Alaskan Showdown

by Sarah Varland

  “We were sitting here.” She was already giving him a walk-through, back in that room, and still she seemed unshakable. How was she the same woman who’d broken down today over a body? Levi wasn’t minimizing the value of life, but he did wonder how she could be so strong most of the time and then just...break like she had today.

  And she hadn’t seemed surprised at her outburst, really, just embarrassed that he had been there to see it.

  “...then the shots.” Adriana finished what she’d been saying and Levi focused back in, realizing he’d missed part of that conversation.

  “Did you tell Judah you thought you saw something out the window before the shooting began?” he asked.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Of course. Not paying attention?”

  Okay, yeah, she didn’t appreciate that. He got it.

  “She did,” Judah answered, “and she also mentioned something about helping you on your case?”

  His brother’s tone left no question about what he thought about that idea.

  “I told you, I offered. Insisted, actually.”

  “That may be a plan you want to rethink.” Judah started out looking at Adriana, but it was Levi’s gaze he held as he finished his statement. More like a command.

  “It’s not like I’m safe if I’m not involved, am I, Officer Wicks?” Adriana asked Judah. She’d folded her arms over her chest, almost like she didn’t appreciate Judah blaming Levi for both shootings.

  But she met his gaze and again, he felt like she understood his complicated relationship with his brother.

  Levi looked away. It was starting to be disconcerting to be read so well. And how did she do that, anyway? A woman who spent more time with her dogs on her days off than other people, if rumors could be trusted.

  “I can see your point,” Judah finally conceded, his voice rough. “Levi, is this something you’ve run past the chief?”

  A question he would have preferred to discuss not in front of Adriana, but sure, why wouldn’t they talk about that now, too.

  “I need to run it past him.”

  He braced for Adriana’s judgmental look, but nothing. Just a small nod.

  “Do that.” Judah’s gaze swung between the two of them. “I’m not sure I think it’s a good idea, but...” Levi opened his mouth. Judah held out a hand. “It’s not my choice, Levi. I get it.” Another look at Adriana. “But if I were you I’d think extremely hard before I started literally digging up the past. It might help with this case, but is it going to hurt you?”

  “That’s not the question here.” Adriana’s tone was still pleasant enough, but her shoulders were tense. “And someone’s already tried to hurt me.”

  Judah nodded. “All right, I’ll process the scene and ballistics here, see if I can get any clearer of a picture of where the shooter might have been. There are a couple of officers outside.” He motioned out the window. “And we’ll try to pinpoint where he or she was in case we can get any forensic evidence from whatever was essentially a sniper’s perch.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Levi was ready to keep working on this. “If you’re okay here?”

  Adriana nodded. He should have known she would be. Part of him wanted to stay and talk to her more, but frankly, at the moment he was too off balance. He needed space and not to feel helpless. This was the closest he’d ever been to being the victim of any kind of crime and it had happened twice in one day. It was unacceptable and working was the only way he knew to deal with it.

  He followed Judah back down the hall toward Adriana’s front door, promising himself he’d check in with Adriana later, as well as make sure someone sat in her driveway in a patrol car that night. He’d do it himself, but that would probably just attract more trouble since he was the main target.

  “You’re sure about this?” Judah asked when they were outside.

  “Helping with the case?” Levi shrugged. “I don’t think it’s a conflict of interest. If we left a case every time someone tried to intimidate us, we wouldn’t get a lot done, would we?”

  “You know that’s not what I mean.” Judah was walking toward the woods behind Adriana’s house. It was mostly spruce trees, with some hardwoods, too. Full, leafed out from summer, but the leaves were changing now in the middle of September, starting to fall down.

  “Adriana is an adult, Judah. And she’s the best cadaver-dog handler in the area, maybe the state. I’ve talked to people, asked for recommendations in case I ever had the money to hire someone to help on a contract basis, and it’s her name that comes up, even as far away as Anchorage.”

  “She looks at you like it’s morning and you’re a hot cup of coffee.”

  “That is the strangest thing I’ve ever heard you say.” Levi shook his head, feeling a rush of heat come to his cheeks. Why would how she looked at him affect him at all? She was helping him with a case. That was all. If she was prettier than any of the partners he usually had, smarter, more intriguing, none of that mattered, right? “Not only does she look at me completely normally, but that’s just a weird expression.”

  “Think what you want. She doesn’t look at you the same way she looks at me.”

  Snarky comments hovered on the tip of his tongue. Saying them would be admitting that Judah was right, and while Levi didn’t know how Adriana looked at him, he didn’t think it was like his brother said.

  Actually, he desperately hoped it wasn’t. Because as much as he’d felt something between them today—the flickers of something, anyway—Levi wasn’t the kind of guy who was going to settle down. No, he had tried that once and it had gone wrong. All wrong and it had been all his fault.

  At least Judah hadn’t brought that up. His brother must have understood that some wounds went too deep to be thrown into someone’s face so casually.

  Together they walked into the woods and the general area from where the shots had come as they searched for evidence. Levi glanced back at Adriana’s town house. The angle was wrong from here, but the distance might not be.

