AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Harper set the soup down—she’d eaten less than half of it—and pushed it away. “I really don’t want to eat anymore right now. Can I go and see her room?”
“I can take you to see the room, but you can’t touch anything. I locals have dusted and catalogued everything, but I have a forensic team on its way to do a more thorough job. We haven’t removed anything because we were hoping her sister—you—would spot anything that was amiss.”
She stood, and Spence led her back to the SUV, and they returned to the lodge. Spence gave her a pair of forensic gloves so she could move things around if she needed but cautioned her to keep it at a minimum and to try and replace anything she touched in the same exact spot. Once inside Dulcie’s room, Harper walked quietly around the room and then approached the open overnight bag sitting on the bed. Slowly, almost absently, she handled and looked at the things her sister had brought with her.
“The backpack that was with her is in evidence right now but everything else is as she left it,” he said.
Harper looked over the items quietly, stopping to touch a few, but mostly just looking to see what was there. Turning to him, she asked. “Did the hotel put her laptop in the safe, or did you take it?”
Everything in Spence went on the alert. “We didn’t find a laptop and the hotel assured us Dulcie hadn’t given anything to them for safekeeping.”
He watched as Harper used a towel to open drawers, look under pillows, and look every place she must have thought the laptop might have been.
“Then she must have had it with her. She never, and I mean never ever, went anywhere without it. It was her lifeline. She had one of those fancy little ones. You know the ones that can fit in anywhere and can be used for just about anything, including a notepad. You know what I mean, they stand up on their own. If it isn’t here, and the hotel doesn’t have it, and you didn’t find it with her, then whoever killed her has taken it.”
“It wasn’t with her, Harper. I’ve seen the contents of the backpack. They’ve been carefully cataloged and there was no laptop. Are you sure she would have brought it along? This was a vacation. It doesn’t seem like something you’d bring on a hiking and canoeing trip.”
“I’m telling you she always had it with her, and…” he watched as she dug down to the bottom of the overnight bag, “if she didn’t have her laptop, then why bring the damn thing’s charger?”
Spence had good instincts, and Dulcie had been murdered. An execution-style killing in a national park was not a run of the mill crime. There was more to this than just a random act of violence. If Harper was correct, then her sister was killed for a specific reason and that meant Harper could be in danger. He would need to ensure she was kept safe, and he knew he would do whatever it took, regardless of protocol or even legality.
CHAPTER5
Spencer turned to Pete. “Let’s get Harper a room, at least, for the night,” he said, waving off her protest. She started to challenge him and then it finally hit home. Dulcie was dead. She’d never hear her sister’s laughter that had always reminded Harper of a summer rain, never be invited back to the Kentucky Derby, never race her sister across an open meadow on horseback; there were so many more nevers. She suddenly felt as if she’d been riding in a hot air balloon, and someone had let the air out.
She was falling.
Falling fast.
“Thank you,” she said. “Between the show, the long drive home, and now this, I’m not sure how much more I can take.”
“That’s understandable, sweetheart.” The endearment slipped out and she wondered if he’d meant it to or if it was just something he said to all women to be kind. He didn’t call it back and didn’t seem to notice or care. Answering his phone, he said, “They have a room arranged for the night. Let me get you settled in and then give me your keys so I can get whatever you need from your truck.”
“Are you trying to handle me, Spencer?” she asked with an edge to her voice.
“No, Harper. I’m trying to help and trying to balance what I know to be procedure for a case with what I think you need.”
“One, my sister is not just a case to me…”
“Nor is she one to me,” he said, the strain in his voice beginning to show his impatience.
She felt dead inside. She didn’t need his patience; she needed someone to be feeling… maybe not what she was feeling, but just feeling.
“And two, you don’t know me well enough to know what the fuck I need.”
“I know you’re teetering back and forth between trying to be strong and curling up in a fetal position and crying your eyes out. I can tell you that the whole being stoic thing is highly overrated and it’s better to get the crying out of your system early on.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I know, Harper. Trust me, I know.”
“How could you possibly know? Has anyone ever murdered your sister?”
“No, my brother.”
“What?” she said, staring at him.
“My kid brother was killed in a national park. I was an Army Ranger at the time and couldn’t do much, so I had to sit back and watch as the park ranger assigned to investigate bungled the job so badly that the killer slipped out of the country and now happily resides in a place where the United States has no extradition treaty. When my stint was up with the Army, I applied for a job as an investigator with the park rangers. I never wanted anyone to have to go through that again.”
