. It was like a street robbery where the thug demanded the money in your wallet and a stick of gum, or else.

Whatever the reason, she had to play it off like she had it. Especially now that she was missing the deadline.

As the darkened hole marking the end of the tunnel came closer, the signs hanging from the rounded ceiling told the story clearly enough—it was going to be bad on the other side. It was a phenomenon that happened often—on the east side of the Continental Divide it was clear and relatively smooth sailing, and then, after passing through Eisenhower Tunnel underneath Loveland Ski Resort, there was a blizzard and a five-mile steep grade that stopped traffic dead in its tracks.

Slow, icy road and heavy snow conditions ahead. I-70 closed at Vail Pass.

As she exited the tunnel the snow hit the windshield like she’d just driven into a carwash.

It was blowing straight into the lights, swirling on a wind that buffeted the car side to side.

She crawled ahead, past a line of flares behind a truck that had careened into a steep slope off to the right, no more than a hundred yards from the mouth of the tunnel.

The lines marking the three lanes were invisible. It looked like a plow had been down the right lane, but that was clogged with eighteen-wheelers moving less than walking speed.

She would’ve bet that Michael didn’t have snow tires, and the slipping and sliding she was doing now told her it would’ve been a safe bet.

And why the hell had that guy called him? Why was her brother being held hostage too? It was something she hadn’t had much time to think about between the bouts of tears, thinking about her daughter. And then there was what Keith Lourde had said in passing about her brother being out of money. Was he out of money? How could that possibly happen, earning thirty thousand bucks a month?

Then there was the email that clearly pointed to Ryan. He was the only person in the world who’d ever called her Lulu. She’d always hated the nickname, but dealt with it while she’d loved him; then, when the marriage had gone sour, he’d used it to antagonize her. And now he was taunting her.

Even though her despicable ex-husband had been rotting in that Sterling jail cell for the past six years, she’d never gotten over the fear of seeing him again. Now she knew it had been her instincts telling her: Beware. The man’s not done with you yet.

He must have met these two guys in prison or something. They must’ve come up with a plan in jail, and now the two guys had been released and were carrying it out.

And now she was stuck, hours away, with no way of meeting the deadline looming in under three hours. What were these guys going to do to her baby?

The thought made her burst into tears again. The road became a blur outside and she felt the sensation of sliding sideways. With a sniff, she jerked the wheel back straight, and sure enough she was sliding back the other way.

For agonizing seconds, she wrestled the wheel, waiting to careen into the concrete next to her, and then finally she pumped the brakes enough to slow down and swerve back straight.

A pickup truck passed by her on the left and she caught a glimpse of a middle finger in the window.

Lauren had seen them.

The idea hit her like a ton of bricks. She could recreate these two kidnappers’ faces on paper as if she’d taken a cell-phone photo of them. Did this guy she’d been talking to know that? He’d seen her artwork all over the walls of her house. He’d seen her studio, her works in progress.

So far, this guy was proving that he liked to cover his bases. He’d been cautious with the phones, shutting hers off and giving her a burner with tracking software installed. After spending time in her house, he would certainly know her ability to identify him was far beyond the abilities of a scatterbrained person talking to a police sketch artist.

She needed to come up with a way to turn the tides on the man, and she could use her artistic gift.

David Wolf.

The handsome detective popped into her brain yet again. She’d known by looking into the man’s eyes that he was better than average. Stronger than average. Smarter than average. He could help her.

She had to get ahold of him. And the closer she got to Rocky Points, the more she thought about it, and the more she was sure that he was her ticket out of this.

Of course, she’d only been on one date with the man. What if getting Wolf involved meant getting the entire Sheriff’s Department involved? What if calling him meant calling the news teams that were apparently tailing his every move?

If the story leaked onto the news that he was helping a damsel in distress with a kidnapped daughter, it would seal Ella’s fate.

“Shit.”

Finally reaching the bottom of the steep hill, Lauren looked at the burner phone and saw there was strong reception as she approached the exit for Silverthorne and Dillon.

She dialed the number and put it to her ear.

“Hello.”

“I’m not going to make it. They closed Vail Pass.”

“I know.”

Silence.

Lauren’s eyes filled with tears again. The guy needed Lauren. He needed his pendant. He wouldn’t do anything to Ella.

“That’s disappointing.”

“You need me. You need this pendant,” she said, her voice a whimper. “I’m a gifted artist. You know that, don’t you? You saw those paintings and drawings all over my house. Those were mine.”

Silence.

“You touch a hair on my daughter’s head and I go straight to the police and draw you three different ways, one with a smile, one with a frown, and one with handcuffs on as you’re getting ass-raped in jail.”

The man chuckled softly, then laughed. “You’re starting to turn me on, you know that?”

“Put my daughter on.”

“She’s sleeping.”

“Wake her up. If you hurt her …” she stopped talking.

“If I hurt her, what?”

Lauren’s tough act cracked. “Just put her on.”

There was a pause, then some rustling. Then the guy said in a soft, creepy voice that made Lauren cringe, “Honey, get up sleepyhead. It’s your mommy.”

“Mommy?”

“Hi baby,” Lauren said through new tears. “How are you doing?”

“Mommy.” She started crying. “When are you coming back?”

“I’m coming back soon, baby, I swear. I’m on my way right now. You stay close to Uncle Mike, okay? Ella?”

“Mommy …” Her cries grew fainter and then there was the sound of a door closing.

“There you have it. She’s fine.”

A truck flew by on the left, laying on the horn all the way past her. She wrenched the wheel to the right.

“I have to stay in Frisco.” She wiped her eyes. “I’ll get back on the road as soon as the pass opens tomorrow morning. I can’t tell you a time I’ll be there because I don’t know.”

The man breathed into the phone.

“You’re going to kill us, aren’t you?” she asked.

“You have no choice but to bring me the pendant and the money and find out. You might be surprised at how kind-hearted I can be. But if you try and contact anyone tonight, if you do anything rash, then I’ll know. The software I put on that phone monitors the text messages and phone calls too.”

Any hope she had for some sort of retaliation or rescue drained out of her.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes. You can track my phone calls. My text messages.”

“That’s right. And if you go exercising that artistic gift of yours, well … I’m a desperate man, Lauren. I have nothing left to lose. I’m perfectly fine saying goodbye to this world and bringing a little girl into the afterlife with me. I could use a companion on the other side. Nobody else will be waiting for me over there.”

Lauren held her breath.

“So quit threatening me.” The man spoke slowly. “Quit gambling with your daughter’s life as if you’re holding any cards. Because I’m the one holding the cards. I have the whole fucking deck!”

The speaker crackled in her ear.

“Okay. Okay, yes.” She spoke in what she hoped was a calming tone to the man’s psychotic brain. “Please, I’m sorry.”

She slowed and exited at the first Frisco exit. Her eyes were too filled with tears so she slowed and stopped at the side of the road.

“You understand me?” the man asked.

“Yes.” Her voice was a weak breath.

“If you try and do anything stupid, then I’ll give up on you. You’re our last hope, mine and Ella’s.”

“Yes. Okay. I know. I won’t let you down.”

“If you try and contact your detective friend, I’ll know.”

She said nothing.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said, though she could think of nothing else but contacting David Wolf. She needed somebody to take this burden. Her heart was crushing under the weight.

“Don’t use your credit cards for the room or for gas from now on.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“Just don’t. You can use some of the cash for that if you don’t have any.”

And if I don’t have the ten thousand either?

There was strain in the man’s voice. Was he worried she would be found in Frisco overnight? Were the cops looking for her because she’d killed Keith Lourde and this man knew it? Was David looking for her? There was a spark of hope after all.

“Or Ella and I will be disappointed.” He hung up and the spark died.

She put the phone down in the center console and looked at her gas gauge. She had a quarter-tank left, which was probably not enough to get to Rocky Points, especially if she had to run the heater all night. Because she was going to have to sleep in the car.

CHAPTER 21

“I SHOULD BE DRUNK RIGHT NOW.” Dr. Lorber leaned over the lap of Mr. Mackenna, pulling aside Mrs. Mackenna’s furry white hair and exposing the gaping exit wound in her skull. “Monday’s my drinking night. Football. Drinking.”

“It’s the playoffs,” Rachette said, keeping his eyes on the ceiling. “Games are on the weekend now and the Broncos suck.”

Lorber peered over his glasses at Rachette, all the while gripping Mrs. Mackenna’s head.

Wolf looked away, finding the county ME’s professional nonchalance unnerving.

“Point-blank. Shot Mr. Mackenna here first, then the missus.” Dr. Lorber pointed a branch-like finger. “You can see how she got hit on the side of her hair by the spray coming out of his exit wound. Her hit’s more in the side of the head, like she was looking at her husband when she got hers.”

Wolf wondered what that had to do with anything, other than to satisfy some sick curiosity inside that head of long hippy hair. “No shells. Revolver?”

Lorber stood up, his white forensic suit swishing as he stepped away, looking like a crane with his long, thin legs. “Nope. Not a revolver.”

“How do you know?” Wolf asked.

Lorber raised a finger and a smile curled his mouth. “See that evidence tent on the coffee table?”

Wolf shrugged when he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Lorber’s pleasure multiplied at stumping Wolf. “The burn mark on the magazine? Hello.”

Narrowing his eyes, Wolf spotted the hole in the cover of the most recent issue of Knitting for Life. A hole the size and shape of a tootsie roll was curled up at the blackened edges, displaying a browned page underneath.

Wolf nodded. “The ejected shell burned the magazine. Good eyes.”

Lorber pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Patterson would have seen that. It sucks not having her up here.”

Wolf ignored him and stared at the smashed smart phone on the bricks of the fireplace hearth.

A tired-looking member of Lorber’s team bent down and snapped another photo of the device, the bright flash reflecting on hundreds of tiny shards of glass and precious metal components.

“It’s all because of this,” Wolf said.

“Because of the phone?” Rachette asked.

The front door opened with an explosion of cold air. Sheriff MacLean stepped inside, tracking in a pile of snow with him, and slammed the door.

“Damn it! What kind of place is this to have a murder scene, and on a night like … ?” He let the words die as he saw the Mackennas on the couch. “Mother Mary …”

MacLean took off his winter cap and looked at Wolf. “Get me up to speed.”

“Lorber was showing me the burn mark one of the spent shells made on the magazine here.” Wolf pointed at the destroyed phone. “I was talking about how this has to be Michael Coulter’s phone.”

“We’ll check the SIM.” Lorber put his hands on his hips.

“It’s Michael Coulter’s,” Wolf said. “The guy with the burner phone called him. Then Michael Coulter came up from Denver, met Lauren at the gas station. They left Lauren’s car, filled up Michael’s with gas, then drove it up here.

“When Lauren and Michael arrived, the culprits saw that Michael Coulter’s smartphone was still switched on and would have GPS location-enabled. Lauren’s was already switched off earlier in the morning. The culprits had probably taken it. They knew his phone would be picking up Wi-Fi signals, transmitting to the cell towers, and that we’d be able to track it. They smashed the phone because you can’t take the battery out of a model like this. They were paranoid, and they thought it was too late, we’d be led right here. And they were right. So they killed the Mackennas, and then upped and left.”

MacLean looked skeptical. “The only way we were led up here was because you saw the nanny’s dead body up at Lauren Coulter’s house.”

Wolf nodded.

“So … they knew you were going to see the nanny’s dead body?” MacLean asked.

“I called Lauren’s phone. Left a message that I was on my way over and looking forward to lunch.”

“So they listened to the voicemail on Lauren’s phone?” Lorber asked.

Wolf nodded. “She shut her cell off minutes after I called.”

“They were really playing phone defense,” Rachette said.

Wolf nodded and the room descended into silence, save the shutter clicks of the digital camera.

“All right, what else?” MacLean asked. “I heard there’s evidence the girl was here.”

Wolf stepped to the back room and MacLean moved to follow.

“Off with your boots,” Lorber said, pointing at MacLean.

MacLean left his boots on the sheet of plastic they’d laid out by the front door. He took a pair of blue booties from the bin and slipped them over his socks, then shook the snow from his jeans.

A few seconds later they were in the room in the hallway.

“Looks like they had things set up in here to placate the girl,” Wolf said. “The little television looks like it was moved in here from the other bedroom. They had snacks there on that plate. Pillows, blankets.”

“And what’s that?” MacLean asked, pointing at the other plate.

“Looks like cocaine.”

“Cocaine?”

“The credit card says Michael Coulter,” Rachette said.

MacLean bent down and took in the scene. “What the hell? Uncle Mikey Coulter comes in here and does a few lines while watching SpongeBob SquarePants with his five-year-old niece?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Rachette scoffed. “Some uncle.”

“The other rooms?” MacLean stood up with a grunt and followed Wolf.

“Looks like they used this room for storage,” Wolf said, standing aside to give MacLean a look. “And here’s their bedroom.”

There were more evidence tents strewn on the bedspread inside the Mackennas’ bedroom.

Lorber appeared in the hall behind them. “Took all of a few seconds to confirm Zeke Jacoway’s prints all over the rest of this place,” the ME said. “The kitchen, bathroom, toilet, all over. Got an immediate match.” Lorber held up his smart phone, indicating he’d used the IAFIS app on his phone. “I also found Michael Coulter’s all over that plate with the drugs and on a water glass next to the sink. And on the snack plate I found Lauren Coulter’s prints.”

MacLean raised an eyebrow and nodded at Lorber. “So we have three players: Zeke Jacoway, Michael Coulter, Lauren Coulter.”

“There’s somebody else,” Wolf said.

“Why?” MacLean eyed him and then pushed past them into the hallway and went to the kitchen.

Lorber nodded and pointed at the water glasses, which had yellow evidence tents next to them. “Got Michael Coulter’s prints on one glass and Zeke Jacoway’s all over the other. As far as the rest of the kitchen, we’ve only found the Mackennas’ prints so far.”

MacLean stepped back out of the kitchen and stared at the bodies. Looking at Wolf he said, “And you think there’s somebody else? Because I gotta tell you, right now, I’m itching to find this Lauren Coulter woman. Right now your date from this weekend’s not looking too good, Wolf.”

Wolf pulled his eyebrows together. “Lauren Coulter? No way. The way I see it, her daughter’s in trouble.”

“That’s not what the proof is telling us, Detective.”

“The proof died with these two people,” Wolf said.

“Convenient.”

“Exactly,” Wolf said. “Think about it. The phones … how did you put it, Rachette? They’re being ultra-defensive with these things. First, somebody calls Lauren at work from an untraceable burner phone. She bolts out of there and comes home. We know that because the GPS data says so. Then they shut off Lauren’s phone, so we can’t track her anymore. Then they call Michael Coulter and shut off the burner phone that called him.”

Wolf pointed at the destroyed cell. “And then Michael Coulter gets up here with a smart phone and they freak out—smash it, knowing we might be led here if I found the nanny, whose body was out in the trees, still warm and bleeding when I called Lauren. They knew I was coming to her house, so they shut off Lauren’s phone and relocated.”

MacLean said nothing, the corner of his mouth turning up.

Wolf waved a hand and rubbed his wire-brush stubble. “What kind of a person goes to all that trouble for the phones? Uses untraceable burner phones. Shuts them off because they know we’ll be able to locate them.”

MacLean stared at him.

“A person who doesn’t want to be caught?” Rachette asked.

Wolf pointed at him. “Thank you. A person who is desperate to not be found.”

MacLean held out his hands and shrugged. “Good point, Sherlock. Where we going with this?”

Wolf pointed at the burn mark on the magazine. “Why would somebody murder these people, then pick up a spent shell?”

“Because they didn’t want these people to talk, and they didn’t want to leave a shell casing with prints all over it,” Lorber said.

Wolf nodded. “We have that type of person, the kind that covers his bases, doesn’t want to be caught.”

They said nothing.

“Then we have another type of person here. One that leaves fingerprints on the toilet, on the vials of drugs they’re ingesting, the water glasses they’re drinking out of, which are left out in plain sight. One of them brings a phone up here, transmitting the whole way, which leads us straight to this house. There’s that type of person we have in play, here. Right?”

Rachette and Lorber nodded.

MacLean stared noncommittally at the table. “I got some news on the way up here about Lauren Coulter.”

Wolf frowned, annoyed his train of thought had been derailed. “What?”

“She was spotted in Denver earlier this evening. Got a call from the DPD. Turns out she visited the CEO of her family’s company. A guy named Keith Lourde. She approached him at a bar in downtown Denver. They went back to his office, where she beat the crap out of him and cleaned out his office safe. Turns out she was at her bank earlier in the afternoon, looking to make a big withdrawal.”

Wolf blinked rapidly, letting the information digest. “Looking to make a big withdrawal?”

“The bank didn’t have the funds to cover the amount.” MacLean raised his eyebrows. “DPD’s got a BOLO out on this woman. So, Detective, let’s start looking at this whole thing with that set of eyeglasses on.”

Shaking his head, Wolf started pacing. “So she was desperate for money because her daughter is being held hostage. What’s this Keith Lourde guy saying?”

“Saying she ripped him off. Seduced him, beat him up, took the money, left.”

“How much money?” Wolf asked.

“Hundred K.”

“A hundred thousand?” Wolf asked. “Of course she was unable to withdraw that amount from the bank.”

“She was trying to withdraw ten K from the bank.”

“Ten thousand?” Wolf frowned. “So … she was trying for ten thousand at the bank, then she stole a hundred thousand from this guy?”

“Keith Lourde is his name. The CEO of their family company.” MacLean nodded, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smile. “Opportunistic actions of a criminal, if you ask me. She couldn’t get ten K, so she goes somewhere else and gets a hundred.”

Wolf waved a dismissive hand. “What about the threatening email she received? What about the daughter in the room over there? What about the nanny?”

“That’s what we need to find out.” MacLean put his hands out. “I’m just saying, you went on a date with this woman this weekend and maybe, just maybe, you’re blind to some things because you’re attracted to her.”

Wolf shook his head.

“Hear me out.” MacLean raised a hand. “I agree with what you say about somebody else being involved here. But what if she’s this other person? She’s the one acting smart, staying away from us while her brother and druggie friend are acting stupid and leading us to them.”

Wolf glared at him.

“Maybe she has some master plan. Maybe that prisoner out in Sterling knew what he was talking about all those years ago, and she’s more dangerous than you think. Tell me, you went on this date with Lauren Coulter—did you see any physical signs of drug abuse?”

Wolf smiled. “You’re kidding me.”

“Answer the question.”

“No. There were no signs of drug use.”

“You sure?”

They stared at one another for a few seconds. With Wolf’s ex-wife being hooked on drugs for years, something that had ultimately torn their marriage apart and led to a whole lot of misery, Wolf knew a thing or two about spotting the signs of drug addiction. And MacLean knew it.

The sheriff lifted his chin in defiance. “This can’t get personal.”

The room fell deathly silent.

Staring through the carpet at his feet, Wolf steadied his breath, letting the upwelling rage dissipate before it surfaced. Since the arrival of Adam Jackson and his announcement of running against MacLean, the sheriff had been a changed man, clinging desperately to control at the expense of morale, letting sound reasoning slip by the wayside on numerous occasions.

But was MacLean right this time? Was Wolf letting this get personal? Was Wolf’s judgment clouded by a spilled beer on his lap? A wad of paper towels pressed against his inner thigh?

MacLean inched closer and squeezed his arm. Then he walked to the front door and said, “I need to speak to you. Right now, down at the station. Because there’s something else going on that we need to talk about.”

Wolf narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“Not here. Not now. But we need to talk tonight. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah.”

MacLean clapped and pointed at Rachette. “I need you to call Hernandez and tell him to meet us at the station. We need to get a plan of action on this thing before tomorrow morning hits. As for the rest of you—sorry, folks. It’s a long night, I know, but sometimes duty dictates. Leaving in five minutes, people. We’ll be following the plow back down, so don’t miss the train. Dr. Lorber, you and your team keep us posted.”

“What about Barker?” Rachette asked. “You want him to come into the station too?”

“I sent Barker home.”

MacLean shoved his feet into his Sorel boots, booties and all, put on his hat, and looked at Wolf. “My office.” He disappeared out the front door.

Rachette turned to Wolf. “What the hell was all that about?”

Wolf shook his head.

Lorber slapped a garbage-lid-sized hand on Wolf’s back. “You’re right, of course. This shit doesn’t add up. I don’t know what it’s supposed to add up to, but I can tell you one thing: I’m afraid that before we find out there’s going to be some more dead people in my morgue.”

The county medical examiner walked away, leaving Wolf to stare at the Mackennas one last time. Like a photo flash right in his face, like a scream in a silent room, the memory of Sarah’s dead body made him flinch and shut his eyes. He opened them, forcing himself to look again, this time using a lens of cold professionalism.

The next time he blinked he thought about Lauren’s light touch to his jaw. He thought about her studying him, the way she’d captured the sadness in Wolf’s eyes in her drawing.

A person so finely attuned to others could never press a gun into someone’s head and pull the trigger.

“Sir?” Rachette asked, opening the door and letting the cold in. “You ready?”

Wolf stepped out the door and into the whipping wind and snow.

CHAPTER 22

MATTHEW BRISTOL LEANED BACK in the unfamiliar office chair and stared at a red dot on his laptop screen. It was blinking in a parking lot in Frisco, Colorado, next to an apartment complex and hotel.

He rubbed his eyes. He envied the cocaine addict in times like these, because he could’ve used a pick-me-up right about now.

Nothing had gone to plan so far, but he’d learned long ago that nothing ever does. But he was still a planner. He’d come up with five different ways this whole thing could go wrong, and then he’d trusted in himself to deal with any obstacle as it came.

That’s where he was now—trusting in his dogged ability to get things done no matter the setback, thinking on the fly to avoid them.

Who would have known she’d be a gifted artist? He’d seen the sketches in her studio, the artwork on the wall, and he believed her when she said she could draw him any way she wanted.

He smiled, thinking about how he’d dealt with that particular obstacle. She was shitting herself now, thinking he was borderline suicidal. A lie that could not be further from the truth.

With a deep inhale, he closed his eyes and hoped the bluff had worked. If she did draw his face? Then the subterfuge, the misdirection, the careful preparation—it had all been for nothing.

As he exhaled, he saw his mother laughing over him, pointing her dirty finger down as he sprawled across the filthy carpet of their single-wide trailer, and he slapped himself on the cheek, hard enough to numb his skin, ejecting the weak-minded thoughts along with the memory.

There was a tiny ping and a window opened on his computer screen, indicating an incoming email.

He furrowed his brow at the subject line: Hello from your sister and her son.

Clicking on the email, the room twisted around him as the picture came up.

She was heavier than the last time he’d seen her, which was over a year ago up in Fort Collins. She lived only an hour’s drive from his downtown condo, but it might as well have been in Tibet for the few times they’d seen one another.

Bristol smiled painfully at the sight of his nephew. Jim was walking now. He was laughing in the picture, leaning forward, trying to chase after a ball, looking like he might have face-planted a step after the picture had been taken. His mother was behind him with folded arms, smiling proudly.

The caption read: I hope you’re on schedule for our payment or we’ll start slitting throats, ending with yours.

The sweat beaded inside Bristol’s latex gloves.

Trey Manzi had completely lost it.

