by Jeff Carson
He eyed Sarah’s photo again. “I’m here for the meeting tonight.”
Carol looked at Sarah’s photograph and back at him. “Oh, I see.” She gave Wolf the most compassionate smile he’d ever seen in his life and took his hand again. “Come. It was a good thing to come here. It’s a good thing to seek help.”
Wolf nodded. “So I hear.”
“This way.”
She led him around the corner and down the hall.
He was bombarded with memories, and swore he could still smell Sarah’s perfume as he passed by her old office. With every step the floor squeaked underneath his feet, just like the last time he’d been here. With her.
And now he was here alone, smelling her perfume, and looking at her face hanging on the wall. As he followed Carol into the room, he felt a surge of something—not quite panic or regret, but something close to both. Like he was a fraud, like he really didn’t mean it, because he probably didn’t really need the help, and he was being disrespectful to these people who were here for a real reason.
There were seven of them sitting in a circle, sipping coffee and happily chatting: four men, ranging from younger than Wolf to twice his age, and three women, all much older.
They hushed at the sight of him and stood up from their chairs.
“Everyone, this is David Wolf.”
He swallowed and approached, and shook each of their hands. And with each new greeting, he felt a tiny surge of strength well up inside, like he was standing much taller by the time the introductions were done. And as he finally sat down the apprehension was gone, replaced by the unrelenting vision of a smug, knowing smirk plastered on Margaret Hitchens’s face.
Acknowledgments
Thank you for reading The David Wolf Mystery Thriller Box Set books 5-7. I hope you enjoyed the stories, and if you did, thank you so much for taking a few moments to leave a review. As an independent author, exposure is everything. If you’d consider leaving a review and helping me with that exposure, I’d be very grateful.
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Preview of Dire (David Wolf Book 8)
“Did you see that?” Chief Detective David Wolf of the Sluice–Byron County Sheriff’s Department twisted in his seat and looked through the tinted rear window of the SUV.
“Whoa, you’re gonna slide off the mountain!” Detective Sergeant Barker reached a meaty hand toward the wheel.
Wolf corrected his steering and pumped the brakes, sliding to a stop in a foot of snow on the shoulder.
A pickup truck honked and slowed on the way by, the driver’s middle finger extended in the window.
They were driving in an unmarked department SUV, a dark-maroon Ford Explorer specially ordered for Wolf and his detective squad, which meant sometimes they received less than the normal law-enforcement respect afforded other cops with rooftop turret lights and fancy paint jobs.
“Move on, asshole!” Barker pointed out the windshield with teeth bared.
With tires spitting snow, Wolf ignored the blossoming road-rage incident and reversed up the shoulder. As they bounced in their seats, the front end fishtailed side to side.
Barker eyed the steep drop-off to the right that sloped down to the icy Chautauqua River. “I didn’t see anything, and you know we have a Situation in ten, right?”
Greg Barker was talking about the impending meeting in the Situation Room. It was the third time he’d mentioned it on their otherwise silent drive back from the resort, where they’d been at a Colorado State law-enforcement conference for most of the morning. Wolf had stayed late to speak to an old acquaintance from Glenwood Springs with whom he’d worked a case, and Barker had been left behind by his partner. And now they were stuck together, an occurrence made rare by mutual design.
“Christ.” Barker shook his head and pulled out his cell phone, probably preparing a text message to cover his ass.
Wolf jammed the SUV in park and stepped out just as an eighteen-wheeler rounded the curve behind them. Behind the oversized windshield, the driver’s eyes widened and he over-steered the wheel to avoid them, sending the truck into a sideways slide. Wolf tensed, watching the wheels catch on an exposed piece of blacktop, providing just enough traction to avoid a collision.
“Shit,” Wolf muttered as exhaust-laden wind whipped against him.
He jogged to the two slide marks and edged up to the crest of the ravine, seeing what he’d dreaded—an upside-down vehicle in the river below.
Wolf popped the rear hatch. “There’s a vehicle in the water.” He grabbed the Life Hammer out of his emergency kit, a twin-steel-point head designed to shatter car windows and a hook blade on the handle to cut seatbelts.
Barker twisted around. “What?”
“We have a vehicle down in the water!” Wolf slammed shut the hatch and went back to the side of the road.
Barker stepped out slowly and craned his neck over the edge, cell phone still in hand.
“Call it in!”
Wolf tucked the hammer into his jacket pocket and stood for a moment, picking the best line down. It was steep, with rocks and bushes covered by a few months of snowfall. There was no best line, just a fifty-degree slope that would’ve been designated double black diamond at the ski resort. Crouching and planting a hand in the frigid snow, he leaped over the side and slid down on his left hip.
It was soft for a few feet and then turned to pure ice. His legs kicked up and wind whistled past his ears. Twisting onto his stomach, he tried to dig his toes in and grab with his hands to slow himself, but the ice was impenetrable. The rock-solid nooks and bumps hit his kneecaps and scraped the skin off his hands, and then he hit the water and stopped instantly with a splash.
