Frozen Ground

by Webb, Debra

  She held perfectly still and waited.

  The sound of frozen vegetation stirring outside raked across her senses. Someone was out there. She reached into her pocket, found it empty. She’d left her cell at the house.

  She held her breath.

  * * *

  Abbey wasn’t sure how long she stayed tucked into the corner behind the wobbly table and chairs she’d played with as a child. Long enough for the cold to seep deep into her bones. Finally, when the silence had gone on long enough that she worked up the nerve to peek outside, she dared to look. She saw nothing but the darkening landscape. It was midday, maybe past noon and already the gathering clouds combined with the thick pine and spruce were blocking the sunlight, making it feel like dusk.

  Whoever or whatever had been out there, he, she or it was gone now. Most bears would be hibernating by this point, wouldn’t they? Then she spotted the cause of part of the noise she’d heard.

  The ladder she’d climbed to get into the treehouse lay on the ground.

  “Damn.”

  The distance down to the ground was only eight or nine feet. She could jump and maybe walk away unscathed. But if she broke a foot or leg—or worse, both—she would freeze out here in these woods before anyone found her. Particularly after she’d basically sent Garrett packing.

  She shouldn’t have overreacted. He was only doing his job.

  “Okay, how do you make this happen?” Abbey glanced around.

  There had to be another way.

  She scanned as much of the woods as she could see from the door. Then she moved from one side of the treehouse to the other and stared out the open slots built in to provide a hunter with a view and a place from which to fire on all sides. Whoever had ripped the shaky ladder free of the building was, it seemed, long gone.

  Still, she couldn’t be certain.

  She shivered. Whatever she did, she had to do it soon. The temperature was dropping far too fast for comfort.

  The hunting stand was built around the tree. There were posts at each corner that held the main weight of the structure. All she needed to do was pull up a couple of floorboards near the corner or near the tree itself and she could use the tree or one of the posts to shimmy down. She’d likely still fall, but maybe not so far or as fast.

  Abbey shoved the sleeping bag away and started at the corner nearest the door opening first. The gap between the floorboards was narrow in some areas but wider in others. She pushed her gloved fingers through the wide part of the gap and started to pull. She pulled with all her might. Cracking and groaning echoed in the air. But the board didn’t give. She kept going from gap to gap until she found a board slightly looser than the others.

  After a half a minute of rest, she started to pull again. This time the crack pierced the air and the board popped loose from the supports beneath it. The space between the supports was around a foot and a half. She could squeeze through with no trouble. All she had to do was pull up a couple more boards and drop her body through the opening and then swing her legs until she wrapped them around the nearest upright support post.

  Two more boards came up fairly easily. Then, lowering her body through the opening and hanging on with her arms splayed out to the sides on the floor proved more difficult than she’d expected. She struggled to hold her weight and to swing her legs in a slight left angle.

  Her elbows suddenly slipped.

  She clawed at the floor to find purchase.

  Heart thundering, she managed to get her fingers into a gap on either side and stop her fall.

  For a moment she could only hang there and try to breathe. Again, she swung her legs. Her feet hit a post. She swung her legs once more. This time her right foot snagged the post and she managed to wrap her calf around it, then the left. With both legs locked around the post, she took another moment to relax her trembling arms.

  “Almost got it,” she told herself.

  Finally, she dared to slip her right arm through the opening in the floor and reach for the post. With a little grunting and a lot of cursing, she managed to push her upper body forward to make the reach. Once her right hand was clasped around the post, she lowered her head and shoulders out and reached for the post with her left.

  Holding her breath, she relaxed her clutch on the post and started to scoot down a couple of feet at a time. Hopefully her jeans and coat would prevent splinters from stabbing into her.

  It wasn’t until her feet hit the ground that she managed to take a deep breath.

  Staggering to a standing position, she surveyed the woods around her again. Still nothing. No sound. No sign of animal life or otherwise.

  Then she ran. Her movements jerky at first, she didn’t slow down until she reached the back door.

  She propelled herself inside and then she stalled.

  She hadn’t locked the door.

  Damn.

  What if whoever removed that ladder was here?

  The image of Mrs. Hansen being stabbed roared through her brain.

  Where was it her father kept his shotgun? Her heart threatened to burst from her chest. She needed her cell. Needed to call Garrett.

  Doing all within her power not to make a sound, she eased across the kitchen. Her phone was on the kitchen counter where she’d placed it while she donned her coat and gloves. Once she had it in her hand, she would look for her father’s shotgun and then search the house.

  Every second pounded in her brain as she made her way to her phone. With the device gripped firmly in her left hand, she moved toward the doorway that opened into the living room. She remembered now that her father kept his shotgun in the hall closet designed for coats that her parents had turned it into a place to store cleaning products and paper goods. There was another shotgun under the bed in his room upstairs. She held her breath as she eased across the room and into the short hall. Instinct urged her to run and forget the gun or the possibility of an intruder. Get in her SUV and drive away.

