by Cindi Myers
“I may have found something,” Dwight said. He used a pen to lift something from the ashes and held it aloft. Brodie recognized the coiled binding of a pocket-size notebook. “The cover is gone, and the edge of the pages are charred, but most of it’s intact,” Dwight said. He spread the notebook on the ground and Brodie joined him in leaning over it. Dwight flipped through the pages, which appeared to contain everything from grocery lists—chips, lunch meat, cookies, soda, razor—to cryptic numbers and calculations. Most of the pages were blank.
“We’ll have to go through this at the office and see if there’s anything significant,” Dwight said. He reached into his coat and pulled out a plastic evidence bag.
Brodie continued to flip through the pages. He found what looked like phone numbers, notes on what might have been climbing routes, then stopped on a page that was simply a column of letters—KF, CO, FW, LG, AA, MU, TP, DD, JD, LW, RP, DS, EW.
“What have you got there?” Dwight asked. “Are they some kind of abbreviations? For what?”
Brodie repeated the letters under his breath, then stopped in mid-syllable as the realization of what they represented hit him. “They’re initials,” he said. “Of all the women he’s killed.”
“Kelly Farrow, Christy O’Brien, Fiona Winslow, Lauren Grenado, Anita Allbritton, Michaela Underwood, Lynn Wallace, Renee Parmenter and Denise Switcher,” Dwight said. “There’s a line through TP—Tammy Patterson. She got away from him. Another line through DD and JD—Donna and Jamie Douglas. They escaped, too.”
“They’re in order of the attacks,” Brodie said. “He must have killed Renee before Denise.” He frowned at the last letters on the page. “Who is EW?”
“Is there a victim we haven’t found yet?” Dwight asked. “Or someone he’s gone after today?”
Brodie stood, his stomach heaving and a chill sweeping through him. “EW could be Emily Walker.” He clapped Dwight on the shoulder and shoved the notebook toward him. “Bag that and let’s get out of here. We have to make sure Emily is all right.”
Chapter Twelve
“I’m fine, and I think you’re both overreacting.” Emily had been up to her eyeballs in surveys to review when Brodie and Travis had burst in on her late Friday afternoon, demanding to know what she was doing and if she had talked to or seen Alex Woodruff. “Alex hasn’t been anywhere near here, and as for what I’m doing, I’m working. And I don’t need you interrupting.”
“You could be in danger,” Brodie said. “Promise me you won’t go anywhere without me or Travis or Gage with you.”
“What are you talking about?” She turned to Travis. “Why are you both here this time of day? What’s happened?”
Travis pulled a plastic evidence envelope from his coat and held it out to her. “Brodie and Dwight found this in a cave over by Eagle Creek,” he said. “We think it belongs to Alex.”
She studied the half-charred notebook, and the list of letters inscribed on the page in front of her. “What does this have to do with me?”
“The letters on that page are the initials of the women Alex killed,” he said. His face was pale and drawn, like a man in pain. “The crossed-out letters are the three women who got away.”
She read through the list again and nodded. “All right. I can see that.”
“The last letters are EW,” Brodie said. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Emily Walker.”
This announcement elicited an astonished laugh from her. “EW could stand for anything,” she said. “Ellen White. Elaine Wilson—there are a lot of women with those initials.”
“What were those names again?” Brodie had pulled out a notebook and pen and was poised to write. “We’ll need to check on those women, as well.”
She shifted in her seat. “I don’t actually know any women with those names,” Emily said. “I was just giving you examples of women’s names with those initials.”
“We’ll research tax rolls and any other records we can find for women with the initials EW,” Travis said. “But we wanted to be sure you’re all right.”
“I’m fine.” Some of her annoyance receded, replaced by a cold undercurrent of fear. She thought Brodie and Travis were overreacting—but what if they weren’t? “I’m smart enough to stay far away from Alex Woodruff,” she said.
“Last I heard, you were volunteering to lure him to you,” Brodie said.
“I did. But Travis persuaded me that was a bad idea.” She shrugged. “It wouldn’t work without the sheriff’s department’s cooperation. I mean, I’m not misguided enough to try to do something like that without a whole bunch of law enforcement watching my back.”
Some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “I’m relieved you’re all right,” he said.
His real concern for her touched her, so that she had to look away. She focused on Travis. “I’m fine. It was sweet of you to worry, but don’t.”
“What are you doing the rest of the day?” Brodie asked.
She really wanted to tell him that was none of his business, but that would only lead to another argument. The man never took no for an answer. “Since the favors for the wedding didn’t get here while the highway was open, a bunch of us are getting together with Lacy in a little while to make everything she needs. We’re going to do crafts, drink wine, eat a lot of good things and stay right here on the ranch.”
“Good.” Travis tucked the evidence bag back into his pocket. “Don’t say anything about this to anyone.”
She shook her head. “Of course not.”
“Come on, Brodie. Let’s see about those other women.”
They turned to leave, but she stopped them. “Did you say you found that in a cave?” she asked.
Travis nodded. “It looked like Alex had spent at least a couple of nights there, though he isn’t there now. We’ve got a reserve deputy watching the place, in case he returns.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t sound very comfortable—not like Alex.”
