Case File: Canyon Creek, Wyoming

Of course. He should have considered that possibility. Sliding the badge into the back pocket of his jeans, he did his best to soften his expression. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal. If you want to call the Canyon Creek Police Department, they can verify my credentials—”

“That’s not necessary.” Anger flashed in her eyes, although he got the feeling she was angrier at herself than at him. She pushed her hair away from her face, taking a deep breath. When she spoke again, she was calmer. “It’s okay, I don’t mind talking to him for a minute,” she told the nurse.

The nurse slanted a look at Riley, as if she wanted to argue, but after a short nod, she left them alone.

“I apologize for barging in without any warning.” Riley pulled a chair next to her bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been kicked in the head and dipped in acid.”

“Pepper spray’s nasty.” He’d been exposed a few times, mostly in his police training. “And so’s a concussion. I took a hit my senior year playing football. Kept asking the trainer what had happened every other minute for a solid half hour.”

His confession elicited a tiny smile from her, the effect dazzling. Bandages, blotchy skin and red-rimmed eyes disappeared, revealing how pretty she was beneath her injuries. Her eyes were a mossy-green, her pupils rimmed by a shock of amber—cat’s eyes, bright and a little mysterious. Her small, straight nose and wide, full lips might have been dainty if not for her square, pugnacious jaw. She was a scrapper. He’d known a few scrappers in his life.

Her smile faded, and he felt a surprising twinge of disappointment. Her chin dipped when she spoke. “You said there was a similar case in your jurisdiction?”

He cleared his throat. “Actually, there are a handful of cases I’ve been looking at over the past three years. Similar MO’s—women driving alone on the highway, incapacitated by pepper spray.” He didn’t add that they usually ended up dead, wrapped in plastic sheeting in some river or lake not far from the highway where they disappeared.

Her expression darkened. “How many got away like I did?”

He licked his lips and didn’t answer.

She nodded slowly. “I’m lucky, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, you are.”

She took a deep breath, coughing a little from the aftereffects of the pepper-spray attack. Her lower lip trembled a moment, but she regained control, her gaze lifting to meet his. “He tried to pull me out of the car, but I kept hearing my brother’s voice in my head. ‘Don’t let him get you out of the car.’ So I smashed my elbow against his hand where it was sitting on the window frame and I drove off as fast as I could.”

“That was smart and brave.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said faintly. “I just didn’t want to die today.”

The simple emotion in her voice tugged at his gut. Had Emily felt that way, trapped by a monster on the highway out of Casper? He knew from the autopsy that she’d fought him—her fingernails had been ripped in places, and there was some pre-mortem bruising from the struggle. Had the pepper spray incapacitated her more than it had Hannah Cooper? Had she lacked the opening that Hannah had to fight back and get away?

He rubbed his forehead, struggling against the paralyzing images his questions evoked. “I saw your statement to the Sheriff’s Department. You didn’t see your assailant’s face?”

“No. I barely saw his midsection through the window before he hit me with the pepper spray. I didn’t see much of anything after that. Just blurry images.”

“You mentioned a silver belt buckle. Can you remember what was on it?”

Her brow furrowed with tiny lines of concentration. “I just know it was silver and there was a pattern to it, but I can’t remember what it was. Maybe I didn’t get a good look.”

Though his instinct was to push her to remember more, he held his tongue. As frustrating as it was not to have all the answers right now, he reminded himself how lucky he was to have a living, breathing witness to the killer’s MO. Maybe she’d remember more as the effects of the trauma wore off.

“You look tired,” he said.

“Gee, thanks,” she muttered, and he smiled.

Behind them came a knock, then the door opened just enough for the light from the corridor to silhouette the shape of a man. The hair on the back of Riley’s neck rose. On instinct, he moved to put himself between Hannah and the visitor.

“Sorry to interrupt. I’m with hospital security. The nurse thought I should check and see if everything’s okay here.” The security guard remained in the doorway, his shoulders squared and his hands at his side, close to the unmistakable outline of his weapon holster.

