Mountain Refuge

by Sarah Varland

“And you did, right?”

  Summer shrugged. “Basically. But while we were stopped the shooter caught up with us and shot at us.” She motioned to her leg. “That’s when I was grazed, not when he shot at us on the highway.” Frowning, she looked at Noah. “Where is the car anyway?”

  “Troopers are going to retrieve it and take it to the state crime lab in Anchorage for processing. It’s possible the killer could have done something to it while you were in the woods, and you know we don’t have the capability to check for threats the way the state lab does.”

  “What do you mean? You’ve looked at it before,” she reminded Noah.

  “We’ve checked for signs of mechanical tampering, bombs. We looked for tracking devices once.” Noah shook his head. “But I don’t like how it seems like this guy always appears to know where you are. Either he has a source on the inside or he’s tracking you somehow.”

  Summer understood. And shivered.

  “Those are all the questions I have for now,” Erynn said and looked at Noah. “Did you have any to add?”

  “You covered it well.” He looked at Summer. “I did get your text about the knife shop in Anchorage. Did you send that before you were run off the road?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “A little while before. I’m not sure how long, but I didn’t figure it would send until we were almost home. I just didn’t want to forget to ask you.”

  “Well, I got it. And good thinking, but I called APD and they actually already checked out that guy. The knife shop was on their radar because of the weapon the killer has used. It may be from that shop, based on some evidence I can’t tell you about, so they already checked him out and they don’t believe it’s him.”

  Summer didn’t know whether she should feel relief or not. On one hand, she was glad it wasn’t that particular acquaintance, but on the other hand, her attempts to come up with a suspect list hadn’t been very helpful.

  And she was exhausted. Inside and out.

  “Can I go sleep now?” Summer asked Noah, feeling like she was on the edge of falling apart emotionally, something she didn’t want Clay to see. He’d seen her at her most vulnerable already, earlier when they were talking, and she needed to maintain just a little distance.

  He nodded. “Yes. I’m going to stay close. I’ll probably just sit in one of those chairs in your room once you fall asleep.”

  She wanted to ask if that was necessary, but knew that it was. Besides, after what had happened the last time she’d fallen asleep in her room, she didn’t think she’d be able to rest peacefully without having someone there with her. So without arguing, she stood and walked to the stairs, then up to her room where she laid down in her dirty clothes and fell asleep within seconds.

  FOURTEEN

  When Clay woke from his nap the sun was high in the sky, not that that told him much about what time it was. He reached for his phone, which sat on the bedside table. Just past 2:00 p.m.

  He threw back the covers, stretched and counted. Better than six hours of sleep, which was like gold in an investigation like this. Noah would have understood how much he was helping Clay by letting him take a break this long.

  Clay took a quick shower and changed into clean clothes, then hurried down the stairs, wondering if Summer had slept, if she was awake yet.

  She wasn’t downstairs in the family’s living room, so he headed out into the main great room of the lodge.

  “How are you doing?” Tyler asked from behind the desk, coming around to look Clay over. “You look pretty good. No injuries that I can see. Why’d you let my sister get shot?”

  “You know I’d have taken the bullet for her if I’d been given the choice.” Clay said the words and meant them, realizing too late that the tone of his voice would probably convince Tyler all too well how much he meant them.

  Sure enough, his friend studied him. “I asked for one thing.”

  Clay shook his head, ran a hand through his hair. “It wasn’t on purpose, okay?”

  “But you are falling for her.”

  Was he? Maybe. Yes. No. Clay just needed to keep them both alive long enough to find out. “I care. A lot.” It was what he knew was true, so it was what he told Tyler. He didn’t want to hide anything from his friend.

  “She’s been through a lot.”

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t know this part. There was a guy—”

  “I know all of it.”

  Tyler looked at him.

  Clay nodded.

  “All of it?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “Don’t break her heart, Clay. That’s all I ever wanted, was to keep her heart from getting broken. You’re here for the summer and then what?”

  “I’d planned to leave.”

  It was the worst time for him to catch sight of Summer coming down the main stairs, but there she was. Clay didn’t know how much she’d heard. The last part without context sounded pretty bad. But he didn’t know if he was ready for her to understand how much he felt for her. How dangerously close to crazy about her he was.

  “You’re leaving?” she asked quietly as she approached where the two of them stood.

  Clay looked over at Tyler.

  “Not right now,” Tyler said. “I just meant he’d only asked for a job for the summer.”

  Clay watched Summer’s defenses go up again and wished he could do something about that, but having that conversation in front of her brother wasn’t something she’d appreciate, he was sure.

  “I’ve got to get back to work,” Tyler said to Clay. “We’ll talk more later?”

  “Sure.” He’d have agreed to almost anything to have Tyler leave so he could get Summer alone to explain. “How did you sleep?” he asked her.

  “Pretty good. I woke up around half an hour ago and just laid there being thankful I wasn’t in the woods anymore.” She smiled a little. “Dry socks never felt so good, either,” she added, holding up one wool sock–clad foot.

