Mountain of Evidence

by Cindi Myers

  “You can sleep when you’re dead,” he said, with no hint that he was making a bad joke. “Keep going.”

  “But where are we going?” She didn’t move. She didn’t think she could. She sank to the ground. “I need water, and food,” she said. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast.” The shop had been too busy to stop for lunch, though she had insisted Janie eat the sandwich Grant had sent with her.

  Masterson knelt beside her and pulled a water bottle from his pack. She unscrewed the lid and drank, the water so good and cool going down. He took a long drink, too, then dug a protein bar from his pack and passed it to her. He took one for himself as well and for several minutes they ate in silence.

  “Do you think that helicopter earlier was searching for us?” he asked.

  “Probably.” She saw no sense in lying. Masterson wasn’t stupid. “But they couldn’t have seen us. It was too dark.”

  “They use infrared,” he said. “We did some of that in the army, looking for insurgents. They use it to map forest fires and stuff, too. It operates on heat signals. You can spot a person in pitch black from 800 feet in the air with those things.”

  The last bite of the protein bar stuck in her throat. Did that mean the helicopter had seen them? That it knew where they were? She tried to hold onto the hope that bloomed within her, but it died too quickly. Rescuers might know where she was, but Toby still had that knife, and he was close enough to kill her with one thrust.

  “Did you take the picture I had in my office of me and Dane?” she asked. “The one of the two of us in a field of lavender?”

  He didn’t speak for so long she started to repeat the question. “You looked so beautiful in that photograph,” he said. “So happy. When I saw it, I realized how completely Dane had fooled you. I took it so you wouldn’t be reminded of him.”

  As if she could forget a man she had been with for three years simply because his picture was gone. But Toby’s sudden honesty made her bold. “Did you kill Marsha Grandberry?” she asked.

  “What?”

  She forced the words out. “Did you kill Marsha Grandberry? That college girl whose throat was cut on the trail?”

  “No! Dane killed her. He left his business card so everyone would know he did it. That’s how messed up he is.”

  Masterson worked with Dane at Welcome Home Warriors. He would have had access to Dane’s business cards. And he wanted everyone to know how terrible Dane was. “I just wondered,” she said. She forced herself to stand despite her wobbly legs, suddenly anxious to move. If they kept going on this trail, they would eventually reach a trailhead, and a road. And someone who could help her.

  Toby rose beside her. “You believe me, don’t you?” he asked. “Dane killed that girl, not me.”

  “Of course,” she said. But he was the one with the knife. He had held it to her throat and she had believed he had been ready to kill her.

  They moved again, Masterson just behind her, almost stepping on her heels with each stride. She walked with her head down, trying to see where she was going, an impossible task in the darkness, though overhead, above the trees, the sky had lightened from charcoal to ash.

  She sensed more than felt movement somewhere to her left, and lifted her head to listen. Had it been a deer, or a large bird—or a person? She glanced back at Toby, but he gave no indication he had heard. So she kept walking, ears straining for any hint of sound. Twice more she thought she might have heard something, but when no one appeared and Toby didn’t react, she told herself she was imagining things.

  Then a dark shape loomed, ten yards in front of them. “Police! Freeze, with your hands up!”

  She tried to comply, lifting her hands in the air, but Masterson tackled her from behind and dragged her back against him. She felt the sting of the knife at her throat. “Don’t move or she’s dead,” he shouted.

  “You’re surrounded, Masterson.” She recognized Grant’s voice now. “You’ll never get away alive. Don’t make things worse on yourself.”

  “If Eve dies, her blood is on your hands, Commander!” he shouted. The knife pricked, and a hot dampness bloomed. She closed her eyes, willing herself to stay strong, to push back the panic.

  “We know you killed Marsha Grandberry,” Grant said. “We have a picture of you with her at the trailhead.”

  “No one would believe how dangerous Dane Trask is,” he said. “I had to show you how dangerous he is.” His hand shifted, and she gasped as the knife nicked her again.

  “Eve, are you okay?” Grant asked.

  “She won’t be okay much longer if you don’t let us through.” Toby’s voice sounded ragged, higher-pitched. “Get back.”

  The shadow receded a little. “I’m moving back,” Grant said. “Don’t do anything rash. We can talk.”

  “I want you all to back off,” he said. “I want you to let me go.”

  “You have to let Eve go first,” Grant said.

  Toby laughed, a wild, choking sound that sent a chill through Eve. “That’s not going to happen,” he said. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

  The explosion deafened her, and the back of her head was wet. She fell forward, Toby collapsing with her. She struggled away, to her knees. Then Grant was lifting her, cradling her. “Eve, are you all right?” he asked.

  Was she all right? She put a hand to the back of her head and felt something sticky, but there was no pain. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “I need a medic here!” Grant shouted, and two men rushed forward, pulling her from his arms and shining lights on her. Others rushed past her to Toby, who lay crumpled on the ground behind her.