They’d been close once, he and Mr. Manzi, but now Bristol was no more than a piece of dog crap that needed to be scraped off his shoe. What was wrong with the big-boss man now?

It had been two years since that fateful day he’d announced to Manzi that he wanted to go it alone. For ten years before that he’d been one of Manzi’s top enforcers in Vegas, in charge of account payments for the south and west sides, which meant he’d seen a lot of action. At the height of his career, he’d busted a lot of heads for the man in charge. A lot of corpses were feeding the scorpions in the desert north of the strip right now because of him.

But Bristol had never been satisfied hanging out with the other brain-dead thugs. Mindless head busting had gotten old quick, and then, after ten years, it had become unbearable.

Bristol was a born businessman. Through sheer determination he’d survived childhood, literally scraping together meals off the floor of the single trailer while his mother slept on the couch in a drug-induced coma most of the day, fluids oozing from her orifices. And that determination had shaped him into the man he was destined to be. There was no way he’d be a thug for the rest of his life, working for a wage to build somebody else’s empire.

Settling for less than he was capable of would be using his past as an excuse. It would be letting his mother pull him down to her level. It would validate all the times she’d put him down, telling him he was “so flippin’ dumb you’ll never even find a job in the real world.” No way was he a dumb, two-bit thug.

Manzi had seen the predatory instinct in Bristol on that day. The problem was, Manzi was a predator too, and predators are territorial animals. In order to get out from under Manzi’s thumb, Bristol had to agree to buy-out terms and move to a different territory.

Manzi had been thinking about Colorado for some time, so he allowed Bristol to leave, opening his own branch of the gambling business in Denver. It was virgin territory, the current bookies in the area a loose-knit group of weak-minded individuals hanging out in the backs of bars and medical-marijuana dispensaries. It took Bristol less than six months to get a foot inside the door in Denver, and now he was the doorman.

It was Bristol doing what he did best—fighting and taking what was there. Doing whatever it took, even if it meant feeding cadavers to the crows up in the mountains, burying bodies in the sand dunes, or dropping a few corpses in mine shafts.

Meanwhile, Manzi had sat back with folded hands, collecting a seventy-five percent cut of everything Bristol built. For the past year and a half, Bristol had been paying down the interest rate with lump sums. Lump sums that were numbers picked out of thin air by Manzi—demands that were becoming larger and more unreasonable as Bristol gained more independence. And now that Bristol was so close to paying down all the ridiculous terms, without batting an eye, Manzi was adding threats to his demands.

It was clear now that payments were never going to be enough. He was going to have to fight his way out of Manzi’s clutches. He was going to have to kill him. Because every positive step for Bristol was a betrayal against the big-boss man. And the big-boss man took betrayal very badly.

As Bristol stared at the picture on the monitor some more, he came up with a new, lofty plan—he would use this Lauren Coulter payday to kill Manzi. It was going to take every cent of the proceeds, maybe even more, to get that done.

Dialing burner phone #3, he stood up and listened to the trilling in his ear.

The driftwood clock ticked, echoing through the spacious great room.

He could picture them now, sipping whiskey and staring at the silver phone on Manzi’s huge desk, the caller ID showing a random 720 area code number from Colorado. They would know exactly who it was.

“Yeah.”

The voice was two octaves lower than an average male’s.

“Hey, Brick.”

No response.

“I just got your email. I just wanted to give you guys a heads-up on what’s going on. Make sure you don’t jump the gun on anything.”

“Jump the gun? You disappeared. We’re just making sure you’re not trying to make that permanent when we’re coming down to our last payment.”

“I’m not.” Bristol looked at himself in a mirror on the wall. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin pale and shiny.

“Good.”

“Whoever you have looking at my sister and her kid, tell them to stand down. I’ll have the money tomorrow afternoon.”

The Brick chuckled, and it sounded like boulders rolling in Bristol’s ear. “I’ll tell Illi to stay right where he is.”

“Illi?” Bristol’s neck-hair stood on end.

Illi was the sickest whacko he’d ever met in his life, with absolutely no conscience. The man was strong, quick to anger, and quick to overreact with extremely violent consequences. Sure, Bristol had killed, but at least he despised the necessary evil. But Illi? Illi was a monster. There was no other way to describe him. One time, Illi and Bristol had been sitting at a dinner table with a man who was refusing to pay. Illi had listened to all of five seconds of the man’s back talk when he picked up a butter knife and got to work. After splashing blood around the room for the length of a good rap song, Illi had sat down and finished his sandwich, paying attention to neither the blood on his hands nor the circles of red, soggy bread on his plate.

Bristol thought of that final morsel of blood-soaked whole wheat going into Illi’s mouth and let out a shaky breath. “I’ll get you the money.”

“We’ll see about that, won’t we?”

“Where do you want me to deliver it?”

The Brick chuckled again. “Just get the money, white boy.”

The line went dead.

Bristol lowered the phone and flipped it shut with tingling fingers.

With quick strides, he walked back to the laptop and checked the dot again. It was still there, parked in the same lot in Frisco.

He’d used the application and software before, but never in the mountains. She’d disappeared numerous times coming up through the foothills, then finally reappeared outside of Silverthorne. She would undoubtedly disappear again, but the metaphorical collar was locked to her neck.

He walked to the door in the hallway, stood in front of the flickering sliver of light at his feet, and silently twisted the knob.

The girl was covered in blankets, huddled in a ball on a beanbag chair.

The muted television played an infomercial, caressing the girl’s face with soft light. Her eyes were closed, little lines drawn at the corners, like she was in a fitful sleep. Or like she was pretending to be.

Michael Coulter was lying on his back on the carpet, drool streaming from his mouth. His bandage was soaked in blood still leaking through the stitches that held together the two pieces of his ear.

Bristol pulled open one rubber glove and let the sweat trickle up his arm; then he bent over and picked up the empty syringe from the plate. Michael Coulter was fully addicted to the new cocktail coursing through his veins. It was going to be simple to deal with the two addicts.

Three people dead. What were two druggies on top of it?

And then there was this girl. He’d killed before, but he had morals.

He thought about the picture of his nephew. It was either his nephew or this child.

But the girl and her mom? She was hot, and this girl was likeable. It was probably because of her upbringing that she acted so civilized, even in the face of all this danger and confusion.

Without warning, the familiar rising sense of panic rose from within, and he suddenly resented this girl for having such a mother, resented them both for existing. Resented the lowlife client lying on the floor.

There was no alternative. They all had to die.

Manzi’s email had sealed the deal.

He shut the door and twisted the lock.

CHAPTER 23

FORTY MINUTES AFTER LEAVING THE MACKENNAS’ house, the train of vehicles, led by a crazy plow driver going at a reined-in pace, reached the flats of the Chautauqua Valley and the western outskirts of Rocky Points.

Wolf’s phone rang. It was Luke.

Rachette watched with interest as Wolf answered. “Hey.”

“Jesus, where ya been?”

“Driving down a canyon out west of town.”

“Well, I’ve been to the office with my guy and we found her brother’s car. It’s in Frisco.”

“Frisco?” Wolf ignored Rachette’s upturned hands.

“Yep, Frisco.”

Wolf paused. “Have you told anyone?”

“No, why?”

“I don’t want you to.”

“DPD’s looking for her. Did you know that?”

“Yeah,” Wolf said. “But I’d appreciate it if you kept it quiet.”

“Great. I always enjoy breaking a few investigatory laws in the name of David Wolf.”

A line of brake lights blossomed as Greg Nanteekut slowed his plow to the side of the road.

The train of SBCSD vehicles swerved around him and rolled down the hill toward Main Street. Wolf honked twice on the way by.

“Where are you now?” Wolf asked.

“I’m sitting here inside Michael Coulter’s place off 16th Street Mall. Been here for fifteen minutes.”

“What do you see?”

“I see it’s a real shithole.”

“On 16th Street? I thought that would be a high-class place.”

Wolf slowed to a stop at Main Street and took a left. The glass of the county building slid past and he took the next right.

“It is high class, all granite and brushed nickel. Place probably goes for a cool million judging by the size and view, but you should see the filth this guy lives in.”

Wolf pulled into the parking lot.

“I’m seeing a lot of drug use. Alcoholic for sure,” she said.

“Hey, just a second, all right?” Wolf parked in a spot and nodded at Rachette. “You go ahead inside. I’ll be right there.”

Rachette jumped out and jogged to the rear automatic doors of the county building, entering after MacLean, who was marching in with two other deputies.

“Okay, go ahead,” Wolf said.

“I’m looking at his set of kitchen knives right now. I’m counting three missing from the wooden block. Two steak knives are in the sink, along with the rest of his filthy dishes. The only one missing is the paring knife, your first murder weapon.”

“How did you know about the paring knife?”

“I called Patterson when I couldn’t get hold of you for the twentieth time in a row. Better than sitting in this creepy apartment in the middle of the night by myself. She told me everything you guys have so far.”

“Did you tell Patterson where Lauren is?”

“About her being in Frisco? Yeah.”

“Shit. I have to go. I’ll call you back.”

“Wait—”

Wolf hung up and limp-jogged through the snow to the rear entrance.

CHAPTER 24

“DID you tell anybody where she is?” Wolf was out of breath, leaning on the edge of Patterson’s desk.

She looked up from her computer monitor and swiveled on her yoga ball, peering back at MacLean’s office. “No.”

MacLean saw him and marched out to the squad room. “Wolf! Office, now!”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

Rachette and Hernandez had been brewing a cup of coffee and came over. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Wolf and Patterson said at the same time.

“I’ll be right back.”

Wolf walked to MacLean’s office, already knowing how the conversation would go. MacLean was going to vent about the news story that had run earlier that night and would want Wolf to do something about it.

“What’s up?” Wolf asked, poking his head inside the door.

“Get in here.”

“Is this about the news story tonight? If so, I don’t care. We have more important stuff going on right now.”

“Get in here!” MacLean’s face was bright red.

Wolf went inside and shut the door.

MacLean made his way to the windows that looked out on the squad room and shut the blinds.

“What’s going on?”

“Where’s your report on the river-rescue incident?”

Wolf frowned. “I haven’t done it yet.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve had other stuff going on, in case you haven’t noticed.”

MacLean gestured to his desk. “Barker gave me his report.”

“Yeah, so you told me earlier. Good for him.”

“So read the report!” MacLean’s voice boomed.

A single sheet of paper with Barker’s name and an incident number typed along the top sat conspicuously on the edge of MacLean’s desk. He walked over, plucked it off the shined wood and skimmed it over. Then he paused, backtracked to the beginning, and read it carefully.

I was riding back from the western law-enforcement conference at Rocky Points Ski Resort in the passenger seat of Chief Detective Wolf’s vehicle when I noticed some slide marks going off the right side of the road. I immediately notified CD Wolf, who first ignored me, but then relented to my insistence we pull over.

Wolf frowned and looked up from the report. “Is this a joke?”

“A joke? What do you mean is this a joke?” MacLean’s face scrunched up.

Wolf tried his best to control his breathing and continued on.

I got out of the car and ran to the edge of the ravine and saw there was a vehicle upturned in the river. I informed CD Wolf of what I’d seen and climbed down the edge of the ravine.

Wolf read on, hot rage welling up in his gut. The report went on to describe the incident in a way that replaced Wolf with Barker, often embellished to make Barker look better, and Wolf much, much worse.

When I realized CD Wolf was not going to come down from the road to help, despite the immediate danger the victim and I were in, I yelled into the radio for him to come down. That seemed to finally bring him out of his psychosis-like state and he finally climbed down with the sleeping bag and clothing I had instructed him to bring.

“The radio-transmission tapes confirm his story,” MacLean said. “That he was yelling at you to come down and you weren’t answering.”

“My radio was shot. From dousing it in the river water.”

MacLean narrowed his eyes and stared at Wolf for a beat.

Wolf thought about Barker coming down the hill, the way he’d lain down in the river, and now it was clear why—to make it look like he’d taken part in the rescue.

“This is a bullshit report.” Wolf stopped reading and dropped it on the desk. “Now, are we done here? I have to get back to work.”

“No, we aren’t. We certainly are not done about this matter.”

“Where’s Barker now?” Wolf asked.

“I told you guys, I sent him home.”

Wolf stared at MacLean and raised his eyebrows. “This is bullshit.”

MacLean rubbed his goatee and looked at the carpet. “I’ve been on the phone with reporters all night. And two of them asked about this.”

Wolf frowned. “He leaked it?”

MacLean nodded. “Coupled with that story they ran on the news earlier, making us look like a bunch of corrupt assholes grabbing money out of the county coffers … this is going to blow up in our faces like dynamite if we don’t meet this head on.”

Wolf rolled his eyes.

“What? You think I’m kidding?” MacLean pointed at him. “You blow this off and you and I don’t have a job in two years. That’s a fact.”

“There’s a five-year-old girl in trouble out there and you’re worried about an election …” Wolf did the math, “twenty-two months from now? Come on. What do you want from me?”

MacLean widened his eyes. “I … I want you to stand up on that podium with me tomorrow morning and tell your version of events.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Okay, then if you’re not going to defend yourself, I have no choice but to believe Barker’s version, and I’ll stand with him on that podium, and then …” He raised his hands and rubbed his forehead.

Wolf glared at him.

“I’m not retiring early,” MacLean said. He started pacing back and forth. “Dammit, Wolf. I need that report from you. Now. Tonight.”

“Let’s not overreact on this.” Wolf used a low voice. “We have other work to do and this crap can wait.”

“It can’t wait!”

Wolf considered yelling back and storming out, but felt a pang of guilt for not filling out his report in a timely manner. If he had done it then they would be having a different conversation right now. Probably with Barker here in the room. But Friday had been a blur, and then there’d been the weekend with Lauren, and now, here, was the worst Monday of his life.

“Judy Fleming and Adam Jackson are behind all this,” Wolf said. “They’ve gotten to Barker. He wants to be promoted and we’re not giving it to him. Adam Jackson will.”

“And that’s why we have to stop being played like fiddles.” MacLean made two fists. “That’s what they’re doing. Playing us. We have to put a stop to it. So … please. I beg you, Wolf … I don’t believe that report right there. I’m not blind. I see Barker for who he is and, yes, I regret that I did his father a favor and appointed him to your detective squad …”

Wolf had never heard the flat truth from MacLean about Barker until now.

“… But I’m telling you right now, I’m not going to lose to Adam Jackson and that bitch Judy Fleming. If it’s the last thing I do on this earth, I’m going to beat them.”

“In two years.”

“Or less!” MacLean’s eyes were wider now. “The county council can fire us from the job before the term is up.”

Wolf rolled his eyes.

“I’m not going to be fired. And I’m not going to lose to them. There’re a few ways I can accomplish these two things. Some of them involve you as my chief detective going forward; others don’t.”

Wolf popped his eyebrows. So now Wolf’s job was up for grabs?

MacLean wilted under Wolf’s gaze. “Listen to me for once, Wolf. I want you to go into your office right now and write your report. Then I want you to go home and get a good night’s rest. Okay?”

Wolf blinked.

“And I’m going to go home and do the same,” MacLean continued. “Meanwhile, Hernandez, Rachette, and every other deputy we have on patrol can look for the Mackennas’ Silver Jeep Cherokee the perps have stolen from their garage. And secondly, Vail Pass is closed and we know Lauren Coulter is stuck on the other side of it, so we’ll let those people over there, the Denver PD and the rest of them, do their job and find her.” MacLean pointed a finger at them both. “You and I will let those people out there do their jobs, and we’ll convene back here in the morning and get our stories straight, our cases against this BS corruption allegation all lined up, and let ’em have it. Otherwise, you and I won’t have a job to do. Get it?”

Wolf said nothing.

“Let the rest of the crew take this case for a few hours. All right?”

Wolf looked out the darkened window at the rear of the office. The snowflakes slid by fast. “See you in the morning.”

MacLean clapped and closed his eyes. “All right. Let’s go. You know I need you in this department. What would it be without you? What would I be without you?”

Wolf walked out the door with MacLean patting him on the back.

“Were there any bystanders watching that river rescue from up on the road?” MacLean asked.

Wolf shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“Right. Just put it in the report.”

They walked to the cluster of desks at the far end of the squad room where Patterson, Rachette, and Hernandez were waiting.

“All right, people. Listen up!” MacLean put up his hands.

Two other sleep-deprived-looking deputies walked over.

“We know the perpetrators in question are now in a silver Jeep Cherokee. Detective Patterson has the license-plate details, and we know the BMW SUV we’re looking for. Vail Pass is closed and with the last known whereabouts of Lauren Coulter being Denver only a matter of hours ago, we know we ain’t gonna find her with that BMW. She’s on the other side of the pass. So that leaves us with this silver Jeep.” He looked them each in the eye. “Find it.”

MacLean turned and gave Wolf a meaningful look. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said under his breath, and then left the squad room.

The two deputies filed out, leaving Hernandez, Patterson, and Rachette looking at him.

“Rachette, Hernandez, you heard the sheriff.”

They exchanged a glance, nodded at Wolf, and walked away.

Patterson sagged down onto her yoga ball.

“How are you doing?” Wolf asked.

She shrugged. “Not bad.”

Wolf eyed her for a few seconds. As always of late, one hand was attached to her belly. Her blue eyes had lost some luster.

The clock on the wall said 11:12. He pulled out his keys and took one off the ring. “Here’s my office key. Why don’t you go in there with your laptop and take position on my couch.”

She nodded. “Thanks. I think I’ll do that.”

“I ran a check on the 1992 Chrysler parked out front of the Mackennas’,” she said.

“And?”

“It was reported stolen in Denver earlier this morning. DPD took a report. I talked to the officer who responded. He says it was Zeke Jacoway’s roommate’s car.”

“Zeke stole his roommate’s car?”

“Yep. His report said Zeke and some random guy he’d never met took it.”

“Any description on the guy with Zeke?”

Patterson lifted a pad of paper, revealing a concealed note. “The roommate said the guy was tall, muscular, dark hair, goatee, dressed nicely. Wore purple rubber gloves.”

Wolf narrowed his eyes. “Rubber gloves. Did he catch a name?”

“Nope.”

He knocked on the desk. “Okay. Good job. Now get into my office and lie down. There’s a cloth sleeping bag in one of the shelf cabinets.”

He helped her to her feet.

“What was all that about in there?” Patterson asked. “We heard you two yelling pretty loud. Sounded kind of serious.”

“Nothing.”

After a brief stare-down with him, she nodded and shuffled away.

As she disappeared around the corner, he grabbed a nearby chair, wheeled it over and sat down, kicking the yoga ball under the desk. He opened the internet browser and pulled up a website, found the number he was looking for, and dialed.

“Colorado Department of Transportation dispatch. How may I direct your call?”

He checked over his shoulder and cleared his throat. “This is Sheriff MacLean. I need to speak to your lead dispatcher on duty.”

“This is she … it’s me. I’m the lead dispatcher tonight.”

“Ah, good. Listen, I need a favor.”

CHAPTER 25

THREE MINUTES LATER, Wolf was back in his SUV and heading north on Highway 734. His phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out. “Shit. Hello?”

“I’m about to leave.” Kristen Luke’s voice was loud in his ear.

“Sorry, what’s happening?”

“I’m wandering around this guy’s apartment, waiting for you to call. It’s been twenty minutes!”

“You were saying you found the knife set,” he said. “What else?”

She breathed into the receiver. “I’ve got some pain-pill bottles in the bathroom, another in the living room. All done and dusted long ago by the looks of it. Just a dirty, smelly druggie’s apartment. Now can I leave?”

He flipped the windshield wipers on high. “Can you send me the map of where Lauren is?”

“Yeah. I already did. I sent it to your email.”

“Okay, thanks. You have any idea if she’s still there? Is there a link to a website where I can monitor her position?”

“No. The tracking system’s back at the office, on Agent Hartford’s computer, and Hartford’s probably fast asleep at home right now. He was pissed when I called him in, and then went home in a huff when I left. That snapshot was taken an hour ago. It’s as good as we’re gonna get.”

“Okay, thanks.” Flashing lights came into view through the snow and Wolf let off the gas. “I have to go now. You’ve been a huge help. Go to sleep.”

“Keep me posted,” she said.

“Will do.” Wolf hung up and slowed next to the plow. Greg Nanteekut has his face pressed to the glass of his high window looking down.

Wolf pulled past the plow and parked on the side of the road. He kept his engine running and got out. His clothing rippled on the wind, which was much fiercer north of town where the Chautauqua Valley widened. He ducked his head and limped up to the grated step under the driver’s-side window.

Nanteekut’s window slid down. “Hey, there he is again!”

Wolf climbed up, receiving a blast of warm air and cigarette smoke flowing out of the plow’s cab. “Hey, thanks for meeting me.”

“Yeah, well, dispatch tells me what to do and I listen,” Nanteekut said. “I hear you’re looking for an escort over Vail Pass.”

“Yep. You up for the task?”

Nanteekut picked up a pack of Marlboro 100s, fished one out with his lips and lit it. With a deep inhale, he pinched one eye and said, “I was born ready.”

CHAPTER 26

LAUREN KICKED the snow away from the twin exhaust pipes on either side of her brother’s car. She knew if snow buried the exhaust pipes she’d be dead from carbon-monoxide poisoning, and then she’d have killed her daughter out of sheer stupidity.

Of course, turning off the engine was no option. She’d been underdressed as it was all day, and now the temperature had dipped to minus-three according to the dash thermometer.

She sat back inside, shivering and rubbing her hands near the vent. The digital display gas gauge had gone from three to two bars in the few seconds she’d been outside.

If it came down to it, she would have to use a credit card. She had no choice.

She leaned back on the heated seat. Rather than calming her, the violins of the classical music streaming out of the speakers sounded like cats being tortured.

Her daughter’s smiling face swam into view. When she closed her eyes, she saw Ella again.

Twisting the front and rear windshield wipers on, she turned in her seat and spied out the back window. Still nothing.

She sat in an apartment building parking lot a few blocks off Frisco’s Main Street, her car wedged between two big pickup trucks covered in pillows of snow. To her rear lay white-encrusted woodland.

A few people had streamed into the lot, and she’d held her breath, hoping she wouldn’t be asked to leave a designated spot. But that activity had been at least an hour ago, and, besides, there were empty spots everywhere. Nobody was going to bother her.

Unless the cops were looking for her. Had Keith Lourde woken up? Was he dead? Was she a murderer?

The torture was too much. Closing her eyes again, she took a deep breath and tried to imagine a moment in time a year from now when this would be all over. Then she saw Zeke’s bloody fist coming at her and she popped her eyes open.

A pair of lights flickered through the tall pine trees in the rearview mirror.

She sagged in the seat and twisted around to get a view.

The lights shifted direction and glared off her back window, then the squeal of tires on snow neared.

Sinking down further, she shut off the engine and adjusted the rearview mirror to get a view out the back.

Was that a cop? It was a generic-looking American SUV, but it had a strange antenna jutting off the roof.

Brakes squeaked.

“Damn it.”

Reverse lights flicked on and her heart started pounding.

“Shit.”

They were looking for her. If the police captured her, the man would find out. All hope of seeing Ella alive again was draining away.

The SUV backed up and stopped, and then she saw the driver’s-side door open.