  “I’m sure. I wanted to talk to you about today. Mind if we sit somewhere?”

  “Let’s go back to the family room.” Summer led the way and they each took a seat on the sofa. She only sat two feet from him but it felt farther, with the way her arms were crossed defensively, shutting him out.

  “I know you walked in on a weird part of the conversation I was having with Tyler.” Clay had never been one to beat around the bush.

  “You’re leaving. I get it.”

  “Not now. And I don’t know if I want to. Anymore.”

  She looked at him, then shook her head. “You’ve got to be a police officer again, Clay. You’re too good at this to run from it forever.”

  “Who says I’m running?”

  “Aren’t you?” She met his gaze, level, looking more confident than she ever had. Because of how her story had drawn them even closer together?

  Clay still wanted to talk more about that. The shooter had chosen the worst time to come after them, not that there ever would have been a good time.

  “About the conversation we had…”

  “Is it okay if I don’t want to talk about it right now?” Her voice softened, making the words not sound harsh or demanding.

  Clay could do nothing but agree. “Of course. The case? Can we talk about that?”

  Unless it was his imagination, she relaxed a bit, leaning back against the sofa cushions. She grabbed a throw pillow from beside her and brought it into her lap to hold. “Sure. If there’s any chance it will make this nightmare end sooner, I’m all for it.”

  Clay was too. He’d miss being with Summer every day but her safety wasn’t worth extending his time with her.

  “I was thinking about the man who is after you.”

  “Me too.” Summer shuddered. “Almost every time I close my eyes.”

  “I’m trying to figure out who it could be. I think we should make a list.”

  “I don’t exactly have a list of enemies, Clay.” Summer shook her head.

  �
�I know you don’t. But someone is after you, and chances are good you’ve met them.”

  “Why do you think so?” Summer asked but immediately shook her head. “No, of course they’d have to know me. Unless he was just waiting on the trail for anyone, but if so it’s entirely too coincidental that I share so many similarities with the other victims.”

  “Let’s talk about them more.”

  “I wrote everything down in a notebook.” Summer’s eyes widened and she paled. “It was in the car.”

  Problems with that ran through Clay’s mind in a line, one after another. They didn’t have her notes, problem one. The killer might have their notes, problem two. The police might find their notes and know they’d been investigating. Problem three.

  “I didn’t write everything down. I tried to keep it pretty bare-bones just in case.”

  “Good thinking on your part,” Clay said aloud, wanting to calm her down some as he could see her eyes widening. “Why don’t we not worry about that right now. The police will bring our belongings back once they’ve processed them for evidence, and then we’ll know if there’s any fallout from the notebook.”

  She nodded. “Okay. I can do that. Not worrying. Much.”

  “Good. Now, what do we remember?”

  “All the women were outdoorsy. That’s the first thing that comes to my mind.”

  “If we assume that’s the critical factor connecting the victims, where could he have met you?”

  Summer held up a finger. “Hold on just a minute…”

  She stood and walked toward the door. Clay followed her. He thought he heard her sigh and he understood—having personal security was restrictive to be sure. But it was necessary still and Clay wasn’t going to take any chances.

  She walked to the front desk and said something to Tyler. Clay wasn’t close enough to hear—he thought she’d appreciate the slightest bit of space.

  Tyler opened a closet that was to the side of the front desk, behind it. What were they up to?

  He reached in and pulled out a whiteboard, and handed it to Summer. She smiled and turned back to Clay. A bag of dry-erase markers was taped to it. Smart. They could brainstorm and then erase the evidence so they wouldn’t have a second notebook situation, something Clay appreciated. Even though he’d told Summer not to worry, he was still slightly concerned about the fact that the investigating they’d been doing might be made public.

  They returned to the living room.

  “Okay.” Summer opened a marker and set the board in front of them, leaning it against the coffee table. “Places he could have met any of us.”

  “Hiking. That’s the first and probably most obvious.”

  Summer nodded. “I agree. It’s also the hardest to prove or to track down. It’s not like most trails have any kind of log system and it would be almost impossible to get witnesses or really anything to back this one up.”

  “That doesn’t mean it isn’t a possibility.”

  “You’re right, I suppose.” She wrote it down. “What else?”

  “Races? Have you run anything lately? Some 5Ks? Outdoorsy people are often the ones who do those too and I know Anchorage has a lot.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve done a couple this year. Could be.” She wrote it down.

  “What about a store for your equipment?”

  “It’s possible. I get most of my stuff at Anchorage Outdoor Gear, where we were, but I’ve gotten shoes at Mountain Central before.” She wrote down the names of both stores.

  “What else?”

  “Trailheads?” she suggested.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if he isn’t a hiker but he fishes or something and that was how we crossed paths?” She shrugged. “It’s a stretch. It’s basically the same as hiking, so I just thought I’d toss it out there.”

  “Go ahead and write it down,” Clay suggested, and Summer seemed to agree. She nodded and set the marker down on the coffee table.

  “Hiking. Races. Stores. Trailheads,” he read aloud.

