“I’m sorry, Parker,” she said sincerely. “I don’t mean to call your expertise into question. Of course, I’ll check it out. And I’ll do it right now.”
He nodded and turned toward the makeshift parking area for workers. Maggie doubted he was done for the day, but since Quasimodo just lighted on a victim, he would rotate out for another dog. This same dance had been going on from sunup until sundown for days now while they checked every home in the large neighborhood, not just the ones whose owners were reported missing.
She continued her course, the first few drops of rain hitting her face. By the time she reached 5040, a steady drizzle was falling. She was glad to see that the crew had already erected a canopy with light over the location to preserve the remains. She stopped to settle a particulate respirator over her mouth and nose and stepped off the road.
She worked her way through the rubble, her boots sure and solid when the ground underneath shifted. Passing by the house, a spiral staircase climbed eerily toward the dark sky. She would never forget the sights and smells of this recovery. Bad dreams haunted her for days now, but she wouldn’t let that scare her off when desperate families needed her help.
She slogged through the debris to the back of the property, where ashen trees stood forlornly looking over the remains of what was once a storage shed. Near the red flags planted by Parker, she set her bag on the ground and snapped pictures of the area for documentation, taking long shots first and moving on to close-ups.
She stowed her phone and set to work, carefully excavating rubble. She found bases for a rake and shovels, the steel impervious to the hot fire, but their wooden handles were gone. Before long, she found her first bone, a femur. Hoping that she might have found an intact skeleton, she continued, carefully picking up and discarding debris from atop the bones. The work was painstakingly slow, but hours later, she reached the upper body covered with a large steel wheelbarrow, and she lifted it off.
Experts told her that this fire burned close to twenty-two hundred degrees, taking most everything in its path. But the melting point of carbon steel was over twenty-six hundred degrees, which is why metal structures remained intact.
As she settled the wheelbarrow out of her way, the sun disappeared below the horizon. Didn’t matter. No way she’d quit before learning more about this body. But she needed to turn on the overhead light to continue working.
She stood and stretched up to click on the bulb. She took a moment to give her leg muscles a chance to recover from squatting and let her gaze roam the quiet site. Her fellow workers had all taken off. Not unusual. She worked late most nights by herself just to keep up with the demand for her skills. And standing there wasn’t going to get it done.
She squatted again to brush away more debris, revealing a narrow, heart-shaped pelvis that told her she was looking at the remains of a male. One of the missing men? Neither of them lived at this address, but it was possible this guy came over here to get a hose or some other tool to try to stop the fire from spreading.
Eager to find leads on his identity, she moved up to the skull. The head was turned to the side, and she spotted a circular hole in the parietal bone in the rear. The wound beveled in, one of the most obvious responses of cranial bone to ballistics.
This man had been shot.
“No way.” She sat back on her heels and stared.
Murdered. Someone murdered him. That was obvious by the location of the wound. He couldn’t have shot himself in the back of the head.
She examined the front of the skull but didn’t find an exit wound. The slug was most likely still in the skull. Would make sense if the wound was caused by a handgun and small-caliber bullet. She quickly measured the entrance wound. Yeah. Small caliber. Most likely a handgun.
She glanced around, looking for the weapon, but found none. She wanted to do more. To look for the actual slug. But this was a crime scene now, and the medical examiner and county sheriff needed to take over.
Heart hammering, she hurried down the street toward the recovery truck lit by a hastily rigged streetlight so she could make the call and get additional equipment. She passed a burned-out car with melted aluminum rims running in rivulets down the street, the metal now solidified. Past the other homes, their foundations dark with eerie shadows.
At the truck, she pushed up the respirator and snapped off her latex gloves to dig out her phone.
“Nate,” she said after the sheriff answered. “Dr. Turner here. I’m at Summit, and I found something you’ll want to check out.”
“What’s that?”
She leaned against the truck and described her findings. “The circular hole along with the beveling in the skull is clear evidence of a gunshot wound. This man was murdered.”
“Oh, man.” He sighed out a long breath. “You’re sure.”
“Yes. The wound is a classic bullet wound, and he was shot in the back of the skull.”
“Which is unlikely for a self-inflicted wound unless the guy rigged something up to hold the gun and pull the trigger.”
“Right,” she said, her mind racing to make sense of this scene. “And odds are good that he didn’t do that. Much easier to shoot himself in the mouth or temple.”
“I’ll get on the horn with the ME and get her out there. If you need to take off, I’ll dispatch a deputy to protect the scene.”
“I’m not going anywhere until we figure out if this guy is one of our missing men.” She shook her head. “Imagine that. A murder in the middle of this terrible tragedy.”
“You think you’ve seen everything in this job and then…” His voice fell off, but he didn’t have to say more. After years of working forensic anthropology investigations, Maggie got it.
“Okay,” Nate said. “I’m about thirty minutes out.”
“I’ll wait for you at the shed.” She disconnected and stowed her phone. This was such a crazy turn of events, and it was likely going to be a long night. She should grab a bottle of water and protein bar from the cab before getting the equipment.