“We agree,” Brodie said. “It shows how desperate he’s getting. The pressure on him is increasing.”
“Then he’s liable to become even more violent and unpredictable,” she said.
“He’s more likely to make mistakes,” Travis said. “We’re going to take advantage of that.”
“Be careful,” she said, but the two men were already turning away again.
She tried to put their visit, and the disturbing news about the list of initials, out of her mind and return her focus to the student surveys. But that proved impossible. She kept repeating the names of the murdered women, and picturing that EW at the bottom of the list. Surely that didn’t stand for Emily Walker, but the idea that it might definitely shook her.
Travis and Brodie and Gage and her family and friends and everyone else she knew would protect her. They formed a living barricade between her body and anyone who might try to harm her. But could they really keep Alex away? He had proved so sly and elusive, slipping in and out of crime scenes unseen, leaving scarcely a trace of evidence. Every law enforcement officer in the county had been tracking him for weeks, yet they hadn’t even touched him. Could he somehow get past all her defenses and take her down when she least expected it?
She shuddered and pushed the thought away. Alex wasn’t a mythical boogeyman who could walk through walls. He was flesh and blood and as vulnerable as anyone. And she was safe. She was smart and wary and protected by all those who loved her.
She didn’t believe Brodie loved her—not in the way she had once wanted him to. But she believed he would protect her. He might be glibly charming and socially superficial at times, but he took his duty as an officer of the law seriously. She tried to take comfort from that.
She was grateful when Lacy came to her and asked for help setting up for their get-together with the other women in the wedding party. “This is so nice of everyone to help,” Lacy sa
id as she and Emily and Bette set out craft supplies and readied the refreshments.
“You deserve every bit of help we can give,” Bette said, arranging paintbrushes at each place setting down the long dining room table, which had been spread with brown paper to protect its polished wood surface. “Besides, this is going to be fun.”
At six o’clock, the other women began arriving: Lacy’s mother and all the bridesmaids—Brenda Prentice, Gage’s wife, Maya Renfro, and Paige Riddell—as well as wedding guests veterinarian Darcy Marsh, Deputy Jamie Douglas and her sister, Donna. Along with Emily, Travis’s mom and Bette, they made a lively party. “We’re going to be decorating fancy sugar cookies,” Bette explained, passing a plate of cookies shaped liked butterflies and birds. “We’re using colored frosting that’s the consistency of paint. Use your paintbrushes to decorate the cookies however you wish. When the cookies are dry, we’ll package them up with fancy wrappings.”
“I’m not very artistic,” Jamie said, looking doubtful. “What if my cookies turn out ugly?”
“Then we can eat them,” Donna said, sending a ripple of laughter around the table.
“I don’t know,” Maya said. “That might be an incentive to mess up.”
“They’ll turn out great,” Bette said. “And when we’re done, we have more cookies and plenty of other yummy party food.”
Emily dipped her paintbrush in a small pot of yellow icing and began to decorate a butterfly. Though she had never considered herself an artist, the results of her efforts pleased her. “Everyone is going to love these,” she said.
“Probably more than the drink cozies and pens I ordered,” Lacy said. She held up a purple hummingbird. “I kind of like the reminder of spring amid all this snow.”
“The weather is breaking all kinds of records this year,” Darcy said. “Ryder says no one he works with can remember the highway closing so often and for so long due to avalanches and the sheer volume of snow.”
“The science classes have been measuring snow amounts and tracking the weather data,” Maya, a high school teacher, said. “Word is forecasts look promising for a shift in the weather to a drier pattern. That will give the snow time to settle and the highway department to get the roads in good shape to stay open.”
“That’s good news.” Emily turned to Lacy. “You shouldn’t have any trouble getting away for your honeymoon.”
“Travis has to catch the Ice Cold Killer first,” Lacy said. “He’ll never leave town with the case still open. I’ll be lucky to drag him to the altar for a few hours.”
“We’re getting close,” Jamie said. “Now that we have a good idea who the killer is, we have everyone in the county looking for him. Someone is going to see Alex and tip us off in time to arrest him.”
“I just pray they find him before he kills someone else,” Bette said. The others murmured agreement.
“Do any of you know a woman in town with the initials EW?” Emily asked. She had promised not to tell anyone about the notebook with Alex’s supposed list—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t do a little digging of her own.
“You mean besides you?” Lacy asked. “Why?”
She shrugged. “No reason. Just wondering.”
“That’s not the kind of question a person asks for no reason,” Brenda said. “What’s going on? Does this have something to do with Alex?”
Emily grappled for some plausible story. “I, um, saw the initials in graffiti on the bathroom stall at Mo’s Pub,” she said. “I was just curious.” She hoped the others didn’t think the story was as lame as it sounded to her.
“There’s Ellie Watkins,” Maya said. “But she’s only six—a classmate of my niece, Casey. So I don’t think anyone would be writing about her on bathroom walls.”
“Elaine Wulf is one of the museum volunteers,” said Brenda, who managed the local history museum. “But she’s at least eighty and I can’t think she’d have been up to anything that would warrant writing about it on a bathroom wall.”
