Alaskan Mountain Pursuit

by Elizabeth Goddard

  But that hadn’t happened yet, he reminded himself. He needed that investigative team to hurry up and get here.

  “I think she did, yes,” Summer answered his question, nodding slowly like she’d realized why he’d asked it and was putting the pieces together for herself.

  “And someone could hike that ridgeline.”

  “Only someone experienced. It’s not a ridgeline I could see a novice doing with any success.”

  He pressed for more details. “How experienced?”

  “Intermediate.”

  “Okay.” So it wouldn’t narrow their suspect list solely to expert mountain climbers, but at least it gave them a direction to look in.

  Movement down the trail caught his attention. His hand immediately went to his side, the familiar bulk of his service handgun there and ready if he needed it. Thankfully he spotted Noah and a female state trooper officer coming up the trail. He moved his hand off his weapon and called to them.

  Noah’s face registered the exact moment he smelled the distinct odor of decay. He felt for the police chief. Clay had kept himself and Summer there not only because the body needed to be kept under supervision until the law enforcement could come to process it, but also because he’d learned in his years of police work that the best course of action was to stay at the scene and let your nose get used to the smell. It was better than getting fresh air and coming back in, a mistake rookie cops often made. It usually didn’t take them long to learn though.

  “Tell me how you found her.” Noah’s voice was all business, the strain of the day already evident in his tone, and Clay knew it was only going to get worse.

  “The smell first. Then I came this way to investigate.”

  “Did it occur to you that you were marching my sister into a crime scene?” Noah practically growled the words.

  “Noah. Calm down. He did what needed to be done.” The trooper stuck her hand out to Clay. “Trooper Erynn Cooper.”

  “Trooper... Cooper?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, never heard that before. Clever.”

  Clay smiled. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Ma’am?” Now her brows were raised. The woman had a really expressive face. “Where are you from, because it’s sure not here.”

  “Georgia.”

  “The South. That makes sense.”

  “Could we save the introductions for later?”

  Erynn rolled her eyes and gave Clay a sympathetic smile. “He’s really not always such a bear.”

  Clay looked between the two of them. “Do the troopers work with Moose Haven police often?”

  Erynn nodded as Noah shook his head.

  Summer sighed. “They have to cooperate because Moose Haven is in such an isolated area of the Kenai Peninsula. Because of that our police force is small and sometimes needs backup.” She nodded to Erynn. “And sometimes the troopers need Moose Haven PD’s help with particular cases because they technically have jurisdiction and the troopers don’t like to supersede that when they don’t need to.” She nodded at Noah. “Did I balance that well between the two of you so we can give up the fighting for now?”

  Noah glared.

  “So.” Erynn moved closer to the body. “I think this is our missing person from Kenai. The hiking blogger—Melissa Mitchell.”

  Noah stepped closer to see as well, and then looked back at Clay. Clay knew what the other man was about to ask. It was time for Summer to get out of there. Pretty soon reality was going to hit, the knowledge that she could have ended up just like that, how close she’d come to being a body in the woods.

  It roiled Clay’s stomach, and without thinking he reached out his left hand. Somehow he just needed physical contact with her right now as they made their way through the growing dimness of this thick area of forest. It was still early enough for plenty of daylight but the clouds had darkened, another heavy rain promising to be released soon in the future.

  If she was surprised at his gesture, she didn’t show it. Just accepted his offered hand. It took him off guard how much smaller her hand was than his. So feminine and soft. He guessed he hadn’t spent much time thinking about what her hands were like, but for someone who was so tough and independent, she was also so fragile.

  Clay couldn’t let anything happen to her.

  “Let’s go,” he said to her.

  “You don’t have to ask me again.”

  SEVEN

  Summer couldn’t quite get comfortable anywhere at the lodge, not after what they’d found that afternoon. Clay had been quieter than usual since they’d returned and the several attempts at conversation she’d made had been unsuccessful.

  She’d finally given up and sat down with a sketchbook and some charcoal pencils. Her family teased her about how rarely she sat still, so this old hobby wasn’t one she had much time for anymore, but she did enjoy it when she got the chance.

  “You’re very good.” Clay sat down beside her on the couch, leaning over slightly, she guessed to see what she was working on.

  “Thanks.” She tilted the pad toward him. “Bear Creek Falls. I wanted to remember what the falls themselves look like, remind myself right now that I like that trail, it’s a good spot in the woods and it’s not the mountain’s fault that...” She couldn’t make herself finish.

  Everything that had happened was settling into her mind, and she knew it was changing the way she viewed the world. Darkening it. Even the lodge that had been her home since she could remember wasn’t the same. That was why she hadn’t been able to get comfortable. Somehow everything had changed for Summer since the body had been discovered.

  Because it wasn’t a body. It was a woman who’d been living, moving, warm flesh and blood like she was right now.

  And the person who wanted Summer dead might be the same person who’d taken that other life.

  It could have been her.

  It almost was her.

  “I see why you’d want to draw it. Got any others in that book?”

