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After tending the horses, Kane walked back to the house. His phone chimed and he checked the caller ID. “Yeah, Carter, what’s up?”
“I heard about the wreck on the highway and the explosion. Are you and Jenna okay?”
Kane snorted. “We were both tossed around like leaves in the shockwave, and Jenna has a cut on her head. She was knocked out cold. We’ve been checked out at the ER and we’re fine. She’ll be sore for a few days, is all.”
“That’s good to know.”Carter’s boots clattered on tile. “We’re in Blackwater and walked straight into a report of another missing person. I’m at the sheriff’s office now. This time it’s a woman, Jenell Rickers, in her mid-twenties. She runs a doggy daycare center in town and took a few of her dogs to an exercise yard owned by the business in Broken Wolf Forest. It’s a regular part of her day. She walks six or so dogs through a trail in the woods and lets them run around for an hour or so in an enclosed corral. The other workers at the center became concerned when she didn’t return and set out to look for her. They searched all over. The dogs are all in the exercise yard, one of the leashes is missing, but there’s no sign of Jenell Rickers.”He huffed out a sigh.“As Sheriff Nolan issnowed underand we’re involved with the Bridgercase, we headed out to take a look and couldn’t find a trace of her. The light was failing, so we’ll be heading back out in the morning.”
Kane stopped on the porch and stared into the endless dark sky. The stars seemed close enough to pluck out of the sky. He leaned against the front doorframe and thought for a beat. “We’ve made no progress on our missing persons cases either. We located Maisy Jones’ phone and Jenna did see a purse fitting the description of the one she carried, but that was just before the explosion. I fell on the phone when I landed on the top of a truck, so it’s pretty messed up and where the purse was located is a hole in the ground.” He cleared his throat. “Nothing more on Billy Stevens. We’ve spoken to his housemates and colleagues at work. He walked home the same way every night. If someone was planning an abduction, he’d be the perfect choice.”
“I figure we should work together.”A door opened and closed and Kane could hear conversation in the background.“Run it past Jenna. We have Kalo with us and he’ll be able to extract information from the phone. We really need Duke on this one. The snowfall in the forest is light and he might be able to pick up a scent on the trail and find our missing woman. At the moment, with everyone still out investigating the wreck, I can’t ask the only remaining deputy to shut the office and assist us.”
Kane rubbed the back of his neck. “Sure, it makes sense to join forces. You’ll need to convince Sheriff Nolan to give us jurisdiction if we need to arrest anyone. I’ll discuss it with Jenna. Right now, she’s exhausted and in the hot tub. I’ll call you in a while.”
“He won’t be a problem. He called us in because he believes the Bridger family are victims of a serial killer. If Jenna agrees, I’ll come and collect y’all in the chopper. Kalo can work at the cottage.”Carter paused a beat.“It would save you the time of driving back and forth to Blackwater.”
Kane smothered a yawn. “It would make more sense for you to move into the cottage now, so we’re all together. I’ll talk to her first thing in the morning. Not tonight, not after a head injury, or she’ll be over there making up beds. You know Jenna. She never takes a break.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to and we can make up our own beds. We’re staying at the Blackwater Motel tonight.”The disgust in his voice was evident.“Jo isn’t impressed. The walls are paper thin and it’s colder than the morgue.”
“And smells just as bad.”Jo’s voice came through the speaker.
Laughing, Kane pulled open the front door and stepped into the mudroom. “Okay, I’ll talk to you soon.”
EIGHTEEN
Maisy Jones pulled the rough blanket around her as cold seeped through her clothes. She’d dragged on anything she could find that was reasonably clean to ward off the freezing temperature. She sat in her room staring at anything other than the bodies on the gurneys dripping blood into buckets. A trail of ants carrying unrecognizable things above their heads, had become a fascination. They worked as a team, moving their burden from one to another in a line that went across the floor and up one wall to disappear through a tiny hole. How they maneuvered the tiny object of their attention through the hole had been her entertainment for the entire day. She’d needed a distraction. Morbid curiosity had drawn her to look at the young male corpse the Smiling Man had wheeled in earlier. His pale face had once been handsome and she wondered why he had murdered him and the young boy. In the middle of the night, her captor had returned with another corpse, this time a woman, and he followed the same ritualistic procedure with her. He removed the clothes and then sponged the bodies in what she realized was a preservative, and then drained the blood. Now that her mind was clearing from the shock of being kidnapped, she concluded he must be embalming the bodies for burial. Perhaps he was just an undertaker or maybe working for one? She rubbed the goosebumps on her arms. So why had he kidnapped her?