Shocking cold replaced the horror of the uncontrolled descent, because now he stood thigh deep in the rushing water of the Chautauqua. In late January. Not that there was ever a month when the water ran warm.
“You all right?” Barker yelled from above.
Wolf took stock of himself. He was fine from the waist up, and anything below that was too cold to feel.
He nodded. “Yeah!”
The car was a new-model SUV, upside down and pointing upstream, the passenger side completely submerged, the driver’s side angled out of the water. Inside, a male driver was hanging upside down in the seat, his bloody head tilted and bobbing with the movement of the vehicle itself. The top of the man’s head was submerged—if he was alive he was losing body heat fast.
There was no one in the seat directly behind the driver, and Wolf prayed that the front and rear passenger sides were empty too—they were completely submerged and any occupants had likely already drowned.
The vehicle moved with a scraping sound.
He waded forward, then stumbled as he stepped up onto an unexpected rock and splashed his arms up to his elbows into the icy flow. Straightening himself, he continued wading through shallow water until he reached a deep pool between himself and the SUV.
Hesitating, he looked left and right. The pool extended up and downriver, and there was no going around it without adding on several minutes of wading.
Barker was still up on the road, standing with a ra
dio in his hand and watching with wide-eyed interest.
“Bring my sleeping bag and extra clothing in the back!”
Barker raised a hand to his ear and then shook his head. Then he shrugged and put the radio to his lips.
What the hell was he doing?
Wolf pulled his radio from his belt. Pressing the button, he said, “Do you hear me?” Wolf twisted the knob back and forth, getting nothing. Close inspection showed water streaming out of the speaker holes.
Barker clearly couldn’t hear him. The radio was close to his lips and he spoke excitedly, but he was looking away from Wolf, so it was probably something along the lines of “Get the Fire Department up here quick!”
Wolf chucked the radio to shore, fumbled in his jacket pocket, and took out the Life Hammer. Crouching down, he jumped as far as he could toward the upturned truck.
It was then, just barely over the biting, freezing numbness, that he felt the first shooting pain in his ankle.
A second later he was submerged completely, the water gurgling over his head. He resisted the overwhelming urge to inhale as the cold hit him like an electrocution.
His head popped out of the water and he sucked in a breath, grabbing for the roof of the car. He whiffed, then went back under. The angle of the car was such that the edge of the window was a few feet above the water. Bobbing back up, he kicked hard, his boots lead weights on his feet, and barely caught hold where the upper edge of the window met the top of the door.
The water cascaded off his face and stung his eyes as he pulled and brought up his other hand, ready to slam one of the needle-point steel tips into the corner of the window, but he slipped and submerging again.
He kicked harder, and then whiffed his hand-hold again, because this time the current had brought him downstream.
This is ridiculous! he thought as he went back under. He was going about it the wrong way. He needed to go around the car, climb up on the underside of it, then over the edge and to the driver’s side door.
He kicked and paddled, keeping a numb fist around the hammer. The current helped him to the edge of the deep pool and he scrabbled up a slick, algae-covered rock to shallower water.
Panting, he got to his hands and knees and stood.
He paused and did a double take when he noticed Barker still standing on the road. His red hair was like a flame against the snow-covered mountaintop behind him. His eyes were unblinking, his expression flat.
“I could use some help!” Wolf screamed at the top of his lungs.
Barker started descending the hill.
“Bring the sleeping bag in back!”
Barker stopped, nodded, and made his way back to the SUV. Taking his sweet time with every movement.
“And the extra clothes! Move!”
Barker moved.
“Shit.” Wolf was shivering uncontrollably now. Hypothermia’s first signs were coming on strong.
Moving on unsteady feet to the upturned guts of the car, he yelled, “Sir! Can you hear me?”
There was only the sound of rippling water and now Barker’s scraping footfalls finally coming down the incline.
Dropping to his belly, Wolf hung over the door and slammed the hammer into the window. It instantly shattered and the glass fell away. At the same time, the car creaked and dropped a few inches.
With relief, Wolf noticed there was nobody else in the car, but following the shift, the guy’s upside-down head was now submerged to his mouth.
He hooked the blade of the emergency hammer on the seatbelt and pulled back, cutting through the tough fabric and a piece of the man’s shoulder. With the seatbelt no longer holding the man up, his head dunked under the water completely.
Wolf dropped the hammer, grabbed hold of the man by his sweatshirt, and tipped himself over the side. His legs up to his torso splashed back in the water, but he had purchase on the man and wasn’t letting go.
“I gotcha,” Wolf said, his voice shaky from the cold.
Hooking his foot into the window, he did a push–pull–grunt ballet and finally got the man free. He rolled onto his back and balanced the reclined man on his chest. Thankfully the victim was young and slim, but Wolf’s limbs were slow now, and it seemed to take an age to swim the few feet back to the other side.
