Cry for Help
An addictive and gripping mystery and suspense novel
Wendy Dranfield
Books by Wendy Dranfield
Detective Madison Harper Series
Shadow Falls
Cry for Help
Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Hear More from Wendy
Books by Wendy Dranfield
A Letter from Wendy
Shadow Falls
Acknowledgments
This one is for Don. Thanks for your support.
(Maybe now you’ll actually read one of my books!)
Prologue
September 2012—Lost Creek, Colorado
Detective Madison Harper is startled by an aggressive thump at her front door. Not wanting to leave her son’s bedside while he’s feeling unwell, she waits.
Two more thumps follow. Instinct makes her glance at the Batman clock on Owen’s nightstand as dread creeps up from the pit of her stomach. Even if she wasn’t a cop, she’d know that a knock at the door after ten o’clock could only mean bad news.
“Who is it, Mom?”
She looks down at her son and pushes a sweaty curl of blond hair from his forehead. His cheeks are still pink with heat, but the thermometer shows his fever is leveling off. Hopefully it will subside as quickly as it arrived.
“I don’t know, honey. Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
He sits up, her anxiety reflected on his face as she slips from the bed and pads downstairs with bare feet. Her front room is illuminated by red and blue flashing lights. She swallows, wondering who could have been hurt. Is it Stephanie, her ex-girlfriend? Or someone from work, injured while on duty?
She pulls the blinds back from the front door just to be sure she’s opening it to someone she knows. She recognizes the tall man staring back at her: Detective Don Douglas from the Lost Creek Police Department. Her police department. He signals for her to open the door, but she hesitates as her gut tells her something is seriously wrong. She doesn’t know Detective Douglas well as he’s new to the department, but he arrived in Lost Creek with a bad reputation.
She can see a few uniformed officers standing behind him, but it’s dark out and the cruisers’ flashing lights mixed with the heavy rainfall make everything blurry. She can’t identify them. She unlocks her door and opens it enough to let in a gust of cold wind. The rain hits her bare feet. “What’s wrong?”
Douglas doesn’t wait a beat before shoving his shoulder against the door, pushing past her and pulling her arms behind her back, cuffing her within seconds.
“Detective Madison Harper, I’m arresting you for the murder of Officer Ryan Levy.” He spins her around to face him.
Madison’s mouth goes dry. She stares up at him in silence, waiting for the punchline. Ryan can’t be dead; they were on duty together earlier today. At the end of their shift he treated her to coffee and cake to celebrate her birthday.
Detective Douglas doesn’t even blink.
“This is a joke, right?” she asks.
“I’m going to assume you don’t need me to read you your rights,” he says, pushing her toward the doorway. “They won’t help you now anyway. We both know murdering a cop is the worst thing you can do. You’re screwed.”
He tries to force her out of the door without even letting her slip on some shoes, or a jacket. She leans back against him but he doesn’t move.
“Are you resisting arrest, Detective?” he hisses into her ear.
His warm breath on her neck makes her cringe. She turns to look at him, wanting to scream in his face, but she spots her ten-year-old son standing at the top of the stairs in his pajamas.
“What’s happening, Mom?” asks Owen.
Douglas notices him for the first time. “Hang tight, kid. Someone from child services is on their way.”
Madison stares at him in disbelief. “You can’t do this.”
He shoves her out of the front door and into the rain as she yells behind her, “Owen! Call Stephanie. Tell her to bring you to the station.”
With another forceful push, she is crammed into the back of a police cruiser. She looks back at her house through the car’s wet rear window and manages to see Owen trying to get out the door—reaching for her—before someone closes him in.
She has a terrible feeling she won’t ever see him again.
1
July 5, 2019—Lost Creek, Colorado
Ricky Gregor sings to himself as he meanders through the sleeping amusement park on his early-morning rounds. He’s got a rock song in his head picked up from the car radio on the way over, and alone on the grounds he belts it out as loud as he likes.
There’s no sign of the sun rising yet, as it’s only just gone 5.30, but Ricky thinks it’s going to be another scorcher today and that’s just fine with him.
Ever since he scored this job as maintenance manager at Fantasy World amusement park, life has been good to him. Working in the great outdoors—the park sits alongside Lake Providence and at the bottom of Grave Mountain—has its perks, especially in summer. He likes to watch the girls wander around the park in their skimpy shorts and bikini tops. Yes, this job beats prison any day.
