set her teeth, lifted the portfolio, climbed to her feet and faced the room. She was thirty-one years old and an eight-year veteran of two different city police forces. She could do this.
But she was aware of McDermott leaning against the wall at the back of the room, alone. Aware of the other officers’ eyes on her, men and women both, all wishing Fitz was there instead of her.
They weren’t going to like what she had to report. I’ve got nothing, she wanted to say, no reliable witnesses, no good sketch, no ideas. Nothing.
Instead, she opened the folder, drew out the pitiful list of the suspect’s possible physical traits and a sad description of the van, and handed it to a surly looking uniform in the front row. “Please pass these out for me.” She addressed the group. “As you can see here, the two witnesses at the MovieMogul 10 were only partially helpful. They saw a man and a light-colored van, but couldn’t be certain of either description…”
She continued to speak, but her attention was drawn to a stir of motion at the back of the room. When she looked up, McDermott was gone.
And a frisson of wariness told her something was up.
THE DESK OFFICER’S SUMMONS had pulled Tucker out of an important meeting, but he couldn’t manage to be annoyed by the interruption. He’d been glad to escape the conference room. It was too hot. Too crowded.
Hell, who was he kidding? Any room with Alissa Wyatt in it was too hot and crowded for him. She was a hot ticket, a bundle of energy with the legs of a Vegas showgirl and the light-blue eyes of an artist. Half the men on the BCCPD were panting after her, and the other half wanted her gone.
Tucker straddled the two camps. He wanted her gone, but he didn’t want it to matter. And it wouldn’t have mattered if it hadn’t been for that night, when he’d met her on a crowded dance floor and heard his favorite words, I’m just in town for a few days.
He wasn’t proud of it, but vacation flings were his stock in trade. He was too much of a nomad for anything more, and at thirty-five was too damn set in his ways to change now. Hell, the one time he’d tried to settle down had been a disaster. He’d hurt a good woman, someone he’d cared about, though he obviously hadn’t cared enough. Since then, he’d stayed carefully away from nesters, from women who wanted more from him than he was able to give.
So he’d danced with the just-in-town-for-a-few-days babe who’d introduced herself as Alissa. He’d reveled in the drape of her long, honey-colored hair as they danced close, then closer still. He’d slid his hands beneath her midriff shirt, riding on the high from closing the Vanzetti case, one too many beers and the gleam of encouragement in her eyes.
They’d kissed on the dance floor, then again in the hall by the phones, moving fast even for him. But the roar of heat had swept away rationality and battered at the small kernel of self-preservation he held close to his soul. They’d stumbled to her rental car wrapped in each other, not sure where they were going but positive they needed to get there quickly, before they proved that spontaneous combustion wasn’t a myth.
Unable to wait for his place or her hotel, he’d pulled her across his lap in the passenger seat. She’d gone willingly, twining around him with arms and tongue until a flaming, pulsing need consumed him—nearly panicked him. It was too much, too soon, but the spark of caution was quickly gone. He fumbled for his wallet, for a condom, and knocked a badge off the center console.
Only it hadn’t been his badge. It had been hers. And it had landed on a real estate printout of a cute house not five miles away from his generic apartment building.
Oh, hell, he remembered thinking when the explanation followed.
She was in town for a few days, all right. But she’d be back soon, and working for the BCCPD. His bosses. He’d excused himself without an explanation and bolted, unnerved by an almost overwhelming desire to stay.
Two weeks later she and her friends had replaced Fitz as part of Chief Parry’s updating of the BCCPD, and she’d been under his skin ever since.
Because the knowledge made him mean, Tucker scowled at the male desk officer, a twenty-something named Pendelton. “This better be good.”
Pendelton gestured at the chest-high counter, which held a plain paper rectangle with “Det. Tucker McDermott” printed in square letters with black ink. “I thought you should see this. It didn’t come in the mail. It just sort of…appeared. One minute it wasn’t there, and the next…” Pendelton snapped his fingers. “There it was on the front desk.” A hint of nerves worked into his voice when he said, “I’m sorry. I went to the can for a minute. Just a minute, I swear. Maybe the dispatchers saw something.” But he didn’t sound hopeful.
Tucker’s gut tightened. “Did you touch it?”
“No. Not on your life.”
It could be a hoax, but instinct told him otherwise. “You got a pair of tweezers and a couple of evidence bags?”
Pendelton trotted off to get the items. For a brief second Tucker thought about calling one of the new evidence techs. Hell, they were just down the hall. He would have if it had been Fitz. But because Fitz had retired—very abruptly—and because Tucker knew the procedure as well as anyone, he took the tweezers himself. Teased the envelope open himself. And read the enclosed note himself.
Dumb cops. Elizabeth is in the canyon, and you’d better hurry. It’s getting cold.
Adrenaline fired through Tucker’s bloodstream. He bolted to the conference room and yanked open the door. The pretty, dark-haired psych expert of the new Forensics Department—he was pretty sure her name was Maya—stood at the front of the room with a string of words listed on the wipe board behind her, things like white male, 20-40 years, and high functioning, followed by a question mark.
Things they didn’t need an abnormal psychology specialist to tell them. They were cops, damn it. They knew the profiles, knew what they should be looking for. They just hadn’t been able to find the bastard yet. They’d needed a break.
Well, maybe they’d just gotten one.
Not caring that he was interrupting, Tucker lifted the note inside its protective evidence bag, blood racing with the thrill of the hunt. “Come on. The first victim is in the canyon.”
Or else the kidnapper wanted them to think she was.
BEAR CLAW CANYON was shallower and narrower than some of the nearby natural wonders, but it had its own dangers, its own treacheries. The crevice was only man height in spots, but the waterway at the bottom meandered and doubled back on itself, breaking off into tributaries and feeder streams without warning.
Because of it, there were thousands of tiny, cracked caverns and overhangs, a hundred places for hikers to lose themselves in the two-thousand-acre Bear Claw State Park.
A hundred places to hide a girl. A body.
Near the snowy spot where they’d parked their official four-wheel-drive vehicles, Alissa curled her hands into fists and fought the urge to run for the canyon, to scream the missing girl’s name. There were procedures to follow, and experience had taught her that protocol beat instinct every time in police work. A gut feel might lead to the perpetrator, but judges and lawyers cared about procedure. Words like intuition could get an important case thrown out, a violent criminal released.
