MurderedIin Conard County (Conard County: The Next Generation Book 40) Read online

  “Let me go hang up this towel.” He pulled it from around his neck. “Be right there.”

  She carried the coffee out to the front room, placing his cup on the rustic end table and hers on the counter that separated the room from the workspace. Everything here was rustic, which she liked, but it also felt empty without the usual comings and goings of campers.

  She settled behind the counter on her swiveling stool, feeling it might be a safer move than sitting beside him on the sofa. She didn’t know why she needed to feel safe as he posed no threat to anything except possibly her peace of mind.

  Afraid of damaging their friendship, she didn’t want him to even guess how sexually attractive she found him. The pull hadn’t worn off with familiarity, either. It seemed to be growing, and in the last couple of days it had grown by leaps and bounds.

  He joined her just a few minutes later and dropped onto the couch. “Okay,” he said. “There’s one thing I want to know, and I want complete truth.”

  Her heart skipped a beat and discomfort made her stomach flutter. “That sounds ominous.”

  “It’s not.” He waved a hand before picking up his coffee mug and toasting her with it in a silent thank-you. “I just want to know if I’m driving you nuts by hovering. You’re a very capable woman. You don’t need a man for much.”

  She nearly gaped at him, then laughed. “Sexist much?”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m being sexist,” he answered. “That’s all.”

  “Ah.” She bit her lower lip, but she felt like smiling. “I don’t. I just thought you were being a concerned friend.”

  “Okay, then. It’s just that you’ve taken care of yourself in some pretty sketchy places and situations. I know that, and I don’t underrate it.”

  She nodded, liking him even more, if that was possible. “Thank you, but I’m glad you’ve decided to help. How much ground can I cover alone? And to be quite honest, I feel uneasy. Really uneasy. This whole situation stinks, and I don’t care how many pins have marked that map, how do we know the killer has moved on? He might hang out in the woods. And if I were to go start poking around by myself, I might make him nervous enough to act, but he might hesitate if I’m not alone. Heck, despite what Micah Parish pointed out with those pins, how can I know I don’t make an attractive target out here if I’m by myself?”

  “That’s my fear,” he admitted. “My main fear. This guy obviously likes killing. You might look like a pear ready to pluck.”

  “I hear most serial killers escalate, too. Speed up.” She leaned forward, her elbows on the polished pine counter, and wrapped her hands around her mug. “I’ve always hated being blind and I was on too many missions where we were just that—blind and waiting for something to happen. That’s what this feels like.”

  “I hear you.” Leaning back on the sofa, he crossed his legs, one ankle on the other knee. “I don’t like this whole thing. One bit. I could be completely off track, though. Comparing this to anything we went through overseas on missions might really be stretching it. Those instincts could be completely wrong.”

  “But what are they telling you?”

  “Probably the same thing yours are. There’s something more than a single murder going on, and I don’t mean five of them.” He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “That was a really interesting point you made about the murders all being in different jurisdictions. It’s not like there’s a free flow of crime information between them. Not unless someone has reason to believe the crimes are linked, or they know the perp has crossed jurisdictional lines.”

  She nodded. “That was my understanding.”

  “Cops are like anyone else, they’re protective of their turf.”

  “They don’t even like the FBI, from what I hear.”

  “And if this really does cross state lines, the Bureau could get involved. Another reason not to open their eyes.”

  “Gage has.”

  “Gage was a Fed once himself,” Gus replied. “I suspect he’s less turf conscious than many.”

  Shaking her head, she tried to ease the tension that was growing in her neck. “There are moments when I feel as if I’m overreacting. I have no more evidence that this killer might act around here again than we have evidence period. And it’s driving me nuts not to know a damn thing about why or how this happened.”

  He put his coffee aside and rose. “Neck tight?”

  “Like a spring.”

  He came around behind her and began to massage her shoulders and neck. “Tell me if I press too hard or it hurts.”

  At that all she could do was groan with the pleasure of it. “Don’t stop.”

  “I won’t. You’re tight as a drum.”

  She could well believe it. Part of her couldn’t let this go, couldn’t just brush it off. The police were dealing with it. The other part of her wouldn’t just leave it alone. They needed more than a spent shell casing. A whole lot more, and if some guy had watched the campsite long enough to know how to approach and when, then he must have left something behind. Something. She knew optics, knew how far it was possible to see with a good scope or binoculars. He could have been more than a hundred yards away. All he needed was a sight line.

  Her neck was finally letting go. Her head dropped forward and she felt the release. “Thank you.”

  “Okay now?”

  “Yup. For now.”

  Dinner was ready. The oven timer beeped, letting her know. “Hungry?” she asked.

  “Famished. And I suggest an early night. We should start at first light.”

  * * *

  FROM THE WOODS farther up the road, in the trees, Jeff watched in frustration. Wasn’t that ranger ever going to go back to his own park? He was all over Blaire like white on rice.

  He’d been told he needed to take Blaire out, but he wasn’t at all sure she’d even remember their brief encounter or connect him to any of this. Why should she?