  “There’s no way to make a list from those things. There’s no way to know who hiked somewhere at a certain time or shopped somewhere when I was there.” She shook her head.

  “Technically in a store like Anchorage Outdoor Gear we might be able to access online copies of receipts if we needed to prove you were there on the same day as someone else, but I see your point. We might be able to use it to prove a connection when we have a suspect in custody, but it won’t help us narrow down a list.”

  “So we’re at another dead end for now though.” Summer didn’t sugarcoat things, did she? While he wished he could soften the blow of what she’d already realized, Clay appreciated that about her.

  “At the moment. But I think we’re close.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  He shifted his weight to face her and waited until he was sure he had her attention. “I think he is afraid you can identify him.”

  She stood. Paced. “Why do you think that?”

  He stayed seated on the couch but watched her carefully, tensing every time she walked in front of a window. That might be an overreaction on his part—no one else involved in the investigation would agree with his tension there…but then again, no one else had seen how well the guy after them could shoot.

  “He’s changed how he’s coming after you. That’s unexpected. I think you have him rattled.”

  “But you saw the sketch APD did. He wore a mask, Clay, I don’t know who he is.”

  “So maybe it’s his voice that he thinks you could identify. But he wouldn’t go to this much trouble to kill you if you hadn’t become a threat.”

  “Isn’t that the very definition of a serial killer? Someone who tries to kill other people?”

  “Sure, but think about it. He killed those other women with a knife, the same way he initially tried to kill you.”

  She nodded slowly. “Okay. But he’s not doing that anymore. And you think that’s significant?”

  “I’m sure it is. Serial killers fit a profile, they play by their own set of rules. Even though they obviously have extreme issues, what they do makes sense to them. They tend to follow patterns even more so than other criminals. He has broken his. It must be for a reason.”

  “I did notice things had escalated. Tracking me down to my home, almost being run off the road, being shot at multiple different times…”

  “It’s not about his usual motives anymore. Now he just wants you dead.”

  “Wow, don’t beat around the bush at all, Clay.”

  “You can take it.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because you’re the strongest woman I know.”

  *

  Summer didn’t know how to react, not to Clay’s words or his nearness. Sometime in the span of a few minutes he’d ended up shifting over to where she sat on the couch and now she was leaning in his direction. Eight more inches and she could kiss him.

  Six.

  Four. She held there, met his eyes and swallowed hard as she tried to decide what she wanted, what he wanted, what she was doing.

  Clay lowered his chin, just slightly. But enough for Summer to tell that her unspoken “kiss me” invitation might be getting an answer.

  She jerked backward. “We should go down to the station and tell Noah what we came up with.”

  Clay hadn’t moved, hadn’t backed up or apologized for his part in the almost kiss. Not that she wanted him to. Not that she wanted him to acknowledge it, either.

  Summer stood, brushed her hair, which had fallen in her face as she’d leaned toward Clay, behind her ear and straightened her shoulders. “We’ll drive your truck, then, right? Since my car is…”

  “Yes.”

  She hurried outside, even more flustered by the calmness in Clay’s voice. Did nothing rattle him?

  Maybe not, and not that many things rattled her. But the way she still felt drawn to Clay, the way he still seemed like he might share those feelings
even after she’d told him all she had…

  Neither of them said much on the way into town, but much to Summer’s surprise the silence wasn’t awkward. Just full. Like there was so much to say and neither of them wanted to say it. Summer knew they’d eventually have to finish the conversation she’d started in the woods if there was ever going to be anything between them. Not that Clay had said there was, and besides, wasn’t he leaving?

  Summer walked with Clay into the building and took a deep breath. Reliving this over and over was getting a little easier, but that didn’t mean it was objectively easy. The fact was she couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching, if anyone was waiting to attack. Because this was actually her real life. Where someone wanted her dead.

  “Summer. Clay.” Noah was walking past the door as soon as they walked in and immediately turned to face them. “Did you come to talk to me? I was just on the phone with the troopers and was about to call you. They recovered Summer’s car. No indication it’s been messed with since you left it.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe that meant they didn’t have to process the car’s contents and no one would notice the notebook?

  Noah frowned. “They wanted me to ask you why you have so much information about the case in a notebook?”

  Summer looked at Clay. They both looked back at Noah but neither said anything.

  “We’d better go to my office.”

  They followed him there. Summer ran her hand over her forehead, trying to do anything to ease the tension that had developed when Noah said they had the notebook. How did they explain that?

  “Don’t be mad, Noah,” Summer said as soon as he’d shut the door behind them, before either she or Clay had even had the chance to sit down.

  “I don’t know what exactly I’d be mad about. I just don’t understand why the two of you seem to be conducting some kind of unofficial investigation.”

  There wasn’t much worse than getting caught doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing. Especially by Noah. Because when he wasn’t working, wasn’t worried about a serial killer terrorizing his town, he was laid-back and funny. But the sense of humor all but disappeared under the pressure of the job.

  “I’ll explain,” Clay started. Summer was more than willing to let him do so. She leaned back a little in the chair.