If his employer had known about his long rap sheet, he would never have given him the job, and rightly so, but Ricky’s not stupid: he faked his references and moved down here from up north, so there’s no risk of anyone ever finding out. With that knowledge and the thought of a pleasant day ahead, he whistles the song’s chorus as he switches on the power to the food concession stands. They need warming up ready for the packed house that’s expected again later.
He stops whistling when he thinks he hears something. His skin prickles like he’s being watched. He shouldn’t be: he’s solely responsible for opening this place in the mornings. He squints into the darkness for any movement. There�
�s no one here. And the only sounds are the thrum of the generators and the rusty rides creaking in the morning breeze.
He laughs to himself and pulls out the pressure washer. There’s usually plenty of vomit to clean up from the night before, but today will be worse than usual, what with last night’s Independence Day celebrations. Normally it’s brightly colored kid vomit from too much cotton candy, but he just knows this morning will include hot dogs and fried chicken from the teens who couldn’t hold their alcohol. He doesn’t touch the stuff himself. Knows too many people who’ve ended up addicted. He’d rather spend what little cash he has on weed.
As dawn gently breaks, he sprays water all around the carousel and works his way up toward the Ferris wheel, his favorite ride. As he approaches, he notices that all the cars are gently swaying. All except one. He drops the pressure washer’s nozzle and walks closer for a better look, certain he can see the outline of someone in the bottom car; maybe a teenager. But they don’t move.
“Little shit,” he mutters. “Hey! You’re not allowed in here until we open.”
He squints as he gets closer, trying to see through the dark. Something about the way the kid’s body is positioned sends a chill down his spine. They’re seated but slumped. He can make out shoulders, but from where he’s standing it looks like the body has no head.
“What the hell?”
At the wheel’s ticket booth he flips the switch that powers up the ride’s many lights.
“Holy crap!”
The body of a teenage girl is illuminated in a halo of colored neon lights. He instantly recognizes her from the long red hair that spills over her cheeks. Her forearms are slit down to her wrists and her eyes are fixed on the pool of blood beneath her dangling feet.
Ricky backs away. If ever his freedom was at risk, it’s now.
2
Route 191, Utah
Madison Harper shivers as she stands in the middle of a vast empty scrubland next to the eerily silent highway. It’s a little before six o’clock and the sun has yet to fully rise, leaving her standing alone in the twilight. With cold hands, she feels for the cigarettes and lighter in her sweater pocket. The flame from her lighter startles a rabbit nearby. He freezes, stares in her direction, then hops into the darkness when it’s clear she’s not a threat. The smoke from the cigarette warms Madison up from the inside as she slowly spins around to see if she can make anything out through the dawn, but there’s nothing to see: just miles of sun-scorched vegetation and a few passing trucks and cars making their way either south to Arizona or north to Wyoming, or perhaps as far as Montana.
Thanks to the clear night they’ve had, she can still see a few stars. The far-off twinkling makes her feel small, as if her problems might be trivial. But down here on earth they’re serious. And they need fixing, fast.
She taps the ash off the end of her cigarette and exhales smoke into the cool morning air. Yesterday was Independence Day, and as she and her companion drove through a succession of small towns in Utah, they passed firework displays and plenty of drunks waving patriotic flags or shooting off rounds from their assault rifles. Madison can’t remember the last time she celebrated Independence Day. Or any public holiday for that matter. As she tries to think back, it dawns on her that the last celebration she had was on her thirtieth birthday; the day she was arrested for murder. And that was just coffee and cake with Officer Ryan Levy, followed by unwrapping some presents her son had made her. It’s a bittersweet memory, since her friend is now dead and her son is lost to her.
When she’s finished her cigarette, she pulls out her cell phone. There are no calls or messages waiting for her. The last call she took was from Mike Bowers, two days ago. He was her sergeant at Lost Creek PD in southern Colorado when she worked there. While she was doing time for a murder she didn’t commit, he was promoted to detective; to the role left empty as a result of her arrest and subsequent conviction. And it was his recent call that prompted her to make this road trip to Lost Creek from northern California as fast as possible.
Mike gave her the news that Stephanie Garcia, her ex-girlfriend, had been killed. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Madison’s pretty sure it happened because someone was looking for her.