  “How did the shots have any chance of hitting us, fired from an upward angle like this?” Levi asked his brother.

  “You don’t think someone was set up in a tree?” The tall spruce trees were high enough to be a possibility, but they were thin trunked and not something a person could put a deer stand in.

  “Here,” Judah called a minute later. The grass underneath one spruce tree had been tamped down, like someone had been lying on it.

  Levi frowned. Not what he’d been expecting at all. He turned around.

  The view into the room from there was good enough. Adriana’s oversized windows that went almost to the floor had provided the shooter with enough of a vantage point to be able to tell when they were there and when they’d crawled to another room.

  But the angle of the shots would have made it difficult for the shooter to hit them. It wasn’t an impossible trajectory, and they’d still been in real danger, but it was strange. Had whoever fired the shots been unable to set up in a more viable sniper’s perch? Or had the shots only been intended to scare them?

  Did that change how they investigated?

  “Someone was rushed,” Judah said when he walked over.

  Levi nodded his agreement. For all the tension between them, Levi knew his brother was a smart guy, a good cop. It was why Levi had followed him here to Raven Pass after his life in Anchorage had blown up in his face.

  Literally.

  “So whoever is after me isn’t a professional killer or a hit man...” Levi said slowly.

  Judah’s expression said that he agreed. “No...”

  Levi suggested, “It’s the serial killer himself.”

  * * *

  The officers working to process the scene had told Adriana that her leaving the house wasn’t necessary, but asked that she stay out of the living room while they processed. So she went to the
kitchen and started cooking dinner.

  She had friends who would argue that if ever there was a night for takeout, the day you’d been shot at more than once was it. But cooking had always helped Adriana calm down, even from the time she was a little girl. There was something about having her hands busy, about seeing all the ingredients come together to make a meal, feeding not just herself but other people. All of it gave her life and helped her cope when...

  Well, everything had fallen apart. Again.

  Adriana reached into the fridge, grabbed an onion and set it down on the cutting board she’d already placed on the counter. She took a knife from the knife block and started the reassuringly monotonous chopping process as her mind ran through the day.

  Their missing hiker was dead. She assumed the cops always got called when bodies were unearthed, but she also assumed there was evidence that the death had not been accidental.

  Chop, chop, chop.

  She’d been shot at in her house. Her living-room window was in shards on her nice floor.

  Chop, chop.

  Most unbelievably, she’d broken down in front of Levi. Cried. Had a full-blown panic attack.

  Chop, chop, chop, chop, chop.

  Adriana blinked moisture out of the corners of her eyes and blamed it on the onion. Never mind that it was a Vidalia sweet onion.

  Having finished chopping, she continued pulling ingredients from the fridge. Spinach. Ricotta cheese. Pasta shells from the pantry.

  A day like today called for carbs and cheese. Adriana had never been one of those women whose goal was to be thin. She just wanted to be fit enough to do her job well and enjoy Alaska.

  She put the pasta on to boil and wondered for half a crazy second if Levi would stay for dinner if she asked. It wasn’t that...

  Well, she knew better than to let herself feel...

  She didn’t like him like that!

  Adriana dumped the spinach in a bowl and slammed the cabinet shut behind her.

  He’d been patient and understanding today; that was why her mind was all weird and confused. He’d been a decent human and he hadn’t made fun of her little breakdown. She’d been feeling the same about...

  Well, no, she couldn’t imagine having this kind of...pull toward Judah even if he’d been in the same situation.

  She couldn’t have a crush on Levi. Could it even be called a crush when both people were adults and should be above such things as “listen to your heart” or “follow your feelings”?

  Or when falling in love wasn’t an option for her?

  Adriana had let it happen once, and her heart had been crushed so badly it had only just started to heal. Or at least she’d assumed that it had until today, when she’d been crouched on the cold dirt next to a man she only knew in a professional capacity, trying to remind herself how to breathe.

  She couldn’t afford to let that happen to her again. She’d seen what love could do to people when she was growing up. She didn’t want to be that way. She had goals, dreams.

  A solid determination to be better than previous generations of her family.

  She wouldn’t invite him for dinner, wouldn’t let him get any closer to her.

  Would. Not. Be. Like. Her. Mother.

  Levi walked in. “Wow, something smells good.”

  She had just put the now-stuffed shells into the oven. “It’s dinner...” She turned and her eyes caught his.

  “Want to stay and eat with me? I made too much for one, anyway.” Was that really her voice, her traitorous voice?

  He didn’t answer right away. She felt every kind of stupid. Her cheeks heated and she looked away from him.

  “I’d love to stay.”

  Oh.

  Well.

  “All right.” She nodded, pulled two plates from the cabinet and busied herself setting the table in her adjoining dining nook.

  “Do you want to know? What we found out in the woods, I mean?”

  If she ignored him, would he go away? Or at least not follow her to the table but give her a minute to collect her thoughts? She was used to being competent, maybe even a bit intimidating to people.