  She didn’t know how much to show him. Was he humoring her, or was he really curious? Then again, did it really matter? He was offering them both something to distract them from the case and the overwhelming feeling that when Noah got home any minute, the news he brought with him might crush her beyond what she could bear.

  “A few.” She kept her voice calm and handed the book to him. It might be easier if she just let him look rather than be involved in showing him.

  He took the sketchbook, started at the beginning, something she admired about him. Any artist’s work, in Summer’s opinion, should be viewed not only as individual pieces but as a series, because that’s how people were—a series of things that happened to them, ways they’d changed, different characteristics...

  “These are amazing, Summer.”

  It only took him a minute or two to flip through them all slowly. She thought she might be up to sketch number eight in this book. Not much compared to the hundred or so pages waiting to be filled. But it had been a long time since she’d slowed down, or been slowed down enough to pick the hobby up again.

  “Thank you.” She never knew what else to say when someone complimented something she enjoyed that came so easily to her.

  “It’s easy to see that you love the mountains. How long have you been hiking seriously?”

  “Hiking? Since I was a kid.” She could ignore his “seriously,” right? Maybe he hadn’t meant it the way she would have naturally interpreted it.

  “Not just hiking in general, but like you do now. You hike like an athlete, like it’s something you’ve trained for.”

  Were all cops this observant?

  “Since I was seventeen.” The words tumbled out before she could question them, and now she couldn’t call them back. Summer didn’t know how to interpret her current emotions. She was scared, tense, but somehow felt less gu
arded around Clay than she had. Because of what had happened today, what they’d been through together so far?

  She wasn’t sure.

  The front door of the lodge opened before Clay could ask any follow-up questions, something for which she was thankful since she wasn’t sure she was ready for those yet.

  “Clay? Summer?”

  It was Noah.

  “In here,” Summer called.

  She heard Noah’s heavy footsteps approach and studied him as he entered. He looked like he’d aged a couple of years today, and his eyes had growing dark circles underneath them. Had he slept since all this had begun? Summer wasn’t sure.

  “What did you find out?” she asked before she could stop herself, before she could consider she might not want to know.

  “I’ve got to head back to the station. I’m just here to grab food and check in with you to make sure you’re fine.”

  “She’s okay,” Clay said. “I’m not letting her out of my sight for longer than it takes to use the bathroom.”

  “Keep it that way.” Noah’s voice was nearly vibrating with tension.

  “So it’s him.”

  “Him? You found a guy?”

  Neither man answered. She understood, gradually. “Ohh. You didn’t find anyone. But now you think it’s the...serial killer.” The last two words she had to force from her mouth, and even as she did she could hardly bring herself to believe this was her real life. That the words serial killer had any place in her vocabulary.

  Noah exhaled. “I’m almost positive.”

  “Because we know now that there was a second victim—like his usual pattern?”

  Noah hesitated, then nodded. Summer narrowed her eyes. Her brother wasn’t lying, but he wasn’t telling the whole truth, either.

  “What other reason do you have?”

  Noah looked at Clay. Neither one of them said anything.

  “You’ve got to stop keeping things from me. It’s not making me any safer.” Surely they’d respond to that line of argument, since it was such a high priority for both of them.

  “Fine.” Noah took a breath. “A forensic artist in Anchorage was able to generate a sketch of the suspect based on the description you gave us.” He reached into the backpack he’d set on the floor and motioned for them to follow him to the back kitchen, where the family had a private eating area.

  They did so. Summer took her seat, trying not to get her hopes up that the sketch was accurate and detailed enough to be useful. She’d have drawn it herself but she didn’t draw people, the nuances of facial structure and expression had always eluded her, and though he’d had a mask covering all but his eyes, she’d still feared she wouldn’t get it right if she did it herself. But as an artist she knew what an almost impossible proposition it was to draw something based on someone else’s description.

  Noah set the manila envelope down on the table and opened it.

  And there he was, staring at her behind the mask he’d worn. Everything, down to the expression in his eyes, was right. Summer shivered.

  “That’s him.”

  Noah nodded. “It also matches the only possible description we had of the serial killer. One of the women who ended up dead, Holly Wilcox, was seen with a man a few hours before her death, walking on one of the multiuse trails in Anchorage. A bicyclist remembered him and gave a description that was, unfortunately, too vague for the artist to work with, as talented as he is. But when I asked him if what he’d drawn for you fit that other man, he thought it did.”

  “Interesting that she was seen with him and no one noticed a struggle or anything,” Clay mused.

  “She knew him, then,” Summer said. “Right?”

  “Possibly.”

  “And you think he’s the man who’s killed those other women and is after me.” Her mind was refusing to wrap all the way around this new bit of news. Maybe the human mind wasn’t made to absorb so much in such a short period of time, because try as she might Summer couldn’t quite get herself to acknowledge that this was her reality.

  “What else?” she asked, even though she wasn’t sure what else she could handle.

  The two men looked at each other again, but right before Summer was ready to let her frustration explode again, Clay took her by the arm. “We’ll be back,” he said to Noah, leading her back farther into the private part of the house and stopping in a hallway where he stood across from her, facing her.

