by Sophie Oak
professional cadence.
“Any signs of sexual trauma?”
Caleb shook his head. “None, but I ran a rape kit anyway. She was
in the water for awhile.”
“We won’t know how long until we can estimate a time of death.”
Nate was cradling his cell in his hand. His face was haggard, and the
morning seemed to have worn him down. “I haven’t even figured out
when she went missing. Her mother talked to her last week. She was
out with her boyfriend.”
“I doubt it was a boyfriend,” Laura murmured.
“It’s too clean,” Caleb insisted.
Laura’s lips pursed in agreement. “Far too clean. This is an
incised wound. It’s going to be hard to determine the exact weapon
beyond the fact that it was a knife. The killer stood behind the
victim.”
“I thought so,” Caleb commented. His gloved finger traced the
line of the fatal wound. “It starts high and ends lower on the neck. It’s also deep.”
“Yes, if he had been in front of her the wound would be more
shallow. This is professional. There’s no passion in this kill. It was business, pure and simple, and this man takes pride in his work.
There’s a neat efficiency about the kill. You’re looking for a hired
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killer.” She turned on her heels and frowned at Nate. “Which brings
me to why I was looking for you.”
“Laura, it’s going to have to wait.” Nate crossed his arms over his
chest. “Right now I need to call some of my old contacts at the DEA.
If this is a Colombian cartel, we need to know.”
“I doubt it, Sheriff, unless Bliss has become the battleground for a
nasty little bit of mob warfare.”
Nate turned to Laura. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I don’t think we’re a hot spot for criminal activity. You
aren’t dealing with Colombians, but I would like to know why the hell
the Russian mob is in town.”
* * * *
The room was becoming slightly oppressive. Jen stared at the door
to the clinic, wondering why it seemed like everyone in Bliss needed
to parade in and out of what had just been designated the county
morgue.
“Bad business,” Teeny said, shaking her head. Her little beak of a
nose was turned down in what looked like sadness. “I can’t believe it.
Would you like some fudge?”
She held out a tray of perfectly cut fudge. She was wearing slacks
and a pink sweater, and a lovingly detailed apron.
This was an autopsy in Bliss.
“No, thanks,” she said, giving Teeny a smile.
“I’ll take some, Momma.” Logan reached over and grabbed two
squares, giving his mother a thumbs-up. “I’m going to take some back
for Hope. Nate left her answering the phones for the day.”
“Me, too,” Rachel said, taking three. The dog at her feet whined.
She frowned at Jen. “Don’t look at me like that. Baby needs fudge.”
“And cookies.” Callie smiled at them, a huge tray of cookies in
her arms. “Stella sent them. Apparently tragedy requires carbs. She’s
on a tear. She’s been working nonstop. She made like a hundred
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sandwiches when she found out the Sheriff’s Department was
working on a homicide. I had to tell her that there were really only
like five people working the case, but then Zane inhaled four
sandwiches, and I just let her work.”
“And you didn’t mention this to us, why?” Rachel asked,
frowning at Callie.
Callie set the tray on the small reception desk. “First, Nate asked
me to keep my mouth shut.”
“Since when has that stopped you?” Jen asked. It was no secret
that Callie Hollister-Wright was the hub for information in Bliss.
“This is serious.” Callie pushed her glasses up her nose. “I knew it
would upset Rachel, and after what you went through, it should upset
you as well. Besides, I only knew they had found a body early this
morning. It could have been an accident. We have a town full of
tourists. The last thing we need is some sort of panic.”
“That is very mature of you,” Rachel said.
“Thanks.”
But Jen knew what that little frown on Rachel’s face meant, and
she agreed with it whole-heartedly. “It wasn’t a compliment. We’re
your best friends. You aren’t supposed to hold out on us.”
“But—”
“No buts,” Rachel replied, a finger pointing out in Callie’s
direction. “Don’t start talking about your husbands. Who did you call
when you put that dent in Nate’s new truck? Should I remind you that
it wasn’t Nate? Was it Zane?”
“It was you, and you know it.” Callie crossed her arms over her
chest. “Of course I called you. You have a really devious mind. I
would never have thought about saying I was installing a satellite
radio for his birthday and getting the damage fixed so he never knew
about it.”
Jen grinned and gave Rachel a high five. “I would have gone with
tinting his windows. See, Callie, you can love your husbands, but
your girlfriends are the ones who get you out of trouble. I should
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know. If you two had been with me, I’m sure one of you would have
pointed out what a damn weasel my boss was. Such a jerk. I was
supposed to be the artist-in-residence, but he had me doing the
stupidest crap.”
