by Jami Alden
John grimaced. “You’re right,” he said with a sheepish look on his face. “Something about that guy rubs me the wrong way.”
Kate didn’t think it was wise to tell him the feeling was mutual.
“And I’m sorry for saying that. I know you’re here as a professional and your only focus is on the case. In fact, it was probably unfair of me to insist you have lunch today with so much going on.”
Kate gave him a noncommittal shrug.
John leaned down, a sly smile on his face. “Even so, I’m not going to apologize for it. I had too much fun catching up with you. But I promise not to force my company on you until this mess is all over.”
“It’s hardly torture,” Kate said, and leaned up to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. She waved to Magda and thanked her for lunch as John walked her to the door.
Chapter 9
Kate arrived at the sheriff’s station ten minutes later. The dispatcher, a woman Kate recognized as one of the volunteers from the day before, directed her to CJ’s office. “CJ’s running a little late—he had a domestic violence call clear over by Priest Lake that he had to respond to, but Tommy’s already back there.”
Kate thanked her and walked back to the office, trying to ignore the knot tightening in her belly as she anticipated spending any time alone with Tommy in a small enclosed space.
She took a bracing breath and pushed the door open. He was sitting at the small table in the corner, his tall, muscular frame managing to make the furniture look like it had been built for children. He gave her a cool nod in greeting. She did the same, trying not to notice the way the sun streaming in from the window made his thick, short hair come alive with a riot of red and gold highlights or the way his biceps strained the sleeves of his black polo shirt.
She joined him at the table, and he pushed a stack of papers toward her. “You can start with that,” he said, not bothering to look up as he spoke. “I’m still gathering additional info about a few more potential leads.”
Okay, so no small talk. And why should there be? They were both professionals, working on this case, and whatever had happened between them in the past was dead and buried and had no relevance in their lives now.
She’d never had a colleague so studiously ignore her as Tommy was doing now, his eyes locked on the computer. He’d been the one to call her there, she thought. And now he wanted to pretend she didn’t exist?
As she sifted through the papers, she felt a little devil tap her on the shoulder, the one she’d never known existed until she met Tommy Ibarra. The one that urged her to do things that were totally out of character. Who convinced her to lie, and sneak, and offer her virginity up on a platter to the first boy who made her secret parts tingle.
Now that devil urged her to ignore all the leave-me-alone signals Tommy was putting out there. “So how did you get all this information?” Kate asked as she began looking through the papers.
Tommy looked up, his expression stony. “Some of it’s public record. The rest you probably don’t want to know.”
Kate scanned what looked like someone’s medical chart from a Boulder area hospital. “Don’t you worry about getting caught?”
“It’s my job not to get caught. That’s why my clients hire me.”
Kate wrinkled her nose. “But couldn’t you be arrested? Can’t they?”
Those acre-wide shoulders lifted and lowered in a shrug. “I don’t worry about it much.”
“But don’t you worry about what your clients are doing with that information?” she pressed.
His dark gaze met hers, deadpan. “Many of my clients hire me to find pieces of information no one else can find. I give them what they want, and they pay me well for it. What they do with that information is their business.”
Kate stared blankly at the sheet of paper in front of her until the letters started to swim. Despite his behavior over the last two days, it was still hard for Kate to wrap her head around how the Tommy she had known had become so cynical, so cold. She’d done this, she realized. She and her father, when he’d tried to rip Tommy’s world apart as much as their own had been.
“How did you get into this?”
Tommy arched a dark brow in question.
“This business. I thought you’d end up taking over the ranch, like your father wanted. I never knew you were even into computers.”
Tommy’s mouth quirked to the side, the first crack in his stony expression she’d seen. “Me neither, until I got into the Army. I’d studied a little computer science in college, but when I joined the Ranger Corps I was assigned as the lead communications specialist for my regiment. Turned out I also had a knack for surveillance, both the physical and cyber kind. After I got out I had enough contacts who were familiar with me and my skills to start my own business.”
“I know Sandpoint has grown, but it doesn’t seem like it would generate the kind of demand that would pay for that house of yours.”
Finally, a little smile glimmered in his eyes as he looked up from his computer screen. “As long as I have access to the Internet and a phone line, I can work anywhere. But I also have an office and a place in Seattle, and I work with several larger firms that hire me as a contractor. I only spend about half my time here.”
“And the rest of your time jet-setting around the globe,” Kate prodded.
“Mostly just around the States. I got my share of jet-setting in my Ranger days.”
“I never would have imagined you in the military, much less special forces,” Kate mused. Not then, anyway. Now Tommy’s military experience seemed to have seeped into every cell in his body. It was in his steady, impassive gaze, the way he held his body, perfectly still yet vibrating with readiness.
This time when he looked at her his dark gaze was sharp, challenging. “Oh, yeah? How did you imagine I turned out after what happened?”