She rounded the truck and came up short.
A man stood in the dark, the moon barely outlining him.
Her heart seized with fear, and her arms went out in an automatic defensive posture.
“Hey, sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” The guy held up his hands and stepped out of the shadows, taking away a bit of the fear factor. He had an average round face, full beard, and glasses making him appear kind of scholarly…like one of her fellow assistant professors or one of the older students on campus. In fact, he seemed familiar somehow.
“Do I know you?” she asked, trying to get a good look at his face with shadows still hiding much of it.
He shook his head. “I just got off work and wanted to check on my house. My place is one of the few that survived.”
He sounded legitimate and didn’t look all that threatening, but still, she wished she had a weapon of some sort or was still on the phone with Nate.
“Which house is yours?” she asked, hoping to ferret out the truth.
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Big blue one on the left about a half mile down. Wife put that ginormous concrete fountain out front. Can’t miss it.”
Maggie remembered the house and fountain he was describing.
“It’s crazy how some houses escaped damage, isn’t it?” he asked.
She nodded and started to relax. The fire didn’t burn as hot in some areas, leaving entire homes in the subdivision without any damage. The destruction all depended on how the fire hopped from one location to another.
“Not that I’m gonna live here anytime soon.” He frowned. “Not with the destruction all around. Still, I check on the place every day. Pick up a few more things. Never know about looters.”
“I’ve been working here for days and haven’t seen anyone who wasn’t here to help.”
“Good to know.” He tilted his head. “You’re working kind of late, aren’t you?”
“There’s much to be done
.”
“You’re the anthropologist, right? Saw you on the early news tonight.”
She nodded and hoped he didn’t gush about her volunteer work the way others were doing. She was just a regular person whose skills allowed her to be of assistance in this dire time.
“Well, on behalf of myself and neighbors, thank you.” He smiled and erased all worry from her mind. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
She nodded. “Nice talking to you.”
He took off down the street, and she headed for the cab to grab her water and bar, glancing over her shoulder along the way to make sure he kept going. He strolled down the middle of the barren street, the only safe place to walk at night—the best place even in broad daylight. She chugged some water, stowed the bottle and bar in her apron pocket, then went to the back of the truck. She unlocked it and climbed in.
The victim’s teeth, though ashen gray—meaning they were extremely fragile—were intact and could be compared to dental x-rays of the missing men as a quick method of confirming his identity. She would use a handheld x-ray device for that. With only fragments left to recover, no one used it for days, and she suspected it was buried in one of the bins on the truck’s shelves. She worked her way down the right side, pulling out containers, digging through each one until she reached the front of the vehicle.
She found the device in a lower bin. Finally. She pulled it out, and carefully set it on the floor. She stood to stretch, her lower back stiff from bending over ruins.
An arm came around her neck, jerking her back against a hard body.
She screamed.
Once. Twice. Loudly.
Then he cut off her air supply. Totally. Completely.
She strained to speak. Couldn’t emit even a peep. Tried again. Failed.
She only had a minute—maybe less—to get free before blackness settled in.
Hurry! Hurry!
She clawed at the arm in long frantic gashes. His long sleeves prevented her from ripping into his skin. She reached up. Clutched a fistful of hair. Yanked hard. Pulling. Tearing.
The man grunted but didn’t release her.
“I’m not going away for murder,” he said, his tone like a hissing snake.
What in the world?
He tightened his hold.
She tried to suck in air. Couldn’t gain a breath. Not even a sip of oxygen.
The darkness came, obscuring her vision. Beckoning her. She blinked hard. Blinked again but couldn’t fight the shadows descending over her eyes.
BUY COLD FURY!
Don’t miss Eryn and Trey’s story in COLD CASE!
When her past comes back to haunt her…
Former FBI cyber security agent Eryn Calloway worked many cyber investigations during her career as an FBI agent and while serving as Blackwell Tactical’s cyber expert. But when her computer is locked with ransomware, she suddenly finds herself facing the biggest investigation of all. Failure to solve the case and find the hacker could result in the loss of her very life.
Can she let the one man who can protect her get close enough to do so?
Enter former Green Beret, deputy Trey Sawyer who offers to serve as her bodyguard. Trey has been in love with Eryn for a year, but she lost her husband several years ago and isn’t ready to open herself to the potential for pain again. She’s kept Trey at arm’s length and wants to do so now—after all, she can take care of herself. But she has a four-year-old daughter to protect, so Eryn reluctantly agrees to let Trey into her world. But when they’re thrown together in a race for her life, she has to combat both a vicious enemy—and the pain from her past. Is Trey trustworthy enough to let him into every area of her life, or is the risk too great?
Chapter One
Cancel your classes or your computer isn’t the only thing that will be DOA.
Eryn Calloway couldn’t look away from her computer. Away from the blue screen—the visual known in the computer world as the “blue screen of death,” warning of a fatal system error.
But this warning was different. Very different.
It wasn’t a Windows error. Not a virus. Her machine hadn’t crashed.
Someone was threatening her life. Here. Now. At the annual Policing in the Modern World Conference where she was teaching computer courses as a representative of her team, Blackwell Tactical.