  But he knew why he was here. This was his punishment for having lost that shell casing. This was his punishment because he’d known Blaire long ago. He shouldn’t have told the guys that he’d passed her on his first recon out here. Hell, she hadn’t recognized him then. He was probably just another face among hundreds she saw every summer, and he hadn’t really noticed her. Why would she remember him any better than he’d remembered her?

  But he had his marching orders. Kill or be killed. Damn, damn, damn, how had he walked into this mess? How had he honestly believed his friends were just playing a game? He should have known Will better. Should have recognized the cold streak in him.

  Should have? Psychopaths were notorious for being able to hide their missing empathy, for seeming like people you really wanted to know. So many were successful con men because they appeared so warm and likable. Hard for a mere friend to begin to suspect such a thing.

  But that was Jeff’s conclusion now, too late. And Karl was probably no better, or else how could they have turned this “game” so deadly? He’d been wrestling with that since he had first realized what was going on, but almost immediately they’d snared him right into this mess. His life or someone else’s.

  He wished he had more guts. Evidently, for him anyway, it took less guts to shoot someone else.

  So now here he was, under orders to kill Blaire Afton, which he really didn’t want to do, and she might as well have a bodyguard. What was he supposed to do? Take them both out?

  He ground his teeth together and leaned his head back against a tree trunk, wishing himself anywhere else on the planet. He couldn’t shoot both of them. There was enough of an uproar over the first murder.

  And he still had the cries of that child hammering inside his head. He didn’t lack feeling the way the other two guys did. He wished he could have shot anyone except a guy with a little kid. Why those two had picked that man...

  He’d assumed it was be
cause he was camping alone. And at first he had been, or so it had seemed. Somewhere between the time the details had become fixed and when he’d crept into that campground to shoot the man, a child had arrived. How could he have missed that?

  But he knew. In his reluctance to carry out the killing, he hadn’t been as attentive as he should have been. No, he’d sat up there higher in the forest, just like this, with his eyes closed, wishing he was in Tahiti, or even the depths of Antarctica.

  Reluctantly, he looked again and saw the national forest truck was still parked alongside the state truck. He wondered about the chestnut horse that had been delivered that day and was now out in the corral with the forest ranger’s horse.

  Maybe the two were lovebirds. Maybe they planned a nice ride in the forest and up the mountainside. Why else would there be another horse in the corral? And if that was the case, how would he ever get Blaire alone so he could shoot her? He sure as hell didn’t want another body to add to his conscience.

  He ached somewhere deep inside over all this and was beginning to feel that he’d be hurting over this murder until the day he died. Crap, the Jasper guy had been bad. His kid had made it worse. And now he was supposed to kill someone he had actually known however long ago and however briefly?

  This time he carried a rifle so he could shoot from a distance, but he also had his pistol. He pulled it out of his holster and stared at it. All he had to do was take himself out and all of this would be over.

  He turned it slowly in his hand and thought about how easy it would be. The victim had died instantly. He never moved a muscle, and while Jeff wasn’t terribly educated in such things, he had expected at least some twitching or even moaning, shot to the head notwithstanding.

  But the kill had apparently been instantaneous. No muscle twitching, no moan, then the kid had started screaming and Jeff had hurried away as fast as he could without pounding the ground with his feet.

  As his more experienced “friends” had told him, no one would dare come out to check what had happened for a minute or two, giving him time to slip away. They’d been right. Except for the kid’s squalling, the campground had remained silent and still. Confusion and self-protection had reared long enough for Jeff to vanish into the shadows of the night. All without so much as scuffing his feet on the pine needles, dirt and leaves.

  No trail. No sound, certainly not with the boy screaming. No evidence other than losing a shell casing.

  And now all because of that casing, and the possibility that Blaire might remember his face or name after all these years, he was back here facing another nightmare.

  The night was deepening. Lights came on in her cabin. Smoke began to rise from a chimney. It was getting cold out here, so maybe it was cooling down inside.

  Maybe, he thought, he ought to try popping her through the window. Sure, and that ranger would come barreling after him instantly.

  Nope.

  A sound of disgust escaped him, and he brought his weary body to its feet. He had to find a protected spot for the night. He hadn’t bothered to locate one while there was still daylight, and through his distress he felt some annoyance with himself.

  He grabbed his backpack with one hand and turned to head deeper into the woods, away from any chance encounter with someone coming up that road. He’d spend another day watching. What choice did he have?

  Well, said a little voice in his head, he could go back to Will and Karl and confess that he was a complete failure and leave it to them to shoot him.

  Except he had a very bad feeling about that. Their little game of not getting caught meant that however they chose to remove him they’d have to make it look like an accident. Which meant he could die in all sorts of ways, from a fire, to a car accident, to a rockfall. Ways that might make him suffer for quite a while.

  He wouldn’t go out as easily as his own victim had. No way. They’d come up with something diabolical that would keep them in the clear.

  It finally was dawning on him that he had plenty of good reason to hate the two men he had always thought were his closest friends. Plenty of reason.

