Beneath Copper Falls

by Colleen Coble

  “He’s still the best suspect we’ve got.” The trouble was, how did he prove it?

  She’d tricked him. Garret kicked a soda can across the cabin’s rough floorboards. And she had that creep with her. Was she seeing someone else already? His rage burned and he drove his fist into the wall. Pain shot up his arm, and he howled with frustration.

  He’d come here because he loved her. She belonged to him.

  He sucked an oozing cut on his knuckles and grimaced at the coppery taste. If she thought she could walk away from him, she was mistaken.

  A distant sound soaked into his consciousness, and he realized he’d been hearing the drone of a snow machine for several minutes. He darted to the dirty window and looked out into the yard. Nothing moved but a few hardy dry leaves clinging to the barren tree branches surrounding the property. Just in case, he grabbed the backpack and cooler, then pulled on his coat and stepped out onto the rickety porch.

  It was probably sportsmen out on their machines, but after today’s fiasco, he needed to make sure. The truck engine still ticked as it cooled from his run over to the SAR building, and it fired right up when he started it. He’d replaced a heater hose, so warmth blew out from the vents as he headed out a secondary fire road to the highway.

  As he pulled onto the main road, a snow machine carrying a county deputy zipped by him. He floored the accelerator. The truck fishtailed on the slick road, then the tires grabbed hold and carried him away.

  He knew in his bones the law was out looking for him. His hide was about to be exposed, and he’d have to find another place to lay low. He wasn’t leaving, not without Dana. She wasn’t going to blithely move on to another man, and he wasn’t going to live without her.

  He turned onto another fire road, slick with ice and snow. The trees were so close on either side that branches brushed against the truck’s sides. Though he had no idea where this dirt track led, he followed it as it wound through evergreens and stands of aspen.

  The trail broke off in different directions, and he took the one to the right. It narrowed even more, and he had to slow the truck over massive potholes. No one had been down this way in ages. He found a narrow spot to turn around and went back out the way he’d come.

  He pulled back onto the road. What if he found a summer home as a base to come in and out of? Not a cabin, but a nice place with a garage and heat. Should be plenty of them around. He just had to find one. He retrieved a map of the county from under the seat and looked it over. The most likely place to find a vacation house would be along Superior’s lakeshore. People with money out of Chicago or Wisconsin wouldn’t want to brave the winter Michigan weather.

  He studied the map, then pulled out onto the highway and drove north from Rock Harbor to a curving bay southwest of Houghton. It should be far enough away from Rock Harbor to escape detection but close enough that a short drive got him to Dana. A road sign indicated a boat launch site, so he turned and followed it around to the water.

  Several roads split off from the boat launch, and he turned left and followed the road to its end, passing several homes along the way. None of them appeared occupied, and he grinned and did a fist pump.

  “You can’t outsmart Garret Waterman,” he muttered.

  At the end of the road he turned onto a driveway that led into the woods. He soon came to a palatial mansion. Pay dirt! This place would be perfect. Secluded by the forest and obviously occupied only in the summer. Now to find a way in without triggering an alarm or breaking a window.

  He parked in front, then walked around the house. Its alarm system would be no problem for him. He went back to the truck and grabbed his computer from the backpack. He logged onto his phone’s hotspot and set to work. It only took him half an hour to break into the network and disarm the alarm system. A few more minutes, and he had the code for the door.

  He slung his backpack over his shoulder and picked up the cooler. The front door opened easily with the code, and he stepped onto oak floors. The place was spotless. The owners had left the heat on fifty-five, much warmer than he’d endured in the old cabin. He’d be very comfortable here, even if he didn’t turn up the heat.

  The sweeping staircase led to a second floor containing five bedrooms but no master, so he went downstairs and found it on the other side of the house. It was massive, a good thirty by twenty feet with a marble bathroom that was bigger than most bedrooms. This would do quite nicely.