“Shit shit shit …” She sagged further in the seat.

Footsteps walked straight to her door and an arm rubbed across the window. A beam of light streamed in.

Although she’d watched it coming, she flinched at the knock.

“Yes?” She leaned into the glass, looking up as if she had every right to be there and was indignant at the interruption.

“Lauren?” The voice was muffled.

She put her face close and looked up as the man bent down.

“David?” Her body flooded with relief. She burst into tears as she opened the door, smacking him hard.

The door connected with his face and he stumbled out of sight, landing on his butt.

“Sorry.” She closed the door.

“That’s okay.”

His face was dimly lit by the light pouring out of his truck cab.

“You’re bleeding.”

He stood up and grabbed her by the shoulders with strong hands.

With a long racking sob, she let her muscles release and her body fall, but Wolf wrapped his arms around her and held her up.

“It’s okay,” he said, brushing her hair back with a warm hand. “You’re okay. Let’s go.” He led her to his car and around the passenger side.

She followed him, letting the tears flow down her face. “My daughter. Ella’s in trouble. I might have killed a man. I might have killed him. But there’s a guy who’s going to kill Ella. I had to—”

“If you’re talking about Keith Lourde, you didn’t kill him.” He stopped and squared off with her, his big hands clamped on her shoulders. “The guy is fine. But he has every cop in Denver looking for you. And they’re starting to search the I-70 corridor. Frisco Police could find you here. You have to come with me.”

Looking up at his eyes, she felt for the first time that everything was going to be all right. David Wolf was here, the man she knew so little about but had got such a strong feeling about the second she’d met him.

He opened the door. “Get inside.”

“Wait.” The warm blanket of security lifted and she suddenly felt cold. She shivered, her knees bounced under her thin jeans. “I can’t go with you.”

She backed away, shaking her head.

“What?”

“I can’t go.” She pushed his hand away. “He’s tracking my cell phone. He knows exactly where I am. I can’t go with you. I can’t move or else he’ll kill her. He has a guy … the guy took my nanny out into the trees and came out covered in blood. He was covered …”

He stepped in and held her again. “He has software installed on the phone to monitor its location?”

She nodded. “He says he monitors everything. The phone calls, the messages …”

They spoke some more, but she was fading so fast it was too much to resist shutting down completely. He was here. He could help her. He could hold her. She didn’t even have to stand anymore.

For the next minute, she felt detached from her body, half conscious and letting David Wolf do the motions for her. She floated, and then she was put into a warm vehicle. The engine was running. The heat was blasting in her face, and then David was gone.

Motionless, she sat, and the howling vents lulled her into a deep, black sleep.

He’d driven away.

He’d gone.

She snapped to. “No! Wait!”

She was at her father’s funeral again, gazing through blurred eyes at his closed casket. She was on her knees, pleading for God to bring him back. There was no way she could go on living alone, bringing a child into the world with no one to help her.

There were crunching footsteps, and then David was walking past the rear of the car. He climbed in, shut the door, and looked at her.

She met his gaze, and then looked at where she was. It was David’s vehicle. “The phone.” A flash of panic sent her heart rate skyrocketing.

He held up the burner phone. “I got it out of your brother’s car. Don’t worry. We’re parked on the other side of the parking lot. The phone hasn’t moved more than a few yards.”

He smiled with compassion in his coffee-colored eyes, and it was the gentlest thing she’d ever seen.

CHAPTER 27

LAUREN LOOKED up at Wolf through tears. She was thoroughly broken, he could see that. He’d seen men who’d been tortured for three days straight whose sanity was more intact than hers right now.

“Ella,” she whispered as her eyes fluttered shut.

Wolf searched for something to say but found nothing helpful, so he remained silent, putting a hand on her shoulder and gently squeezing instead.

Her shoulder was bony, flexed and tense, and then it relaxed. “Ella …”

He watched her fall into a fitful sleep. He wondered exactly how long she’d been awake. Their lunch date was to have been her dinner after an all-night shift.

He did the math. Unless she’d slept at work, which was doubtful, she was probably working on no sleep for the past two full days.

He rubbed his hands and put them near the heater vent. He’d backed the car up against the apartment building so he had a perfect view of the entire parking lot. If Frisco Police came in and found the BMW, he could exit quickly with Lauren ducked out of sight as he drove out.

He deemed the cab of his SUV warm enough now, so he turned down the heater. Picking up the burner cell phone from the center console, he pushed a button and it lit up.

He was unfamiliar with the operating system, but it was self-explanatory. The list of recent calls consisted of one single phone number. The number was proceeded by a plus sign and a two-digit country code he failed to recognize.

“No!” Lauren jolted awake and snatched the phone out of his hands. “What did you do?” She pressed a button and held it away from him. “What did you do? I told you, he’s monitoring the calls, the messages.”

He held up a hand. “Lauren, I didn’t do anything.”

Her face was still twisted in panic, her breathing shallow.

“Lauren.”

She looked at him.

“I need the phone. I’m checking the recent calls. Then I’m going to give the number to my deputy, and she’s going to try to fix a location on the caller using the number. It could lead us to your daughter.”

She darted her eyes around the cab. “Then what? He’s got a gun, and there’s a crazy guy with a knife who killed Barbara. What are you going to do? Storm the place? He’ll—he’ll kill her. They’ll both kill her.”

Wolf lowered his hands. “We’re not going to storm the place. We’re not going to do anything but figure out where they are at this moment. We’re not going to put your daughter in any more danger.”

He held out his hand and she finally handed over the cell.

He pressed the phone button again and stared at the digits. “This is the number he calls from?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t have your cell phone, do you?” Wolf asked.

“No. He took it.”

“Do you know who this man is?”

“I don’t know. All I know is he’s creepy and he wears rubber gloves all the time,” she said. “And even then, he never touches anything with them unless he has to. He uses the crazy guy with him. To pick up stuff, to hand it to him, to … kill.”

Her eyes glazed over.

“So there’re two men? Two men who took your daughter?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Did either of them use each other’s names?”

“The crazy guy’s is some weird name.”

“Zeke?”

“Yes, Zeke.”

He took out his own phone and dialed Patterson.

Lauren watched him with an unreadable expression, probably wanting to trust him but unable to.

“Hell—” Patterson cleared her throat and fumbled the phone. “Hello?”

“Hey. Where are you?”

“On the couch in your office. Where are you?”

“I’m with Lauren.”

“In Frisco?”

“The guy that’s holding Ella Coulter, I have the number he uses to call Lauren.”

“You do?” She grunted and shuffled the phone some more. “Okay, go ahead.”

He relayed the digits.

“Foreign?” She shuffled the phone and he heard some keys clicking in the background. “Looks like Vienna, Austria. Which means …”

“What?”

“He might be using a call-masking service online. He uses his computer to make a call, and the service routes it through different IP addresses around the world.” She went silent for a few seconds. “Or maybe he just has an Austrian phone. I’ll look into it.”

“Don’t tell anyone.” His tone was ice.

“Rachette and Hernandez?”

“Yeah, they’re fine, but nobody else. Especially if you get a location on that number. We can’t move until we have a rock-solid plan on this. The more uninformed people involved in this, the more that can go wrong.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Talk to you soon.” He hung up.

Lauren looked up at him. “What’s your deputy going to do?”

“She’s going to check into that phone number.”

“What do you do?” she asked. “Just put the number in a database and it shows where you are? Isn’t that what happens when somebody dials 911?”

Wolf had been a cop in the digital age long enough to know sometimes it was difficult to find a phone. It was a serious problem that Enhanced-911 engineers and cell-phone carriers were trying to iron out. People on cells could call 911 easier than ever nowadays, from more remote places, but it in no way guaranteed that help was on its way. It depended on the surrounding cell infrastructure and many other factors.

“It depends. If he shut off the phone, then it won’t be transmitting. We might be able to get historical data, but … we’ll see.”

And then there was the whole call-routing thing.

Wolf looked over. The hope had leaked out of Lauren’s eyes.

“My deputy is the best. She’s looking right now.”

Lauren closed her eyes and took a shaky breath. “What if they can’t find her?”

CHAPTER 28

“I NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING,” Wolf said. “From the call you got at work up until now. Everything.”

“Okay.” Lauren sniffed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Like you said, I got a call at work. It was from a number I didn’t know, and I thought it might be you … you know, your work number. But it was a guy. He said, ‘I have your daughter and nanny. Leave work and come home now. Don’t tell anyone or I’ll kill them both.’ And then he hung up.

“So I left work and came home. The whole drive back to Rocky Points, I thought about telling you. I passed by the Sheriff’s Department, and I almost … but he’d said not to tell anyone or he’d kill them.”

Tears fell from her eyes.

“I went home, saw the car parked outside. Inside there were two men with my daughter and nanny in the kitchen, waiting for me. One of them was this really dirty, scary guy. He had a knife in his hand and was jabbing it everywhere, saying he was going to cut us with it. He had constricted pupils, shaky hands, scratched himself. Classic signs of being completely screwed up on drugs.

“And then there was the other guy. He was completely different. Calm and cool, and he had a pair of purple latex gloves on, which freaked me out.”

She zoned out for a few seconds.

“Then what happened?” Wolf asked, his voice a tiny nudge.

“It was like this rubber-glove guy was putting the scary guy on display. Letting him talk, jab his knife everywhere. And then the gloved guy told him to shut up. He had a gun and he pointed it at the scary guy … Zeke. He was like a pet. A sick pet to this other guy.”

Wolf watched as Lauren faced her memories with clenched eyes.

“The gloved guy told Zeke to take Barbara, my nanny. And he did. Grabbed her by the hair and took her downstairs into the basement. Then they were outside, walking through the snow toward the forest. She didn’t even have shoes on.” She closed her eyes. “The guy with the gloves on told me that he was doing this to let me know he was serious. I begged him not to do anything. Told him I knew he was serious. But he just watched as they disappeared into the trees, and then a few minutes later Zeke came out.” Lauren’s voice shuddered. “His arms were covered in blood. He was wiping them on the snow. And then the gloved guy pointed the gun at me and Ella and told me to open the safe for him.”

“He wanted the Glacier pendant,” Wolf said.

“Yeah. You know about it?”

Wolf nodded.

“But I told him I didn’t have it. Because I didn’t. He didn’t like that and told me to show him. So I picked up Ella and went into the office. I gave him the money inside, two thousand in cash. I told him the pendant was in the bank vault in Denver, where my parents left it, and where it’s been ever since.

“He forced us back into the kitchen.” Lauren stared into nothing. “Zeke was back by then. I’ve never been so scared in my life, walking back to the kitchen with him in it after what he’d just done to Barbara … he was washing blood off his hands in the sink. He saw me watching him, and that seemed to piss him off so he came over and hit me.” She felt her bruised cheekbone under her eye.

“Then what?” Wolf asked.

“Then the rubber-gloved guy told him to relax, and he gave him a bag and a syringe, and Zeke took it and disappeared into the dining room for a while. The other guy took out his phone and called my brother. And he told my brother he was holding us hostage and he wanted him to come up to Rocky Points, or else he’d kill us.”

“He told your brother to get the pendant at the bank in Denver and to bring it up?” Wolf asked.

She frowned. “No. I thought he was going to, but he didn’t. He just told him to come up. To get in the car and drive, or else we were dead. He wouldn’t have been able to get the pendant anyway. It was left to me by my parents when they died.”

“How did this man call your brother? Did he have your brother’s number in his phone?”

She thought about it. “No. He went into my phone and got the number.”

Wolf nodded.

“And then we just sat there and stared at one another while we waited for my brother. I sat with Ella at the kitchen table while she colored, and the crazy guy was doing his heroin in the other room. The guy with the gloves just stood like a statue, watching us.”

Wolf narrowed his eyes. “And then I called.”

“Yes.” She drew in a breath. “And then you called my phone. And that set off a whole thing, because the guy was holding my phone, and he saw it said Detective David when you called, and he freaked out. He listened to your voicemail, and then he started asking about you, who you were. I told him you were a cop. I thought that news would maybe scare him off. But instead he made us get ready to leave immediately.”

“Because of my voicemail,” Wolf said. “Because I said I was looking forward to our lunch date and I’d be a little late coming over.”

“That explains it … he was calm and collected before and then went into freak-out mode after your call. Ella and I watched him pace back and forth for a while, and then he shut off my phone, took out the battery, and gave me this phone. He called my brother back and told him there was a change of plan. That my brother was not to come to my house, but to meet me somewhere else. He made me tell him which gas station would be the best to meet at.”

“The Mackery.”

Lauren sniffed. “Yeah.”

“So,” Wolf said, “instead of your brother being forced to come up and meet you guys at your house, I called and screwed up this guy’s plans. So you all had to scramble and get out of there. He went up Rainbow Creek Canyon with your daughter and this guy, Zeke.”

She nodded. “And I waited at the Mackery for my brother. While I was waiting, he called me with the old couple’s house address. Up at the end of Rainbow Creek Road.

“My brother got to the gas station. We filled up and drove up there. When we went inside, the old couple were sitting on the couch and Ella was set up in a room in back. The guy with the gloves shoved my brother in the back room with her. Barely even let me say hi to her.”

Wolf thought about the Mackennas’ corpses. “Then what?”

Lauren gathered herself again. “Then he sent me back out the door to Denver. He said he wanted the pendant and ten thousand cash. He gave me until 8 p.m. to return, and so I got in my brother’s car and drove.”

She told him about getting the pendant from the vault and how the bank had failed to give her the withdrawal.

“So you went to Keith Lourde,” Wolf said.

“Keith Lourde.” She closed her eyes and nodded. “I knew he used to keep a lot of cash lying in the safe of his office. And it was after hours … I didn’t know where else to go.”

“And you attacked him?”

“He attacked me.” She looked up at him with pleading eyes. “It was self-defense, I swear.”

Wolf nodded. “Okay.”

He sat quietly and listened as Lauren recounted her history with Keith Lourde—how she’d tracked him to the bar downtown, asked him for money, and ended up being assaulted for the second time in her life by the man. She admitted she’d perhaps used too much force, but Wolf thought the punishment fit the crime just right.

“They think I attacked and robbed him?” she asked.

“That’s what he told the cops.”

She twisted her face. “He’s lying, I swear.”

Wolf put a hand on hers. “I believe you. So what happened next?”

“I was afraid to tell the man I didn’t have the money, so I lied and told him I did, and then Vail Pass closed and now I’m here with you.”

“He knows Vail Pass is closed and you can’t make it across?”

“Yes. He’s got tracking software on that thing and he knows I can’t go anywhere. How did you get here, anyway?”

“A plow.”

“A plow?”

Wolf’s phone rang in his pocket. He leaned back and dug it out of his jeans. “Just a second. Hello?”

Patterson’s voice was veiled by mountain reception static. “Sir, no luck on the phone. It’s gotta be like I said. He’s using a call-routing service online. There’s no way to track it.”

Wolf rubbed a hand across his stubble. “Okay. And I take it nobody’s spotted the Jeep Cherokee?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Someone acting as cautious as this guy isn’t going to leave the vehicle sitting out in the open. Tell Rachette and Hernandez to come back in.”

“Okay … so what are we going to do?”

Wolf looked at Lauren. “I’ll call you back.”

He hung up and opened his glove compartment. He pulled out a yellow legal pad of paper and a pen and handed it to Lauren. “I need you to draw this guy with the rubber gloves. We can’t find his phone number, but with a drawing of his face we might be able to get an ID on him.”

She backed away, looking at the paper like it was going to bite her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I already told him I was going to draw him and go to the police. He said if I did he’d kill Ella and himself.” She shook her head. “I’ve decided I’m not going to threaten this guy with anything. Not when he has my daughter. He’s crazy. He has to be if he’s doing something like this. I’m not gambling for my daughter. I won’t draw him.”

He lowered the paper and pen.

They sat in silence for several minutes while Wolf contemplated their position. He thought through different options, came at everything from various angles, and concluded that no matter what, no matter how he tried to tilt the odds in their favor, it was always going to be a big gamble.

He pulled out his phone and dialed again.

“Hello?” Patterson answered.

“It’s me.”

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

“First, I need you to call the CDOT dispatch and tell them Greg Nanteekut can go back home without me.”

“Greg Nanteekut? The snowplow driver?”

“Yeah. He led me here over Vail Pass. He’s waiting for me at the highway exit here in Frisco. Tell him I’m not going to need him on the way back.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to wait and come back with Lauren when the pass reopens.”

“Okay … then what?”

“You drove your civi vehicle into work today, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. We’ll also need Hernandez or Rachette’s car.”

“If you want a car that runs, then you’ll want Hernandez’s car. What are you thinking?”

Wolf laid out his plan.

CHAPTER 29

MATTHEW BRISTOL HELD his breath as he stared at the fluctuating audio sine waves on the computer screen. One second the voices were soft behind a waterfall-like static, and the next so loud they stretched his eardrums, but he heard every word as it was spoken.

“… I’m not gambling for my daughter. I won’t draw him.”

He listened carefully for another fifteen minutes, and when he was satisfied he’d heard enough, he took off the headphones and wiped the sweat from behind his ears with his sleeve.

He was still shell-shocked he’d checked the microphone-listening function when he had. Leaning forward, he kissed the screen of his laptop.

He swiveled in the well-oiled chair and surveyed the huge darkened room he now sat in. A cone of light sprayed from the tiny desk lamp, faintly illuminating the stuffed animal heads lining the walls. It was amazing how much money some people had that they could fill such a large room with such frivolous crap. He could only imagine the things they had to do to get this kind of money.

A bead of sweat ran from his palm down to the tip of his finger under his latex glove. He ripped both off and let his hands breath for a few seconds. The skin was white and wrinkled, like he’d been in a bathtub for an hour, so he pulled a bottle of talcum powder from his pocket and sprinkled some on his hands, then put the old gloves in his zipper pocket with the other used pairs.

After extracting a new set from his other pocket, he put them on and stood to stretch his back. He needed to walk off some of the nervous energy, so he moved to the yawning hallway off the side of the room.

A sliver of light flickered underneath the door at the end. A whistle escaped the closed door, like somebody on Looney Tunes had just slipped on a banana peel.

Shuffling on his socks across the smooth wood floor, he cocked an ear to the first door on the left. He could hear the soft inhales and exhales of Zeke in his heroin coma.

Bristol twisted the knob and opened the door.

A tiny lamp on the end table illuminated the scene within. Zeke was cocked sideways on the bed and lying flat on his back, a rubber strap next to one bared arm, a syringe next to that. The arm had deep, scabbed holes in it, each surrounded by jet-black skin.

The muted television played an infomercial for an overpriced magical blender.

Bristol walked in and poked off the TV.

“I was watching that.” Zeke’s voice was like a dying whisper.

“Really?” Bristol smiled and pushed the power button again. “You gonna start juicing after you get your cut?”

“My cut?”

Bristol smiled wider. “Your cut of the money.”

“Pssh. Yeah. I need some more.” Zeke’s eyes and lips moved, nothing else.

“You sure? You need sleep.”

“Can’t sleep if I don’t have any more. You just woke me up.”

“Yeah.” Bristol looked at the television and then at Zeke. The guy’s heart had to be almost dead. His brain fried. He needed him alive and active in a few hours. “How much?”

“Just a baggy.”

Just a baggy? My God, the guy was suicidal. And what if this batch killed him?

Zeke sat up. His pasty white skin glowed in the darkened room. “Give me more asshole! More! More!”

Bristol jumped onto the bed, gripped his throat, and slammed him down onto the mattress, careful to keep away from the bouncing syringe as he straddled him. He brought his mouth close to Zeke’s face. “Shut up.”

“More!”

Dealing with the child in the other room was nothing compared to this guy. “Okay. Chill.”

Bristol slid off the bed and pulled out a ten-gram baggy, two full teaspoons of heroin, from his inner pocket. That made seven remaining—more than enough to kill the man with an overdose in the end.

“Take it easy, though. I need you in a few hours—to finish the job.” He dropped the baggy next to the blackened spoon and lighter on the end table. There was a singed spot on the carpet. “And don’t set the place on fire, huh?”

Zeke was already up and sitting cross-legged, twisting the tie off the bag.

Bristol watched for a few seconds, marveling at the power of the drug, and then stepped out of the room and locked the door.

Walking to the end of the hall, he twisted the lock and opened the other door.

Michael Coulter huddled in a ball on the floor beneath a mountain of blankets, like he’d gotten an attack of the chills since the last time Bristol had checked on him.

The television showed yet another episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. They must be having a marathon.

The girl was on the bed, tucked under the covers, only a tuft of blonde hair visible above the sheets. The glass of orange juice was empty. He wondered whether she had to pee. It had been four hours.

His sympathy for her was now completely gone. This room right here had to be larger than his entire single-wide trailer, growing up. He’d been locked in a space much smaller than this while Mom had her boyfriends over—never had any television. No plush bed. Just a single piss-soaked blanket, a garbage bag in the corner to crap in, and a dark wall to stare at for entertainment.

This girl had no clue how easy she had it.

Stepping over to the empty glass of juice, he looked over and froze.

Her eyes were wide open, staring into his, right into his soul. She knew his intentions. It was right there on her face.

He swallowed. “I’ll get more juice. You gotta pee?”

She looked at the television.

“Let me know if you do.” He walked out and shut the door behind him.

Leaning against it, he closed his eyes, wondering why his breath was so shaky. He fought back the panic by thinking of Jim—almost two years old and his future ahead of him. Two years old and a psycho killer taking photos of him from a hundred yards away. Oblivious to the danger. An innocent little kid.

CHAPTER 30

VENUS HOVERED next to the sliver of moon in the eastern sky. The wind outside had cleared the storm clouds.

A snowplow came into the lot and scraped past Wolf’s SUV, rattling the vehicle. Lauren slept on, oblivious to the passing cacophony of sound and twirling light.

He zipped his coat up to his chin, put on his winter cap, and opened the door. The cold pinched his exposed face and hands. Stepping to the front bumper of his Explorer, he stretched his hands above his head and arched his aching back. Moving his foot back and forth, he decided he’ do a fresh wrap on his ankle to see if it eased the nagging pain.

The eastern peaks were silhouetted against an azure sky brightening by the minute. The mountains to the south were dark monoliths looming over the town of Frisco.

Through the trees to his left he saw a piece of Lake Dillon, a flat white plain with a deer trudging through deep snow at its edge.

“David! David!” Lauren was knocking on the window.

Wolf stepped to his door and launched inside. “What?”

The phone in the center console vibrated and rang a shrill tune.

“Okay, okay.” Wolf settled in his seat, shut the door, and handed Lauren the phone. “Here we go.”

Lauren took a hard breath through her nose. “Hello?”

Wolf bent over and Lauren tilted the phone sideways so he could hear out of the tiny ear speaker.

“Rise and shine,” the voice said.

Lauren said nothing.

“Vail Pass just opened. I saw on the news. So get your ass to Rocky Points already.”

“Where do I go?” Lauren looked at Wolf.

“I’ll let you know when you get closer.”

The line went dead.

Lauren handed over the phone. The phone number was different, from a foreign area code. Certainly not Colorado.

He pulled out his own phone and called Patterson.

“Hello?” Her voice was groggy.

“We just got a call from the guy.”