“Some men.” Rachel shook her head. “I remember my boss at my
last job before coming to Bliss. He treated me like his barista.”
“Yeah, well, Jean Claude seemed to think I was a handy man. One
of the last things the bastard had me do was—oh, yeah.” Just like that it fell in place, and she wanted to smack herself for not seeing it
sooner. The day before she’d been arrested, he’d had her mess around
with the security cameras. He’d complained that the security company
would take too long. Bullshit. Bastard. Son of a bitch. He’d set her up, and she’d been too stupid to see it.
“What?” Callie asked, her eyes round under the glasses she wore.
“I know where that painting is.” Jen started for the door. “I was
just about to give the damn thing to Rachel as a baby gift.”
“Whoa! You were about to give me a half-of-a-million-dollar,
black-market Picasso? I thought it was just one of yours. Though they
are beautiful.” Rachel’s mouth hung open. “That’s the awesomest
present ever. Way better than the baby monitor that also acts as a
SETI receiver. Baby boy’s going to college.”
Jen reached for her coat. “You don’t get to keep it, Rach. It has to
go back, but at least I know where it is. The nasty jerk hid it under the painting I was going to give to Rachel. He pulled the canvas off and
hid the Picasso under mine. I wouldn’t be able to tell because he was
a dipshit when it came to his personal life, but brilliant at what he did.
He just didn’t figure I would be a crazy perfectionist. I decided I
could do better. I painted the whole damn thing again in one night and changed some of the colors. Renard must have called the pol
ice the
minute he realized he no longer had the painting. Asshole.”
Rachel flushed slightly. “Uhm, I kind of talked to Holly. The one
you put back for me really didn’t go with the room. I might have
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talked Holly into switching it with the blue one. Don’t look at me like that. It’s a boy. Blue is for boys.”
There was no pleasing a client. Every artist knew it. “It’s fine,
Rach. But that means the others are potentially up for sale. I need to get my hands on that painting. Tell Stef I’ve gone back to town hall,
and he should meet me there when he can.”
Callie was right behind her. “I’m going with you.”
Jen brushed past Logan and Marie and out of the door of the
clinic. The glare of the sun off the snow made everything seem vital
and alive. She loved winter in Colorado, but her mind was on getting
to the town hall. Her heart wasn’t going to slow down until she pulled the canvas off that painting and made certain that the Picasso was
underneath. It was her sure ticket to getting that potential felony off her record. Once that oppressive weight was off her, perhaps Stef
could see her as something other than a girl constantly in trouble.
The clinic was on the end of Main Street. It was quieter here. Up
ahead, she could see that the festival was in full whirl, but here, there was an almost eerie quiet. She turned to tell Callie to follow her when she noted the two men standing with her friend.
“Callie?” Jen immediately recognized them as the two men they
had seen earlier in the day.
The smaller one with the dangerous eyes was standing far too
close to Callie. The big, gorgeous one was walking her way.
“Miss Waters?” His deep voice rumbled out.
“Yes,” she said because she had a terrible feeling that the smaller
man wasn’t helping Callie balance on the snow. She caught the glint
of metal at Callie’s waist and the way her face tightened. “Let my
friend go.”
“I can’t to be doing that.” There was an almost sympathetic look
in his eyes, but it didn’t move Jen because the bastard still had a gun in his hand. “You have something that belong to my employer.”
Jen took a deep breath. Trouble, it seemed, just kept finding her.
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Chapter Thirteen
Alexei stepped close to the brunette, who now resembled a
frightened deer in the presence of a tiger. The fact that he was the
predator was not lost on him. The gun in his hand felt pounds heavier
than he knew it to be.
“Don’t scream.” Ivan’s voice was low, but there was no way
anyone could mistake the steely threat in it.
Alexei wound his hand around the artist’s elbow and looked back
at what was happening behind him. Ivan had the woman with glasses
in a dangerous hold. His arm was securely wrapped around her waist,
the bulky coats hiding the gun Ivan had shoved into the woman’s side.
“You scream and I have no reason not to shoot you. Understand?”
The woman bit her lip as though forcing herself to comply when
all she wanted to do was yell. Slowly, she nodded her head. She took
a deep breath, and though Alexei could still see the fear in her eyes, a stubborn will took over. She would fight. That small woman, with her
sweet face and round glasses, would not go down easily.
“It’s going to be all right, Callie.” The woman he held kept her
voice steady. Her jaw firmed as she stared at her friend. “I’ll get us out of this.”
