inside, he locked the door and turned on the faucet.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
His own interior monologue mocked him as he scrubbed away the crusted-on blood from his temple. She had hurt him. She goddamn made him bleed. She paid for it, of course. Nevertheless, why did she have to go and do that? What was the point, bitch?
He looked at his face in the mirror. Normally, when he did so, it brought an appreciative gaze from his own eyes. This time, his heart pumped a little faster. Not as fast as it had earlier that evening by the frozen pond, of course. But faster, nevertheless. The blood he saw at his left temple brought worry and a touch of fear. He knew it meant something that he hoped would never surface. That she, literally, would never surface. It was possible that his DNA was lodged underneath one of her prettily painted fingernails. How come he hadn’t thought of that? He could have chopped off her fingertips and fed them to the dog. He could have killed her faster to avoid that burst of adrenaline that gave her the upper hand for just one second.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Water ran down the drain as he scrubbed his hands and pulled himself together. Though he hadn’t used it, he flushed the toilet. He’d been in there a long time.
Thinking. Cleaning. Worrying. But also reliving the triumph of what he’d accomplished in the flat, cold light of a snowy winter night in the middle of nowhere.
His drink was ready when he emerged from the restroom and slid the key at the girl. She was pretty. No denying that. Yet not his type. She had a tattoo on her wrist that appeared to be some kind of tropical flower, maybe a hibiscus. The tattoo artist who’d rendered the image was either a hack or a newbie. Either way, it was permanently a very bad tattoo. If her wrist was any indication, she likely had more of them wallpapering her young, lithe body. Probably some piercings, too.
The man liked his women a little more on the traditional side. More conservative. Pretty, like the coffee girl, but not so wild. Not so reckless with the beauty God had bestowed on them by virtue of His grace and their parents’ genetics.
“Whip on this?” the girl asked.
“Oh, yes.” He smiled, set down five dollars pulled from a gold monogrammed money clip, and winked. “I love whip. Keep the change.”
The girl at the counter caught the eye of her coworker, a pudgy brunette who never flirted with customers. They watched as the man with the mocha got into his truck, turned the ignition, and drove away.
“Do you want some creepy with that mocha?” the brunette teased.
“No kidding. Make that a venti creepy.”
“Extra hot, though.”
The young women laughed. Both knew that the man, no matter how handsome or fit, was too old for them anyway. Besides, it was against company policy to even think about hooking up with a customer. The last one to do that got a week of corporate-sponsored ethics training and a new assignment repacking scones in a warehouse. Not worth it by a long shot.
As the truck backed out and pulled past the windows of the shop, the blonde walked to the door and turned the lock. Her coworker flipped the overhead lights and the store went dark. As they looked out at the moving truck, which was slightly shrouded with swirling snow, they noticed something that seemed a little strange. There was no Christmas tree in the truck bed.
It was empty.
“I thought he said he’d been out getting a tree,” the brunette said
“Jesus. It figures. Everything is a pickup line these days.”
The blonde rolled her eyes. “You got that right.”
Chapter One
Cherrystone, Washington
Emily Kenyon was proud of her deep blue suit and the polished silver star of the sheriff’s office on her jacket, yet the idea of an A-line skirt in late November was more than her thin blood could take. Why wasn’t there a pants option? She was the first female sheriff for Cherrystone, but surely someone had thought that through before. It was an annoyance on chilly November days and thankfully she only had to wear the suit for official occasions that had more to do with public relations than law enforcement. Moreover, she had the sneaking suspicion the getup made her look like a flight attendant as much as anything.
That afternoon she had lunch with the Rotary Club to kick off the annual “Teddy Bears for Tots” fund-raiser, a statewide drive in which officers collected plush teddy bears for the littlest victims of crimes, accidents, and fires. Emily spoke for five minutes, shook the hands of several Rotary officers, and thanked them for the “teamwork that makes us great.”
The line felt hokey; even so the crowd applauded.
As she exited the restaurant banquet room, she knew that she needed a warmer coat than her old trench if she wanted to keep from freezing. She ran through her mental list of things that had to be done. She needed to get her roots touched up at the salon. She also had to do something with the turkey carcass that occupied the top shelf in her refrigerator following Thanksgiving with Jenna, her twenty-two-year-old daughter, Chris Collier, her boyfriend—though she loathed the idea of a grown man being called a boyfriend—and her friend, Olga Cerrino.
Her cell rang. It was Jason Howard, her deputy.
“Kenyon here,” she said.
“Hi, Sheriff. It’s Jason.”
That they even bothered to identify themselves was almost a joke between them. Only a dozen employees made up the Cherrystone Sheriff’s Department. It wasn’t the smallest law enforcement organization, but it certainly wasn’t in Washington State’s top ten. “We got a call from Jeanne Parkinson at the clerk’s office. She’s worried about an employee.”
Emily knew Jeanne. She worried about everything.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“An employee didn’t come to work today.”
Emily wanted to laugh, yet somehow she held it. “Is this what we’ve been reduced to? The attendance monitors for the county?”
“That’s what I thought, but this could be different. They’re worried that something might have happened to Mandy on her way to work.”
“Mandy Crawford?”
“Yeah. She’s pregnant, you know.”
“I know. She’s due any day, isn’t she?” Emily checked her teeth in the rearview mirror of her Kelly green county-issued Crown Vic. Spinach salad was never a good choice for a luncheon. Why didn’t caterers understand that spinach leaves gripped teeth like Velcro?
“Mitch says when he left for work, she was already gone.”
Mitch was Mitch Crawford, Mandy’s husband.
“I’m not far from there,” Emily said. “I’ll stop by and follow her route to the office.”
“Need the address?”
“I