“Okay. Give me the number.”

Wolf gave her the number.

“My God, a fourth number?” She exhaled into the phone, like she was fighting a yawn and losing. “What time is it? Oh, okay, I’ll get on it and let you know what I can find. It might take hours at this point, though.”

“We’re leaving right now.”

She went silent.

There was a voice in the background.

“Is that Rachette?” Wolf asked.

“Yeah.”

“Let me talk to him.”

“Hello?” Rachette’s voice sounded like sandpaper.

“You guys have everything set?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. We’re leaving now. With the road conditions, we’ll probably be an hour and a half. I’ll be in touch when we get closer.”

Rachette’s breathing accelerated. “Yes, sir.”

CHAPTER 31

WOLF AND LAUREN drove in silence for the first thirty minutes—up the winding canyon west of Frisco, past the sprawling Copper Mountain Ski Resort, and up Vail Pass.

Wolf had finished passing another eighteen-wheeler, his eyes glued to the road, his fingers clenched on the wheel, when he noticed Lauren fidgeting more than before. He wondered whether she was going into shock and thought better of asking how she was doing. He knew the answer to that.

They rode in silence for another few minutes, cresting the pass and coasting down the western side. The traffic was thick, the vehicles in the right lane clearing dual tracks down to the asphalt but crawling at an unacceptable pace, so he kept on the icy packed powder of the left lane, making for a demanding start to what was going to be a very stressful day.

“What happens if you guys lose me?” she asked, finally breaking the silence.

“My deputy put a GPS transponder in the car he’s leaving for me. There’s no way we’ll lose you. Plus, I’ll be following you.”

“And if he sees you following me?”

“I’ll be inconspicuous in a civilian car.” Wolf sounded unconvincing even to himself. “And we’ll deal with that as it comes.”

She closed her eyes. “Okay. So the plan is, your deputies are going to leave a civilian car somewhere.”

Wolf nodded. “Somewhere on the way to the meeting place, which we’ll know when he calls again.”

“Okay. So, you drop me off, I get in and drive the car, you follow me in another civilian car to where this guy wants to meet me. When I meet him, if he asks about the car I’m driving, I pretend it’s Keith Lourde’s vehicle. Because I knew my brother didn’t have any snow tires and it would be dangerous driving up in my brother’s car with all the snow coming. So I asked Keith, who’s the CEO of my family’s company, to give me his car …” She looked at Wolf and shook her head. “This all sounds like a lie.”

“It sounds like the truth. Don’t dwell on it. You wanted a safer car. You asked him if you could borrow his. He said sure, here. Done.”

Her chest was heaving as she spoke. “And they leave you a car. What are they going to give you? A bunch of guns?”

“They’ll leave me a rifle just in case, but the plan is to get closer.”

“Meaning …”

“They’ll leave me a lock-picking kit and snowshoes. I’ll have my hand gun and the knife I have on me, and I’ll infiltrate the house.”

She dropped her jaw. “I … wha … so your plan is to infiltrate this house by picking a lock, then sneaking in and taking out two armed men who have guns to my daughter’s head?”

Wolf nodded.

“Jesus … and you can do that? This is something you do? You’re like a one-man SWAT team for your Sheriff’s Department or something?”

Wolf said nothing.

“Have you done anything like that before?”

He nodded. “I have.”

“When?”

“In a former life.”

“In the military?”

He nodded.

She leaned back with closed eyes, the back of her hand against her forehead.

“Lauren, I know you’re apprehensive. By God, I know you are. It’s your daughter. I understand—”

“No, you don’t understand, so don’t say you do.”

Wolf waited for her to sit back again. “But think about it. The guy is giving us no alternatives. We don’t know where this meeting place is going to be. It’s unlikely to be the same place he has Ella.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if I were this guy, a man who’s clearly apprehensive, a guy who wears rubber gloves at all times and routes cell phone calls through foreign countries, I would make sure you weren’t working with the cops before I showed myself. I certainly wouldn’t lead you straight to where I’m holding your daughter without knowing for sure. You had the whole night to make some calls on a payphone, maybe talk to the Frisco cops about what’s going on.”

She lowered her hand and looked out the windshield now.

“As far as a SWAT team goes, we don’t have one. So what we could do is bring in a bunch of deputies—some trained better than others in high-stress situations involving hostages. If we do that, bring them crashing into our meeting place, we could spook this guy. If we surround the place and wait for him, he might spot us. You know what he looks like, but we don’t, nor do we know what he’s going to be driving. It’s not going to be the Mackennas’ Jeep Cherokee that everyone’s looking for. He knows we’re looking for that.

“We spook him at all, we don’t find out where your daughter is. Rocky Points is a small town, but not that small. Some houses are miles from one another, out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Okay, okay.” She covered her face with her hands. “So you’ll bring in the cavalry after we’re led to the place she’s being held?”

“If it comes down to it, we’ll bring in the cavalry.”

She opened her fingers and looked at him.

“With this Zeke guy with your daughter, and how unstable he is, I’m not liking the outcome of bringing in the cavalry. The more people we bring into this, the more things can go wrong.”

She dropped her hands and contemplated for a few minutes. “So it’s up to you and your one-man-infiltration plan.”

Wolf’s chest tensed at her skeptical tone.

“I keep thinking that there’s no way he’s going to let us live,” she said. “I can draw him. He’s wearing rubber gloves all the time. Making that Zeke guy do stuff for him. He’s trying to keep his identity hidden. He’s trying to stay invisible from this whole situation. If Ella and I can identify him, then he’s planning on killing us.”

I know, Wolf thought.

He grabbed her hand. “I’m planning on doing the same to him.”

“So wouldn’t it be best to call in the cavalry right off the bat? Otherwise they might be planning on killing us straightaway. If they come in and surround the house, let him know that the jig is up and they know who he is now, then he’ll have no choice but to surrender, or …”

She let go of his hand.

Wolf readied himself to say something, then stopped.

She stared at him, searching his features again like she had on their first date, only this time her face was blank. “I hope you’re fast.”

CHAPTER 32

BRISTOL STARED at the blip on the map and lifted one earphone from his head, letting in cool air.

“I have to pee!”

He ignored the girl for a few seconds longer, watching as the blinking red dot pulled nearer the section of windy road tagged on the map as Cave Creek.

She pounded on the door.

He pulled off his earphones and walked to the end of the hall.

After he’d unlocked the door the girl exploded out of the room—straight past him and into the bathroom across the hallway.

“What’s going on out there?” Michael Coulter was sitting up, his hair messed on one side, eyes squinting against the morning sunlight streaming inside.

“I’ll get you guys some breakfast. You want some more?”

Some more. Michael Coulter mouthed the words silently and fought the demon Bristol had unleashed with that first euphoric injection less than a day ago.

Michael nodded.

“Yeah?” Bristol gave him a sly smile.

“Yes.”

The toilet flushed and the girl came out of the bathroom, then marched straight back into the room and dove into the bed.

Michael stood from his clump of bedding on the floor and came out.

Bristol handed over the paraphernalia and bag, and then waited patiently while Michael took his fix inside the bathroom. Five minutes later, Michael emerged with paler skin than he’d gone in with and a fresh mosquito-bite-like sore on his arm.

He stumbled inside the room and melted onto the floor under his covers.

“I’ll be back with some breakfast later,” Bristol said, shutting and locking the door.

He ducked into Zeke’s room next. Sound asleep, Zeke looked paler than ever in the natural light. A thin sheen of sweat veiled his body. The room smelled like an animal den.

Bristol scraped together the paraphernalia on the end table and prepared another dose, using the same careful, familiar movements from his years of preparing his mother’s fixes: pour the dope into the tablespoon, crush it into a fine powder with the other spoon, draw the water from the cup into the syringe, add it to the dope, cook it with the lighter, drop the cotton in the spoon, draw the liquid through the cotton ball, hold it to the light.

Staring at Zeke’s arm, he searched for a suitable place to stick him with it and found more scar tissue, black bruises, and scabs than untouched flesh. Finding a tiny portion of blue vein, he pushed in the needle and depressed the plunger.

Zeke cracked an eye and his lips curled into a smile.

It was all Bristol could do to not vomit right then and there. “See you in a bit.”

Zeke nodded and his eyes rolled to the back of his head.

Bristol locked the door and stepped quickly into the living room and back to his laptop.

The blip was a fraction of an inch further south.

With his chores done for the morning, he donned his coat, zipped it all the way, and fished inside his backpack. He dug through the five phones, each numbered with white paint, and found #2 along with the corresponding battery. Pocketing them, he slammed his laptop shut and shoved it into his backpack. Then he grabbed the Toyota key fob from the hook on the wall and left.

CHAPTER 33

WOLF AND LAUREN were south of Brushing, driving through the flat, high plateau just north of Cave Creek. The sage bushes dotting the landscape were now white mounds, smothered under a foot and a half of wind-blown snow from the storm.

The sun blazed through the windshield, and since the sodium chloride from the plows had done its job here, melting the snow to the black top in both lanes, it made for treacherous driving conditions. Mist from cars and trucks in front of Wolf hit the windshield, and every few seconds he had to use the wipers with a dose of fluid.

Lauren was holding the phone in her lap and must have felt the vibration first, because she abruptly turned to Wolf and then came a shrill ring. She was mesmerized by the screen. “It’s a different number.”

Wolf flipped off his radio and twirled his finger.

“Hello?”

Wolf glanced between her and the road.

“Okay … okay. No, I haven’t told anyone.” She looked at Wolf. “Okay.”

She ended the call, put the phone on her lap, and looked ahead. “He says to go through town and out the south end. He’ll call us … me … when I’m out and give exact directions to the house.”

“Can I see the phone?”

She handed it over.

Wolf checked the recent-call list. “That was the same number that called you yesterday. The first number … when you were at work. He’s rotated back to that phone.”

Wolf grabbed his phone and dialed.

“Yeah,” Patterson said.

“We just got instructions from this guy. He wants us to go south of town. When we get there, he’ll call with directions.”

“Okay. South of town? He’s at the resort?”

“Listen, he used an old number. He’s rotated back to the first phone he used to call Lauren at work yesterday morning.”

“Yep, here. I just got a notification email and a text message from the carrier.” Patterson paused and exhaled into the receiver. “Okay … I’ll get back to you.”

She hung up.

Wolf lowered his phone and stared out the windshield.

“What’s going on?”

“She’s trying to trace a location on the number.” Wolf pulled behind an old pickup truck and had to endure the spray on the windshield. “He said he’d give directions to the house? That’s what he said?”

“Yeah.” She looked at him.

Wolf hit the gas and passed the truck. “There’s the ski resort south of town, and then nothing but William’s Pass. I guess he’s holed up in a condo at the base.”

“What are you thinking?”

Wolf shook his head. “It’s just a very crowded area. It doesn’t make sense that he’d go to the base, where there are condos stacked on top of one another and a lot of people. Or he could go south of Rocky Points, I guess. To Ashland.”

His phone rang again. “Yeah.”

“Got a real good hit on this one.” Patterson’s voice was excited. “He’s broadcasting GPS and cell. I’m staring at a dot on top of mile marker 211, right there off Highway 734.”

Wolf frowned. “How big a dot?”

“About a fifty-yard diameter. A pinpoint.”

“On Williams Pass?”

“That’s what I’m getting.”

“What’s on the map? What structures? Is that the ranger station?”

“Nope. Ranger station is another mile up the valley, right near the first switchback on Williams. This is just past the resort entrance.”

Wolf stared out the windshield.

“Sir?”

“Okay. Get Hernandez and Rachette out and on their way. Tell them to leave one car at the resort entrance and do a flyby of mile marker 211. Let me know what they see.”

“You got it. They’re out the door.”

Wolf hung up and put the phone in his lap.

“What? You located him?”

Wolf nodded.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just don’t know what’s there. He must be planning to meet you on the road and driving from there. Or you’ll drive him.”

“He’s not calling from a house?”

Wolf shook his head. “There’s nothing there.”

There’d been a rock in Wolf’s gut all morning, a sinking feeling pulling down on his stomach. The rock felt like a boulder now.

“You don’t like it.” Lauren was staring at him.

“The plan stays the same. There’s nothing where he wants to meet, which means you’ll probably be driving in a car with him.”

“Shit.” Her chest was heaving now. “If he’s on the side of the road, and I have to pull over to meet him … then what are you going to do if you’re following me?”

Wolf wanted to placate her, but she had a good point. “I’ll stay out of sight. They’re doing a drive-by now. We’ll have more intel in a few minutes.”

He watched with his peripheral vision as she stared at him. He kept his eyes on the road, his expression neutral, his mind on Rachette’s next call.

CHAPTER 34

DETECTIVE TOM RACHETTE drove in Patterson’s immaculately clean, feminine-scented car two miles south of town on Highway 734, trying to figure out a place to stuff the breakfast burrito wrapper. Every surface was cleaner than a baby’s butt, so he hesitated, but only for a second, before he tossed it to the floor.

Wiping his grimy hands on his pants, he tried to breathe. His heart was racing and had been for the past hour. His stomach was queasy and food was probably the last thing he needed. He should have left the burrito in the microwave, but he was freaking out and needed something to do while he made the drive, contemplating the mayhem that was sure to come this morning. Now, to add to it all, he was holding back a nervous crap.

He let off the gas at the sight of a long-haired kid in a bright-yellow vest, waving a flag at the ski-resort entrance.

Rachette pulled the car over into the turn lane, taking him from a well-worn and plowed lane to a few inches of fresh powder, which proved no match for Patterson’s all-wheel-drive crossover vehicle. If he ever got rid of his Volkswagen, he should look into one of these. They were solid.

Pulling up next to the guy, he rolled down the window.

“How’s it going?” Rachette asked.

“Pretty damn good. Twenty-two inches of freshies. Gonna be an epic day up there. Plenty of parking—”

“Yeah, hey, we need to park that vehicle behind me at this entrance, okay?” Rachette produced his badge.

The guy’s eyebrows shot up above his mirrored sunglasses. “Uh, yeah, okay.”

“We’re leaving the keys in it. We’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t touch it. If we don’t come back, there’s going to be a woman coming to drive away in it. Let her.”

“You got—”

Rachette rolled up the window and drove forward. Hernandez followed close in his own vehicle, a four-wheel-drive Jeep SUV new model, which they’d decided was the more reliable of the two if it came down to tough terrain, which meant they were going to leave it for Lauren.

He took the turn onto the ski-resort entrance road, flipped the car around, and parked along the road on the exit side.

Hernandez followed suit and rocked to a stop behind him. Hernandez hopped out of his vehicle, then walked over and had his own conversation with the parking guy. His head bobbed and breath shot out of his mouth as he pointed down the road. Then the parking guy nodded like his life had just been threatened, which, knowing Hernandez, it probably had.

Hernandez jogged over and climbed into the passenger side. He kicked the burrito wrapper. “You’re gonna trash Patterson’s car like that?”

“Pfft.” Rachette hit the gas and they shot out onto the road.

“Nice pickup in this thing,” Hernandez said, his voice a little strained sounding. Probably nervous, too. Rachette was glad to finally have somebody with him. Especially Hernandez, who Rachette knew was lightning quick with his gun and, if it came down to it, his fists.

Rachette shrugged. “It’s not bad. Smells like lady’s crotch deodorant, but not bad.”

Hernandez shook his head. “Better than that outhouse on wheels you drive.”

“The Volks? She’s a steed.”

“I think a steed is a male horse, isn’t it?”

“Nope. Can be either a male or female.”

Hernandez stared at him, then checked the mirrors and leaned forward in his seat. He palmed the dashboard and tapped his fingers.

“Two-eleven?” Rachette asked, though he knew the answer.

“Two-eleven.”

They road in silence for a mile and a half. When mile marker 210 flashed by the window, Rachette tapped on Hernandez’s shoulder.

“Why don’t you chill, act like we’re relaxed and not looking for some guy.”

“Yeah.” Hernandez leaned back and took a big breath. “Shit, this is crazy. I never been in nothing like this before.”

The next mile marker came into view far in the distance, sucking the wind right out of Rachette. “Keep an open eye.”

“No shit. Keep a steady pace. Just drive by him, and we’ll have to go down a mile or so and turn around to come back.”

As they neared the 211 mile-marker sign, Rachette let his foot off the gas because there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary ahead.

“Don’t slow down,” Hernandez said. “It’ll look obvious.”

“To who? There’s nobody here.”

They swiveled in their seats, pressing their noses to the glass. There was nothing but snow-stacked trees and virgin powder on both sides of the road. To the left, beyond the trees, was the meandering Chautauqua in a snow-covered meadow, but no structures whatsoever, and certainly no cars.

Rachette slowed to a crawl as they approached the mile marker.

“Don’t slow down,” Hernandez said. “What if he’s on foot, watching?”

Rachette studied the snow in every direction and shook his head. “No. There’re no footprints. It’s untouched powder.”

He pulled over and came to a stop. In front of them on the side of the road stood a green-and-white sign— the 211 mile marker. Something was attached to it.

“Look.”

“Shit, is that what I think it is?” Hernandez opened the door and launched himself outside.

Rachette got out and walked around the rear of Patterson’s idling car. He studied the fresh powder on top of previously plowed snowpack and saw a set of fresh tire tracks that weren’t theirs.

The tracks showed that a vehicle had parked and a man with large feet had walked around the rear of his car, just like Rachette was doing now. Rachette followed the footprints to Hernandez’s and then looked back up at the mile-marker sign.

“Shit.” Hernandez said. “What does this mean?”

Whoever had parked here had fastened a cell phone to the sign with black electrical tape.

Rachette walked to the front of his car and looked at the outgoing vehicle tracks. They swung hard left, almost to ninety degrees. An eighteen-wheel truck blew by, kicking up snow and exhaust in Rachette’s face, but he held firm at the side of the road, staring back the way they’d come.

“I have no idea. But it’s not good.”

CHAPTER 35

WOLF SLOWED at the speed-limit sign at the northern edge of town, dropping them from fifty-five miles per hour to thirty-five. A second sign would drop them to twenty-five in another hundred feet. He was antsy, loath to let off the gas, but the last thing he wanted was to draw attention to his vehicle with Lauren inside. With Vail Pass now open, the radio was blowing up about the BOLO for Lauren Coulter and her blue BMW SUV.

Lauren’s phone emitted a high-pitched tone, shattering the tense silence of the cab. “It’s him. It’s back to the foreign phone number.”

Wolf twirled a finger.

“Hello?” Her face twisted in confusion as she listened to the call.

Wolf’s phone vibrated silently in his lap. He saw it was Rachette and pressed the call-end button.

“Yes … okay.”

He leaned over and put his ear close to her, and she tilted so he could hear.

There was a lot of noise coming out of Lauren’s phone, a voice over background music.

“I want you to go to Ed’s Grocery Store,” the voice said. During the pause before the next sentence, Wolf heard more music, clanking dishes, and random voices.

“I want you to go to the far western edge of the lot and wait for me there. I’ll come pick you up in a few minutes. You tell anyone—and our original agreement still stands—and Ella and I leave together. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I understand.”

The phone went silent.

“He hung up,” she said. “He changed the meeting place to Ed’s Grocery Store. What the hell?”

Wolf grabbed the phone and looked at the untraceable number from before. “Why did he use that … ?”

Rachette called again and this time he answered. “Yeah.”

“He’s not here. He taped a phone to the mile-marker sign.”

“Okay. Get your asses back into town. He changed the meeting point to Ed’s Grocery Store.”

“Okay.” Rachette hung up.

“What’s this guy doing?” Lauren asked.

Wolf’s eyelids slid down to half-mast. “He’s successfully splitting us off from my deputies.”

CHAPTER 36

BRISTOL CLICKED the call-end button on his computer screen, ending another call originating in Vienna, Austria—another nifty piece of software he’d acquired on the internet.

He took off his headphones and stuffed them in his bag, slammed his laptop shut and bagged it too. He scraped his chair back and stood.

The many loitering people inside looked at him with raised eyebrows.

He gave them a nod and a charming smile, and they turned back to their loud conversations over the equally loud crappy music blaring from the speakers.

He felt like popping two bullets in each of the baristas behind the counter—a thank-you for providing such an ear-splitting atmosphere to work in—but instead he waved and said, “See ya later.”

Of course, he meant nothing of the sort. He was never going to set foot in this town again.

He ran out to the Toyota 4Runner parked alongside the road, jumped in, and fired up the engine. The heavy weight of the pistol in his jacket pocket pressed against his hip.

The engine roared and lurched forward with the slightest touch of his foot. He was going to have to get a nice SUV like this with his new money.

CHAPTER 37

“SPLITTING US OFF FROM YOUR DEPUTIES?” Lauren put a shaky hand to her forehead. “What? Why? He knows about them? He knows our plan?”

Wolf dialed Patterson.

“Hello?”

“He just called from the foreign number again. The first call from the older number was a decoy to split us from Rachette and Hernandez.”

Patterson paused. “He knew about them? How the hell—”

“Listen, I think he was at that new coffee shop down the street. The music was very loud in the background of the call.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“He wants to meet Lauren in the parking lot of Ed’s and take her to her daughter. I can’t tail them in this car. Go tell MacLean right now. Tell him to get someone’s civilian car and get to Ed’s. It’s supposed to go down in a few minutes, on the western edge. Did you hear me?”

“Yes. I’m just … shit. MacLean’s not in his office. He was here.”

“Hernandez and Rachette are too far to make it in time. Get Munford. Somebody. Anyone with a civi car. Tell them to get it to the rear of the store and park it next to my vehicle.”

“Okay.”

“Go now.”

“Okay.” Patterson hung up.

Lauren’s face was whiter than the snow outside.

He put the phone down as they entered the northern edge of town. Ed’s came into view up on the left, a sprawling boxy grocery store with huge windows and a mostly vacant parking lot.

He slowed on the strip of unplowed road in the center lane, the SUV wobbling side to side, and hung a left into the parking lot.

At 8 a.m. the morning grocery shopping rush was not at full volume yet. A few cars dotted the lot, but he paid them no attention. He was sure of what he heard over the phone speaker. The last time he’d been inside that new coffee shop, Dead Ground, the same African music, blaring at the same ungodly volume, had been playing. It was physically impossible for the man to make the drive from there to here that quickly.

“I’ll drop you off at the western edge.”

She looked pale. Her breathing was too rapid.

“Calm down, okay? Deep breaths.”

“What if he asks about how I got there?”

“Point vaguely to one of these cars,” Wolf said. “Breathe, Lauren.”

She closed her eyes and did as instructed.

“I’ll be with you every step. I won’t let anything happen to you two.” The words were out. A tiny voice inside screamed at him to take them back.

CHAPTER 38

PATTERSON’S HANDS WERE TINGLING, blood rushing in her ears.

She’d returned to her desk as the morning shift had come on duty. Now looking around, she found those people were all gone, save two detention-level deputies standing by a box of doughnuts.

“Hey, you.” She knew neither of their names.

One of the deputies put his hands on his chest. He was a skinny guy with short hair and big ears. “Me?”

She opened her mouth to speak and then waved her hand. “Never mind.”

She walked to the end of the room and put both hands on the cold windows overlooking Main. She leaned forward, accidentally bumping her belly. The baby kicked violently.