  One of the medics shone a light in her eyes, while the other probed at the back of her head. “Hang on a minute,” the second man said. “This is gonna be wet, and probably cold.” He dumped what must have been a half gallon of water over her, drenching her hair and the back of her shirt, then handed her a dry T-shirt. “You’re gonna want to take a shower when you get home,” he said. “But none of that blood and other stuff was yours. You’re gonna be just fine.”

  Grant moved forward to hold her close once more. “You’re sure she’s not hurt?” he asked the medics.

  “She’s okay. Just blowback from the other guy.”

  She tried to turn to look at Toby, but Grant held her head. “You don’t want to see,” he said.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “He was shot in the head,” he said. She could feel him shaking. “It wasn’t a shot I’d have risked in a million years. It was way too close to you. But the shooter knew what he was doing, I’ll give him that.”

  “He must have had a hell of an infrared sight.” A man in a visored helmet and body armor joined them. He raised the visor and she recognized Lieutenant Dance. “It wasn’t one of our guys, Commander.”

  Grant shifted her in his arms and faced Dance. “Are you sure about that?”

  “I’m positive. Reynolds and Spencer were covering that side of the trail and they got held up by a deep gully they had to navigate in the dark. They didn’t show up until after Masterson was shot.”

  “Someone was trailing us, to my left, for a long way down the trail,” Eve said. She cleared her throat.

  “It wasn’t one of us,” Dance said.

  Both men looked at her. She closed her eyes and opened them again. “Dane had a sharpshooter’s medal from the army. And he had a bunch of guns. He took me with him to the shooting range a couple of times, but I didn’t really like it.”

  “You think Trask shot Masterson?” Grant asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I think he would have risked a shot like that. To save someone he cared about.”

  “I’m going to see what I can find out,” Dance said, moving past them.

  Grant kept his arm around her, and together they walked back down the trail. Eve leaned on hi
m heavily, exhausted, wet and cold, trying not to think about what might be clinging to the back of her.

  Grant took her, not to her house, but to his. He showed her his shower and she stood under the hot water until it ran cold, the spray forceful and stinging, washing away some of the horror of the evening, and a lot of her tears. When she finished, she found he had laid out a stack of thick towels, and a T-shirt and sweatpants that were several sizes too big for her, but soft and warm and smelling of fabric softener, and of him. She held the shirt to her nose and inhaled deeply, wanting to stay in this warm, humid sanctuary forever.

  But a growing chill and her growling stomach forced her to open the door and step into the hall. She found her way to the kitchen, where Grant stood over the stove, scrambling eggs. “You can make the toast if you want,” he said, nodding toward the loaf of bread laid out beside the toaster. “I called Janie and let her know you’re okay. She was really worried.”

  “Poor kid.” She fed two slices of bread into the toaster. “How is she doing? I was terrified she was going to come out of the back room while McMasters was there.”

  “She’s a little shaken up, but she’s a real trouper. She called for help right away and gave us the information we needed to find you.”

  “She probably saved my life, and I’ll be sure she knows it.”

  “Sit down and we’ll eat.” He had made tea, too, and she drank a large mug of it, sweetened with honey, and ate scrambled eggs and toast with strawberry jam and neither of them said anything until their plates were clean. Grant carried the dishes to the sink, then sat across from her. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. “You’ll need to make a statement at some point, but that can wait if you’re not ready.”

  “It’s all right. I can talk about it.” Talking was better than silently reliving the events of the night in her mind, though she imagined she would do her share of that, too. She told him everything from the moment Toby had grabbed her in the flower shop.

  “He actually told you he wanted to use you as bait to get to Trask?” Grant interrupted when she got to that point in her story.

  She nodded. “Yes. I don’t know if he envied Dane or resented him. He had read or been told all this terrible stuff Dane had supposedly done, and I think he really believed it. Maybe he felt betrayed by that. He thought Dane needed to be stopped and he was the person to do it.”

  “I guess it worked, to a point,” Grant said. “He managed to lure Dane out of hiding.”

  “We don’t know that,” she said.

  “No, but we know someone killed Toby Masterson. Someone who was expert enough to risk that kind of shot. You don’t take that kind of risk for just anyone.”

  She bowed her head. If what he said was true, Dane had saved her life. She didn’t know how that idea sat with her. Not that she wasn’t grateful to be alive, but it was a heavy debt.

  Grant slid his hand over hers. She turned her palm up to twine her fingers with him. “I know you still love Dane,” he said.

  She jerked her head up, startled by the words. “No! What makes you think that?”

  “The two of you were together so long. After you broke up, you admitted you couldn’t find anyone else, even though you dated a lot of men. I read that last letter he wrote you, where he said he loved you...”

  “Maybe he loves me, but I don’t love him. Not in that way.” She leaned toward him, compelling him to look into her eyes. “I love you,” she said. “Not Dane.”

  He squeezed her hand tighter. “I love you, too,” he said.

  Her smile felt as wobbly as her voice sounded. “Then I guess we’re both really screwed,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  She let go of his hand and leaned back. “I only seem to fall in love with men who don’t want children.”