Kate swallowed hard as she realized her mistake in admitting that she’d thought about him at all. She felt her face heat as she remembered some of what she’d imagined, the fantasies she’d spun. Her very favorite had been the one where she left school one day to find Tommy’s truck parked outside. He’d be leaning against it, wearing a T-shirt and worn jeans, a sly smile on his face and a knowing glint in his eye. He’d pin her up against the truck and kiss her like he’d been dying for the taste of her.
Then… oh God, just thinking about it made her want to melt into a puddle of embarrassment, though he couldn’t possibly read her thoughts… Then he’d pull an engagement ring out of her pocket and ask her to marry him. Of course she’d say yes and drive back to Idaho with him.
“I imagined you here, working with your father on the ranch, most likely married with a couple kids,” she said simply.
“There was a time in my life when it easily could have gone that way, though I don’t know that my father and I could ever see eye to eye enough to work that closely together. As it is, he can only stand me coming around to help a couple days a week.”
Kate gave him a little smile and went back to her reading.
After a few moments Tommy broke the silence. “You know, I never spent much time imagining what happened to you.”
The knife dug deeply into her chest and just as quickly withdrew. “I didn’t have to, not with you popping up on the news all the time. I couldn’t get away from you no matter how bad I wanted to. Apparently I still can’t.”
And back in went the knife.
Why should it matter, she scolded herself, especially when the feeling was mutual. Wasn’t it?
She didn’t have much time to stew on it before CJ burst in the office, his brusque “What have we got?” a sharp reminder that she had a job to do.
And once again Tommy was proving too much of a distraction.
Tommy hit a key on his computer that made the printer start humming and spit out several more pages. “Here’s some more info on the shuttle driver.” Tommy gestured with his chin. “He’s already in your pile.”
Kate grabbed
the pages, and while Tommy gave CJ the highlights, Kate focused all of her attention on parsing the data Tommy had gathered.
He was thorough, no doubt about that. He’d collected school, driving, employment, and medical records for over half a dozen possible suspects.
Two hours later Kate had arranged all of the information in order of priority. “The top three are the handyman, Robert Walford, his roommate, Dillon O’Brien, who helped him out at Frankel’s sometimes, and Vitaki Korcu, the son of the overnight nurse who drove his mother to and from work.”
As CJ made phone calls to the local law enforcement in Boulder, Tommy went to work tracking down any information he could find about the top three men’s recent credit card activity to see if there was any evidence that they’d headed this way.
Though nothing was solid yet, Kate couldn’t suppress excitement bubbling through her blood along with the slight easing of the knot in her stomach as she felt one more nudge of optimism thanks to the information Tommy had gathered.
She didn’t want to get her hopes up, but as she drove back to the townhouse, she couldn’t keep from thinking that maybe, just maybe they were about to get a break.
The envelope was on her windshield the next morning when she went outside. She instinctively looked around, even though it could have been placed there any time in the last twelve hours. At this early hour, there still wasn’t much activity. Kate picked up the envelope carefully and with no small amount of trepidation.
Being a marginally public figure, Kate had gotten her share of harassing notes and phone calls.
Then again, it could be nothing but a marketing brochure, although she noticed none of the other cars parked along the street had anything tucked under their windshields.
She opened the envelope to find two pieces of paper inside. The one was plain printer paper, the message typewritten in black text: “They didn’t find her in time. Will this time be any different?”
A jolt of adrenaline shot through her as she pulled out the second page. It was a photocopy of a news article. The headline read “Local girl, 16, Missing.” The accompanying photo showed a pretty girl with big eyes and a wide smile. Her long, light hair—it was hard to tell the exact hue from the black-and-white photo—was held back from her face by a headband.
Kate went on to read the article describing how Ellie Cantrell, a sixteen-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska, went missing on her way home from cheerleading practice. She looked at the dateline of the article. October 12, 2001. Nearly ten years ago. At the time the article had been written, the girl had been missing for three days.
Goose bumps broke out all over her body as she read her mother’s reply to speculation that the girl had run away. “Ellie is a straight A student. She volunteers as a Candy Striper at the hospital.” The statements from Ellie’s friends matched those of her parents, describing her as a nice girl, a studious girl, not big into partying.
No one who knew her could point to anything in her life that would motivate her to run away. “Ellie’s really tight with her parents,” said one friend. “Running away isn’t something she would do.”
Kate took the article and went back into the townhouse. Within minutes she had her laptop going and had logged into the St. Anthony’s Web site to access the comprehensive database of missing persons.
It took her only a few seconds to pull up Ellie’s record. And to find out the young girl’s fate.
Her throat tightened as she looked at the field marked “Status.” It was filled with the single word: “Deceased.”
Kate brought up her Web browser and did a search on Ellie Cantrell, which led to thousands of results. Kate clicked on the headline that read “Missing Omaha Teen’s Body Found.”
Thirteen days after her disappearance, Ellie Cantrell’s body had been found in a shallow grave in a wooded area less than five miles from her house. The cause of death, Kate read, her eyes burning with unshed tears, appeared to be blunt force trauma to the head and face, though final determination would be known after the autopsy.
