Cold Conspiracy

“There’s a lot you never knew about me.” She hadn’t meant the words to come out so sharply and hurried to smooth them over. Otherwise, Nate might think she was still carrying a torch for him. “I stopped by the department one day to get an application to become a 911 dispatcher,” she said. “I found out they were recruiting officers. They especially wanted women and would pay for my training, as long as I agreed to stay with the department three years. The starting salary was a lot more than I could make as a dispatcher, and I thought the work sounded interesting.” She shrugged. “And it is.”

“A little too interesting, sometimes, I imagine,” Nate said.

“Well, yeah. Lately, at least.” She had been one of the first on the scene when the killer’s third victim, Fiona Winslow, had been found. Before then, she had never seen the body of someone who had died violently. Then she had responded to the call about a body in a car in the high school parking lot and found the killer’s most recent victim, teacher Anita Allbritton. The deaths had shocked her, but they had also made her more determined than ever to do what she could to stop this killer.

“The sheriff is getting married soon,” Donna said.

“Yes, he is.” Nate looked back at her. “I’m going to be in the wedding.”

“You are?” Donna sounded awed, as if Nate had announced that he was going to fly to the moon.

“I’m one of the groomsmen,” Nate said.

“I didn’t know you knew Travis that well,” Jamie said.

“We ended up rooming together in college for a while,” Nate said. “He’s really the one who talked me into coming back to Eagle Mountain, when an opening came up in my department.”

So Nate had returned to his hometown because of Travis—not because of anyone else he had left behind.

They reached the trailhead, where Jamie’s SUV was parked. Nate helped her get the dogs into the vehicle. “Where is your car?” Donna asked, looking around the empty parking area.

“I hiked over from the base of Mount Wilson,” Nate said. “I’m checking on the condition of the local deer and elk herds. The department is thinking of setting up some feeding stations, to help with survival rates this winter. All this snow is making it tough for even the elk to dig down and get enough food.”

“I could help feed deer!” Donna’s face lit up.

“I appreciate the offer,” Nate said. “But they’re too wild to come to people. We put out pelleted food and hay in areas where the animals congregate, and monitor them with remote cameras.”

Nate had intended to study wildlife biology in college, Jamie remembered. He was in his element out here in the snowy woods. That his job involved carrying a gun and arresting poachers would only make the work more interesting to him. He had always had a strong sense of wrong and right. Some people might even call him idealistic.

She didn’t have much room for idealism in her life these days—she had to focus on being practical. “We have to go,” she said, tossing her pack in after the dogs and shutting the hatch. “Buckle up, Donna.”

She started around the side of the car to the driver’s seat, but Nate blocked her way. “I’m glad I ran into you this afternoon,” he said. “We didn’t have much chance to visit at the scavenger hunt at the Walker Ranch.”

She shook her head. Fiona Winslow had died that day—no one had been in a visiting mood. “I’m sure we’ll run into each other from time to time,” she said. Eagle Mountain was a small town in a remote area—she saw a lot of the same people over and over again, whether she wanted to or not. “But don’t get any ideas about picking up where we left off.” She shoved past him and opened the car door.

After she made sure Donna was buckled in, she backed the SUV out of the lot. Donna waved to Nate, who returned the wave, though the look on his face wasn’t an especially friendly one.

Donna sat back in her seat. “He was cuuuute!” she said.

“Don’t you remember Nate?” Jamie asked. “He used to come over to the house sometimes, when he and I were in middle school and high school.”

“I remember boys,” Donna said. “He’s a man. You should go out with him.”

“I’m not going out with anybody,” Jamie said. She wasn’t going to deny that Nate was good-looking. He had been handsome in high school, but time and working out, or maybe the demands of his job, had filled out and hardened his physique. Though the bulky parka and pack he had on today didn’t reveal much, the jeans and sweater he had worn to the party at the ranch had showed off his broad shoulders and narrow waist in a way that had garnered second and third looks from most of the women present.

“Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” Donna asked. It wasn’t a new question. Donna seemed determined to pair up her sister with any number of men in town.

“I’m too busy to have a boyfriend,” Jamie said. “I work and I take care of you, and I don’t need anyone else.”

“But I want you to have a boyfriend,” Donna said.