Alexei hated the way his stomach churned, acid rising to his
throat. He’d been worried about tears and pleading, but this suddenly
seemed worse. These women were calm though afraid, their solidarity
obvious in the way they encouraged each other. It was completely
different from the others he’d dealt with. He and Ivan had specialized in dealing with other criminals. They had often worked over
“partners” in an attempt to get information or simply to send a
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message. The people Alexei had interrogated always gave up the
other man. They begged and pleaded and lied about their partners in
an attempt to throw the violence on someone else.
These women loved each other. These women, he had no doubt,
would sacrifice for each other.
There were tears in the artist’s eyes as she looked up at him. “I
know what you want.”
He had to force the words to come out harshly. “The painting. My
employer pay for painting. He is not a man to cheat.”
“Well, he didn’t pay me. Did he pay you, Callie?”
The woman named Callie shook her head. “Nope. I haven’t had a
single check come in for a stolen painting.”
Jennifer nodded his way. “See, big guy, there’s no reason to go all
Godfather on us—or whatever the Russian equivalent is. I can get you
your painting, and you can go on your happy way.”
But it wouldn’t be like that, and Alexei knew it. They couldn’t
afford to leave these women alive. They would need to kill them,
stash the bodies, and get out. There was far too much at stake, and this wasn’t some piss-poor, mob-run rural town in Russia where they
could bribe their way out of anything. Pushkin’s name didn’t mean
anything here.
An image of his brother flashed across his brain. Mikhail had been
a handsome, smiling young man who had never been impatient with
his brother. He’d taught Alexei with a gentle smile. What would his
brother think about him killing this woman?
“Move.” Ivan walked behind them, his gruffness letting Alexei
know he was growing tired of waiting. “If either one of you makes a
wrong move, we will kill you both and then start on the crowd. If you
care at all about the people around you, you will behave.”
Jennifer slid her arm around his waist. She smiled, though it didn’t
reach her eyes. “Pretend you’re crazy about me. Otherwise, people
might wonder why we’re walking so close. We have to get to town
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hall, you see. We can go in from behind, but there’s a good hundred
yards before we can move to the alley.”
Alexei saw what she meant. There were people milling around all
over the place up ahead of them. He saw the place where she pointed,
a small road that led to the back of the buildings on their left. “All right. We’re just two couples enjoying the day. You can handle that,
can’t you, Ivan?”
“I think so.” Ivan switched to Russian. “Perhaps we can enjoy
much of the day. I like this one. I think she’s got nice breasts under all the clothes she’s wearing. Let’s get the painting and then go back to
the motel. We can enjoy their bodies before we kill them, my friend.”
He could taste the bile in his throat, but forced himself to laugh
and agree with the man he hated. How much? How much of his own
soul was he willing to give up? Panic threatened as he started to walk Jennifer toward the opposite side of the road. It was all happening so fast. His life seemed to be coming to a point. His revenge seemed
further away than ever before, and yet so tantalizingly close. All he had to do was get the painting and take it to Pushkin.
&n
bsp; His feet moved along the ground, the thud in time to his beating
heart. All he had to do to avenge his gentle brother’s life was kill two women after watching Ivan brutally rape them. All he had to do was
go against everything his brother ever taught him. All he had to do
was give up his soul.
“Hey, Jen! I’ve been looking for you. Did you hear what’s going
on around here?”
A man in a cowboy hat strode confidently down the sidewalk.
“Be very careful,” Alexei whispered. “He really will kill your
friend.”
“And you won’t?” Her words were returned quietly.
That was the question that ran through his head. Could he pull the
trigger and end an innocent life?
Jennifer turned on a bright, charming smile. “Hey, James! How
are you doing today?” She winked at the cowboy who stopped and
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stared at the four of them. “Callie and I are having fun, if you know
what I mean.”
The cowboy’s mouth came open and then closed. Alexei felt a
thrill of terror that the man would call them out.
“I thought you were with Stef.” The cowboy’s eyes narrowed in
obvious anger.
“I’m with a lot of guys, James. You know that.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, I heard that, too. And Callie. Biggest
slut in the county. I thought I was different. I thought I meant
something to you. I was willing to wait for you to wake up to what a
creep Stef is, but I won’t watch you go through tourists, too.”
“You’re an asshole, James,” Callie spat out. “And Jen was right
not to sleep with you. I was bored when I slept with you.”
“Bitch.” The cowboy named James stalked off without a
backward glance.
Ivan laughed. “Dumb bitches,” he said in Russian. “American
women are all sluts. Perhaps they will like what we do to them, eh?”
But Alexei didn’t think so. Alexei got the distinct feeling that
something was wrong. He moved along anyway, his mind whirling,
seeking a way out until he knew there wasn’t one.
You’re the best thing I ever did, Alexei. That was what his brother had said when Alexei had asked if he minded giving up his chance to