“Shit.” She put a hand underneath her stomach and peered out the window toward the coffee shop, which was down the block to the left.

She had to lean her shoulder into the glass for an oblique view, but she could see the sidewalk in front.

A front-end loader was doing its thing with the mountain of snow lining the middle of the street, like it always did when there was a huge dump. There were a few cars parked alongside the road, and traffic was very light.

A man jogged around one of the parked cars, a Toyota SUV, and jumped into the driver’s seat. The door bounced all the way open on its hinges, and then he reached out and slammed it. In a few seconds he was driving, jerking the SUV out onto the road, not bothering to wait for a car that had to jam to a stop for him.

With held breath, she watched as the man drove toward her.

He drove a few miles an hour over the speed limit and hit the brakes a little too late for the stop sign. Then he came to a rolling stop and spat snow as he accelerated, clearly unconcerned that he was passing by the front entrance to the county Sheriff’s Office and breaking the law. Passing directly below Patterson’s third-floor perch now, his hands gripped the top of the steering wheel and tapped out a fast rhythm, as if he were excited or nervous, and then he was out of sight, hidden beneath the roof of the SUV.

The baby squirmed inside her as an electric jolt passed through her body.

The man had been wearing purple latex gloves.

“Shit.”

She thumbed the keychain inside her pocket. She had given Rachette her keys and taken his.

She took off down the hall as fast as she could, holding her belly with two hands. The elevator doors opened and a woman stepped inside.

“Hold that elevator!”

CHAPTER 39

WOLF STOOD at the corner of the grocery-store building, watching the rapid streams of breath come from Lauren’s mouth at the far end of the parking lot.

The air was frigid, the wind biting, but the sun warmed the bricks behind him, somewhat counteracting the cold. He wished he had a cigarette, because right now his loitering outside on the corner of the building was conspicuous. At least he was in plain clothing.

With so few cars in the parking lot, his unmarked SBCSD vehicle, with its oversized antenna and light bars inside the windshield and rear window, was also conspicuous, so he’d parked it around the back of the building.

A black Toyota SUV turned into the lot from the highway, passed Lauren without slowing, and continued out of sight around the other side of the building.

Lauren watched the vehicle disappear. She glanced at Wolf with a shrug and shoved her hands in her pockets, squinting into the sun.

She was such a beauty, standing out in the light like that. His heart ached for her. Once again his muscles tensed at the thought of seeing this man. He was proving both resourceful and unpredictable.

Was unpredictable the word? No. The man was paranoid. Only such an ultra-cautious person would put out a decoy like that before making a move to meet Lauren.

Wolf’s eyes relaxed and his heart stopped as a thought came to him. Maybe it hadn’t been a decoy. Maybe he’d known about the plan. It had been a topic glossed over by one of the speakers at the law-enforcement conference on Friday—the prevalence of viruses, bugging software, credit-card cloning techniques, and other cyber threats.

Bugging software. His mind swirled, thinking about the implications. The burner phone could have had microphone-tapping software installed on it too. If so, the man would know about Wolf being with Lauren. He would know everything they’d discussed.

There was a scrape behind him, toward the rear of the building, and a man came around the corner with footsteps squeaking on the snow.

He was muscular and walked briskly with his hands shoved in his pockets. Squinting against the sun, he smiled pleasantly at Wolf.

Wolf pulled his pistol and aimed it at the man’s center mass.

“Whoa!” The man took his hands out of his pockets. One was empty and the other held a cell phone—they were both clad in latex gloves. “You don’t want to do that.”

Wolf held his aim.

The man kept walking. “If I don’t call my friend in a specified amount of time, he has instructions to do to the girl what he did to the nanny.”

Wolf lowered his gun.

“Drop it in the snow there and cover it. And then take out your phone and do the same.” He sidestepped out into the parking lot and let out an ear-splitting whistle through his teeth. “Lauren! Come here! Fast!”

Lauren had already been walking their way. Now she ran at his command.

“That a girl. Time to go see Ella!” He pocketed his phone. “I told you to put the gun and your phone in the snow. If I have to ask again I’ll let you take me down. Let you have your way with me, and I’ll let Zeke have his way with Ella. The guy’s a real sick bastard.”

Wolf clenched his teeth and dropped his Glock in the snow, then his cell phone. Then he kicked a pile of snow over them both.

Lauren came up out of breath. “Where’s my daughter?”

“You’ll be seeing her soon enough. Now take out the phone I gave you and drop it in the snow.”

Lauren hesitated.

“We’re on a time schedule here, people. Move! If we’re not back in my car in the next minute I’m not sure I’m going to be able to talk Zeke down.”

Lauren dropped the phone in the snow and stomped on it. “Let’s go.”

The man waved a hand toward the rear of the building. “Lauren, you go first, and Mr. Detective David here can follow. But first, you have the pendant, correct?”

“Yes.” Lauren said.

“Give it to me.”

Lauren produced the velvet bag from her pocket and handed it to him.

The man dropped the shimmering chunk of jewelry onto his latex-gloved palm. His future twinkled in his eyes, and then he shoved the pendant back into the bag and drew it shut.

He waved them onward.

They went to the back of the building, to the black Toyota 4Runner they’d just seen enter the lot parked right next to Wolf’s SUV.

“Hands on the hood, please,” he said. “My hood.”

On the way to planting his hands on the car, Wolf looked around. There was nobody in sight. No cars, no civilians. Only piles of snow from overnight plows, a sleepy parking lot, and pine trees.

“Less than one minute,” the man said.

Wolf put his hands on the hood and spread his legs.

The man was on him instantly. His search was expert, thoroughly exploring Wolf’s crotch for foreign objects before moving onto other places.

The man moved to Lauren next, taking more time than necessary on her crotch.

“That’s enough,” Wolf said.

The man frowned and stood up. “And the money?”

She turned to face him and leaned against the hood. “I couldn’t get any. The guy didn’t have it.”

The man’s confident smirk disappeared. “You said you got it. You bitch!” The man reared his hand back in a fist.

Wolf moved. Fast—like he’d been stung. He caught the punch and pushed. It missed her, though barely. His left elbow connected with the man’s cheek bone at the same time.

“Ah!” The man fell to the ground with his legs up in the air.

Wolf stepped over him, grabbed him by the coat, and hefted him back to his feet.

The man smiled, a smear of blood staining his teeth.

Wolf let go of him and stepped back. “You got a name or what?”

The man wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He sized Wolf up, like he was about to say “Screw it all” to his timetable and throw down some rounds. He was big and muscular—Wolf gave that to him—but would be no match for Wolf in his current state of mind.

“Bristol.”

Wolf nodded. It looked like the truth, which meant the man was planning on killing them soon.

Bristol spat a red dollop in the snow and flicked a set of keys to Wolf. “You’re driving. Lauren, you’re sitting in front. I’m in back.”

Wolf walked to the driver’s-side door and got in.

“Where to?” Wolf said, adjusting the mirror to look at Bristol.

“Out of the parking lot.”

“Aren’t you going to call Zeke?” Lauren asked.

Bristol ignored her. “Drive.”

“You have to call him. Please.”

“If you don’t shut up, I won’t. Now drive.”

Wolf backed out and drove, only vaguely reacting to the sight of Patterson coming past in Rachette’s beat-up Volkswagen Jetta. She looked straight ahead out her windshield, as if she were on the mundane mission of shopping for eggs.

“Right on the highway.”

Wolf took a right and adjusted the mirror to see out the back window.

CHAPTER 40

“WHERE ARE YOU GUYS?” Patterson sat on the side of the highway, watching the cloud of mist kicked up by the Toyota receding into the distance.

“We’re just getting into town—shit, watch out!” Hernandez talked with a voice raised two octaves above normal.

“Where?”

“We’re … passing the coffee shop, almost to the station.”

“Oh … crap.” Patterson let off the brake and gunned it. The clutch slipped for a long moment before catching, and the engine almost stalled out. She pushed the clutch and wrenched the stick over, realizing she’d been in third gear.

“Piece of shit.”

A car honked and veered in front of her, kicking up spray onto her windshield.

“Damn it.”

“What’s going on?”

She finally got up to the speed limit. “I just watched the guy pick them up. They’re driving north on 734 in a black 4Runner.”

“Where are you?” It was Rachette’s voice in her ear now.

“North! Get your asses up here fast.” Patterson felt something pop inside her, and she sucked in breath as her legs and butt flooded with warm liquid. “Oh no.”

“Oh no, what? Get over, asshole! What’s Wolf doing?”

Patterson put both hands on the wheel and pulled herself forward to look down. Her crotch was soaked. “Oh, shit.”

“Oh shit what?”

“I’m wet.”

Rachette went silent for a second. “You’re … here, talk to Hernandez.”

“What’s going on?”

Patterson jammed the brakes because the car in front of her was almost at a dead stop with his left blinker on. She lay on her horn when the driver took his sweet time turning.

Edging past the car, she spritzed the windshield with washer fluid and saw the Toyota had disappeared. “They’re gone.”

“They’re gone?”

“Just a second.” She caught movement beyond the flat barbed-wire-enclosed field to the right. “There they are. They took a right on …”—she slowed and turned on the road—“County 19. They went right, east, on County 19.”

“Okay. Right on County 19,” Hernandez said. “East on County 19.”

Patterson heard a muted horn sound through her earpiece as she shifted. Rachette’s tiny engine sputtered and howled, vibrating the wet seat underneath her.

She started to shiver and fumbled with the controls of the heater, breaking off a knob in her fingers. Looking back at the road, she clenched the wheel with both hands to correct a sideways skid. She barreled into a deep drift, then edged her way out and back onto the plowed and packed surface of the county road.

The Toyota was bouncing ahead, kicking up a cloud of snow behind it.

“Where are you guys now?”

“Passing the station … we’re through the stop sign. It’s a little tough without a siren … Shit, watch out!”

Patterson’s doctor had told her she would have “fake” contractions—essentially her body’s warm-up session for the real deal. She’d always thought that a strange concept, and she’d wondered for the past few weeks whether she’d been having them or whether it had been gas pain—and she’d been gassier than Wolf’s dog the past few months.

Then there was the time a month ago when she’d bent over the toilet to vomit, coughed, and soaked her pants. That day she’d gone to the doctor, only to be told that her water was still intact and she’d peed herself.

When the twisting, clenching pain made her forehead bead with sweat, she knew this was a real contraction. And that was no pee—her water was trickling onto Rachette’s fast-food, crumb-ridden seat.

“Wait a minute.” Rachette was back on the phone. “Did your water just break? Is that what you were talking about?”

Patterson shifted into third and let the car ride out on the straightaway as the excruciating pain in her pelvis ratcheted upwards.

“No, I was all of a sudden horny from the sound of your voice!”

“Here’s Hernandez.”

“Your water broke?” Hernandez’s voice went up another half octave.

“It’s okay. Just get your asses here now.”

“We’re passing the grocery store. We’re coming, we’re coming. We have to get you to the hospital. I’ll call an ambulance.”

“No! We can’t do that.” Patterson let off the gas and held back, watching the Toyota take a left and climb a rise, passing under a big fancy sign. “They’re turning into the Swallow Creek development. Damn it, I might as well have a flashing siren on this thing, driving into a fancy neighborhood in this piece of crap.”

Hernandez said nothing.

The crunching pain subsided just as suddenly as it had come. “I’m heading in. I’ll figure out where they’re going and get you guys an address.”

CHAPTER 41

“WHAT DID you do with the family?” Wolf asked, locking eyes with Bristol in the mirror as they drove down the straight county road.

In his peripheral vision, through the swirling white wake behind them, he saw a tiny blue dot.

“Which family?” Bristol asked.

“The one who owns this car, the house we’re going to.”

Bristol looked out the window and Wolf took the opportunity to focus his eyes on the car behind them.

Bristol shrugged. “I think they’re in Denver. This little five-million-dollar cottage is just their weekend getaway, looks like.” His eyes flicked back to Wolf’s.

Wolf had been ready for it, already shifting his gaze back to the road ahead of them, but he’d seen clear enough that Rachette’s Volkswagen was definitely following them. “So you didn’t kill one of these families up here? Just the three people.”

“I didn’t kill three people.”

“Zeke did.”

“I killed two people.”

Wolf nodded. “The Mackennas.”

“Is that what their name was? Take a left up here into this development.”

Wolf slowed and took the turn, then passed under a gate with the sign above that read Swallow Creek. The neighborhood had houses built on ten- to twenty-acre lots, strategically placed in trees or out in flat meadows that left residents feeling like they lived in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the majesty of the Chautauqua Valley.

“Right here.”

Wolf took the first turn inside the overhanging sign, thankful it was well plowed—Rachette’s Volkswagen would need all the help it could get. He cursed their timing and the microphone-bugging software, because now Patterson and the child in her belly had been sucked into the danger.

“Second house on the right.”

They passed the first house, a sprawling two-story with a separate guest house, surrounded by a meadow and sweeping views of the western peaks. The second house was more secluded, squatting in a section of forest.

“So, you knew this house was vacant?” Wolf asked. He was trying to stall, knowing Bristol would be in a big hurry to kill them if he wanted to get out of this unscathed. “Is that why you chose this place?”

“No. Unsecured wireless internet. Just a happy coincidence for them that they’re out of town. If they’d been here, I’d have shot them in the head.” He raised a gun and waved it in the mirror. “Which I’ll do to both of you if you try anything, like that sucker punch you caught me with back there.”

Wolf slowed at the approaching driveway and turned in.

“Press the garage-door opener.”

Wolf did, and one of the four doors lifted, revealing an empty space in a spotless, well-lit garage.

“Park in there and shut off the engine. Close the door all the way. I’ll get out and then you’ll get out when I tell you.”

The driveway was half plowed, half covered in at least a foot of snow from the overnight storm. Car tracks led into another of the closed garage doors, twin depressions covered by inches of snow, and as Wolf pulled in he saw that it was the Mackennas’ Silver Jeep Cherokee that had made them.

Wolf shut off the engine and pressed the button for the garage door. With a final glance in the mirror, he saw the tail end of Rachette’s Jetta pass by.

CHAPTER 42

“1493 EDELWEISS LANE,” Patterson said. “That’s where they are. I’m going to … oh God.” She breathed rapidly as another wave of pain hit her.

“You okay?” Hernandez asked. “We’re coming. We’re on the county road now. We can see the entrance to the neighborhood.”

She twisted in her seat and looked behind her—the movement made her gasp. “I’m going to be at the next house around the bend. It’s on the right. There’s forest between here and the other house. You could approach on foot under cover of the trees.”

“Copy that. We’ll drive by to the next house. Get inside if you can. If not, we’ll be there in a second.”

Patterson shut off the phone, too distracted by the pain to say anything more. Bouncing hard in her seat, she launched the car into the ample driveway of the sprawling house and jammed the brakes.

The Volkswagen skidded for a few feet and rocked to a stop.

Rather than reach up and turn the key, she let off the clutch and stalled in the deep snow.

Her cop instinct was telling her that nobody was home. The blinds on all the windows were closed. The driveway was covered with deep powder.

“Maybe someone’s there. It’s still early in the day,” she said out loud. “They’re just lazy with their shoveling.”

Opening the door, she rolled off the seat and landed on her hands and knees in the deep snow. Her butt and legs were ice cold, the amniotic fluid exposed to the cold air, and now her hands were numb bricks.

She struggled to her feet and slammed the door, then breathed on her left hand, while her right hand pulled desperately up on her belly. It felt like the baby wanted to dive out of her. She was dilated—she could feel it—and the baby was dropping lower and lower with each bowlegged step.

She stopped. Tackling the driveway and the snow-covered steps up to the front door in the grip of a contraction was too much. And what if no one was there, anyway?

She was in limbo, standing with her legs wide, in snow up to her knees, too far from the house, and the prospect of going back to Rachette’s Burger King trash can of a car even less appealing.

She’d wait for her car. Hernandez and Rachette would be here any second. It would be warm. It would be clean. It was the next best thing to a hospital.

She turned and sucked her breath in as she saw the red in the snow. She looked at her legs—the right was stained darker than the left.

She was bleeding.

What did that mean?

Her placenta had ruptured? Oh my God. That was deadly to both of them, wasn’t it?

“Oh shit, oh shit.” She stepped fast back to Rachette’s car and opened the rear door. Pausing for a moment, she crawled inside on her hands and knees, because that’s what a million years of evolution was telling her to do.

She pulled out her phone and stared at it. If she called 911, the ambulance would come and her baby would be saved. She’d also be pulling the pin on a grenade. What would happen to the little girl, Wolf, and Lauren if a wall of sirens came toward them?

She lowered the phone and brushed aside a crumpled bag and a rock-hard French fry.

As she shivered uncontrollably, another contraction came on. They were too close together. Something was wrong.

The rear door flew open and Rachette bent down in front of her face. With wide eyes, he studied her and the fabric seat beneath her. “Holy shit, you’re bleeding!”

CHAPTER 43

WOLF STEPPED out of the SUV and onto the painted concrete floor of the garage. There were plenty of weapons hanging on the walls above a workbench—hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches—but little opportunity to get at them.

Bristol came around the other side of the car with his gun to Lauren’s head. “You go first. You try anything tricky and I splash your back with her brains.”

Wolf pushed the driver’s-side door closed and walked slowly and deliberately around the front of the car.

“Go on.”

Wolf kept walking, past the silver Jeep Cherokee and a gleaming black Ferrari.

“There had to have been an alarm on this place,” Wolf said.

“I’m good with electronics.”

Wolf nodded.

“Now start moving faster. Inside.”

Wolf took three steps up to a house entrance. He twisted an expensive knob, pushed the door open, and walked into a warm hallway that smelled like pine cleaner.

He held the door open for Lauren and Bristol.

Bristol was still at the bottom of the stairs, smiling up at Wolf. Lauren stood stiffly in front of him. Bristol lifted his elbow, changing the angle of the gun pointed at the back of Lauren’s head. “Use that doorstop to prop the door open and back up into the hallway five steps. Do it, now.”

Wolf flipped the hinged doorstop down with his foot and stepped back.

Lauren waited and then flew forward as Bristol’s brutal push hit her from behind. She just caught her balance, narrowly avoiding going head first into the steps, and stumbled up into the house.

A television played behind the closed door immediately to Wolf’s left. A flickering sliver of light escaped out the bottom, and he saw shadows of feet standing on the other side.

Lauren walked in stiffly, the gun still pressed to the back of her head, and then she followed Wolf’s eyes to the bottom of the door.

“Is Ella in there? Ella!”

“Mommy!” the girl screamed at the top of her lungs.

Lauren lurched for the door but Bristol pulled her back by her hair.

Wolf tensed, waiting for an opening, a millisecond when Bristol let his guard down amid the confusion.

But Bristol held Lauren’s hair with one hand and kept his eyes locked on Wolf. “You’ll see your daughter soon enough. Now shut up and move down the hallway.”

“No, no. Please let me see her now.”

Lauren’s head jerked forward as the barrel of Bristol’s gun thudded against her skull.

“Now!”

She staggered forward into Wolf’s arms.

“Move,” Bristol said. “Into the big room at the end of the hallway.”

Wolf turned his back and walked forward with Lauren.

The space was large with an enormous vaulted ceiling, furnished with expensive, heavy furniture made of iron, wood, and leather.

Wolf took a circuitous route to the center of the room, past a leather chair, around a chest, through two couches. His fingers ran across the smooth wood of a circular table. On top of it sat a marble cube sculpture—heavy, with sharp corners and edges. On another table stood a black iron candleholder with a slim white candle sticking up out of it. He made his way toward the weapon along the back of a leather couch.

“That’s enough,” Bristol said. “Stop there.”

They did as they were told.

Low furniture stood between them and Bristol, who had held his position at the mouth of the room.

Lauren’s eyes were newly wet with tears, but her face was hard, her jaw clenched and her teeth grinding.

Wolf put a hand on her shoulder and she shrugged it away.

“Bring her out here, you sick asshole,” she said.

A door clicked open behind Bristol and shuffling footsteps moved down the hallway.

“Ella?”

A man coughed, his rattling lungs echoing into the great room.

It was not Ella.

CHAPTER 44

PATTERSON LEANED into Rachette’s arms and felt herself being pulled out of the car. For agonizing seconds she became twisted, the pressure on her baby too much until she arched her back and the pain lifted.

Now she was looking upward at a single contrail bisecting a brilliant blue sky. Rachette held her under her shoulders while Hernandez took her legs. They were going up steps, and then under the covered porch of the house and into the warm interior.

She heard crunching glass on the floor with their footsteps. The view above her became a vaulted ceiling with log beams in geometric patterns. It was warm, so warm.

“Over there. On that fluffy rug. I’m gonna call,” Rachette said to Hernandez. “Get your ass down there. You have to help Wolf.”

Patterson was between contractions now, feeling relatively normal, save the sideways sagging of her belly.

Thumping footsteps stamped out the front door and it slammed shut. Suddenly there was no sound but Rachette’s heaving breath as he laid a blanket over her.

“Tammy, I need an ambulance right now.” Rachette relayed the address into the phone while he stared at Patterson’s legs. “Patterson’s bleeding. She’s in labor. I think something’s wrong, totally wrong.” He paused. “What? Are you kidding me?”

He lowered the phone and his mouth dropped open.

“What?” she asked.

“Tammy says I have to take off your pants.”

Patterson nodded. “Okay.”

He dropped the phone, moved the blanket aside, and gripped the top of her pants. “There’re no buttons.”

“They’re maternity pants. Just pull.” She helped him get started, but it hurt to bend forward so she lifted her butt and let him finish the deed.

“Shit.” His eyes widened as he put the phone back to his ear. “There’s blood … I don’t know, I guess … enough to be running all the way down her leg … what?” He closed his eyes and put his fingertips to his forehead. “What?”

He swallowed and opened his eyes. “I have to take off your underwear. Tammy’s telling me to.” He held out the phone to her. “Tell her, Tammy.”

“Just do it,” Patterson said, pulling the underwear off her hips. She felt the blood stick and pull on the skin between her legs.

Rachette pulled the underwear down and looked, transfixed by her crotch. As if an afterthought, he put the phone to his ear. “Okay … no … no there’s not …” He leaned closer toward her crotch.

Screw it. She allowed her legs to fall open.

“No, there’s nothing. I’m not seeing anything at all. It looks like the blood’s stopped. Fluid? I don’t know … it’s bloody. Not fluidy. But … there might be some …”

Rachette pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it. “I need to take this other call. It’s Hernandez.” He poked the screen and put it back to his ear. “What’s going on?”

Rachette stood up and paced, putting his hand on his face, oblivious to the streak of blood he was smearing on his cheek. “Shit. I can’t. Patterson’s bleeding, the ambulance—”

“Go!” She felt another contraction coming on, another wave of pain about to crash into her. “Get down there and save them. You’ve done all you can do here!”

Rachette shook his head.

“Fucking go!”

Rachette looked at her crotch one last time, knelt and put the blanket back on her, and then stood back up. “Okay.”

The pain hit her and her forehead instantly beaded with sweat. In that moment, she had a terrible premonition that nearby people’s lives were being extinguished just as her son’s was beginning.

“Get out,” she said. “Go!”