Wolf kept expecting Barker to appear with his strong arms, but the detective sergeant never came.
He continued his labored ascent over the rocks, collapsing in the shallow water, then hauling the man a little further.
“Get down here!” Barker was just a few yards away, on the shore of the river and yelling into his radio. “He’s out! Let’s go!”
With clenched teeth, Wolf dug deep to find his remaining strength and heaved the man up onto his shoulder. Staggering on the slick rocks, he watched in confusion as Barker stood up from the water, soaking wet.
Had he fallen? What the hell was he doing now?
With mouth wide, water dripping off his face, Barker came rushing over. “Careful, be gentle with him.”
The weight lifted from Wolf’s shoulders as Barker took the man and carried him to the sleeping bag at the side of the river. Wolf saw Barker had brought the dry exercise clothing, too.
The sirens were right above them now, and a line of rescue workers appeared at the edge of the ravine, springing into action.
Wolf unraveled the sleeping bag and watched Barker put his large muscles to use, ripping the guy’s clothing off like it was made of tissue paper.
Wolf stood hunched over, hands on his knees, still trying to catch his breath. If he moved, his wet clothing lapped against his skin, worsening his distress, so he tried to remain still, despite the wracking shivers making it all but impossible.
“He’s got a pulse,” Barker said, zipping up the bag to the man’s head.
Wolf nodded. He heard footsteps and yells behind him, and then there was a man crouching in front of him and looking up.
“Hey, Dave. You all right?”
Wolf tried to nod.
Living in the mountains of Colorado made one realize why people had worshipped the sun for millennia. Life-threatening cold was always an inopportune moment away. A broken-down car, an injured leg, a drink too many, a wrong turn on the walk home—people had died for all these reasons and more in the mountains of Colorado.
Wolf sat in the back seat of a fire truck and wondered whether there were any cultures that worshipped rapid-deployment heat packs. There should be because they were doing the trick right about now. He had six taped to his back, a further six on his chest, one for each foot, and one more balanced on his head. He was naked under two wool blankets, knees drawn in a cannonball position.
The diesel engine of the fire truck rattled underneath him while the vents howled, pumping out heat like dragon’s breath. He’d started out as a numb block of ice; then there had been a stinging sensation as his body had regained sensation; now the heat was almost unbearable. He also needed to take the biggest leak of his life, but that was going to be a whole other logistical problem without shoes or clothing, parked on the busy road with passersby slowing to a crawl and gawking at the flurry of activity.
A young firefighter came to the window and looked in.
Wolf nodded at him, giving him the okay to open the door.
The firefighter opened it, letting in a blast of cold air, and climbed inside. “The victim is stable and on his way to County.”
Wolf nodded.
“We need to get you in now. We have another ambulance on the way.”
Wolf shook his head. He had stopped shivering a few minutes ago and concentrated on keeping it that way as the cold from the open door bit into his face. “No need. I just need some dry clothes.”
“You sure? Give me your arm.”
Wolf stuck out an arm and the cold burrowed into the opening of the blankets, caressing his exposed skin. “I’m starting to sweat.”
There was no way he was spending the next thirty hours in a hospital bed for observation.
“Damn right I am. I’ve got my exercise gear in the back of my SUV. You mind grabbing it? And I could use something to take a leak in.”
The firefighter nodded and left, and Wolf assumed his huddle position under the blanket.
Barker climbed out of the truck parked in front of Wolf’s current warming hut, looking refreshed and toasty in his stocking cap, fireman’s coat, boots, and sweatpants. He exchanged a few words with a fireman, shaking his head and thumbing over his shoulder.
The rescue worker, a guy Wolf recognized as Tim Dunlop, and one of Barker’s friends by the looks of it, stole a glance towards the fire truck Wolf was sitting in and shook his head.
Wolf narrowed his eyes, wondering what Barker had to bitch about, and why he was pointing toward Wolf.
Greg Barker was the only member of the detective squad that Wolf would’ve liked to see the back of. The other three—Rachette, Patterson, and Hernandez—were good deputies who had proven themselves good detectives over the past year and a half since the inception of Wolf’s team. Barker had not.
Not only that, but Barker hadn’t been appointed by Wolf, but rather by Sheriff MacLean as a favor to Barker’s father, a man who lived south of Williams Pass and owned one of the biggest cattle ranches in Colorado—by far the biggest in Sluice–Byron. Upon his appointment, MacLean had immediately promoted Barker to sergeant, presumably for the same reason.
Barker was the type of deputy Wolf despised: a ladder climber with aspirations of sitting in Sheriff MacLean’s office chair one day, stepping on any and everyone who was in his chosen path.
Which made the hesitation in Barker’s actions today even more puzzling. Normally, Barker showed over-the-top aggression during these types of scenarios, trying to outshine everyone—promotions, medals, and commendations first and foremost on his mind.