  Clouds raced over the moon, occasionally dimming the already darkened woods even more. Each time he had to pause and wait for the light to return. All so he could find a sheltered place where the wind wouldn’t beat on him all night and he could bundle up in a sleeping bag.

  Maybe his mind would work better in the morning. Maybe he’d find a solution one way or another. A good solution. Hell, maybe he’d find a way out of this altogether.

  Vain hope, he supposed. It was hard to hide completely anymore. Very hard. And he had no idea how to stay off the grid.

  Damn it all to hell! There had to be a way. And if that way was killing Blaire Afton, what was she to him? Nothing. Not as important as his own life.

  Because that’s what it really came down to. Who mattered more.

  He was almost positive that despite what he’d done, he mattered more. Blaire had gone to war. She probably had a body count that far exceeded anything he could do.

  Hell, maybe she even deserved to die.

  He turned that one around in his head as he finally spread out his sleeping bag against the windbreak of a couple of large boulders.

  Yeah. She deserved it.

  Now he just had to figure out the best way to do it.

  Feeling far better than he had in a couple of days, he curled up in his sleeping bag with some moss for a pillow, and finally, for the first time since he’d killed that guy, he slept well.

  Chapter Nine

  Dawn was just barely breaking, the first rosy light appearing to the east, as Blaire and Gus made a breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast. They ate quickly, cleaned up quickly, then with a couple of insulated bottles full of coffee, they went out back to the corral and found two horses that looked ready for some action.

  Gus helped Blaire saddle Lita, carefully instructing her on the important points of the western saddle. They weren’t so very different from the saddle she had used a few times in Afghanistan.

  He saddled Scrappy with practiced ease, and soon they were trotting up the road toward the rustic campsite where a man had been killed. They hadn’t talked much, but Gus wasn’t naturally chatty in the morning, and Blaire didn’t seem to be, either.

  The horses seemed to be enjoying the climb, prancing a bit, tossing their heads and whinnying once in a while as if talking to one another.

  “I hope you slept well,” Blaire said, breaking the prolonged silence. “That couch is barely long enough for you. Oh, heck, it’s not long enough at all.”

  “It was fine. And yeah, I slept well. You?”

  “Nightmares.” She shook her head as if she could shake loose of them.

  “About anything in particular?”

  “I wish I knew. No, just woke up with the sensation of having spent a frightening night. I probably ought to be glad I can’t remember. For too long, I could.”

  He knew exactly what she meant. Long after coming home, long after returning to civilian life, he’d relived some of his worst experiences in his dreams. “This situation hasn’t been good for the mental health.”

  “No,” she admitted. “I’m beginning to feel as if I’m teetering on a seesaw between the past and present.” She paused. “Hey, that’s exactly the thing I’ve been describing as being uneasy. I just realized it. Yeah, there was a murder, it was heinous, but that alone can’t explain why tension is gripping me nearly every single minute.”

  “Maybe it could.” But he didn’t believe it.

  Another silence fell, and he would have bet that she was considering her post-traumatic stress and how this event might have heightened it.

  Everyone had it to some degree. Some were luckier, having it in smaller bits they could more easily ignore. Some couldn’t get past it at all. He figured he was somewhere in the middle, and after all this
time he had a better handle on it. Hell, he and Blaire had spent hours over coffee discussing it, as if talking about it would make those memories and feelings less powerful.

  Maybe it had. The last few months he’d thought the two of them were moving to a better place. Now this. Not a better place at all.

  When they reached the turn to the rustic campground, they paused. “Want to look over the scene again?” he asked her.

  “I’m thinking. How much could the crime scene techs have missed? They certainly found the shell casing.”

  “True. So let’s start circling farther out.”

  But she chose to circle the evident edge of the camping area, with all the sites in clear view. She drew rein at one point and looked down.

  Gus followed her gaze and saw the small metal cars in the dirt, roadways still evident. Kids playing. Kids whose parents had been stricken enough by events that they’d left without getting these toys. Maybe the youngsters had been upset enough not to care about them, or had even forgotten them in the ugliness of what had occurred.

  “Sad,” Blaire remarked.

  “Yeah.”

  They continued on their way, and through the trees he could see the tent where the man had been killed, and the crime scene tape that still surrounded the area. He wondered if anyone would clean that up or if it would be left to Blaire and her staff.

  He asked, “Are they done with the scene?”

  “I don’t know. I need to ask. Then I guess we get to do the cleanup.”

  That answered his question. “I’ll help.”

  She tossed him a quizzical look. “I thought you had your own responsibilities.”

  “I do, but Holly’s in her element. She always enjoys standing in for me. One of these days, I bet she replaces me.”

  That drew a smile from Blaire and he was relieved to see it. She’d been awfully somber this morning.

  After the first circuit, during which they’d noted nothing of interest, they moved out another fifty yards. The woods grew thicker but when he looked uphill, he saw more than one potential sight line. Not far enough, maybe, before they were blocked by the growth, but they were still there. He felt, however, that a watcher would have stationed himself a much longer way out if he could. Away from chance discovery.