Rachette stutter-stepped and then sprinted out the door.

The door swung shut and clicked. An arctic wind flowed in through the broken window on the other side of the room, and the heater vent howled next to her, a comforting sirocco that was now her only companion.

She clenched her teeth. Half of her brain was telling her to push, the other half insisting she resist. And she was clueless as to which half was right.

CHAPTER 45

“WHAT’S GOING ON?” a voice echoed into the great room.

Wolf grabbed Lauren by the arm and pulled her behind him as a greasy-haired man came out of the hall.

He was the embodiment of a strung-out drug addict. His eyes were sunken and red rimmed, his skin shiny and white. A line of blood oozed from one of his arms, a hideous appendage worthy of a zombie-movie makeup artist.

Zeke Jacoway.

Bristol looked at the druggie and waved him over with the gun.

Zeke obeyed the unspoken command without hesitation.

“I want you to shoot these two in the head,” Bristol said.

Zeke raised a hand to shield his eyes and looked at Wolf and Lauren. “Why?”

“Because that’s why you’re here. Because if you want what’s coming to you, that’s what you have to do.” Bristol produced another gun from his waistband so he held two, then aimed one at Zeke and handed the other over to him.

Zeke seemed oblivious to the clear distrust, grabbing the pistol and marching toward Wolf and Lauren. He was sulking, his eyes on the ground, mumbling like he was angry for having to carry out a chore, like he’d been told to take out the trash by his father.

There was zero hesitation in Zeke’s movements. As he stepped forward on his dirty socks, swerving between the furniture, he racked the slide back on the handgun, checking the chamber.

Wolf grabbed Lauren and pushed her violently, sending her over the back of the couch. He turned back and ran at Zeke, grabbing the heavy iron candleholder from the table on his way. The candle snapped off as Wolf reared it back, just as a report from Bristol’s gun popped. A bullet burned past Wolf’s head.

Zeke raised his weapon, his bloodshot eyes wide open in shock.

Wolf came down with the candleholder as Zeke’s gun fired, but Wolf saw the angle and leaned at the last moment.

The bullet missed him, but he caught a face full of white-hot residue from the muzzle as he continued his downward blow with the makeshift weapon.

Wolf’s hearing was gone from the close-range blast—otherwise, he would have heard a metallic thud as he buried the candleholder five inches into Zeke’s skull.

He let go of the object and caught Zeke’s light, lifeless body and held him up in a headlock.

Bristol’s gun popped again from the hallway and Zeke’s body convulsed as a bullet hit him in the chest.

Wolf grabbed Zeke’s hand, which still held the gun, raised it, aimed it at Bristol, and pulled on Zeke’s trigger finger.

Bristol was already moving, diving back into the hallway as the mahogany splintered where he’d previously stood.

“No!” Lauren’s scream tore the air, penetrating through the ringing in Wolf’s ears.

He let Zeke fall, yanking the gun from his dead hand, and sprinted, knocking over the table, ignoring the ungodly pain in his ankle.

He entered the hallway at full speed and fired at Bristol. He missed again as Bristol dove into the bedroom where Ella Coulter watched cartoons.

“No!” Lauren was behind him.

Wolf’s lungs wheezed as he ran. His vision bounced. The hallway was unimaginably long.

A gunshot flashed inside the bedroom, and Wolf knew his life was over.

He’d failed Ella Coulter.

He’d failed Lauren Coulter.

Slowing at the doorway, he felt his face twist, his teeth bare, and he grunted so hard he felt his throat rip—a hideous noise that came from the dark, suicidal part of his soul that demanded revenge at any cost.

Walking into the room, he raised the gun and marched forward.

“Mommy!”

With a gasp, Wolf froze, taking in the scene through tear-filled eyes.

Bristol had Ella Coulter, shielding himself with her squirming body.

“Mommy, Mommy!” She kicked her feet back and forth.

The room was ice cold, the window wide open. Two men lay on the ground. One was Hernandez, writhing on the carpet beneath the window, blood seeping from a wound on his shoulder. The second man, whom Wolf recognized as Michael Coulter, was stirring underneath a pile of blankets against the wall.

“Drop it.” Bristol had his gun to Ella’s head.

Wolf’s body was shaking with adrenaline, his hands unfeeling bricks. He eased the tension off his trigger and lowered his weapon “Bristol, wait.”

Bristol sidestepped toward the window, keeping his gun against Ella’s temple.

“Mommy!”

“Ella!” Lauren stood behind Wolf.

“What the hell’s going on?” Michael Coulter sat up and leaned against the wall.

“Shut up,” Bristol said. Tears streamed down his face. He darted his eyes down to Hernandez, over to Wolf, across to the window, then back at Wolf.

“You don’t want to do this,” Wolf said. “That’s why you had Zeke. You can’t do this. This kind of thing isn’t you.”

“You on the ground! Throw your weapon out! Do it or I shoot this girl!”

“Okay,” Hernandez grunted. “Just a second. He fished around underneath him and produced his gun, then tossed it toward Bristol.

“Who is this?” Bristol asked.

“That’s the cops,” Wolf said. “You can’t go out that window. You can’t escape. You can’t kill everyone now.”

Bristol stood contemplating. “Change of plans. Back out the door and into the garage.”

Wolf hesitated. “Why?”

“We’re going to Fort Collins.” He pointed his pistol at Wolf and took a step forward.

A pop came from outside and Bristol jerked sideways. A spit of blood shot from his side as his mouth opened in a silent scream, and then he crumpled over Ella, both of them crashing to the floor.

Wolf dove head first, grabbing the gun with his left hand and prying Bristol’s arm from Ella with the other.

“Give me my daughter!” Lauren appeared and tore Ella away from Bristol.

“Get out of the room,” Wolf said, doubting she needed much convincing.

Wolf’s grip on the gun was tentative at best, but he had the leverage, and pinned it to the carpet with his full weight.

A meaty fist came up and connected squarely with his nose.

His vision blurred. Pain shot up into his skull between his eyes as blood gushed out of both nostrils. Keeping his palm pressed on the gun, Wolf lunged down and punched Bristol in the cheek, and then followed with a hard elbow to the side of his face. At the same time, the gun went off.

Another close-range shot snuffed out Wolf’s hearing and this time there was searing fire against his left hand.

Wolf slammed his right elbow onto Bristol’s forearm and the bone snapped under the skin. Finally, Wolf felt the gun release from Bristol’s grasp.

“Ungh!” Michael Coulter writhed on his side, clutching his stomach.

Another blow hit Wolf in the side of the head, this time weaker.

“Freeze!” Rachette aimed his gun point-blank at Bristol’s face.

Bristol rolled to his back and put a hand to his forehead, chest heaving.

“Hands up!”

Bristol stayed still. One arm was broken and worthless. The wound on the side of his ribcage flowed steadily, his lungs rattling as they filled with blood.

Wolf got to his knees. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear the tears that were streaming down his cheeks. He wiped his broken nose with his sleeve, painting it solid red.

“Oh shit, oh shhhhhh …” Michael Coulter curled into a tight ball. He’d clearly been hit by Bristol’s shot.

“Call an ambulance,” Wolf said.

Wolf gave his left hand a double take and raised it. His left pinky was gone, only a flap of skin near the bottom knuckle remaining. His ring finger was blackened and bent at an unnatural angle.

“You okay?” Rachette asked.

“Yeah.” Wolf turned to Hernandez. “You okay?”

“I’m hit.” Hernandez was on his side, clutching his right shoulder. “I’m okay though. I think.”

Bristol stirred and grunted. He rolled onto his side and tried to sit up.

“Get back down!” Rachette squared off and aimed his gun.

“My stomach. Ah … my stomach,” Michael whimpered.

The sound of sirens floated in through the open window.

“Ambulance is on its way,” Wolf said to Michael Coulter.

“Shit.” Rachette stood frozen, bouncing glances from Hernandez to Bristol. “Patterson’s in labor up there. She’s bleeding. I called that for her. I gotta get back up there.”

Wolf picked up Hernandez’s Glock from the floor. “Go.”

“Okay. I’ll call for more help.” Rachette disappeared out the window.

Bristol looked at the ceiling with vacant eyes, like he was on his tenth hour of staring at the television. With gurgling lungs, he convulsed and coughed.

Wolf watched him die, thinking about the Mackennas and the dead nanny. He thought about the look of terror on Ella’s face moments ago, and the memories she would be fighting for life because of this man.

With bared teeth, Bristol got to one elbow. His lungs rattled worse now, and there was blood coming from his mouth.

“My stomach,” Michael said.

Bristol slid his gaze toward Wolf. He teetered forward, his arm spasming. Inch by inch, he clawed his way up to sitting position. Then, with the final reserves in his dying body, he came at Wolf.

Wolf aimed for his chest and pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER 46

TWO DAYS LATER …

“You look like … hmmm, what’s another way of saying you look like shit?” Special Agent Kristen Luke sat in the bolted chair with crossed legs, a facetious smile curling her lips. “Ass? Nah. Way worse than that.”

Wolf went back to staring at the gray security door at the other end of the room. He had to admit, he was a little self-conscious about his nose. It looked like somebody had inflated the skin between his eyes and painted it different shades of purple. His left elbow sat on the armrest of a plastic chair, hand wrapped in a ball of bandages and sticking straight up to ease the throbbing. And while the analgesics made him more affable, they did little to mask the pain from the aftermath of having his pinky shot off.

“How does it feel?” Kristen asked.

“Like ass.”

The topical pain-relieving ointment under the ball of bandages needed reapplying, and that wouldn’t happen for at least another five hours, because he’d left it on his kitchen table up in Rocky Points.

“Here he comes,” she said in a low voice.

They could see Ryan Rome through the square window being lectured by the security guard. He was nodding, rolling his eyes, like visitation hours were old hat to him.

Wolf knew it was an act because the warden had told them Rome received exactly one visitor in the past six years of his incarceration, and that had been his lawyer.

The door clacked, the opening lock sounding like someone had hit it with a hammer, and then a guard pushed through the door, a big beefy black guy with a bored expression.

Rome’s legs were chained together so he shuffled in for his entrance. When he saw them, one side of his mouth curled and he raised both handcuffed wrists, waving with his fingers.

The guard grabbed his belly chain and led him over, and then waited until Rome had sat in the chair. Locking the restraints into the eyelet on the bottom of the concrete table, he nodded at Luke and said, “All yours.”

The guard walked to the wall, leaned up against it, and folded his arms.

Rome’s eyes lit up and he bent over to look under the table at Special Agent Luke. “I’m all yours? Damn, my lucky day. Why don’t you say we lose this freak here and grab a conjugal suite?”

“I’m Special Agent Kristen Luke with the FBI,” Luke said in a bored tone. “This is Detective David Wolf with the Sluice–Byron County Sheriff’s Department.”

Rome’s eyes never left Luke. “My goodness, look at those tits. Are you sure you don’t want to … you know … ?” He bounced his eyebrows.

“They took my gun at the door, so I don’t have anything with me to jam up your ass. I assume that’s the way you like it now.”

Wolf cleared his throat. “Can we please get on with our questions?”

Rome looked at Wolf as if he’d just appeared out of thin air. “What happened to you?”

“We have a few questions for you, Mr. Rome.”

“So they tell me.”

They sat in silence for a beat.

“Did you email Lauren Coulter this Monday morning?” Wolf asked.

Rome furrowed his brow. “This Monday?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, this Monday? Oh, wait. We don’t get internet access in this shithole so I’m going to have to say no.”

His voice echoed through the empty visitation room.

“Settle down over there,” the guard said.

Rome sat forward as far as his chains let him. “Next question.”

“Could have sent the email from a cell phone,” Luke said.

“If I had a cell phone, yeah, I guess so. But I don’t have one.”

“You could be lying,” Luke said.

“They cracked down on that a year ago. Now they check every sealed bag of cereal, every box of macaroni and cheese, every sphincter that comes in here.”

“Mind if we search your cell then?” Luke asked.

He shrugged. “You’ll do what you want to do.”

“You’re right,” Wolf said. “They’re searching it right now.”

The smile slid off his face and then he shrugged. “They’re not going to find a phone.”

Wolf thought about the Denver Police photos of Lauren Coulter’s father. “You hit Lauren Coulter’s father quite a few times with that baseball bat.”

Rome sat back.

“You were caught with a pendant when all was said and done. You said, ‘I just wanted to get what’s rightfully mine,’ did you not?” Wolf asked.

When Rome blinked, Wolf upturned his good hand and looked at Luke. “You want to tell him about our deal with the warden, or should I?”

“Go ahead,” Luke said.

“Special Agent Luke here is a close personal friend of Warden Gantry’s daughter.”

“She works in my office, actually,” Luke said.

“Oh really? That’s great, honey.”

“And she’s worked out a deal with your warden,” Luke said. “And if you don’t answer our questions to our satisfaction, he’s going to put you in solitary.”

“For a month,” Wolf said.

Rome rolled his eyes. “Please. I get to be away from my smelly, masturbating, cellmate for a whole month? Sign me up.”

Wolf and Luke exchanged a glance.

“Look, no offense,” Rome said, “but I don’t think this is going to work out. I just don’t like piles of shit with badges like you two. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d still spread you wide in the conjugation room. I’d just kick you to the curb when I’m done.”

Wolf put his good hand on Luke’s arm. “The second part of the deal is: If we figure out you’re behind any of this, your warden will be recommending your transfer to Florence ADMAX.”

Rome’s eyes pinched.

“You know what it’s like in Florence?” Wolf asked. “They’ll have you in your cell twenty-three hours per day, the other hour in a ten-by-ten box that’s designed to let you have outdoor time, but it’s really just a form of torture. You can hear the birds, but you never see them, because they cover the sky. You never see it again. Ever. You’ll be begging for a death like you gave Lauren Coulter’s father and all the others.”

He snorted and then swallowed. “What others?”

Wolf said nothing.

“Okay, what? Ask the damn questions already. This foreplay is getting me horny.” He gave Luke a slow wink.

“You know a guy named Matthew Bristol?” Wolf asked.

“Nope. Never heard of him.”

“How about Zeke Jacoway?”

Rome raised his eyebrows and leaned toward Wolf. “Nope. Next question.”

“Zeke Jacoway and Matthew Bristol came to your daughter’s house and killed the nanny, then kidnapped your daughter.”

Rome looked shaken for the first time. “And?”

Wolf shrugged. “And what?”

“So is she okay?”

“Your daughter?” Wolf asked.

“Yes, my daughter, you asshole!”

The guard pushed off the wall and started towards them.

Wolf held up a hand and the guard stopped with more than a little reluctance.

“Just answer the question. Is she okay?” Rome lowered his chin and gave a menacing glare.

“When you were picked up after killing Lauren Coulter’s father six years ago, you had a pendant in your possession,” Wolf said.

Rome blinked.

“In the police report, it says you said something to the effect that the pendant was ‘rightfully mine.’ Did you say that?”

“Yeah, so what? Tell me about Ella. What happened to her?”

“You were found with that pendant after you smashed Lauren’s father’s brains in. Lauren arrived to find her father dead and you knocked her over the head, putting her into a two-day coma, all while she was carrying your baby, so don’t pretend you give a shit about your daughter now.”

Rome sagged in his chair and shook his head. “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

Wolf and Lauren exchanged a glance, neither of them buying the remorse act.

“Come again? You didn’t mean to hurt her?” Wolf asked.

“She was just in the way. Screaming and punching me while I was trying to get out of there.” Rome looked up at them, this time with a hint of desperation. “What is this? What do you people want? Did something happen to Ella?”

“Ella’s fine,” Wolf said.

Rome closed his eyes and exhaled. “That’s good news. That’s good.” He studied their faces. “And Lulu?”

“Lulu.” Wolf frowned. “That’s what you used to call her, isn’t it?”

Rome flicked a glance between them. “Yeah, so what?”

“Lauren’s fine. And the two kidnappers are dead.”

“Good.”

They sat in silence for a few moments.

A door behind them squeaked open and Warden Gantry stood in the doorway, staring at Wolf and Luke expectantly.

They got up, leaving Ryan Rome chained to the table.

“We found nothing,” the warden said under his breath.

“You’re sure?” Luke asked.

“We checked extremely thoroughly.” Warden Gantry shook his head. “I tell you, we’ve had some serious trouble with this type of thing in the past. There’s no way a cell phone’s getting in this place without me knowing it. We check everything that comes in here. Even use X-ray scanners to look at each and every box that’s given to an inmate, the whole nine yards. And then after that we regularly sweep with cell-signal detectors.”

Wolf nodded. “Thank you, sir. We appreciate you allowing us to visit Mr. Rome on such short notice.”

“You got it.” Warden Gantry gestured to Rome, who was gazing out the windows. “I just thought you’d like to know ASAP that we found squat. Take all the time you need with him.”

Wolf grabbed the edge of the door. “That won’t be necessary. We’re done here.”

Luke raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You sure?”

“Yeah. I have to get back up to Rocky Points.”

After a series of exit procedures, Luke and Wolf were walking through the parking lot of the Sterling Correctional Facility. It was bright out, blue skies and glaring snow covering the gentle slopes of the eastern Colorado terrain, which stretched out in every direction as far as the eye could see.

Luke inhaled deeply through her nose. “Ah, I miss the smell of cow shit in the morning.”

Wolf eyed her.

“I’m serious. I used to get smells like this up in Glenwood Springs. Now I’m lucky to get a whiff of Greeley when a cold front comes in from the north, and the rest of the time I get dog food from the plant on I-70 … and crappy men’s cologne. Being surrounded by the shifting scent of manure really gets the blood pumping.”

“You oughta make your way up to Rocky Points more often. The scent of bull and horse shit is pretty strong up there.”

She eyed him. “Yeah. I saw MacLean’s press conference yesterday. He took a good portion of credit for himself, I noticed.”

Wolf raised his left hand higher to counteract the throbbing pain while they walked.

“I talked to ASAC Frye,” she said. “They have Matthew Bristol’s sister and her kid in protective custody. With those emails and everything else we’re finding on Bristol’s computer, we’re filling in a lot of information we’ve been looking for. The SAC in Vegas is breathing down our necks for everything we have. So, on a positive note, looks like I’ll be takin’ myself a trip to Vegas soon.”

“Put a twenty on black for me.” He stepped over a clump of snow and pain shot up from his ankle.

Luke put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him to a stop. “You need to listen to me, okay?”

“What?”

“Go rest.”

With a roll of his eyes he continued to the loaner sedan the Sterling PD had lent them. “I will when this is wrapped up.”

“You still think you’re right about everything?”

Wolf nodded. “I do.”

“You’re sure you don’t want me and a few boys coming up to give you a hand? You don’t have to handle it yourself.”

Wolf shook his head.

“That’s gonna be a little damper on your relationship with this woman, right when it was just getting started.”

Wolf opened the car to the Caprice Classic and sat on the worn seat. “It was one date.”

She eyed him again and started the engine. She pulled out her cell phone, dialed a number, and reversed out of the spot. “Hey, we’re done. You can start with the pre-flight.” She hung up and looked at him. “Chopper will be ready in fifteen. You want me to stop at a drug store for some pain reliever?”

“Just drive.”

“Because you look like shit.”

CHAPTER 47

WOLF STOOD at the window in the third-floor waiting area of County Hospital, watching the snowflakes brush up against the windows. He held his cell phone against his ear with his good hand.

The heavy breathing continued on the other end of the line. “I, uh … you know why I’m calling, don’t you?”

Wolf waited for MacLean to continue.

“I got Patterson’s email, which I’m sure you got.”

Wolf said nothing.

“You there?”

Wolf sniffed in response.

“I guess I don’t blame you for being a bit pissed off. But I need to talk to you ASAP. We need to figure out the way forward on this. So when you’re done there at the hospital, call me. I’ll bring Barker in here and we’ll conclude this.”

Wolf hung up and pocketed his phone.

“Three days and she doesn’t have a name for him yet?” Rachette asked behind him.

“It’s a tough decision,” Munford said. “It takes some people time to decide.”

The mountains of Williams Pass were now invisible behind an ever-widening column of white flakes. Wind rattled the windows, and a trio of crows blew past. Wolf turned away before the memories of the body in the trees surfaced again, and saw the doors to the maternity wing opening.

“Here she is!” Munford sang.

Patterson and Scott stood in the doorway with their yet unnamed newborn child bundled in a car seat hanging from Scott’s long arm.

Munford swooped in first. “Oh, he’s so adorable. Oh my God.”

Rachette hung back, his face blossoming red. The story relayed by Alan Wenter, a paramedic on board the ambulance that had come for Patterson, had been that Rachette was between Patterson’s legs, his hands out like he was catching a football snap, when they’d arrived on scene.

In the end, Rachette’s readiness wasn’t required, however, because the baby was ultimately delivered by C-section. It had twisted into breech position, and Patterson’s placenta had ruptured, putting both their lives in danger.

Rachette had stuck by her side for the ride and then the air-ambulance flight to County, which was a feat in and of itself for Rachette, who was deathly afraid of heights.

Patterson and the baby were fine. They’d spent the past three days in the hospital for rest, tests, and healing. Rachette had been unusually quiet about the incident since, and Wolf suspected that, in the end, Rachette had been more traumatized than anybody else in this room.

Scott had missed the whirlwind birth, while Rachette had held Patterson’s hand through it all. Scott was more than grateful to Rachette for his help, and was now shooting regular glances back at the detective.

Wolf smiled at the newborn, who was peacefully asleep, his impossibly tiny red face the only exposed skin. The rest of him was burrito-like in a blanket, his head covered with a pink-and-blue cap.

“You need help?” Wolf asked, shaking Scott’s hand.

There were two bags hanging across Scott’s chest and a paper sack dangling from his free arm. “Nah. My mom and dad are back there getting the rest of the stuff.”

“Well, congratulations. And how are you doing?” he asked Patterson.

She nodded. It was amazing to see her so flat-bellied, so back to her normal self after watching her balloon for eight months at work.

“I’m doing fine,” she said, craning her neck. “Hey, Rachette.”

Rachette looked up from the floor and came over. “Hey, congrats you two. There he is. He’s so cute.” He sounded like he was reading cue cards.

“We have a name for him,” Patterson said.

“What is it?” Munford asked, unable to contain the volume of her voice.

“Thomas.”

The room went silent.

“Thomas?” Rachette asked. “Tom? Like … me?”

Patterson smiled, and then instantly grimaced. “Oh, shit … my stomach hurts when I laugh. Yes, we named him after you, dumbass.”

Rachette’s mouth fell open, and then his lip quivered. “You serious?”

Closing her eyes, Patterson nodded. “I told you, I can’t laugh. These freakin’ staples are going to come out.”

“Oh, man. That is the coolest thing ever. Let me see that kid.” Rachette pushed aside Munford. “What’s with the red splotches on the skin of his face? Do you …”

Patterson stepped aside and motioned for Wolf to follow.

“His middle name is David, after you.”

Wolf nodded. “Ah, thank goodness. I was going to be pissed off if it wasn’t.”

She smiled and held her stomach.

“Sorry, right. The laughing thing.” He squeezed her shoulder with his good hand. “You did good, kid. Everyone’s hugging their children tonight because of you.”

She looked at his bandaged hand with a sigh. “Everyone sacrificed. How’s Hernandez doing?”