  He dropped his backpack on the floor, then took the cooler to the kitchen. Rows of canned goods and boxes of pasta and cereal lined the shelves in the gigantic pantry. He wouldn’t go hungry here. It would all be waiting when he got back from his work trip.

  CHAPTER 17

  The spicy aroma of lasagna filled Bree’s kitchen. Dana had already set the table, and Bree put her to work making garlic toast while Boone made coffee. The sun had set an hour ago, but the bright lights in the kitchen pushed back the shadows.

  Usually Bree loved nothing more than having her friends and family with her like this, but sadness and tension hung in the air. Kade would be home from work any minute, and Davy was playing hide-and-seek with Hannah and Hunter. Or rather, Dave, as he often corrected her. It was still impossible to think of her eleven-year-old as anything other than Davy.

  Boone turned on the coffeepot. “Once Mason finds Garret, he’ll be headed to jail for attempted kidnapping. I saw the whole thing so it’s not just Dana’s word against his.”

  “I bet he leaves the county,” Bree said. “He knows now that Dana won’t go with him willingly.”

  Dana shook her head. “He doesn’t give up that easily. I fear Boone is on his radar now too. Probably all my friends are. The more he sensed me pulling away, the more he followed my every move back in Washington. I was at a coworker’s house one night, and he left a dead rat on the doorstep.”

  Bree suppressed a shudder. “How do you know he did it?”

  Dana slid the sheet of garlic bread under the broiler. “He bragged to me about it later. He said to stay away from Michelle or the attacks would escalate. That’s why I thought he might tell me the truth about Allyson. And maybe he did, even though it seems he’s the most likely person to have killed her.”

  “Creep. He won’t scare us off.” Grief squeezed Bree’s chest. Allyson deserved justice. If Garret killed her, he had to pay.

  Dana tucked a curl behind her ear and shut the oven door. “I’m worried about your kids, Bree. He’s not above scaring them if he thought it would affect me.”

  This time Bree couldn’t hold back the shudder that ran up her spine. After Davy’s ordeal when he was four, she knew she tended to be too protective, but she found it impossible to stop. If any of the kids were out of her sight for more than a few minutes, she was out looking for them.

  Boone lowered coffee mugs from the cabinet over the pot. “He’d actually harm a kid?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s not above scaring the daylights out of them. He’s so unpredictable.”

  Bree slipped on oven mitts and carried the pan of lasagna to the table. She placed it on the hot pads and turned as Kade’s voice called out from the front door.

  “We’re in here.”

  He greeted the children before he appeared in the doorway from the living room. His cheeks and nose were red. He’d shed his boots and jacket but still wore his khaki ranger uniform.

  He smiled when he saw the group. “Hey, looks like we’ve got a crowd.”

  She lifted her face for his kiss and palmed his cheeks. “Your skin is cold. The coffee is nearly ready.”

  “Dinner smells awesome. I didn’t get any lunch. We were all out searching for Waterman.”

  Dana straightened from checking on the garlic toast. “He was out on forest land?”

  Kade nodded. “We had a report he might be staying in one of the summer cabins along the Ottawa, so we were out on snow machines. We found signs of a squatter in the last one, but if it was Waterman, he had already gone.”

  “
You think he left the area?” Dana’s voice held hope. She moved the garlic toast from the baking sheet to a plate.

  Kade shrugged and went to pour himself a cup of coffee. “No way of knowing, but the cabin was warm, and I smelled kerosene. It could have been kids. That happens all the time. Though I only found one sleeping bag.” He took a sip of the steaming coffee. “A report described his truck, so I think it was him. He’d have heard all the snow machines going from house to house and probably skedaddled.”

  Kade bit into the crunchy bread and sighed. “Man, that’s good. I’m famished.”

  Bree carried the glasses of iced tea to the table. Her anxiety level had been rising through the dinner preparation. Would Garret be likely to target any of them because of their friendship with Dana? Samson growled softly at her feet, and she glanced down at him. He was looking at the door.

  She set down the glasses and touched the top of his head. “What is it, boy?” But she knew. He had an uncanny way of knowing when they were in danger. Someone was outside.

