Alaskan Christmas Cold Case

“She’s not fine, Noah, trust me.”

She’d asked him to trust her once. To keep the Ice Maiden case open, against the advice of every other law enforcement officer involved.

He hadn’t done it.

“Let’s go.”

They backed out of the driveway, note carefully put inside a notebook on the back seat. They would process it for prints or any other trace evidence, though if this guy had been terrorizing and killing people for longer than a decade, Noah held out little hope it would hold anything useful.

“So much I didn’t say to her...” Erynn muttered. “I didn’t thank her for coming. Didn’t tell her I was sorry I didn’t figure it out sooner...”

“You figured out more than we did about that case, it seems like. More than anyone else.”

Erynn shook her head. “Not really. I had a hunch, that was all, but you can’t take a hunch to court. Can’t keep a case open for one.”

“You can tell her everything you want when we get there.”

She just shook her head again. “You don’t understand how he works.”

“Then tell me, Erynn. Tell me everything.”

“I’ve known him to take people from their beds while they were sleeping, with no one in the house disturbed, all the doors firmly locked when he left. He’s gotten people who were under police protection. Got an officer...”

“Janie told me you knew the officer who was killed.”

Erynn looked at him like she was asking him a question, asking his eyes, but didn’t say anything.

“She’ll be okay.” He believed it or he wouldn’t say it.

“She won’t.”

They drove on. His phone rang half a mile from Moose Haven.

Janie Davis was dead.

THREE (#u8b7dfd64-67d6-53ec-a6c0-e9471aa2c314)

Erynn could not remember the last time she’d cried, but she knew it had been years, likely connected to this case. But she wanted to now. If only she could make the tears come, relieve the pressure building in her face and forehead...

She’d been too late. Again.

Beside her, Noah’s body language was another worry to contend with. The man was past worked up, more so than she’d ever seen him. On most of the cases they’d worked together, Erynn would have taken it upon herself to help him calm down, to bring some perspective.

Today she had nothing to give him. Wasn’t sure she had much left to give herself.

Janie was dead.

Erynn couldn’t see how she was supposed to escape the same fate. Not when every single person this killer had ever come after was dead. He’d already found Noah’s house, realized their connection.

“I wanted to be able to look at you for this conversation, not driving, but I need to know now, Erynn. Who and what are we dealing with? What do you know?”

He had managed to say the last part with no accusation in his voice.

She might be a lot of things, but she’d never hinder progress, especially not in this case. Didn’t Noah get that? This was her life, not just her.

Erynn had lost everything that mattered to her before. And thanks to this killer, she’d already come close again.

She didn’t want that to happen. Didn’t want to die. She drew in a shaky breath. “It’s faster if you search for some of the details online—they’re all out there. Someone handed the press quite the lovely story.” Her first brush with how newspapers could destroy an investigation. Let one detail slip at the wrong time, let the criminal know you were on to something, and it all blew up in your face. In that case, a reporter had not just interviewed her dad and other officers about the case, they’d also employed less than ethical tactics and listened to their conversations, even recorded some. And had compromised their safety because of it. Those reporters had been prosecuted, but it didn’t bring Erynn’s dad back, or solve the case.

“Give me the bare bones,” Noah said as he turned onto the main highway that would take them back to Moose Haven proper.

“There was a serial killer in Anchorage about fifteen years ago.”

“The link between his victims? Do they know that?”

It had been what he was known for. Some had even dubbed him the “Foster Kid Killer,” though the nickname grated so much Erynn tried not to use it. Instead she just thought of the killer as him. The unseen presence that had haunted her life in one way or another for years.

“Yes. He was killing foster kids. Some still in high school, some as they aged out of the system.”

She felt Noah glance at her, could almost hear the wheels turning in his head. She’d managed to keep her past out of her life in Moose Haven, invent this new identity for herself, where all anyone knew about her past was that she was a trooper.

She’d succeeded. Most days she was proud of herself. Today she knew Noah well enough to understand what a slap in the face it would be to him to learn he hadn’t known her as well as he’d thought... She wasn’t proud.

She just hurt.

“And you...?”

Still, he asked her to clarify. Erynn took a deep breath. “Yes. I was in foster care for part of that time period. I was adopted the summer before my senior year of high school.”

“So you knew the people who were killed.”

“Yes.” Every single one. Erynn stared out the window, watched the spruce forest as they drove through it on the approach to town. The trees were thick and the woods looked almost like a shelter. If she was Noah’s sister Kate and good in the outdoors, maybe she could hide there, manage to survive. But she wasn’t Kate and it wasn’t an option. She had nowhere to hide and anywhere she ran would only provide temporary security.

The fact that he was in Moose Haven proved that.

“Which foster kids was he after specifically?”

Erynn shook her head. “They never...figured that out exactly. Both males and females were killed. No other obvious patterns. One officer had a hunch. But he didn’t keep his speculations about that case in a file at work, since they weren’t founded on fact, and I don’t know where they ended up.”

“So we go to Anchorage, ask him and—”

She was already shaking her head. “He’s dead, too. And the notes weren’t found in any of his personal belongings.”

She could feel the tension building, knew the questions were coming. Erynn took a deep breath. “I know because my adoptive mom and I looked. He was my adoptive father.”

Noah absorbed Erynn’s story, careful not to let his face flinch. She was better at reading him than anyone he knew, and this was one of the times he didn’t like that fact.

The killer they were after might have more than one reason to be tracking Erynn down—she wasn’t just another former foster kid who might have been in danger. She was the daughter of an investigating officer. Was she in danger because her dad had been killed? Janie had mentioned a police officer losing his life in the investigation, so that meant Erynn’s dad...