Alaskan Christmas Cold Case

“He was law enforcement?”

“Yes.” She still wouldn’t look his way. He knew because he kept glancing over at her as he drove.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” Of course, he’d said the same thing to Janie earlier. He’d thought putting her in protective custody would be enough. He’d underestimated the man Erynn was so afraid of. He wouldn’t do that again.

“You can’t say that.”

He didn’t argue, knew it was better not to when Erynn was like this. But he meant it. If he had to stop sleeping, follow her around every day, armed, quit his job—

Noah almost jumped in his seat. The thought had come out of nowhere, and made no sense, not when his career gave him access to information that could help figure out who was behind the killings, and could help keep Erynn safe. Nevertheless, the fact that he’d even consider sacrificing the dream he’d always had if it would be enough to keep her safe...

It might be time to stop trying to deceive himself about his feelings for Erynn.

Those emotions were much different than Noah had ever had for any other coworker or any friend. He’d been half in love with Erynn for years and had just avoided it.

He didn’t see how he’d be able to entirely sidestep the feelings now. But he’d had to keep them hidden. He had always known there was more to Erynn, just hadn’t known exactly what. This was more than he’d expected. And it hurt to know she’d kept it from him.

But he understood. And was going to do everything in his power to make sure that sooner, rather than later, all of this would be in her past, the threat removed. That she could continue with her life, doing what she wanted to do with it without thinking of the implications her choices might have on the madman who was after her.

Noah pulled the car into the back lot at the station. Every vehicle in the department was there and he wished again he had a bigger police force. Not that Moose Haven saw an excess of crime, but if someone drove by and saw that all officers were at the station, it would be an ideal time to get into trouble elsewhere.

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed his brother, who acted as a reserve officer on occasion.

“Tyler, can you come by the station if you get a chance, get a car and just drive around town a bit?” It was more to reassure himself about preventing small crimes than to show the murderer how well equipped they were. Clearly they were not, if he’d been able to waltz into the jail.

Tyler agreed and Noah took a breath.

“Ready?” he asked her when he disconnected.

Erynn was looking out the window. He watched her as she inhaled, squared her shoulders and nodded once. “Ready as I can be.”

He stuck close to her as they walked inside, into the chaos. The police department was small but adequate for what they usually needed. Today it seemed crowded, the energy building in a way that made the air feel thick. Too tense. They were already playing defense when they should be on the offense.

He stopped, waited for Erynn at one point. She was still in her uniform and right now looked every inch the trooper she was. Any little chinks that might exist in her armor were not part of her reality in here. She was good at pulling herself together, he’d give her that.

“Where is the body?”

“In the cell. The ME is back there now, getting ready to transport her.”

“He can’t do that when we haven’t had a chance to sketch the scene, process it or anything.”

“Officer Hitchcock took care of that. He’s back at his desk now, writing it up.”

At least he knew that had been handled right. Clay Hitchcock had as many years of law enforcement experience as Noah himself, or at least close. He was also Noah’s brother-in-law, married to his sister Summer.

“Let’s go talk to Clay,” he said to Erynn, motioning with his head at the area with the officers’ desks.

Erynn shook her head. “I want to see the crime scene.”

“Erynn...”

There it was again. That ridiculous protective instinct toward her that was all too familiar. He had been fighting it for years. Some women liked it when a man wanted to protect them. At least, that was what Noah had gathered from the movies his sisters used to watch and the way he’d seen several of his siblings fall in love. His own personal experience with love was limited. Besides one or two girlfriends in high school that hadn’t been serious, he hadn’t dated much.

Because the only woman he was interested in dating saw him as a coworker and a friend. Nothing more.

Protective instincts toward her aside, she didn’t needed protecting. At least not from the crime scene. If they were going to catch the serial killer responsible, he’d need every good law enforcement mind in town working on the case. And Erynn was one of the best. He couldn’t just exclude her from the investigation, which he could only if it really was a conflict of interest for her to investigate a case directly tied to her past. But technically there had been no threat directly to Erynn—at least neither she nor Janie had made him aware of that. The fact that her father had been killed did make her involvement dance close to the line of ethics, but this wasn’t a city where police and law enforcement resources were unlimited. She was far enough from the case emotionally to still be involved.

His feelings were going to get in the way of keeping her safe if he wasn’t careful. Surely he could make it a few more weeks, till this guy was behind bars, no longer a threat.

It wasn’t optional. Noah didn’t have a choice. Treating her like any other colleague was the only course of action that was going to work here. So he nodded. “Okay, let’s go to the crime scene.”

They made their way through the halls. Noah was careful to look for anything that seemed out of place, but nothing caught his attention.

“She was still locked in her cell,” one of his officers told him as they walked up to the scene. The man shook his head.

“Do we know how she died yet?”

“Elsie at the front desk mentioned that her lawyer came to see her. I’ll go get Clay, he probably knows the most.”

As he started to walk away, Noah took in the body on the floor of the cell. It never stopped striking him how once a person had died, they didn’t look like they had in life. The body truly ceased to be a person and became a shell, something his law enforcement mentor had taught him when he’d first started.

Janie was pale, her skin lacking the healthy appearance she’d had while alive. Her hair was spread out on the floor behind her, touching the puddle of blood pooled beneath her. She’d been shot in the chest, at very close range.

Noah looked around the cell. The chair was sitting upright. Nothing indicated there had been a struggle.

Was the killer someone she knew? Someone she’d expected to be there to help her?

His mind ran with that thread as he reviewed what the officer had just told him, and he asked, “Janie’s lawyer came?” She hadn’t been arrested long enough for any lawyer to arrive from Anchorage or even Kenai, whichever place she’d been living. While she could have called a local lawyer...Noah didn’t think she had.

The officer nodded.

If his guess was right that the “lawyer” hadn’t been one at all, that explained how the killer had gotten inside. Walking in in plain sight. It spoke of a level of overconfidence that could possibly work to their advantage if they could get a step ahead. At the moment it just scared the stupid out of him. “Thanks. Yes, get Hitchcock, please. And do we have video footage?” The cameras in the jail should tell them something, even if the killer had avoided showing his face.

Officer Smith shook his head. “Cameras cut out just before he came in. We’ve had so many issues with that old system lately that we thought it was a technological glitch.”

Noah felt anger stir inside. Not toward his officers. Moose Haven didn’t often see crime like this—he understood how they wouldn’t have been immediately suspicious—but he hated that evil had won this battle today.

Hated that it felt personal.

“She was sitting in this chair when she was shot, it looks like,” Erynn was saying as she moved closer to Janie, tilted her head like she did when she was focused. “See where her body is positioned in relation to the chair? And the blood splatter?”

“Is that significant with past cases or are you just walking through what you see?” Noah forced himself to sound professional, though at the moment he felt anything but. He didn’t want Erynn considering victims, blood splatter or anything but keeping herself safe.

But it wasn’t his place to keep her out of this. Not when she was already involved so deep her safety was at risk either way.

A second or two passed before she answered. “I think the second? But I’ll let you know.”

Clay walked into the room just then, his face as sober as Noah felt. They nodded at each other and Noah was as thankful as he had been in the past that Clay had come to Moose Haven. He would need all the help he could get on this one.