How could this be?
She was smack dab in the middle of a crowd of law enforcement officers mingling in the lobby of The Dunes Resort and someone wanted her dead.
Craziness. She shook her head at the absurdity, but fear had a hold of her stomach and it wouldn’t let go.
“Eryn?” Deputy Trey Sawyer’s deep voice jolted her.
She whipped around to see him approaching her, weaving through the crowd.
If she hadn’t recognized his voice, his red hair would make him easy to find in a crowd. But his voice stood out to her much like a mother instantly picked out her child’s voice in a group. Not that Eryn’s feelings for him were motherly. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
She filled her lungs with air and connected with his grayish-blue eyes that were often calm and reflective of his easygoing personality. But not today. He looked darkly dangerous and very intimidating.
Every bit of air she’d drawn in whooshed out. She’d never seen this side of him, but man, she liked it equally as well as the laid-back guy.
He ran his gaze over her. “You’re as white as a sheet. What’s wrong?”
No way she was telling him anything. He was the last guy she wanted to share her problem with.
She reached for the laptop screen to lower it. He shot out a hand and pressed it over hers, halting her movement. His touch amplified the usual tingle of excitement she felt in his presence, and her already stressed-out mind whirled.
She swallowed hard and did her best not to reveal her unease about the hack and about seeing him again. They’d danced around their mutual attraction for a year now, and she found him almost impossible to resist. Almost. But she managed it so far. The key was to eliminate the time they spent together.
Today was no exception. She would move on as soon as possible, and while he was here, she wouldn’t display even a hint of her feelings. Not when she would never let things develop with him. Or any other man for that matter.
He bent forward to stare at the screen and released her hand. He worked the muscles in his strong jaw for a moment then turned his gaze on her, the intensity there making her gasp. “What in the world is going on, Eryn?”
“It’s nothing.” She tried to sound casual, but she didn’t manage it.
“Right. Nothing made all the color drain from your face.” He grabbed a chair and turned it to face her. He straddled the seat and rested powerful arms on the chair back.
She took a moment to look at him. Not a good idea, but then she didn’t have good ideas around him. He wore black tactical pants much like hers, and an Under Armour tactical shirt in an army green color that fit him like a second set of skin, accentuating his muscular build and broad shoulders.
Her gaze wanted to linger there, but she forced it back to his face. She steeled her expression and her voice. “It’s nothing. Leave it alone.”
She closed her computer and started to get up.
He rested a hand on her shoulder, effectively stopping her from rising. She held there, midair, and refused to look at him.
“I can’t let this go, and you know it.” The vehemence in his tone surprised her. Where was the laid-back guy she knew? “Someone is threatening you, and you need help.”
Right. His help. She shook his hand off and stood up. He was acting like most guys—assuming she wasn’t capable of taking care of herself. But as a former FBI agent and cybersecurity expert, she was capable. Very capable. She turned to glare at him and walk away, but his eyes were locked on her like a sniper eyeing his target. Leaving without discussing this was pointless. He would trail her and corner her in another location.
She sat back d
own and lifted her chin. “I can handle this.”
His gaze softened, his eyes bluer now, a striking contrast to his rich red hair. “Why do you always think you need to be so tough?”
She did have to be tough in the law enforcement world to ensure that men took her seriously. Fortunately, her male teammates at Blackwell Tactical respected her skills and abilities.
She deflected his question with a wave of her hand. “Why do you have to interrogate me? I said I can handle it.”
He eyed her but didn’t budge.
“Look. I’m a cyber professional and know how to deal with this hack.” She leaned closer so they wouldn’t be overheard in the crowded lobby. “The guy deployed ransomware. You’ve likely heard of the software that locks a computer until the owner pays ransom to have it released. Well in this case, he doesn’t want money. He probably did it to show off. It likely happened when I logged into the unsecured resort network. I’ll restore my machine, trace the hack back to the offender, and turn him over to the authorities. End of story.”
Trey shook his head. “That doesn’t explain why this hacker wants you to cancel your classes, and he’s threatening your life if you don’t.”
Her gut was twisted in a knot over that very thing, but she ignored Trey’s concern. “He’s likely just testing my competency.”
Trey’s eyes hardened to steel. “Or this person really does want you to stop teaching and is going to kill you if you don’t.”
Eryn sat back, putting a wall up between them. “You’ve been in law enforcement too long for your own good—seeing a problem where one doesn’t exist.”
“No.” He planted his hands on the table. “I’m seeing what was right in front of my face before you closed your computer.”
She didn’t know how to respond, so she said nothing.
He made a low sound in his throat like a growl, then shook his head. “Tell me about your classes.”
She wanted to rush up to her room to take care of the computer issue. But Trey was tenacious and wouldn’t let it go until she explained, so she would get it over as quickly as possible. “I’m teaching two classes. One is about how every cell phone is unique and pictures taken on a cell can be traced back to an individual phone due to these unique characteristics.”
Cold Fear: (Cold Harbor Book 5) Page 29