She’d been beaten to death.
Kate clicked back to the results page and then followed the links through to half a dozen follow-up articles. The medical examiner’s report revealed that she’d also been sexually assaulted. Though it came as no surprise, it nauseated Kate nonetheless.
But even more interesting were the reports that authorities believed Ellie’s case was connected to at least three others in Colorado, Utah, and Montana. Kate pulled up all of the information they could find on the man the press had dubbed the Bludgeoner.
All were pretty girls between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. All were good students who enjoyed active social lives but weren’t described as partiers. Not the kind of girls to put themselves in risky situations.
No arrest was ever made, but the FBI did question Arthur Dorsey of Ogden, Utah. Two days after he was taken in for questioning, Dorsey hanged himself. When they found a baseball bat with traces of blood matching one of the victims among Dorsey’s personal possessions, the FBI quickly concluded he was responsible for the murders.
The strongest evidence was that no cases with similar patterns were flagged after his death.
Dorsey was described as a loner who, despite the fact that he was well educated, had no permanent residence. He worked as a carpenter and a handyman, moving from place to place as the mood struck him.
He’d been placed in all of the victims’ cities near the time of their abductions and deaths.
Kate’s stomach knotted as she read how it was believed Dorsey targeted his victims and stalked them for several days, even weeks, before he took them. Learning their patterns, finding out where they went, when they were likely to be alone and vulnerable.
Just as Tricia’s stalker had monitored her.
Dorsey was dead. But that knowledge didn’t stop the hairs on the back of her neck from prickling or the warning twist in her gut that told her she needed to pay very close attention to this.
Kate grabbed her phone and without thinking dialed Tommy’s number. It didn’t even occur to her that she should call CJ first until Tommy’s curt greeting crackled across the line. “Kate.”
Kate didn’t bother with any social niceties and quickly filled Tommy in on the envelope, the news story, and the connection to the other missing girls. “All of them were murdered roughly two weeks after being taken,” she said. “He beat them to death.”
“And you think there’s a connection? It says here the guy they think did it hanged himself.” Of course Tommy had logged on and pulled up the information faster than she could speak.
“Someone obviously wants me to think so, if they left the article on my car.”
“What does CJ think?”
Kate was glad Tommy couldn’t see her cheeks flush as she admitted, “I haven’t called him yet.”
As Tommy was silent for a few seconds, Kate blurted, “Ibarra comes up before Kovac in my contact list.”
His soft grunt told her he could smell the bullshit through the phone line. “I’ll be over in ten. I’ll call CJ on the way and have him meet us.”
“Shouldn’t we go to the sheriff’s station?”
“I want to see if there’s any way we can figure out who left you that note. In the meantime, don’t handle it any more than you need to.”
Right. If the person who left the note was serious about keeping his or her identity a secret, there weren’t likely to be any prints, but it was worth a try.
Kate hung up, and while she waited for the guys to arrive, she pulled up everything she could find on the Cantrell case.
The FBI had been brought in after Ellie Cantrell’s murder. She was the third victim, and by that time there was an unmistakable pattern: Girl is kidnapped on her way home from a normal activity in the early evening. Ten days to two weeks later, the body is found in a shallow grave close to the victim’s house.
Dorsey was questioned after it was uncovered that he’d worked on construction sites clos
e to all four of the victims. His mother protested loudly that her son wasn’t capable of such heinous crimes, that any evidence against him was purely coincidental. She’d even gone so far as to try to sue the FBI agent in charge of the investigation for driving her son to suicide.
Despite her efforts, the media widely believed Dorsey was the killer.
The families of the victims agreed, even when another set of fingerprints was found on the bat in Dorsey’s rented room. “Investigating a dead man isn’t going to bring my daughter back,” said one father from Billings, Montana. “The monster who killed my little girl is rotting in hell. The only way I’d feel better was if I’d sent him there myself.”
But as the note on her desk caught her eye, Kate couldn’t help wondering if maybe Arthur Dorsey’s mother had been on to something.
Chapter 10
Nine and a half minutes after he’d hung up the phone, Tommy was knocking on Kate’s door. He called himself five thousand kinds of idiot as his skin seemed to tighten in anticipation at the sound of her footsteps approaching the door.
He couldn’t stop his breath from hitching for a split second before she opened it, as if he were bracing himself for the first sight of her of the day. And God help him if he didn’t feel a little sucker-punched as he met her anxious blue eyes as she ushered him inside.
“There’s the note.” Kate gestured to the desk. Tommy nodded, set his laptop case on the floor, and tried not to notice the creamy length of her legs stretching out from the hem of her shorts or the soft curve of her breasts pressing against the thin cotton of her long-sleeve T-shirt.
Tommy pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and walked over to examine it.
“You always carry those around?” Kate said, eyeing his hands suspiciously as he picked up the typewritten note.