“He’s going in for a third shoulder surgery this morning.”

“Again?”

“They’re trying to give him mobility.”

Her face dropped. “Damn.”

“Yeah. He’ll live, though. That’s all that matters.”

“But his career as a cop?”

Wolf gave her a who-knows shrug. If the man couldn’t move his arm, couldn’t fire a gun with reliable accuracy, there was no spot for him on the detective squad. It was a tough thing that he wished on no good man like Hernandez.

“And you got my email about the LoStar system in the river victim’s car?” Patterson asked.

“I did. What the hell are you doing working hours after a helicopter ride to the hospital that ends in an emergency C-section birth of your first child?”

“Anything to get Barker out of the department.” She raised her eyebrows. “And he’s out of the department, right?”

“It’ll be up to MacLean.”

She shook her head.

“Just relax, go home, get some rest,” Wolf said. “But, hey. Thanks.”

She nodded. “How’re Lauren and her daughter doing?”

“I’m going to see them now.” He checked his watch. “In fact, we have to go. We’re meeting the hospital security in five minutes up there. You have a good three months with that baby of yours.”

She put one hand over her abdomen and reached up to hug with the other. “Come visit?”

“Of course we will.”

“I’ll miss you guys.”

Wolf gave her a gentle squeeze while Rachette launched into a rendition of his harrowing experience in the helicopter and bumped into Patterson from behind.

“No you won’t,” Wolf said.

“You’re right. I won’t.”

CHAPTER 48

WOLF KNOCKED SOFTLY on the hospital-room door and entered first, Rachette and Munford bringing up the rear.

Lauren and her brother looked up, smiles plastered on their faces left over from watching Ella do something in the center of the room.

At the sight of the three deputies, the five-year-old ran to her mother, climbed onto her lap, and laid her head on her shoulder.

“It’s okay, baby. It’s David and Tom, remember them?”

She did, and that was the problem, Wolf thought. At least the little girl had been smiling when they’d walked in. That was something.

“Hi, ma’am.” Munford took the bag from Wolf’s hand and pulled out the Disney princess doll from within. “My name’s Charlotte.” She bent down and Ella twisted her head and looked at her. “David and Tom want to talk to your mother and uncle for a few minutes. What say you come out into the hall with me and tell me all about this princess?”

Ella burrowed her head into the crook of her mother’s neck. “No.”

Lauren shook her head. “It would be best if she stayed here.”

“It would be best if she left,” Wolf said.

Lauren’s eyes met his. She nodded and pried Ella back. “Honey, I’ll be right out to see you in a second.”

“No!”

It was heart-wrenching to watch. A part of the girl suspected she was saying goodbye forever, but Wolf held his unflinching gaze on them, making it clear that Ella Coulter could not be in the room.

A few drama-filled moments later, Lauren sat back down on her chair. “Okay, that was painful. Sorry, she’s just … well, you understand.”

Wolf nodded. “Of course I do. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“So, your nose looks better today,” she said with a smile that warmed the room. “How does it feel?”

“Better.” His t’s sounded a little like d’s, it hurt to sniff, and the bridge of his nose now took up a big part of his vision, but he was generally telling the truth.

Rachette said hello and backed away, taking up position by the closed door.

“And your hand?” Lauren asked. “I can get you stronger pain meds if you want. Just give me the word.”

Michael Coulter was silent. He looked unhealthy, his skin pale and covered in sweat. Countless hoses ran to and from his body, some attached to bags filled with different colored liquids, all of it powered by beeping machines.

“So … what’s up?” Lauren asked, following Wolf’s eyes to her brother.

“What’s going on?” Michael Coulter croaked.

Wolf stepped up to Lauren and made to move past. “May I?”

She nodded and stood out of the way.

Wolf walked to the bedside and brushed his hand along the scabbed sores in the crook of Michael’s arm. His skin was cold.

“That’s where that guy was shooting me up with heroin.”

Wolf nodded. “How’s the withdrawal going?”

He smiled with exasperation. “I was up all last night shivering. I’ve never felt like that in my life. I wanted to scream, but the staples in my stomach wouldn’t let me. Basically, it was like the worst fever I’ve ever had and I felt like I was getting stabbed every other second. I wanted to cough, but the staples … It was absolute hell. They say it’s not over yet, either.”

“You’re not used to the stuff,” Wolf said.

“Yeah.”

“You’re used to cocaine, marijuana, lots of booze. But not heroin.”

The joviality vanished from Michael’s face.

Soft canned laughter came from the television mounted on the wall.

Wolf stuck a thumb on Michael’s eyebrow and lifted it, studying the yellow tint of the skin surrounding his bloodshot eye and the horizontal sliver of purple just under his lower eyelid.

“Hey.” Michael flinched. “What are you doing?”

Wolf poked at the bruise with his index finger.

“Ahh, what are you doing?”

“David.” Lauren stepped up and put her hand on Wolf’s shoulder.

Wolf lowered his hand. “How old is that black eye?”

“What?”

“Where’d you get that black eye? Did Matthew Bristol give you that?”

His eyes narrowed and then opened. “No. I got it before.”

“Before what?” Wolf asked.

“Before … I came up to Rocky Points and this whole thing started.”

Wolf stood rooted, looming over Michael.

“What?” Michael asked.

Wolf looked long and hard into Michael’s eyes, and saw none of his sister in them. “The FBI has been going through your apartment for the last few days.”

“I didn’t know that,” Michael said with a scowl, as if his personal privacy had been invaded. But he said nothing else.

“They’ve also been searching Matthew Bristol’s home. They saw the connection between you two pretty quickly. Your phone records show that you call his little network of phones often. You place bets with him, don’t you?”

Michael said nothing.

“Baseball, basketball, hockey, horse races. There doesn’t seem to be any common theme, other than you lose a lot and, most recently, you pay very little.”

“You knew that man?” Lauren stepped to the end of the bed. “You knew him?”

Michael looked like a cornered animal. His eyes darted around the room.

Wolf looked up at the television, then reached across Michael’s cowering body, grabbed the remote control, and shut it off. “You saw your sister on television, didn’t you?”

Michael shut his eyes.

“She was on the news, with me, the same day you got that black eye from Matthew Bristol.”

Sweat streamed off Michael Coulter’s forehead now.

“We know it was the same day, Friday, because the FBI looked at the security footage of your condo building and saw Matthew Bristol visiting you around lunchtime, and then leaving a few minutes later. Two hours after, when you left your apartment, you looked up at the camera and had a fresh bruise on your eye. It wasn’t there when you came home from the bars the night before. We checked.”

“Oh God …” Lauren put a hand over her mouth, her gaze on her brother hardening.

Michael held his eyes shut.

“Why did Matthew Bristol do that to you?” Wolf asked.

Michael said nothing.

“According to Matthew Bristol’s records, it looks like you owed him upwards of one hundred thousand dollars. Is that right?”

Michael kept his eyes clenched tight and shook his head.

“You owe your sister an explanation, Michael. Open your eyes and look at her.”

After what seemed like a minute, he did as he was instructed, unleashing a torrent of tears.

“Still not going to talk? I guess I’ll explain.” He turned to Lauren. “Your brother was out of money and desperate to get some. Matthew Bristol had just punched him, probably threatened his life, because he wasn’t paying back what he owed. Later that night, in a state of desperation, probably hopped up on some cocaine and liquor, he saw you on the news, standing next to me while I was interviewed by those reporters.”

Wolf turned back to Michael.

“You saw your sister on the news and you remembered the family pendant. The one Lauren got after your parents died. The pendant you didn’t get, because you were screwed up on drugs back then just like you are now, and your parents didn’t trust giving you anything in their last wills and testaments. Nothing, except, the honorary job with the family company. Which should have been enough … but not for a guy like you.”

Michael closed his eyes again.

“Is that true, Michael?” Lauren asked with a thick tongue.

He said nothing.

“And so you saw your sister and came up with a plan, but you needed somebody else to carry it out, somebody with motivation. So you enticed Bristol with five hundred thousand, half of the fenced price of the pendant when all this was said and done. You told him, why take a hundred grand when you can take five hundred, right?”

Michael started sobbing.

“Am I on the right track here?” Wolf asked.

He nodded.

“Words, please.”

“Yes.”

“Tell your sister about the plan—how you were going to have her and her daughter killed.”

“What? No. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“But they did! Three good people are dead, and only our intervention kept your little five-year-old niece, your sister, and you from dying too. The FBI looked at the browser history on your computer and found the website you used to make the anonymous email. You knew that Bristol going up and stealing the pendant wouldn’t work. Not many people can just break into a house, then crack a safe and leave, so you came up with the whole kidnapping scheme, because you knew Lauren would have to open the safe.

“So you set up the misdirection to make it look like it was Ryan Rome, the prisoner pulling the strings from behind bars, the guy who had a personal vendetta against the family. It was perfect—you knew about him trying to steal the pendant six years ago, so you could exploit that. You sent the fake email from Ryan Rome at the same time Bristol and Zeke went inside to kidnap your niece, get the pendant, and then come back to Denver.”

Michael closed his eyes.

“You actually thought Matthew Bristol and that lowlife druggie were trustworthy enough to put your niece and sister’s lives in their hands?”

“That’s not what the plan was.”

“Then what was it?” Wolf stepped back, giving him a clear line of sight with Lauren.

Michael looked up, finally meeting Lauren’s gaze. “Bristol, not Zeke—I’ve never even met Zeke in my life—was supposed to go inside with a mask on, wearing gloves. You know, so nobody could identify him later …” He shook his head and let the words die.

“Tell me.” Lauren’s lips were wet with saliva.

Michael shook his head, locking his mouth shut.

“Maybe you didn’t want anything to happen to your niece, or to Lauren, or to the nanny,” Wolf said in a quiet voice, “but you were partnering with Matthew Bristol. The guy has a real history of violence.”

“I didn’t know that,” Michael said. “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. It was supposed to be quick and easy. In and out. He was supposed to get Lauren to give him the pendant, maybe tie them up at worst, or lock them in a room—that’s it, I swear—and then come back to Denver. But she didn’t have the pendant, so it screwed everything up. And then he called me, and he went crazy, went on the run … and when I drove up here and we went up that canyon, he killed those people.”

“The pendant wasn’t at your sister’s house,” Wolf said, “which was definitely one of the gears coming off his plan, but he was prepared to wait it out at Lauren’s house while she went down to Denver, got the pendant from the family bank, and returned to Rocky Points. The pendant missing from Lauren’s safe was the least of his worries. I was coming over for a date I’d scheduled with Lauren and that’s why the plan went to shit for him. You coming up to Rocky Points, on the other hand, was always part of his plan.”

Michael frowned. “What?”

“Your plan was to have Bristol carry everything out, come back, and you guys would split the money raised from the sale of the pendant. Everyone’s happy. But Bristol thought of his own counterplan well before he ever came up to Rocky Points. He decided to recruit a lowlife ‘friend’ who’d do anything for another hit of heroin. Somebody easily manipulated because of the drugs coursing through his veins, much like you. A man named Zeke Jacoway.”

Michael scrunched his face, trying to comprehend.

“The security tapes from your building in Denver show that Matthew Bristol returned to visit you Sunday night. You guys were undoubtedly going over the final stages of your plan. Did you know that Bristol stole a paring knife from your kitchen at that time?” Wolf asked.

Michael shook his head.

“He did. So when he and Zeke went to Rocky Points bright and early the next morning, in order to catch your niece before she went to school,” Wolf injected some disgust into his voice, “he and Zeke forced their way into your sister’s house and called her home from work. And Bristol ordered Zeke to kill Ella’s nanny with that knife, which had your fingerprints on it, along with Zeke’s. Tell me, did Bristol have gloves on when he visited you on Sunday night?”

Michael closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the pillow.

“That was phase one of Bristol’s plan complete,” Wolf continued. “Phase two was to lure you up to Lauren’s house in Rocky Points. His plan was to have you go there, and then have Lauren withdraw some money. Not so much to raise red flags at the bank, just a little. Just enough to make it look like a couple of lowlife druggies had done everything for a quick payday.

“He’d leave this small amount of money, ten thousand dollars, along with five dead bodies—you, your sister, Ella, the nanny, and Zeke. It’d look like you and Zeke had masterminded the whole thing, but had had a spat in the end. Maybe Bristol’s idea was to have Zeke shoot you, and then he could keep injecting heroin into Zeke until he died, making it look like an overdose. In the end, Bristol would get the 1.8 million-dollar pendant, leaving no trace of him ever having been there. There’d just be you two fools looking like you’d gone off the deep end, all for ten thousand measly dollars.

“We probably would’ve learned about the pendant with the email pointing to Ryan Rome, but the ten-gallon hat that Bristol wore every time he visited you pretty much hid his identity on the security tapes at your apartment. He never left a trace of usable physical evidence anywhere. He would’ve vanished. And you and your whole family would have been dead because of your stupidity in thinking a plot to kidnap your niece was going to work out.”

Wolf pulled out his phone and tapped the screen to start the audio recorder. He held it out. “I need you to confess everything right now. They’ve subpoenaed the email-scrambling site to get the IP address of where the email from Ryan Rome originated. In the end, it’s all going to come back to you. The least you can do is confess and take your punishment like a man. You owe that much to your sister and her daughter.”

Michael nodded, whimpering as he put a hand over his stomach.

“Why didn’t you just ask me for money, Michael?” Lauren stared at her brother with dead eyes.

For the first time in minutes, Michael Coulter looked up at his sister. “I didn’t want to see that again.”

“See what?” she asked.

Michael closed his eyes. “That look. I always get that look. I’ve always gotten that look.”

Lowering her gaze, Lauren walked to the door, pausing while Rachette stepped aside, and then she left.

Wolf held up his cell phone toward Michael. “Let’s get started.”

CHAPTER 49

“SIR! CAN YOU HEAR ME?” Wolf’s voice was barely audible, like a man shouting through a pillow, and then hissing background noise and gurgling poured out of MacLean’s desktop-computer speakers.

Wolf eyed Barker in the seat next to him, impressed at the man’s balls for showing up to the meeting in the first place. He had not expected Barker to show. He’d never expected to see him again.

Barker held his chin up, looking MacLean in the eye, but he had yet to make eye contact with Wolf.

Sheriff MacLean held up a finger. “Here’s the window break.”

A sharp crack blasted out of the speakers, the sound of Wolf punching out the river-crash-victim’s car window with the Life Hammer, and then the background noise dropped in pitch.

“I gotcha!” This time there was no dispute. It was Wolf’s voice coming out of the speakers.

MacLean tapped the mouse and leaned back in his chair. Bridging his fingers, he crossed one leg over the other and volleyed glances back and forth between them.

They had just finished listening to a recording made by LoStar, the in-vehicle emergency service that had been installed in the SUV lying upside down in the river that fateful day the previous week.

Through due diligence, Detective Patterson had learned of the call the LoStar dispatcher had made to 911 and requested a copy of the company audio, which consisted of a few minutes of an employee trying to speak to the unconscious driver, and then several interesting snippets of sound while the victim was being rescued by a member of the Sluice–Byron County Sheriff’s Department.

With sound-enhancing software, Patterson had prepared the digital file they’d just listened to, all while lying in a County Hospital bed after her emergency C-section delivery.

Wolf had to admit it—he was relishing the moment.

MacLean sniffed, and then locked eyes with Barker. “Do you have your report from Friday’s incident, Greg?”

Barker closed his eyes and nodded.

It was only then that Wolf noticed the manila folder tucked in the chair next to Barker.

Barker slapped the folder on the desk and pushed it to MacLean.

MacLean palmed it and pulled it to the side. “Thank you, Sergeant. You can leave now.”

Wolf watched in confusion as Barker stood and left the room. He was expecting the words “You’re fired,” or “Get the hell out of here,” at the very least. At most, a discussion of the criminal charges that would be brought against the former employee of the SBCSD.

As the door clicked shut, MacLean pushed the manila folder toward Wolf.

Wolf tilted his head. “What just happened?”

MacLean gestured to the folder.

Wolf opened it. It was an incident report, written in the same chicken scratch Wolf recognized as Barker’s handwriting.

Last Friday, on the morning of January 25th at approximately 8:30 a.m., I was riding in the passenger seat of Chief Detective Wolf’s cruiser when he pulled to the side of the road, reporting he had just seen a vehicle that had crashed in the river. When he reversed back a few yards I saw the SUV lying upside down in the river.

Chief Wolf immediately instructed me to contact dispatch. As I called in for assistance, Chief Wolf lowered himself down the incline, went into the water, and proceeded to rescue the man from the upturned vehicle, putting himself in considerable danger …

Wolf lowered the report, feeling the heat redden his face.

MacLean held his gaze, his face a mixture of embarrassment and defiance.

“What the hell is going on?” Wolf asked.

MacLean stood abruptly, turning to the window. “This is the official report he’s filing about the incident last Friday.”

“I thought Barker already filed a report. Already leaked his previous version of events to the media.”

Turning back around, MacLean narrowed his eyes. “I hadn’t filed it yet. And he never leaked it to the media … I was just …” He finished his sentence with a twirl of his hand.

“What does that mean?” Wolf stood up.

He must have looked intimidating because MacLean held both hands in the air. “I wanted you to take the situation seriously, so I said he went to the media with it. But he hadn’t yet … but he did say he was going to. He said he was going to.”

Wolf blinked rapidly. “So this was all something concocted by you two—”

“What? By me?” MacLean’s eyes were about to drop out of his head. “No, you had it right before. Like you said, it was Barker working with that asshole Adam Jackson and Judy Fleming on this. They must have gotten to him. Told him if Adam Jackson were in office, they’d have Barker promoted five times by now, instead of none.

“So, like you said in your report, Barker was hanging back, he was hesitating, because he was thinking.” MacLean tapped the side of his head. “He was going to really start makin’ us look bad. Maybe he could even get you fired, which would be a huge blow to us.”

Wolf pulled his eyebrows together.

“He knew I’d have to make a decision about whom I’d believe,” MacLean said, now pacing in front of the window. “He came to me saying he’d go to the media with his side of the story if I chose your version.” MacLean smiled and bounced his eyebrows. “Well, he screwed up. Because your voice is on that LoStar recording, and your pal Patterson saved the day.”

“So … what’s happening with Barker?”

MacLean swallowed. “We need to be smart about this whole thing.”

Wolf shook his head.

“Listen, Barker denied working with Adam Jackson and that bitch. And there’s no way to prove it either way.”

“But there’s a false report he filled out, citing me as being negligent in my duty on numerous occasions within it. There’s dishonesty. Betrayal of a fellow deputy.”

MacLean pointed at the manila folder. “And now there’s this report.”

Wolf frowned. “I’d much rather just have Detective Sergeant Greg Barker gone.”

MacLean turned his back on him again. He clasped his hands behind his back and stepped closer to the window, staring at Wolf’s reflection.

“But, of course,” Wolf said slowly, getting it now, “you still want Barker’s father’s support in the next election.”

MacLean remained silent.

“You still have the false report Barker wrote earlier,” Wolf said. “And now you have this corrected report and this LoStar audio file. You have evidence that Barker made a colossal screw-up, so you’re using it to blackmail Barker’s father for support in the next election. Support for your campaign in exchange for his son keeping his dream job.”

MacLean turned around, looking pleased with himself. “For that, and keeping his son out of jail for what he did to my best employee.”

Wolf opened the door. “I’m not your employee. And from now on you’d better just keep Barker away from me and my squad.”

CHAPTER 50

A MONTH LATER …

Wolf crested the mountain with heaving lungs and the taste of copper in the back of his throat, legs tight from the exertion of the short hike.

Piercing reflections twinkled and moved in town at the bottom of the valley. A solitary eagle screeched and circled in the powder-blue sky above, floating on the light breeze that wicked the sweat from his face.

Clumps of melting snow trundled off the trees, and water trickled somewhere beneath the foot of compacted snow blanketing the forest floor.

“I’m coming,” Lauren shouted from below. “Sorry.”

Wolf turned and watched her climb the final incline.

Her breathing was fast and rhythmic, matching the strong, determined stride of her thin legs.

“You done?” Wolf asked.

“Yeah.” She beamed a smile up at Wolf, and it was much brighter than the morning sun’s glare off the snow. “I shouldn’t have drunk that last cup of coffee on the way over.”

Jet followed behind her, panting loudly with his tongue out, tail wagging side to side, moving with the spryness of a dog half his age.

“Jet kept look out for me.”

Wolf shook his head. “I think he likes you.”

“Oh, wow.” She came up next to him and marveled at the view below.

She was an attack on Wolf’s senses—a coconut-and-flower scent, body heat, soft breathing of young, healthy lungs, beautiful skin with tendrils of copper hair curling on her cheek.

She turned to him and exhaled deeply, and her breath smelled like candy. “Thanks. I needed this.”

He smiled, finally prying his eyes from her face to the view below. “I come up here a lot.”

They stood in silence for a few moments, atop the hill on the northern edge of Wolf’s property. His barn’s red-and-white façade popped through the trees below.

Jet pushed his way between them and sat, panting and clucking his tongue.

“Such a cutie.” Lauren leaned over and rubbed Jet’s neck.

She looked up at Wolf, still gripping Jet’s head. “Your ankle seems to be doing great.”

He shrugged. “It’s fine. Don’t even feel it anymore.”

She watched him take off his gloves and unzip his jacket.

“And your finger?” She grabbed his left hand and held it up to examine the bandage over the stump where his pinkie finger used to be. “Does it itch?”

Hell, yes, it itched! The thick scab had morphed into a web of scar tissue that got irritated the more he sweated—and he was sweating profusely now.

“How’s Ella doing?” he asked.

She let go of his hand. “Good. Really. She’s doing better.” She gazed down the forested hillside in front of them and nodded. “Heck, I don’t remember much about being five years old. I guess I hope the same applies for her. Getting out of that house helped. The new place is good. It’s a rental right in town. Margaret Hitchens sold my other place, did you know that?”

Wolf nodded.

“She talks about you incessantly,” Lauren said.

Of course Wolf knew she’d been talking to Margaret, because Margaret had been talking to Wolf incessantly about Lauren. It was clear that Margaret liked her and she wanted Wolf to like her too. According to Margaret, Lauren was incapable of committing to a new property, and Margaret’s assessment was that she had one foot in and one foot out of Rocky Points.

“I was surprised you called,” she said. “I didn’t think you would.”

“I … wasn’t sure you wanted me to.”

With a shrug, she said, “I probably didn’t want you to at first. But I’m glad you did. Ah, I don’t know about you, but I’m hot.”

She took off her hat, revealing a tight ponytail. She rubbed her hand over her head, letting her fingers linger behind her ear for a moment, and for the first time Wolf got a good glimpse of the tiny tattoo. It was a bar of music, a measure, with three notes on it.

Turning toward him, she read his thoughts. “‘Also sprach Zarathustra.’”

Wolf raised his eyebrows.

She smiled and then laughed at his confusion. “The theme song for 2001: A Space Odyssey?”

“Ah. Yes. Also sprecken …”

“Sprach Zarathustra.”