  She glanced at Kade, and he went to the back door and peered through the window into the dark night. “The light is out. It was all right last night.”

  “Maybe the bulb is burned out.” She hoped that was it.

  He frowned and reached into the top cabinet by the door for a flashlight. “Come on, Boone.”

  “You bet.” He followed Kade out into the wind.

  Bree started to follow, but her husband shook his head. “Stay inside, honey. We’ll check this out. Keep your phone handy and call Mason if you need to.” He snapped his fingers. “Come, Samson.” The dog was only too happy to leap after them.

  She grabbed her phone from her purse before going to the window to watch the beam of the flashlight bob along the backyard. The shadowy figures of the two men went to the garage, all along the fence toward the crashing waves of Superior. The light paused for a while, then came quickly toward the back porch.

  Kade opened the door for Boone and Samson, then shut and locked it once they were all inside. “Someone shot out the light.” He held out his hand and a .9mm casing lay in his palm. “We’d better call Mason.” He stared at Bree for a long moment. “I didn’t want to worry you needlessly, but Martha found a cooler with two chunks of steak in it behind her shed. I had them checked, and they both contained poison.”

  Naomi’s mother, Martha, owned the bed-and-breakfast next door. Bree caught her breath. “There was someone out there Monday night.”

  “Looks like he planned to poison Samson. Maybe Phantom too.” He held up the bullet casing again. “And now this. I want you to be careful, honey.”

  What she wanted to do was run Garret to the ground and see him behind bars. “We have to get that man jailed.”

  “And we will,” Kade promised.

  The scent of an apple-spiced candle hung in the air when Dana let herself into the house. She could hear Chris’s low voice in the living room. Who was here? She slipped off her boots and hung her coat up in the closet, then went to find out. Her stockinged feet slipped on the polished oak floor, but she made no noise. Maybe she should. He might think she was spying on him.

  She deliberately tromped on the boards a bit as she moved toward the flickering glow of the TV in the otherwise dark room. As she paused in the doorway, she made out Chris’s figure sitting on the sofa. He had a phone to his ear.

  “Hey.” She moved on into the room.

  “I wasn’t expecting you yet.” Chris cupped the phone closer to his mouth. “Listen, I’ll call you later.” He ended the call, reached over and flipped on the table lamp, then got up to throw another log on the fire.

  Dana blinked at the sudden glare of illumination, and it took a second for her eyes to adjust. “I went to Bree’s for dinner. We, uh, we had things to discuss.”

  Maybe hearing what Garret had done today would get Chris moving on her behalf. Garret was his friend, or had been. If anyone had a chance of getting Garret to leave her alone, it was Chris.

  She headed for the recliner opposite the sofa. “I talked to Garret today.”

  Chris took the remote and clicked off the television. “Are you okay?” His gaze raked over her as if he expected to see her bloody and beaten.

  The sweet scent of the candle relaxed her, and she settled back against the chair. “He tried to make me go with him. To be honest, I kind of set him up.” She launched into how the meeting had come about and what she hoped to accomplish. “So it sounds like he didn’t kill Allyson. Do you think he could have had an accomplice?”

  Chris shrugged and went back to his seat on the sofa. “I can’t see him trusting anyone enough to be in cahoots on a murder. I’m glad you’re home and away from that creep.”

  Dana grabbed the fluffy red throw from the pile by the fireplace and snugged it around her legs. Home. This place had quickly become her sanctuary. If she could, she’d stay inside the rest of the winter and emerge when spring did. Maybe Garret would be gone by then.

  But she couldn’t hide from this. He’d already proven he wasn’t one to easily give up. Even with all the law enforcement looking for him, he was still in the area. She could feel him.

  “It’s my job to take care of you. You’re my baby sister. I like being your knight in shining armor.” He gave a short laugh.

  “You’ve sure rescued me enough.” She shuddered. “The night I got locked in the hull of the abandoned boat was the worst night of my life. It kept creaking all around me, and I was sure monsters dripping with seaweed and slime were slithering out of the water after me.”