“Everything’s fine,” Hannah said firmly. “Thank you.”

With a nod, the security guard closed the door behind him.

“Did the Teton County Sheriff’s Department offer to post a guard outside your door?” Riley asked.

“Why? The guy who attacked me didn’t know me. I was—what do y’all call it? A target of opportunity?”

She was right, but leaving her alone here in the hospital didn’t sit well with him. The staff had shown they had her best interests at heart, but he couldn’t shake the idea that the wily killer he’d been looking for over the past three years wouldn’t be happy leaving behind a live victim. The more time Hannah had to remember details from the attack, the more valuable she was to the police—and dangerous to the killer.

He pushed to his feet, sensing she was running out of energy. She needed her rest, and they could pick up this conversation in the morning. “I’m heading out now. You get some sleep and don’t worry about any of this, okay?”

She nodded, her eyelids already starting to droop.

He slipped out of the room and headed down the hallway toward the nurses’ station, where the nurse he’d met previously was making notes in a chart behind the desk. She looked up, her expression turning stern. “You didn’t stress her out, did you?”

“Is there a waiting area on this floor?” he asked.

The nurse pointed out a door a few feet down the corridor.

Riley entered the room, which was mostly empty, save for a weary-looking woman stretched out across an uncomfortable-looking bench in the corner. Riley grabbed a seat near the entrance, where he could keep an eye on the door.

He hadn’t wanted to worry Hannah Cooper, but it had occurred to him that, target of opportunity or not, she’d seen the killer and lived to tell.

The son of a bitch wouldn’t like that one bit.

ONE OF THE DIRTY LITTLE secrets of hospitals was how shoddy hospital security was, especially in a place like Jackson, Wyoming. Jackson Memorial Hospital had a single security camera trained on the main entrance and a few guards scattered throughout the hospital in case trouble arose. If you looked like you belonged and knew where you were going, nobody gave you a second look.

That’s how it worked in institutions of all sorts.

He wasn’t on duty that evening, but it was a piece of cake to enter right through the front door, wearing his work garb, without anyone lifting an eyebrow. Now, he had just one more job to do to cover his tracks, and then he’d finish what he’d come here to do.

He slipped inside the empty security office and closed the door behind him.

SHE DREAMED OF HOME, with its glorious vista of blue water, green mountains and cloud-strewn skies. The lake house where she’d spent her first eighteen years of life had been built by her father’s hands, with lumber and stone from right there in Gossamer Ridge, Alabama. Though she’d lived on her own for almost eight years, the lake house remained home to her, a place of refuge and a source of strength.

She didn’t feel as if she was dreaming at first, the setting and companions as familiar and ordinary as the sound of her own voice. Out on the water, her brother Jake was taking a fisherman on a guided tour of the lake’s best bass spots. Nearby, her brother J.D. worked on the engine of a boat moored in one of the marina berths, while his eleven-year-old son, Mike, shot a basketball through the rusty old hoop mounted on the weathered siding of the boathouse.

She basked in the sun on her skin and breathed in the earthy wildness of the woods and the water from her perch on the end of the weathered wooden pier. Her bare toes played in the warm water, drawing curious bluegills close to the surface before they darted back down to safety near the lake bottom.

Suddenly, the pier shook and creaked beneath her as footsteps approached from behind. She turned to look up at the visitor and met a pair of brilliant blue eyes gazing out from the chiseled-stone features of Riley Patterson.

“Wake up,” he said. “You’re in danger.”

The dream images shattered, like a reflection in a pool displaced by a falling stone. She woke to the murky darkness of a hospital room filled with alien smells and furtive movements. A shadow shifted beside her in the gloom, and she heard the faint sound of breathing by her bed.

She froze, swallowing the moan of fear rising in her throat. It’s a nurse, she told herself. Only a nurse. In a minute, she’ll turn on the light and check my pulse.