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