  He cleared his throat. “About that—I’m man enough to admit I was wrong.”

  She couldn’t speak, only stared at him, waiting. He took her hand again. “I love you,” he said again. “And I want to have children with you—if that’s what you want.”

  “You said you had raised two children and couldn’t handle any more.”

  “I lied. Having Janie here with me proved that. I thought I wasn’t cut out to be a father, because I’d done such a poor job with Janie and her sister. But she’s a great kid, and she loves me in spite of everything, so I must have done something right. I’d like to have a chance to do even better this time around.”

  “You’re not just saying that to get me back in your bed?” she asked.

  He laughed, and she laughed, too, breaking the tension. “I love you,” he said a third time, and kissed her. “And I think you’ll make a wonderful mother.”

  She buried her face in his shoulder and they held each other for a long time. “It’s a little scary,” she said after a while. “Marriage and children and the whole nine yards.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s a gamble, but I’m feeling lucky. Aren’t you?”

  She looked into his eyes, shining with love, and couldn’t stop smiling. Right now she felt like the luckiest woman in the world, not only because she had survived, but because she had found what she had been looking for, for too long. She thought—she hoped—that it had all been worth the wait.

  * * *

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  Chapter One

  Mark Taylor loved the scents of fish, grill smoke and the outdoors that clung to his clothes and filled up the cab of his truck. He and the silver-haired man sitting in the passenger seat across from him were chasing the sunset along Highway 7, speeding home to Kansas City after their annual camping-and-fishing weekend at Truman Lake.

  The scenery on either side of the twisting highway was especially picturesque in the summer. The rolling hills were carpeted with endless green trees giving way to tiny towns, the steel-gray water of wind-whipped lakes and the grittier browns of creeks and rivers filled with the rain that had flooded parts of the state earlier that year. Although some of the highway had been straightened and expanded into dual lanes, Mark preferred the narrower cuts of the two-lane sections because it still felt like he was out in the country. As much as he loved Kansas City, where he’d grown up and now worked as a firefighter/EMT, there was something inherently relaxing about the slower pace of the countryside.

  And something good for his soul in sharing another memorable one-on-one weekend with his grandfather, Sid Taylor.

  The two men had been doing this for twenty-three years, since Mark’s fifth birthday. Grandpa Sid had done more than teach him how to pitch a tent or fish. As the youngest of four adopted brothers, with five uncles, an aunt and their families, it had been easy to get lost in the boisterous shuffle of holiday gatherings and Sunday dinners when the entire Taylor clan got together. But Sid had singled him out as his baby boy—his little buddy who shared his love of the outdoors. If Sid hadn’t closed his butcher shop a few years back, Mark might have considered learning the trade so that he could take over his grandfather’s business. Instead, he’d followed in his adoptive parents’ and birth brother Matt’s footsteps, and joined the KCFD.

  As a little boy, Sid had made Mark feel like his favorite kid on the whole planet. Mark now knew that Sid had singled out each of his grandchildren to develop a special bond with, but he wouldn’t trad
e these twenty-three years with his grandfather for another Chiefs Super Bowl victory. Their conversations over the years had been about nothing and everything. Sid had been there through the insecurities of getting to know his new family and measuring up to his overachieving brothers’ standards; his concerns for his extremely withdrawn brother, Matt; some messy teenage angst; and the ignominy and heartache of his girlfriend saying no to his proposal and moving away to pursue a dream he wasn’t invited to be a part of.

  This afternoon’s conversation was no different as they segued from the Royals trading away good players and relying too much on their farm system, to probing questions about whether Mark had started seeing anyone again, and on to a friendly debate about the success of their time at the lake.

  “That bass was over twenty inches,” Mark insisted, adjusting his wraparound sunglasses on the bridge of his nose. “Maybe even two feet.”

  “The one that broke your fishing line or the one in your imagination?”

  Mark grinned, refusing to take that gibe without giving back one of his own. “My largemouth was twice as big as that shrimp of a striper you caught.”

  “Why don’t you just make him a mile long now, so he doesn’t have to keep getting bigger every time you tell that story,” Sid teased, pulling his ball cap lower on his forehead to shield his eyes from the bright June sun.

  When Mark had been a boy, his grandfather had planned the weekend to his lake of choice, packed the food and driven him—filling the time with jokes and deeper conversations about life, answering questions and challenging him to make good, thoughtful decisions about any problems he might have confided in the older man.

  Now that Sid had survived two heart events, the knuckles of his workingman’s hands had knotted with arthritis and his broad shoulders had stooped with age, their roles had reversed. Mark planned, packed, drove. Although he still let Sid, a retired butcher and former marine, clean the fish and grill them because there were some talents the old man had that he’d never be able to surpass. He could only emulate. Like his adoptive father had before him, like his uncles and brothers had. Every man in the Taylor family had learned about hard work, honor and integrity from this guy who was still teasing Mark about his lousy lack of fish this weekend.