She’d gone hungry all day and must be adjusting to the stink because her stomach was cramping with starvation. If she was lucky, he brought a small meal once a day, but this time he didn’t so much as acknowledge her when he rolled the woman into the room. He went to work, singing Christmas jingles. It seemed like an insult and hearing him made her angry, yet she sat on her gurney and remained quiet. She hated the thought of actually looking forward to his visits. Perhaps seeing a living person gave her hope of finally getting out of the room. She wondered if he was controlling her with food or she’d started to suffer from Stockholm syndrome. Shaking her head, she pushed the thoughts out of her mind. He terrified her, so how could she possibly like him? Concerned for her sanity, she scrubbed both hands down her face and smelled the stink of searching through clothes, some bloody or stained with what might be blood. She had water to wash her hands but nothing to dry them on and the water was ice cold.
The door to the room opened with a whine and she crept from the gurney, careful not to make a noise. It was the Smiling Man. He was carrying something and walking toward her. As his footsteps came closer, she moved to the corner of the room and brushed away cobwebs heavy with dust. Heart thumping in her chest so fast she couldn’t breathe, she cringed away. Had he come to kill her and drain her blood like the others? He’d kill her. Trapped and alone, nobody would know. No one would come to help her, or even notice she’d gone missing. She brushed a cobweb from her arm, the occupants long gone and only the husks of a few flies left behind. The sight of a fly tangled in a spider’s web had always horrified her. Trapped alive and wrapped in a cocoon just waiting for the spider to eat it was chilling. In that second, she’d become the fly. Caught and secured and the spider was heading her way.
NINETEEN
FRIDAY
Every inch of Jenna ached as she staggered back to the house. Her insistence to help Kane tend the horses had drained every ounce of energy from her. They’d cleaned the stalls and moved the horses to the corral only, so they had time to muck out and set up the spare stalls in case they were delayed again. It was a good idea but meant a double workload each morning. The exertion had eased some of the tightness in her bruised body, but the moment she’d finished she headed for the hot tub. Ten minutes and some stretches would ease her pain. “Breakfast can wait. I need to soak my aching body.”
“Me too.” Kane followed her into the mudroom and shucked his coat and boots. He pulled out his phone and smiled at her. “It will give me time to bring you up to speed about Carter’s case.”
Jenna led the way through the door leading to the space under the house that held their extensive gym, hot tub and cellar. She made her way along the passageway, through the gym and into the warm room that held the hot tub. “When did he call?”
“Late last night.” Kane closed the door behind them and undressed.
She gasped when Kane turned his back to her. Purple and red bruises covered his back. She must have been blind not to have seen them last night. She’d seen the cuts on his cheek and his bruised forearm, but they hadn’t spoken about the explosion, just eaten and fallen into bed exhausted. “You’re covered in bruises. What happened to you?”
“I landed on the top of someone’s pickup.” Kane climbed into the hot tub and sighed. “Slid down into the back and scared the hell out of the driver.” He smiled at her, winced and touched the small cuts under one eye with his fingertips. “I’m fine, Jenna. I was lucky.”
She shook her head. “Not so lucky, looking at your back.” She placed her phone beside a towel, climbed into the deliciously hot water, leaned back and hit the control for the bubbles. “Okay, what did Carter want?”
As Kane finished, Jenna’s phone buzzed. “It’s Wolfe.” She put the phone on speaker.
“How are you both this morning?”Wolfe yawned.“Any headaches, blurred vision?”
Jenna shook her head. “We’re okay, battered and bruised, is all.”
“That’s good. With everything that happened yesterday, I didn’t get the chance to tell you about Zander Hastings.”Wolfesighed.“I went to see the body. I had permission to bring it back here for autopsy, but we had a jurisdiction problem. I spoke to the state medical examiner and explained the situation. They allowed me to examine the body and it’s definitely homicide. The needle stick wound to the neck was dissected, and swabs taken indicated positive for heroin. As the needle in the victim’s arm was a different gauge, it proves beyond doubt someone else administered the lethal dose via the carotid artery. The case has been handed over to the local law enforcement and the body sent to the state ME for further investigation. I was returning when I heard about the wreck. Before you ask, you were in no shape to discuss cases last night, Jenna.”
Jenna nodded. “I agree. Soone of our missing persons, Maisy Jones, might be a killer?”