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I have a boyfriend!” Donna grinned and hugged herself.

“Oh?” This was the first Jamie had heard that Donna was interested in anyone in particular. “Who is your boyfriend?”

“Henry. He works in produce.”

Donna worked part-time bagging groceries at Eagle Mountain Grocery. Jamie made a note to stop by the store and check out Henry. Was he another special-needs young adult like Donna, or the local teen heartthrob—or even an adult who might have unknowingly attracted her? It was an easy mistake for people to think of Donna as a perpetual child, but she was a young woman, and it was up to Jamie to see to it that no one took advantage of her.

She slowed to pass a blue Chevy parked half off the road. The car hadn’t been there when they had come this way earlier. If she had more time, she would stop and check it out, but a glance at the clock on the dash showed she was cutting it close if she was going to drop Donna off at Mrs. Simmons’s house and change into her sheriff’s department uniform before the meeting.

“What is wrong with that car?” Donna looked back over her shoulder. “We should stop and see.”

“I’ll let the sheriff’s office know about it,” Jamie said. “They’ll send someone out to check.”

“I really think we should stop.” Donna’s expressive face was twisted with genuine concern. “Someone might be hurt.”

“I didn’t see anyone with the car,” Jamie said.

“You didn’t stop and look!” Donna leaned toward her, pleading. “We need to go back. Please? What if the car broke and someone is there, all cold and freezing?”

Her sister’s compassion touched Jamie. The world would be a better place if there were more people like Donna in it. She slowed and pulled to the shoulder, preparing to make a U-turn. “All right. We’ll go back.” Maybe the sheriff would accept stopping to check on a disabled vehicle as an excuse for her tardiness.

She drove past the car, then turned back and pulled in behind it, angling her vehicle slightly, just as if she had been in a department cruiser instead of her personal vehicle. “Stay in the car,” she said to Donna, who was reaching for the buckle on her seat belt.

Donna’s hand stilled. “Okay,” she said.

Cautiously, Jamie approached the vehicle. Though she didn’t usually walk around armed, since the appearance of the Ice Cold Killer, she wore a gun in a holster on her belt at all times. Its presence eased some of her nervousness now. The late-model blue Chevrolet Malibu sat parked crookedly, nose toward the snowbank on the side of the road, the snow around it churned by footsteps, as if a bunch of people had hastily parked it and piled out.

She leaned forward, craning to see into the back seat, but nothing appeared out of order there. But something wasn’t right. The hair rose up on the back of her neck and she put a hand on the gun, ready to draw it if necessary.

But she didn’t need a gun to defend herself from the person in the car. The woman lay on her back across the front seat, eyes staring at nothing, the blood already dried from the wound on her throat.

Chapter Two (#u0ad51da8-d660-55ec-81d9-afc0a55bc029)

Nate reached his truck parked at the base of Mount Wilson just as his radio crackled. Though a recently installed repeater facilitated radio transmission in this remote area, the pop and crackle of heavy static often made the messages difficult to understand. He could make out something about needing an officer to assist the sheriff’s department. He keyed the mic and replied. “This is Officer Hall. What was that location again?”

“Forest Service Road 1410. That’s one-four-one-zero.”

“Copy that. I’m on my way.” The trailhead on 1410 was where he had left Jamie and her sister. Had they found something? Or had something happened to them?

He pressed down harder on the gas pedal, snow flying up around the truck as he raced down the narrow path left by the snowplow. The Ice Cold Killer’s next to last victim, Lauren Grenado, had been found on a Forest Service road not that far from here. Maybe Nate shouldn’t have left Jamie and her sister alone. He could have asked them to give him a ride back to his truck, as an excuse to stay with them. But Jamie had said she was running late for work, so she probably would have turned him down.

Who was he kidding? She definitely would have turned him down. She clearly didn’t want anything to do with him, apparently still holding a grudge over their breakup all those years ago.

And yeah, maybe he hadn’t handled that so well—but he’d been nineteen and headed off to college out of state. He had thought he was doing the right thing by ending their relationship when it was impossible for them to be together. He had told himself that eventually she would see the sense in splitting up. Maybe she would even thank him one day. But she wasn’t thanking him for anything—the knowledge that he could have hurt her that deeply chafed at him like a stone in his boot.