  She still was, according to her search-and-rescue team. Apparently it was just this...weirdness of today that was turning her this way.

  Some help here would be great, God. Praying hadn’t occurred to her earlier, which she felt bad about. There had been a time in her life when it was the first thing she did in any situation that made her uncomfortable, but Robert’s death had changed that. She and God...well, it wasn’t that they had a bad relationship, but Adriana just didn’t quite trust Him like she had before. He’d let her down, hadn’t He? Not come through when she’d needed Him to.

  “You can tell me if you are allowed,” Adriana finally answered, glancing over at him. His expression looked relieved. That was one thing she appreciated about Levi—at least he wasn’t difficult to read.

  “We found the place where he had been sitting. Not sure what significance it has yet, and we didn’t find any solid forensic evidence so far. But there are still officers out looking it over. If there is something to be found, they will find it.”

  Adriana nodded. “Good.”

  Levi grabbed the silverware she’d set on the table and while she was setting out napkins, he started to put it down.

  “The woman you found in the lake today?” he said as he did the chore, not looking at her. Something in his voice warned her that they were still talking about the case.

  “Yes?” She did her best to brace herself even though she felt her chest tighten, her breathing become more shallow, as she imagined the scene.

  “I believe she’s tied to my case because her hands were zip-tied, Adriana. She didn’t drown, not on accident the way...” He trailed off but she knew what he meant and heard every single word that he was merciful enough not to say.

  Did that make her feel better? She didn’t know. A life had still been lost, wasted. And zip-tied...

  A life had been stolen, as she’d suspected and he’d hinted at earlier, the way he’d implied that the serial killer had something to do with her missing—now murdered, it turned out—hiker case.

  “So this is for sure tied to your case,” she clarified.

  “I’m almost certain.”

  “How do you want to start the search?” she asked him, finally daring to meet his gaze. He shook his head, regret lining his features.

  “Let’s talk after dinner. We both need a break.”

  He’d been the one to start the discussion, did he realize that? Adriana wanted to point that out to him, but it didn’t seem polite. Instead she just nodded and brought dinner to the table.

  They sat to eat and as Levi prayed over their food, Adriana felt herself wondering what the next few days—make that even just the next few hours—were going to hold.

  The gunshots confirmed they were making progress on the case. If they weren’t, then whoever was behind all this wouldn’t take the risk to attack them, possibly being caught in the process. It spoke of a criminal who was desperate.

  But desperate criminals were often the most dangerous. And Adriana knew she and Levi were the ones in the crosshairs.

  FIVE

  Levi had barely been able to focus during dinner.

  He had so much he wanted to talk about, details of the case he’d gotten permission to share.

  But she’d been starting to look pale when she was setting the table and he’d been concerned they were going to have a repeat of this morning.

  So he’d told her they’d talk about it after dinner. And he’d spent the entirety of the meal making plans, thinking of areas they should search, information he should give her.

  He tried to keep up a polite conversation with her, said goodbye to the officers who were processing the living room once they’d finished, and head
ed out. But as he did all that, he was debating what he was about to do—and asking himself how much he should tell Adriana. How much she needed to know.

  She’d seemed relatively unaware of his internal struggle. Her color had turned back to normal and he was feeling fairly confident now that she wasn’t going to...

  What, fall apart again? Levi was sure Adriana wouldn’t appreciate even being thought of in the terms he’d been pondering.

  “So what were you thinking? ” she asked him once she returned from clearing their plates and going to let her dogs out. She’d kept them locked up while the officers were processing the scene. He’d started to stand up to help with the dishes but she had waved him off.

  “Thinking about what?” he asked as she sat back down.

  “The...” She took a breath. “The murders. The investigation. Where do we start?”

  “You really don’t have to do this.” The words came out before he could take them back, charging ahead without his permission. He couldn’t afford not to have her help, so he wished he could yank back the offer, hold her to her promise.

  But when he looked at her, her eyes were shooting sparks and it appeared he didn’t need to backpedal. She was going to help, anyway. Regardless of how much it cost her emotionally.

  “You aren’t seriously trying to get rid of me already, are you?” She met his gaze head-on, immovable in front of him.

  “I can’t...” He trailed off and then decided honesty was always the best policy, but especially with Adriana. “Listen, are you sure about this?”

  “How many times do we need to have this conversation?”

  “I know, but—”

  “Earlier. You doubt that I can handle it because of earlier, right? Is that how it’s going to be, Levi? One mistake, one time that I accidentally break down...”

  She stood up and walked to the coffee maker.

  “Adriana...” He started to talk but she pressed the coffee grinder.

  Kind of hard to talk over that.

  He waited.

  She turned to him when it was done. “Listen, the way I see it we have two choices. One, I can help you, and you can treat me like a functioning adult who is doing you a favor and is capable and strong. That panic attack was an exception.” She emphasized the word, but her facial expression wavered. Was she doubting herself? Was that why she was coming down so hard on him? “Or,” she continued, “we can forget it. I’ll try to stay safe, you can try to solve the case without critical evidence. But I will not tolerate being treated like a child in any way.”