The others laughed and Emily forced a weak smile. “It was probably only a tourist, then. Never mind.”
“What did the message say?” Lacy asked. “It must have been pretty juicy if you’re asking about it now.”
“Oh, it was nothing.” She held up her finished butterfly. “What do you think?”
They all complimented her and began showing off their own work, but Emily was aware of Lacy eyeing her closely.
When the women took a break to eat, Lacy pulled Emily aside. “What is going on?” she asked. “What was all that about a woman with the initials EW? And don’t give me that lame story about graffiti in the restroom at Mo’s Pub. There is no graffiti there. Mo wouldn’t allow it.”
Emily chewed her lip. “You have to promise not to let Travis know I told you this,” she said.
“I can keep a secret—within reason.”
“Dwight and Brodie checked out a cave where Alex might have been camping. They found a half-burned notebook in the fire ring. In it was a list of initials that matched the initials of all the women he’s killed—or attempted to kill. The last set of initials on the list was EW.”
Lacy’s face paled. “Emily Walker—you!”
“It’s not me!” Emily protested. “I mean, I’m not dead, and Alex hasn’t tried to get to me, so it must be someone else. I was trying to figure out who it might be.”
“I’m sure Travis is looking for her, too.”
“Of course he is. I just thought with a room full of women here, someone might know a woman with those initials that Travis could check on—just to make sure she’s all right.”
Lacy rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “I hate to think the killer is out there stalking another woman.”
“And I hate that I’ve upset you.” Emily put her arm around her friend. “Come on. Let’s go back to the others and do our best not to think about this anymore. Think about your wedding and how wonderful it’s going to be when you and Travis are married.”
For the rest of the evening, Emily did her best to put Alex out of her mind. She ate and drank, and listened as the married women in the group told stories of their own weddings—Travis’s father had apparently been late to the altar because he got lost on the way to the church, and Lacy’s father had proposed by hiding an engagement ring in a piece of cheesecake...and her mother had almost swallowed it.
After they ate, Bette led them in making wedding-themed wreaths to hang on all the outside doors of the ranch house, as well as the doors of the four guest cabins. They wrapped grapevine wreaths in white tulle and silver ribbon and added glittered snowflakes and feathers. The end result was surprisingly delicate and beautiful.
They wrapped the cookies and placed them in baskets, to be handed out at the wedding in two days. “They look like little works of art,” Maya said.
“Definitely too pretty to eat,” Brenda said.
“You have to eat them,” Bette said. “They’re delicious.”
“They were!” Donna said. She, like everyone else, had eaten her share of “mistakes.”
After everyone had left, Emily volunteered to help Bette hang the wreaths. “I’ll get the cabins, if you’ll do the doors in the house,” she said, draping four of the wreaths over one arm.
The four guest cabins sat between the house and the barn, along a stone path through the snow. The porch lights of each cabin cast golden pools across the drifted snow, islands in the darkness that she headed for, the chill night air stinging her cheeks and turning her breath into frosty clouds around her head. Emily hung a wreath on each door, smiling at how festive each one looked. The last cabin in the row—the one farthest from the house—was where Brodie was staying. Emily approached it quietly, not anxious to disturb him. He’d been hovering over her even more than her brothers and all the attention made her uncomfortable. The sooner the case was solved and the wedding
was over, the better for all of them. Brodie could go back to Denver, she’d return to Fort Collins and everyone could go about life as it had been before.
She hooked the wreath on the nail in the cabin’s door and stepped back to make sure it wasn’t crooked. Satisfied, she started to turn away, but the door opened and Brodie reached out and took hold of her arm. “Come inside,” he said. “We need to talk.”
She could have argued that she didn’t want to talk to him, but arguing with Brodie never went well. He was too stubborn and determined to be right. If he had something he wanted to say to her, she might as well hear him out now. And then she’d make him listen to a few things she needed to say, too.
Once inside, he released his hold on her and she sat in the room’s single chair, while he settled on the side of the bed. He didn’t say anything right away, merely looked at her—or rather, looked through her, as if he was searching for some unspoken message in her face. “What did you want to talk about?” she asked, forcing herself to sit still and not fidget.
“Why did you turn down my proposal?” he asked.
She frowned. “Your proposal?”
“I asked you to marry me and you said no.”
She couldn’t have been more stunned if he had slapped her. “Brodie, that was five years ago.”
“Yes, and it’s been eating at me ever since. I figured it was past time we cleared the air between us.”
Maybe he thought that was a good idea, but did she? Was she ready to share with Brodie all she’d been through—and maybe find out he’d known about her troubles all along? That he had received the letter she had sent to him, and chosen not to get involved? She pressed her lips together, searching for the right words. “I turned you down because I wasn’t ready to get married yet—and neither were you.”
“You said you loved me.”
“I did! But marriage takes more than love. I was only nineteen—I had so many other things I needed to do first.”
“What other things?”
Maybe he should have asked these questions five years ago, but he was asking them now, and maybe answering them would help her put herself back in that time and her mind-set then. “I was only a sophomore in college. I knew I needed to finish my education and get established in my career before I married.”