  He grinned. “I always regretted not getting to you sooner.”

  She was twelve and had foolishly thought Chris’s friend Kory liked her. He’d invited her to come with them to roast marshmallows in the abandoned shipyard, and she’d gone with high expectations. Instead, the kids ignored her, and she was locked into a boat’s hull overnight. Even now the thought of being in a tight, dark room made her chest tight.

  “How’d you find out where I was anyway?” She’d asked Chris before, but he never really answered her.

  His blue eyes darkened, and he looked toward the fire. “You’d already been through so much. It was just plain mean to pull that when you’d barely buried your mom and dad.”

  Her smile faded at the memory. “I sure got over my crush in a hurry.”

  He grunted. “Lousy person to have a crush on.”

  “He was your friend, and I thought you were Superman and Captain America all rolled into one. He took on some of your glamour.” She laughed and rose. He wasn’t going to tell her how he found out she was trapped, even after all these years. Had he beaten it out of Kory? Overheard him? She would never know. Kory didn’t move in Chris’s circles after that. He’d seemed almost afraid to talk to her and probably feared she’d tell the sheriff.

  She wasn’t a tattletale though. Pressing charges against Garret had been impossible.

  Chris rose and held out his arms. She went into them and laid her cheek on his chest. His love and care for her was the one steady thing in her life.

  CHAPTER 18

  Boone settled on the recliner with his laptop and called up the file his cousin had sent him. Reading her breezy e-mail was a knife stab to the chest, but he owed it to her to find out what had happened. He opened the file, then blinked. It was all gibberish.

  “What the heck?”

  He went back to her e-mail, saved the file again, but got the same result when he tried to read the newly saved document. A conversion problem from the e-mail, or had she protected it in some way? Maybe Mason had figured it out after taking Allyson’s computer.

  He glanced at his watch. Only nine so it wasn’t too late to call the sheriff.

  Mason answered on the first ring. “Boone, how you doing?”

  “Hope I’m not interrupting anything, Mason.”

  “Nope, just got Zoe down for the night. Hilary is working on a campaign speech, and I’m sitting here trying to decide between watching Fixer
Upper or a ball game. What can I do for you?”

  Hilary wouldn’t have any trouble winning reelection for Rock Harbor mayor. “You have Allyson’s computer, don’t you? At least I saw it was gone from her cabin.”

  “Yeah, for all the good it’s done us so far. Most of her files are encrypted. I have our computer guru trying to figure out the password she used in the program so we can access them. Why?”

  Boone told him about the e-mail from his cousin. “So she knew she was in danger. She must have stumbled on the identity of whoever killed my sister.”

  “Whoa, Boone, you’re jumping to conclusions. She was poking around a lot, but she could have seen something else that got her killed. Maybe she ran into a smuggling operation.”

  Boone gripped his phone more tightly. “You have evidence of that?”

  “There was the hole in the ice. I’ve got divers going in there tomorrow to see if they can find anything. But it’s hard to say what happened. We have to look at all of it objectively.”

  “Do you have cause of death yet?” Boone wasn’t sure he was ready to deal with the mental images that were sure to come, but he had to know.

  “Yeah. The coroner found water in her lungs. She drowned.”

  Drowned. Just like Renee. “And you still think it wasn’t that guy she called the Groom Reaper? Come on, Mason.”

  “I admit it looks suspicious, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it. I have a call into the detectives in charge of both of the other cases Allyson was investigating, including your sister’s. But again, let’s not leap to conclusions. Good police work means we don’t get set on an answer until we examine all the evidence.”

  Boone knew Mason was right, but as far as he was concerned, everything pointed to whoever had killed Renee. Allyson had figured it out, but why hadn’t she called immediately and told him? It didn’t make sense.

  Boone closed his laptop lid. “Any unusual phone calls? Like from someone out of town? Maybe she called whoever she suspected of being the killer, and he came after her.”