  “You’ve got to stop asking to be told more than you need to know.”

  “I’m the victim...attempted victim, whatever the correct terminology is.” She shoved back a piece of her hair that had fallen in front of her eyes and lifted her chin a little, doing everything she knew how to do to project confidence and certainty, hoping to convince Clay that she was strong enough to handle this.

  Clay only shook his head.

  “Do you know anything about cases like this, Summer? Do you even have a clue what Noah is dealing with?”

  “I don’t,” she admitted. It was as far from her comfort zone as anything could be. But it was happening to her, and Summer was not the kind of woman to back down from a threat, or hide from it. Much as some people might prefer to live with their heads in the sand, that wasn’t Summer.

  “Everything we saw today was just a glimpse. Do you realize that? There’s so much more that will go into the investigation. Autopsies. Analyzing time of death, exact cause of death, whether there was any other trauma... I don’t want you to hear those details. And neither does Noah. But even if he did, I’d fight him on this.”

  “Why? Why do you care so much?”

  “Because you’re the kind of person who shouldn’t have to deal with this.”

  “I’m not some fragile Southern belle, Clay. I’m an Alaskan woman who has dealt with life and death more than you could probably guess and has faced down both, when they seemed equally scary, and barely flinched.”

  A slight hint of a smile crossed his face. “First, if you think Southern belles are fragile, you haven’t met one. I should introduce you to some of my friends. Second, I’m sorry you’ve had to do that. I have no doubt you did it well and bravely, but I’m the one in charge of protecting you right now and if I can protect your heart and your mind as well as protect your physical life, I’m going to.”

  Summer swallowed hard. Her heart was pounding, higher in her throat than it should be from the intensity of this entire conversation. Much as she was worried about her physical life and her mind, it was her heart that had her on shaky ground right now. It was time to stop denying she felt any attraction for Clay Hitchcock. Her only course of action now was to remind herself of all the reasons why it didn’t matter, why it would never work.

  Because the man had a passion and a caring that wove together into an almost irresistible combination, and Summer couldn’t pretend any longer that wasn’t true.

  But she would protect her heart. She had to. Because she knew what happened when she let her heart get involved—she lost sight of everything but the object of her affection, and last time she’d done that her family had suffered.

  She felt the rhythm of her heart beating, enjoyed for just one more second the weight of Clay’s hand on her hand and then pulled hers away.

  “Keeping me entirely safe is not a job anyone is asking you to do Clay. And it may not be a job you can do.”

  * * *

  They rejoined Noah and heard one more update. The crime lab in Anchorage had analyzed the fibers found on Summer’s clothes and on the tree branches where the struggle had taken place. They were fleece, and the composition matched the Anchorage Outdoor Gear’s store brand. As people from all walks of life shopped there, it still didn’t give them much to go on.

  Clay would ask Noah what else he had when Summer went to bed tonight. She may not want the kind of sheltering he was trying to give her, but that wasn’
t going to stop him for now, not when Noah agreed she didn’t need to know all the details.

  The truth was that this guy was vicious. From a quick conversation when Summer had gone to the bathroom, Clay had learned that the killer was worse than anyone either he or Noah had ever dealt with. The only plus side to anything they’d learned about him today was that with as bold as he was, the risks he took were going to lead law enforcement to catch up to him eventually.

  All that troubled him was whether or not that would occur before anything worse happened to Summer.

  Time moved slowly. Summer spent some time updating Kate on what had happened. After they all ate a late dinner, Clay suggested a card game to Summer to help pass the time, but the look she gave him more than answered his question about whether or not she was interested in that. Finally he gave up on trying to entertain her and just sat quietly, his mind going over and over the details of the case they knew already and wondering how they’d fill in the ones they didn’t. There had to be something more proactive they could do than sit in the lodge, but Clay hadn’t figured out what that could be yet.

  He glanced at Summer, something telling him he should ask her, but he couldn’t quite convince himself to willingly put her through the stress of thinking through the case in deeper detail.

  She caught him staring and met his gaze. “What?”

  He shook his head. Maybe tomorrow he’d talk to her about it. But he just wasn’t sure enough yet that it was a good idea.

  “I’m going to bed.” She stood. Clay glanced at the clock. Not long past ten but it had been a long day.

  “Sleep well.” He stood too and started to follow her.

  “You don’t need to follow me.”

  He let her walk upstairs alone, but when he heard the door to her room shut, he headed up too and sat down in a chair he’d positioned earlier in the hallway outside her door. He and Noah still hadn’t figured out quite what to do about nighttime. Someone needed to be watching Summer at all times, but if the two of them didn’t get sleep they wouldn’t be any good at providing daytime protection in the long run. Clay had mentioned Tyler as an option, but Noah didn’t want his brother adding anything to his plate since he was the one keeping the lodge going while the rest of them focused their energies on this. Clay suspected Noah probably hadn’t slept more than three or four hours since all this had started. The man wore a double weight—he was her brother and the police chief. Clay didn’t have that pressure...