  She ignored the warning voice and reached for the doorknob. Praying the closet door wouldn’t creak from disuse, she turned the knob and pulled. No creak, no groan. Thank God. She reached inside, her fingers closed around the barrel of the shotgun and she drew it toward her.

  It wasn’t necessary to check to see if it was loaded. Her father always kept it loaded. With the butt against her shoulder and the barrel leveled in front of her, she moved back along the hall. No one popped out of a hiding place. But she checked behind the couch anyway. Living room was clear. She’d come through the kitchen without encountering trouble. If there was anyone in the house, he or she was upstairs.

  She had been brought home from the hospital to this house. She knew every inch of it like the back of her hand. By the time she was thirteen and had started sneaking out of her room, she had memorized each tread that made the slightest noise under foot. Number four and then number ten.

  At the second story landing, she stilled and listened. Nothing other than the wind whipping a tree limb against the window in one of the bedrooms. The first door on the right was her brother’s room. She stepped inside. Clear. A quick look under the bed and in the closet confirmed the conclusion.

  Next was her room, on the left. It too was clear. Nothing under the bed, no one in the closet. At the end of the hall she went through the same steps with her parents’ room before backtracking to the bathroom she and her brother had shared.

  There was no one in the house.

  “Okay.” She lowered the barrel and stamped back down the stairs.

  She started to put the shotgun up but opted to hang onto it for a bit. The front door was locked. She hurried to the kitchen to lock the back door. She had considered locking it when she came inside but she’d worried she might need to run back out that way if she encountered someone in the house. There were calls she needed to make. Garrett, certainly, but not first, she decided now that she felt a little calmer. She skimmed through her contacts list and selected Stella Ferguson, the assistant from the DA’s off
ice. Stella was retired now, but during the trial she and Abbey had grown close. Stella was the nurturing type and Abbey had desperately needed just that.

  “Stella, this is Abbey Gray. I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but I’m back in Montana to sell my father’s house and I have a problem I’m hoping you can help me with.”

  “Oh my, with Holly giving us all she’s got, are you all right out there in the middle of nowhere?”

  “I’m good for now.”

  “So how can I help?” the other woman asked.

  Abbey explained about the murder next door—a murder very similar to her mother’s. Then she went on to detail her walk in the woods and what she found in the treehouse. Hearing the story now it sounded a bit dramatic and maybe a little like she had overreacted.

  “This may be nothing,” Abbey offered, “but I’m wondering if there is any way you can confirm my brother’s location. I’ll just feel better if I know he’s where he’s supposed to be.” She opted not to mention that the sheriff—Garrett—had already mentioned the similarities in her mother’s case and this one.

  “I think I can handle that,” Stella assured her.

  “Great. I’ll breathe easier when I’m confident this has nothing to do with him.”

  Stella asked how Abbey was doing, and she did the same. When the call was finished, Abbey placed the phone on the counter and decided it was time to put the shotgun away. Rather than return it to the coat closet near the front door, she placed it behind the kitchen door. The door between the kitchen and the dining room had always been left open. With it open the shotgun was well hidden. No reason for anyone to move the door.

  She leaned against the counter. Though four years had separated them, Abbey had adored Steven and he seemed to adore her as well. Once, when she was ten, she’d gone exploring in the woods and gotten lost. Usually she was better at tracking her way back, but not that time. Worse, it had been growing dark. Panic had set in. Her parents weren’t home. They’d gone to Bozeman for the day. She closed her eyes and thought of the cold and the fear. She had cried for her parents. She’d been so tired, so hungry.

  Steven had found her. He’d carried her all the way home. Warmed her up, fed her hot soup. Then he’d held her in his lap until their parents came home.

  He’d pulled her out of a swimming hole once too. There was no denying that her every memory of him—save one—was good.

  Determination hardened in her belly. Someone else must have been in the house the day their mother died. Someone Mrs. Hansen hadn’t seen.

  Abbey exhaled a breath. Years ago, after giving up on proving Steven innocent, her father had sat her down and told her it would be best if they put the past behind them. Steven refused to see or to speak to either of them. Her father had pleaded with her to move on with her life and not look back. He set the example, moving forward just as he’d urged her to do.

  Could she have been wrong all those years with her untiring belief in her brother?

  No. She couldn’t have been that wrong. Her father couldn’t have been that wrong.

  Still, she had to make the call to the sheriff’s office.

  Someone had been staying in that treehouse. A place close enough to know she was back. To access the Hansen home. Her pulse rate kicked up. She had an obligation to inform Garrett in the event what she’d found had anything at all to do with his case.

  Chapter Five

  1:15 p.m.

  Garrett shrugged off his coat and hung it on the rack in the corner of his office. It was after one and he felt as if he’d done nothing but spin his wheels this morning. They’d found not one single piece of evidence in the Hansen home to point them toward the perpetrator of Dottie Hansen’s murder. They’d lifted numerous prints but so far nothing that came up with a match in the system. The murder weapon was nowhere to be found.

  Garrett dropped behind his desk.

  Abbey had been right next door. She could have been robbed or worse.

  He rubbed his eyes and heaved a big breath. He couldn’t get past the idea that she hadn’t bothered to let him know she was coming. She usually did. Or maybe it had been her father who’d let him know most of the time.

