Blood on Copperhead Trail

Tough lady, he thought. “You said you heard rustling. What about birds? Did you hear any birds?”

Her eyes narrowed, her focus shifting inward. “No, I didn’t hear any birds.”

“What about the breathing? Could you tell whether it was a man or a woman?”

“Man,” she answered, her gaze focusing on his face again. “He didn’t vocalize, exactly, but there was a masculine quality to his breathing. I don’t know how to explain it—”

“Was he breathing regularly? Slow? Fast?”

“Fast,” she answered. “I think that’s what was so creepy about it. He was almost panting.”

Panting could mean a lot of things, Doyle reminded himself as a cold draft slid beneath the collar of his jacket, sending chill bumps down his back. It could have been a hiker who wasn’t in good shape. Might not have been anyone connected to this murder or the girls’ disappearance, for that matter. Maybe someone had found the phone, answered the ring but was too out of breath to speak.

Or maybe he was breathing hard because he’d just chased down three teenage girls like the predator he was.

He tried not to telegraph his grim thoughts to Laney Hanvey, but she was no fool. She didn’t need his help imagining the worst.

“She’s not alive, is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“But the odds are—”

“I’m not a gambler,” he said firmly. “I don’t deal with odds. I deal with facts. And the facts are, we have only one body so far.”

“Who’s out looking for the other girls?”

At the moment, he had to admit, no one was. It took time to form a search party. “We’ve put out the call to nearby agencies. The county boys, the park patrol, Blount and Sevier County agencies. They’re going to lend us officers for a search.”

“That’s not soon enough.” Laney turned and started hiking around the perimeter of the crime-scene tape, heading up the trail.

Doyle looked back at the crime scene and saw Ivy Hawkins looking at him, her brow furrowed. She gave a nod toward Laney, as if to say she and Parsons had the crime scene covered.

He was the chief of police now, not another investigator. While Bitterwood might be a small force, he didn’t need to micromanage his detectives. They’d already proved they could do a good job—he’d familiarized himself with their work before he took the job.

Meanwhile, he had a public-relations problem stalking up the mountain while he waffled about leaving a crime scene that was clearly under control.

He ducked under the crime-scene tape and headed up the mountain after Laney Hanvey.

* * *

“I’MNOTGOINGto be handled out of looking for my sister,” Laney growled as she heard footsteps catching up behind her on the hiking trail.

“I’m just here to help.”

She faltered to a stop, turning to look at Doyle Massey. He wasn’t exactly struggling to keep up with her—life on the beach had clearly kept him in pretty good shape. But he was out of his element.

She’d grown up in these mountains. Her mother had always joked she was half mountain goat. She knew these hills as well as she knew her own soul. “You’ll slow me down.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.”

She glared at him, her rising terror looking for a target. “My sister is out here somewhere and I’m going to find her.”

The look Doyle gave her was full of pity. The urge to slap that expression off his face was so strong she had to clench her hands. “You’re rushing off alone into the woods where a man with a gun has just committed a murder.”

“A gun?” She couldn’t stop her gaze from slanting toward the crime scene. “She was shot?”

“Two rounds to the back of the head.”

She closed her eyes, the remains of the cucumber sandwich she’d eaten at Sequoyah House rising in her throat. She stumbled a few feet away from Doyle Massey and gave up fighting the nausea.

After her stomach was empty, she crouched in the underbrush, battling dry heaves and giving in to the hot tears burning her eyes. The heat of Massey’s hand on her back was comforting, even though she was embarrassed by her display.

“I will help you search,” he said in a low, gentle tone. “But I want you to take a minute to just breathe and think. Okay? I want you to think about your sister and where you think she’d go. Do you know?”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue to wipe her mouth. Before she’d finished, Massey’s hand extended in front of her eyes, holding out a roll of breath mints.

“Thank you,” she said, taking one.

“I understand you don’t live here in Bitterwood.”

She looked up at him. “I live in Barrowville. It’s about ten minutes away. But I grew up here. I know this mountain.”

“But do you know where your sister and her friends would go up here?”

“I called my mother on the drive here. She said Jannie and the others were planning to keep to the trail so they could bunk down in the shelters. They’re sort of like the shelters you find on the Appalachian Trail—not as nice, but they serve the same basic purpose.” She waved her hand toward the trail shelter a half mile up the trail, frustrated by all the talking. “Has anyone looked up there?”

“Not yet.” He laid his hand on her back, the heat of his touch warming her through her clothes. She wanted to be annoyed by his presumptuousness, but the truth was, she found his touch comforting, to the point that she had to squelch the urge to throw herself into his arms and let her pent-up tears flow.

But she had to keep her head. Her mother was already a basket case with fear for her daughter. Someone in the family needed to stay in control.

“Ivy called in the missing-person report on Jannie.” She stepped away from his touch, straightening her slumping spine. “Has anyone contacted the Adderlys?”

The chief looked back at the crime scene. “No. I guess I should be the one to do it.”

“No,” she said firmly. “You’re new here. You’re a stranger. Let one of the others do it. Craig Bolen and Dave Adderly are old friends.”

Massey’s green eyes narrowed. “Bolen...”

“Your new captain of detectives,” she said.

“I knew that.” He looked a little sheepish. “I’ll call him, let him know what’s up.” He pulled out his cell phone.

“You probably can’t get a signal on that,” she warned. “Go tell Ivy to call it in on her radio.”

His lips quirked slightly as he put away his phone and walked back down the trail to the crime scene. He turned to look at her a couple of times, as if to make sure she wasn’t taking advantage of his distraction to hare off on her own.

The idea was tempting, since she could almost hear the minutes ticking away in her head. She hadn’t gotten a good look at Missy’s body, but she’d seen enough of the blood to know that the wounds were relatively fresh. Even taking the cold weather into account, the murder couldn’t have happened much earlier than the night before, and more likely that morning.