But that’s not the only reason she’s returning to Lost Creek after seven years away. As well as spending six years in prison for manslaughter, she lost the job she loved, her ten-year-old son, and her freedom.
Today she’s heading home to find out who framed her, and why. And she’s not in the mood to play nice.
3
Nate Monroe opens his eyes and is greeted with blackness. He feels confined. His mind betrays him, unable to tell him where he is, but his body reacts quicker; it’s trembling with fear. The all-consuming feeling of panic convinces him he’s back on death row.
He tries to move his arms but they’re weighed down. His legs won’t move either. His heart races in alarm, fear rising in his chest. How is he back here after serving seventeen years of someone else’s sentence? He must be strapped to the lethal injection bed, but he doesn’t understand how this is happening when he was finally exonerated. Or was that a dream? The thought makes him want to scream. Instead he says a silent prayer to a God who has evaded him ever since he chose love over the Church.
“No.” He gasps, trying to fill his lungs, but they feel constricted. “Not again. I can’t.” Lifting his head off the bed, he tries to focus on anything but the blackness, but there’s nothing to be seen. Has he gone blind, or have they pulled a hood over his head?
He feels a cold hand on his arm.
“Nate?”
He turns to the female voice, but there’s no one there.
“Nate? It’s me, Madison.” A cell phone lights up and she points it downwards to avoid blinding him. “Are you okay?”
He looks across at her. Madison Harper: his employee, and maybe his friend.
“Holy crap.” He leans back against the car’s headrest as goosebumps consume his entire body.
“We’re in Utah. We pulled off the highway last night to get some sleep. Nate, listen to me: you’re not back on death row.” She squeezes his right hand. “Are you awake now?”
Nate swallows the lump in his throat and nods. He silently thanks God, then looks down at his chest. Brody, the former police cadaver dog they seem to have adopted, is curled up on his lap and chest for warmth. Nate doesn’t understand how such a large dog—a German shepherd and husky mix—can fit on top of him in the driver’s seat of his Jeep Grand Cherokee, but he’s managed it.
The dog yawns, looks up at him and licks his face in greeting. His tail gently beats against Nate’s thigh.
“Shit, Brody.” He looks across at Madison. “I thought I was strapped down for my lethal injection.” This isn’t the first time he’s woken with that feeling. After all, at the time of his release, his execution date was just three months away.
“It’s the dark,” says Madison. “There are no street lights because we’re in the middle of nowhere. Don’t worry, you’re safe. We pulled over because you were falling asleep at the wheel. I only woke up a half-hour ago.”
Nate looks down at Brody and notices the fur that’s now covering his clothes. The dog sneezes in his face, making Madison laugh. She’s probably relieved. She’s witnessed one of his depressive episodes before, and she knows it’s not pretty.
His heart rate takes a while to regulate, but he’s thankful to be anywhere other than death row. There’s no way in hell he’ll go back there alive.
4
Colorado state line
Back on the road but feeling the need for coffee and courage, Madison suggests they pull in at a truck stop diner for breakfast.
The waitress pours their coffees then disappears to get their food order. As Nate goes to freshen up in the restroom, Madison notices a young brunette waitress giving him the eye. He’s bound to attract attention; he’s a good-looking guy. He’s also the only guy in here not wearing a flannel shirt and dirty denims
. Some women can spot outsiders a mile off, especially ones with money.
Nate’s not completely oblivious to the attention because he smiles at her as he passes. The waitress spots the rosary around his neck and whispers to her friend, “Forgive me, Father, I’d like to sin.” They explode into laughter and Madison can’t help but grin. She doesn’t think Nate heard them.
Hugging her hot coffee mug with both hands, she looks out of the partially steamed-up window at the highway beyond. It’s still early, so there’s not much traffic yet, but the diner is almost half full already with truckers. Most of them are sitting at the counter watching the TV and ogling the waitresses. Brody is outside scouring the parking lot for trouble.
As she and Nate get closer to her home town of Lost Creek, she’s feeling increasingly uneasy about the final leg of the journey. She thinks about what’s waiting on her arrival. Not only will she have to face her old police colleagues for the first time since her trial, but she also has to arrange Stephanie’s funeral. While they were a couple, Steph was a big part of her life with her son. Saying goodbye is not going to be easy, especially when she feels like she’s to blame.
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