Her lips were curled in a playful grin as she watched Wolf repeat the words. “My dad used to lecture my brother and me on the importance and genius of the piece, how it was inspired by a Friedrich Nietzsche novel. There’s a series of notes in the final section of the piece, a melody that resolves in two different keys, which supposedly refer to the ‘World Riddle’—something Nietzsche wrote about, which basically was his banging his head against the wall about the meaning of life and the nature of the universe and how it was all an unsolvable puzzle.” She twirled a finger in the air and then laughed. “And it’s actually way more notes than are tattooed behind my ear, but these are just the first three in the piece. You know, at the beginning—duh … duh … duh?”

When she was done, she opened her eyes and noticed Wolf and Jet gazing at her like crushing schoolboys, and her face went bright red.

“Anyway, my father, the weirdo that he was, used to blare this music in the house, quoting Nietzsche, drinking his Scotch, all the while lecturing his two children about the meaning of life.”

Wolf watched her—the way her face animated as thoughts flitted from her mouth. He decided he could watch her talk for hours on end and it would never bore him.

But she fell silent, her eyes unfocused.

The breeze freshened, bringing on it the scent of the surrounding pines.

“How are you doing?” Wolf asked.

“Not bad, I guess, considering.”

“I hear Keith Lourde dropped his charges,” Wolf said.

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. My lawyer did some investigating. Turns out he was broke, lost most of what he had in his divorce, because he was screwing every other woman in Denver, and what little he had left he was losing in the stock market.”

Wolf nodded.

They stood in silence for a long minute, listening to the sounds of the forest and Jet’s panting.

“It was my fault,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

“What my brother did. What he became in life.”

Wolf shook his head. “You can’t blame yourself for—”

“No, I mean, it really was my fault.”

Wolf held still as she gathered her thoughts.

“When we were kids, I did something horrible.” She looked up at him, but said nothing.

He got the sense she was desperate to get something off her chest, so he asked, “What happened?”

“We went on this trip to West Virginia once. My brother, my parents, and me—to some resort in the middle of the mountains. It was all green and lush, and there were all these fun outdoor activities to do. I was … twelve? Yeah, and he was fifteen. It was one of the best trips we’d ever had as a family, like we were firing on all cylinders, you know? We laughed so much.

“And for my brother … it was even better for him. Because my father was so strict with us growing up, so hard on Michael especially, but on that trip there was some connection that happened between them. Some change in my father we could all sense. The way he’d pat Michael on the back. The proud smiles from both of them. It was the opposite of how my father would usually act—pushing my brother in sports he never wanted to play in the first place, shunning his artistic talent as if it were embarrassing. It was different on this trip. I remember Michael playing a song on the piano, the Peanuts Song, and we all danced, and my father actually patted him on the back after he played it.

“It was like they were getting to a better place. And for some reason, it ticked me off. My dumbass little twelve-year-old pre-pubescent brain was thinking that my brother was getting too uppity about the whole thing. That he needed to be knocked down a notch.”

Jet let out a small whine.

Wolf said nothing.

“So one day, my brother and I went for a hike, and my father told Michael to keep an eye out for me. ‘The woods can be dangerous,’ he said. And Michael said, ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’m the big brother. I can do it,’ or something to that effect.

“So we went. I remember it was very dense woods. Hot and steamy, thick underbrush. And I led the way, and we talked and talked, mostly about Dad. Michael wouldn’t shut up about music school, and how cool it was that Dad wanted him to go, and … all the while I was burning with jealousy. I was Daddy’s little girl. I’d even drawn a little picture of my dad and me together, and he was supposed to be impressed with me, not my brother. Dad kept the picture in his pocket at all times. He used to pat it and wink at me. And now Michael was butting in.”

Wolf knew the picture. It had been framed and hanging on her home office wall, splashed with her father’s blood.

“We kept walking like that along the path for ten or twenty minutes, and then we switched places. He went first, and I followed. And that’s when I decided to duck into the trees and hide.”

Lauren’s eyes locked open.

“I sat there behind a downed log, just a few yards off the path, and I watched my brother freak out. He stopped, didn’t see me. Couldn’t. It was too dark and thick. He started calling my name, ran back and forth yelling for a while. And I just sat there watching.

“I was going to come barging out laughing, point at him and say ‘ha-ha!’ But for some reason I just stayed there. And then the joke was no longer a joke any more, and it was getting serious, and I just … sat there. Then he was gone. Back the way we’d come, off to get help from the grownups.”

Wolf put his hand on her shoulder and she flinched.

“Sorry. This is depressing.”

“Then what happened?” Wolf asked.

She looked up in his eyes for a second, then back out over the valley. “I waited a few more minutes and started walking back. Ran into my father and a couple of men who were running up the path, screaming my name at the top of their lungs. Dad hugged me. I said I was fine, had somehow wandered off the path and got lost. But I was fine now, all better. Thanks for coming to find me.

“It was ridiculous. Michael had been screaming my name at the top of his lungs, and I couldn’t hear him? I’d wandered off into the woods? My story didn’t hold water. I was sure he could tell I was lying and I was found out. But he never second-guessed me. But my father was so angry with Michael. Didn’t speak to him for the rest of the afternoon, and when he finally did the next day, it was at the top of his lungs, a red-faced lecture on discipline and lost trust.

“In the end, I couldn’t take the torturing my father was giving Michael so I confessed everything. Told him how I’d snuck into the woods and hidden, not wandered off, and it was all a cruel joke. And I apologized to everyone, but my father just thought I was lying to help my brother. It was hopeless. Of course, my brother knew the truth at that point.

“He was fifteen on that trip. And when we returned home, back to Denver, that was the beginning of the rest of his life—a struggling kid with a drug problem.”

They stood listening to the wind breathe through the tops of the trees.

Wolf ran through options in his head of what to say. From his time in group therapy over the past year and a half, he’d observed many good moderators who instilled comfort in somebody who’d just spilled their guts.

“Thanks for telling me that,” he said. He blinked, cursing himself for the wooden response.

She turned toward him and looked up with hard eyes. “Thanks for saving my daughter’s life.”

He looked past her.

She put both hands on his cheeks and steered his gaze downward. “I’m serious. Like I said, Margaret talks about you a lot, and I’ve learned a lot about what happened that night. How you went against direct orders and came and got me in Frisco. If you hadn’t … we’d all be dead.”

He shrugged. “Don’t mention it.”

She snorted and gazed out at the valley.

They stood in another minute of silence until she snapped him a look.

“What?”

“I think your dog farted.”

“Jet.”

Jet looked up at the sound of his name and wagged his tail.

“I think that’s our cue to head back,” Wolf said.

Jet immediately slipped next to Lauren and followed her down the trail.

“Jet, come!”

He stopped and looked back with a disappointed arch of his eyebrows.

“Don’t worry. He can stay.” Lauren scratched the fluffy neck of the German shepherd. “Mr. Farty.”

Wolf watched with interest as Lauren walked away from him, her perfect backside creasing her jeans just so.

During the twenty-minute return hike down the hill to Wolf’s ranch house, the mood was buoyant enough, but he sensed she was regretting opening up to him so much on the top of the mountain.

When they reached the barn, and then passed along the front side of its red boards, she headed straight for her Audi.

Wolf ushered Jet inside the kitchen entrance to his house, took off his snowshoes, and walked over.

She already had her own snowshoes off and she stood with crossed legs, leaning up against the hood of her car.

“You probably think I’m pretty screwed up by now, huh?”

“You know, it’s pretty difficult to change people.”

She squinted and tilted her head. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They stared at one another for a few seconds and she rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure where you’re going with that.”

“Do you think your father had a choice that day?”

“About what?”

“Could he have believed your confession and forgiven your brother?”

She swallowed and thought about it. “Yeah, I guess he could’ve.”

“But you said your father went back to treating him badly after that trip. He reverted back to old patterns of judging your brother, looking down on him.” Wolf shrugged. “It’s tough to change people.”

The side of her mouth curled a little. “You’re a regular psychologist.”

“Are you going to stay in Rocky Points?” he asked.

“I don’t know. There’s not really a reason to.”

“What about your job?”

“There’re other places I can get nursing jobs. Other hospitals in places where people don’t point and whisper at me and my daughter as we walk past.”

He stepped up and kissed her.

At first her lips were dead fish beneath his, but then she let out a high-pitched moan and they parted. Her tongue swirled eagerly, but softly, inside his mouth, tasting faintly sweet.

She reached her hands up behind his head and pulled, and her back arched as she pressed hard into him.

Jet barked from somewhere inside the house as they writhed against one another for what seemed like five seconds, but proved to be ten minutes by the time Lauren came up for air and looked at her watch. “Shit, I’m going to be late for work.”

“What time is it?”

“Ten forty-three.”

“Me too.”

She smiled wide, and her eyes did that squint that almost gave Wolf a heart attack. “You said you had the day off.”

He shrugged. “I lied.”

With a soft peck on Wolf’s lips she lowered herself, ducked out from his arms, and opened her door. She gave him one last look, an unreadable flat expression over her shoulder, and disappeared inside.

With the ferocity of a close lightning strike, Sarah’s face flickered into his mind. Just like the countless times she’d come to him in the past few months, she had that same sad expression—arched eyebrows, close-lipped smile—and in that moment Wolf understood.

The thump of Lauren’s car door snapped him back. He approached his reflection in the tinted window and knocked.

It rolled it down, revealing her soft, concern. “Are you okay?”

“Will you go out with me?”

She laughed, and her smiled wavered. Then she studied his sincerity and nodded. “Sure. I’d love to.”

“Okay.”

The Audi’s tires squished on the mud, the engine humming softly as she drove away through the horned headgate his father had built so many years ago.

He stood, breathing her scent coming off his clothes, and when the sound of her car’s engine dissipated and became the ambient sounds of the forest, he turned and walked to the house—his mind on jade-green, squinted eyes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you for reading DIRE. I hope you enjoyed the story, and if you did, thank you for taking a few moments to leave a review. As an independent author, exposure is everything, and positive reviews help so much to get that exposure. If you would consider leaving one, I would greatly appreciate it.

CLICK HERE TO LEAVE A REVIEW

I love interacting with readers so please feel free to email me at jeff@jeffcarson.co so I can thank you personally. Otherwise, thanks for your support via other means, such as sharing the books with your friends/family/book clubs/ anyone else you think might be interested in reading the David Wolf series. Thanks again for spending time in Wolf’s world.

Would you like to know about future David Wolf books the moment they are published? You can visit my blog and sign up for the New Release Newsletter at this link – http://www.jeffcarson.co/p/newsletter.html.

As a gift for signing up you’ll receive a complimentary copy of Gut Decision—A David Wolf Short Story, which is a harrowing tale that takes place years ago during David Wolf’s first days in the Sluice County Sheriff’s Department.

PREVIEW OF SIGNATURE (DAVID WOLF BOOK 9)

THE CREATURE MUST HAVE HEARD them coming because a shrill cry filled the night.

“Oh … did you hear that?” A pair of tiny arms latched onto Wolf’s leg as the plastic bin lurched again.

He bent over and shined the Maglite through the cage of the hockey helmet, illuminating the six-year-old girl’s eyes locked on the trashcan.

She gripped his leg harder and took a step back, trying to pull him with her. For all the fuss Ella Coulter had made, wanting to be his wingman, she was starting to crumble.

“David!” Her mother’s voice came from the house and echoed into the forest beyond the barn.

“It’s okay!” he said.

“Do you know how painful rabies shots are?” Lauren Coulter asked, her shapely silhouette shifting in the kitchen doorway.

He had never had the privilege.

An outbreak of barking came from deep within the house behind Lauren. Jet, Wolf’s adopted German shepherd, had informed them of the current problem and then lost his usefulness. At twelve years old, the dog was normally slow, living out his twilight years comfortably seated or lying down, but when it came to raccoons he became a rabid beast. He was probably clawing a groove into Wolf’s bedroom door right now.

“Mom! I’m okay!” Ella said, releasing her death grip on Wolf’s thigh. She adjusted the mittens, straightened the puffy winter coat, and pointed. “Let’s go. He’s probably scared. You have to get him out.”

He shined the flashlight beyond the downed trashcan. A large raccoon edged closer along the barn’s red exterior wall. The three babies watching from the corner told him one of their siblings was stuck inside. Otherwise, he assumed this mother would have long led her family away.

To keep wildlife out of this particular trashcan—the only one without a heavy-duty bear-proof fastening system like he had on the others—he’d strapped a simple thirty-inch bungee cord from handle to handle across the lid. He’d been lulled into complacency about this bin. Though he’d found it on its side more than once over the years, it had never been opened. Apparently, it was time to invest the $22.50 at Rascal’s for a secure model.

Another shrill cry pierced the silence, this time longer and more desperate, and it drew the mother raccoon closer at a faster clip.

“Stay here.”

Wolf’s tone froze Ella in her tracks, and she stood obediently under her pile of protective clothing.

He’d had enough screwing around. It was three in the morning and he needed sleep if he wanted to function at all tomorrow, so he made straight for the can.

The mother went mean, trotting alongside the wall at full steam now, both of them making for the target without slowing.

I am a man.

He straddled the can, at the same time swiveling it so that the lid pointed at the mother, keeping his flashlight pinned on her shining eyes. The cold wetness of the plastic soaked through the fabric of his pajama pants.

The raccoon bared her teeth now, raising her front claws with each running step.

Shit.

He felt the animal knocking against the bin under him, heard the rustling of plastic bags inside. There was another cry, this time sounding as if Wolf had put it in a headlock.

The mother started screaming—short shrieks that said there was about to be blood.

“Let him out!” Ella shouted.

“David!”

Wolf dropped the flashlight on the dirt and used his left hand to grip the bungee cord that ran over the length of the lid, trying to pry his fingers underneath. It was trivial, mundane movements like these that made him miss his pinkie finger, which had been blown off by a handgun last year. The missing digit reduced his dexterity, slowing his timing just enough to allow the mother raccoon to get too close.

“Stop!” He pointed at the animal.

The mother skidded to a stop, peeling back her lips as she shuffled from side to side.

Pulling the bungee cord, he released his makeshift lock and popped open the lid with his other hand.

A ball of fur darted out, knocking the flashlight along the ground. The light beam twisted and landed on the family of raccoons disappearing into the woods.

“Yay! Ha ha!” Ella jumped up and down. “Ha ha! Did you see that, Mommy?”

“Yeah, I saw that.” Lauren stood with them now, her chest heaving as she retracted her arms back from her daughter.

“Oh, hey.” Ella turned around. “Can I take this off?”

Lauren took the helmet off her daughter and watched Wolf straighten the garbage can against the barn and pick up the flashlight.

Free of her helmet, Ella pulled off Jack’s old mittens and swiveled a glance between the two adults. “That was so cool. David saved him.”

Walking back to the house, Wolf rolled his shoulders and puffed his pectoral muscles, making a show of stretching one side of his neck.

Ella stared in smiling awe while Lauren rolled her eyes.

“See you inside,” Wolf said.

Three hours later, a thin hand grasped Wolf’s shoulder, gently pulling him from his sleep.

“My hero,” Lauren’s warm lips tickled his earlobe. Her hand ran down his side, causing him an involuntary muscle spasm.

He turned, catching her facetious smile. If he had learned one thing about Lauren Coulter in their past year of dating, it was that she relished every moment that she could make Wolf lose even the slightest bit of control, which meant all she had to do to get her fix was to touch him.

Her jade eyes narrowed as she looked at his lips. Without hesitation, she reached around the front of him and went straight for the groin, massaging him through his boxer shorts.

“Good morning,” she said.

Her lips pulled into a perfect-toothed smile, and then relaxed as they gravitated towards his mouth. The smooth skin of her thigh brushed across his legs as she straddled him, and then she was over him, kissing him on the neck as her fingernails tickled at the waistline of his underwear.

He gave another involuntary shudder as she reached inside with an eager, firm grip. With her other hand, she hiked up her T-shirt and sighed. Coupled with her firm, warm body pressing against him, the sounds she made drove him wild.

He pulled up her shirt, revealing her small, golden-skinned breasts, and palmed them both. When he tried to pull off her shirt, she refused to unhand her trophy and they became a tangle of fabric and limbs.

They both laughed. Her smile was perfect. Even after a night of sleep, her breath was intoxicating.

The doorknob rattled and the door swung open, banging against the wall. An eighty-pound German shepherd strode in with a six-year-old girl in tow.

Lauren collapsed onto his chest. “Hey, baby.”

“Hi,” Ella said in that conspiratorial tone she used first thing in the morning. She was there to speak to her mother, not to Wolf.

Sticking true to her routine, Ella rounded the bed, her feet pattering on the carpet to the far side where Lauren had been sleeping three or more nights per week, for months now.

Lauren slid her hand out of Wolf’s underwear in the most erotic way possible and bent towards her daughter.

He and Jet met eyes as the girls whispered and giggled. He knew the gist of the conversation well, though he never heard it outright:

“Can I have some milk?”

“Yes, you can get it yourself.”

“Can I take Jet outside?”

“Yes. Be careful.”

Ella left in a run, and Jet left on her heels, a wagging tail thumping the doorjamb on the way out.

“Race?” Lauren asked, straddling him again.

When the kitchen door thumped closed, they began to make love furiously. Lauren had once called their new pastime a race to the finish. Either Ella wins or we win. Who will it be?

Three minutes later, when the hinges of the kitchen door squeaked back open, they were already spent and panting heavily. They always won.

After a quick shower, Wolf changed into work clothes, which consisted of his second-favorite pair of worn Levi’s, a lightweight flannel shirt, and lace-up leather Gore-Tex work boots that had seen more miles than the tires on his SUV.

He went to the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee from the steaming carafe. A half-eaten bowl of chocolate Cheerios sat on the table, and a cooling piece of toast on the counter. Lauren and Ella stood on the front deck, marveling at something.

Curiosity piqued, he sipped his coffee and walked out the front door to join them.

The valley wall to the west was ablaze with sunshine, the highest peaks veined with tendrils of dirty snow that clung to the shady crevices.

At 7:20 a.m., the sun’s rays had yet to hit the valley floor on his ranch acreage, so the air had more than a nip to it. Mid-August at nine thousand feet could host all sorts of temperatures and weather extremes during the day, but the morning was always cold.

After the overnight rains, the meadow grass was matted down with water, the pines high up near the treeline dusted with snow. Two elk grazed in a thin veil of fog to the south.

Ella stood against the railing, staring in awe at the two beasts. “They’re huge.”

Lauren smiled at the view, sipping her own coffee, then slapped Ella on the back. “Okay, back inside. It’s cold.”

“Do you ever see bears here?” Ella looked at him, her imagination already running wild behind her eyes before he could answer.

“Yes.”

She shot her mom with an I-told-you-so look and stayed put on the railing.

“Let’s go,” Lauren said. “You have to finish your breakfast, and I have to butter my toast.”

“Didn’t I butter your toast earlier this morning?” he asked.

Lauren blinked. “Butter my toast?”

“You did?” Ella asked.

Lauren walked inside, pulling a strand of her strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear. “You’re a dumbass,” she said just for him on the way by.

He watched her hips sway under her flannel pants.

With great reluctance, Ella followed her mother. “I love your house. It’s so much better than our new place in town.”

“Ella,” Lauren said from inside, her tone sharp.

“What?”

He followed them in and shut the door.

“Come on and eat your Cheerios. They’re getting soggy.”

“That’s how I like them.”

He was frozen for a few seconds, watching the gorgeous woman with the tattoo behind her ear and her beautiful daughter do their morning routine in his kitchen.

Finishing a glaze of butter on her toast, Lauren turned, catching him staring. She did the hair thing again, averted her eyes and went red in the face. “Do you want some toast?”

“Sure.”

“Eggs?”

“Sounds great.”

Ella looked up from her cereal. “Do you know what?”

“What?” He sat down.

“I want to be a bear when I die.”

He raised his eyebrows and sipped his coffee, unsure where to begin with a response.

“When you die?” Lauren turned from cracking an egg.

“Yeah. A bear. Do you know why?” She waited for him to answer.

“Why?”

“Because they’re huge and fierce. And they can scare mean raccoons away, and they don’t have to answer to anyone.”

Lauren scrambled the eggs in a bowl. “Where did you learn about coming back as a bear when you die?”

“What? I don’t know.” Ella chomped a spoonful of Cheerios, dropping half of them on her lap. She looked up at her mother, then at Wolf, looking like she was trying to figure out what she’d said wrong.

He winked. “You like bears, huh?”

“Yeah. We saw one on the road last month.”

“I know. You told me about that. That’s so cool.”

“Yep.” She dove back into her Cheerios.

Lauren slid a plate of steaming eggs and toast in front of him, and then kissed him on the temple. “I have to go pee,” she declared and left the kitchen.

Ella dropped her spoon and squinted one eye. “Do bears have mommies and daddies?”

“Yeah.”

“They do?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then why is there only one big bear with the little bears when they’re walking around?”

“That’s the momma bear. She takes care of the cubs.”

“Same thing with the raccoon last night. There was only the momma.”

He nodded.

While Ella thought on this, he heard a sound just outside of the kitchen, and then Lauren’s receding footfalls.

“So … what do the daddies do?”

He shoved a forkful of eggs into his mouth, brainstorming for an answer.

“Can daddies change?”

“What?”

“Can, like, you have one dad, and then another dad comes and becomes your dad?”

He gave a non-committal shrug and took a bite of toast. “Yeah. They can.”

“I wish you were my dad.”

“Ella.” Lauren was back at the entryway, her mouth hanging open. “Jesus,” she muttered under her breath as she walked into the kitchen. There was a loud clank as she fumbled something in the sink.

Once again confused, Ella stared at her mother’s back and chewed a mouthful of food.

He stood, walked to the sink, and put a hand on Lauren’s shoulder.

“Sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

His phone vibrated in his pocket, which sounded as intrusive as a buzz saw in the awkward silence.

She looked at his pocket and flipped on the faucet. “Better get that.”

The screen told him it was MacLean, which meant something was going on. The sheriff rarely called, preferring to talk through the channels of one of his underlings rather than to Wolf himself.

“Hello?” He moved out of the kitchen into the living room.

“We have a DB,” MacLean said.

He walked out the front door to the porch, letting the information soak into his brain.

“You there?”

He shut the door. “Yeah.”

“I said we have a dead body.”

“Where?”

“Start driving down the river. When you cross the bridge, she’ll be on your right. Next to a shitload of cops.”

CLICK HERE to download Signature (David Wolf Book 9) and continue the adventure!

DAVID WOLF SERIES IN ORDER

Gut Decision (A David Wolf Short Story)– Sign up for the new release newsletter at http://www.jeffcarson.co/p/newsletter.html and receive a complimentary copy.

Foreign Deceit (David Wolf Book 1)

The Silversmith (David Wolf Book 2)

Alive and Killing (David Wolf Book 3)

Deadly Conditions (David Wolf Book 4)

Cold Lake (David Wolf Book 5)

Smoked Out (David Wolf Book 6)

To the Bone (David Wolf Book 7)

Dire (David Wolf Book 8)

Signature (David Wolf Book 9)

Dark Mountain (David Wolf Book 10)

Rain (David Wolf Book 11)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Table of Contents

David Wolf Series in Order

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Acknowledgments

Preview of Signature (David Wolf Book 9)

David Wolf Series in Order