  He hadn’t meant to stick his foot so deep into his mouth when he brought up her brother. Still, there were too many similarities in the murder scene to pretend he hadn’t noticed. He’d put in a call to Ted Brisbain, the assistant deputy district attorney he worked with the most frequently. He would look into Steven’s whereabouts and get back to Garrett. If Abbey’s brother was where he was supposed to be, they had nothing to worry about. As much as Garrett hated the idea of hurting her in any way, he had a job to do. A woman was dead.

  Like Abbey and her father, Garrett had never believed Steven guilty of his mother’s murder. The idea was crazy.

  But now he had a too similar murder of the eyewitness who had put him in prison, Garrett couldn’t ignore the connection. He’d pulled the file on the Gray homicide case and he gone through the reports. He’d done this once before when he first became sheriff. He’d found no missteps in the investigation. The fact of the matter was, like now, they’d had nothing in the Gray homicide except that witness.

  Now that witness was dead.

  On one level he remained convinced that Steven was innocent, but his lawman instincts wouldn’t let him ignore the possibility that he was wrong.

  “Sheriff?”

  Garrett looked up at his assistant who had poked her head into his office. He hoped there wasn’t more bad news. “Come on in, Rayna.”

  She smiled and stepped inside. “I was about to go to the diner and pick up lunch. Would you like me to bring you something?”

  Garrett returned her smile. Rayna was a really good assistant. She ran the office more so than he did. The former sheriff had just hired her to replace his retiring assistant the year before Garrett took over. Rayna had proved intensely loyal and incredibly diligent.

  He would be lost without her.

  “A sandwich would be great.” He reached for his wallet.

  “Leave it on my desk. I’ll be back in fifteen.”

  He thanked her and when she’d gone, he considered how grateful he was that things had worked out even after he’d had to tell her he wasn’t interested in a personal relationship. She’d been hurt but she’d taken it well. As cliché as it sounded, it wasn’t her—it was him. Rayna was an attractive woman. A kind-hearted woman. Garrett had simply lost his heart long ago and, so far, he hadn’t been able to get past the idea that the woman he longed to be with would never be his.

  Maybe one day he’d be able to move on.

  The thought had his mind going back to his meeting this morning with Abbey. She’d looked good. No surprise there. She always did. But weariness showed on her face. He felt certain this had been a difficult year for her. She and her father had been extremely close. Years ago, Douglas Gray had told Garrett that he hoped one day the two of them would stop pretending they didn’t belong together.

  Garrett wondered if he had ever said this to his daughter. Abbey Gray had known what she wanted to do since she was just a kid. She’d planned her escape from Montana before she was old enough to drive. She’d always said it wasn’t because she didn’t love the place, it was only because she had big plans.

  He'd had plans as well but going off to join the Marines hadn’t worked out. The truth was, he hadn’t really wanted to dive into a military career. He just hadn’t wanted to stay here with her gone so he’d pretended to have big plans too.

  After his father’s accident, he’d kept his feelings about her leaving to himself. He wouldn’t have dreamed of holding her back. After all, they’d never been anything other than friends. Close friends. Best friends, but friends nonetheless. Still, they had shared intimate firsts that went well beyond friendship. If he was completely honest with himself, he would admit that he’d been in love with Abbey since he was fourteen years old. But he’d never once ventured into that territory beyond doing so in
his dreams. He would not put that burden on her back. If she had loved him in that same way it would have been different.

  But she hadn’t.

  He still felt that familiar tug of the bond they had shared. For him, it hadn’t faded at all. He would have to find a way to make it up to her for treading on her feelings where her brother was concerned. His gaze settled on the muted television hanging on the wall across the room. He kept it on the weather station most of the time. That damned storm was almost on top of them. He’d noted the crowded parking lot at the supermarket. Folks were stocking up just in case.

  Abbey had said she had everything she needed. He hoped so. Around town it wasn’t so difficult to get around, even after a fairly large snow. But out there on Mill Creek Road where the Grays and Hansens lived, the going got rough.

  Maybe he’d call her again after the meeting with the team. This homicide case was top priority. He needed his entire focus fixed on finding the person or persons responsible for attacking and murdering an elderly woman at her own home.

  Home was one place a person should feel safe.

  He gathered his notes from this morning and walked out of his office. He dropped a bill on Rayna’s desk to cover his lunch as well as hers and headed to the conference room. This already long day was only going to get longer.

  * * *

  Deputy Sheriff Kyle Wagner and Deputy Chad Sanders waited in the conference room. Reports and photos were spread across the table.

  “We have anything back from the coroner yet?” It was early. Garrett knew this but he could hope.

  “Nothing yet,” Wagner said, glancing up from the report he was reviewing. “I stopped by the morgue on the way back. He’s started a preliminary examination already. He hopes to have something in a couple of hours, but it may be tomorrow. He said he’d do the best he could.”

  “I’ll damned sure owe him one if he can get this one done ASAP.” Garrett pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “Where’s Mr. Hansen?”