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Raising her eyebrows, Jenna shook her head. “Forget the Stetson today. It’s freezing out there.” She opened her drawer and pulled out two woolen caps and tossed him one. She chuckled. “Oh my, it’s not been a year yet and we sound like an old married couple.”
“I like it.” Kane grinned at her, pulled the cap over his ears and pushed on his Stetson.
Jenna rolled her eyes. “You’re wearing your hat over the cap? Isn’t that a little tight?”
“Nah, it’s all good, Jenna. My hat keeps the snow from running down my neck.” Kane shrugged. “I guess we should take Duke. It’s not been snowing all night, so it won’t be thick on Stanton and we might find something inside the truck we can use as a scent to track the owner.” He patted his leg and the bloodhound came to his side to allow him to fit his coat. “Okay, we’re ready.”
At six-five and two hundred and seventy pounds, Kane had gained twenty pounds of muscle before winter this year and was even taller in his snow boots and wider in his puffy jacket. Jenna couldn’t help admiring the handsome man she’d recently married and then dragged her eyes away to concentrate on the job at hand. She grabbed two survival backpacks from the closet, handed one to Kane and then headed for the door. At the bottom of the stairs, the sheriff’s department was unusually quiet. Nobody waited in the foyer or lined up at the counter to speak to their receptionist, Maggie Brewster. Rowley was at his desk, as was Deputy Zac Rio, a gold shield detective from LA who’d joined the team a year or so previously. She went to Rio’s desk. “We’re heading out to check out a truck on Stanton. You’re in charge while I’m gone. Rowley will bring you up to speed with the abandoned truck. See if you can find the owner, a Maisy Jones out of Idaho, in town. She might be in trouble or in need of assistance.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Rio nodded. “I’ll see if I can hunt her down at one of the motels or the shelters.”
Jenna nodded and, giving Maggie a wave, followed Kane out into the artic tundra. With Duke in his harness in the back seat, she helped Kane shift the ice from the windshield of the black tricked-out truck affectionately known as the Beast. Bulletproof and bombproof, it made the Batmobile look like a toy. She stamped the snow from her boots and climbed inside. “What were you working on when we left? Anything interesting?”
“It was an email from Ty Carter.” Kane was referring to Special Agent Ty Carter, ex–navy Seal from the local field office out of Snakeskin Gully. “He’s investigating missing persons reported in Blackwater and just letting us know he’ll be stuck there for a time until the weather breaks. The visibility is bad over the mountains right now.”
Wondering why the Blackwater sheriff’s department would call in the FBI to chase down missing persons, she frowned. “Is Jo with him?” Behavioral analyst and Special Agent Jo Wells was Carter’s partner.
“Yeah, and before you ask, an entire family—Mom, Dad and a kid—have vanished.” Kane swung her a gaze as they headed along Main. “Dinner half eaten on the table, coats left in the mudroom, dogs not fed. It was as if they just walked out of the door and disappeared.” A nerve ticked in one cheek. “Freaky.”
A cold chill spilled down Jenna’s spine. “An entire family? What else did Carter say?”
“That’s it.” Kane accelerated onto the highway alongside Stanton Forest. “He made it to Blackwater just before the blizzard hit last night and now they’re stranded. He can’t risk flying the chopper until the visibility improves.”
Frowning, Jenna turned to him. “I understood that his chopper’s engine was fitted with snow filters or whatever. The snow shouldn’t be a problem, should it? We have choppers dropping people in and out of the ski resort all the time.”
“Yeah, his chopper has the filters, but only a fool would risk flying over the mountain range when the visibility is low.” Kane cleared his throat. “He doesn’t plan on being splattered all over the mountainside anytime soon.”
Jenna snorted. Carter was known to be fearless in the chopper and risked his life far too often. Maybe this was a side of him she hadn’t met yet. “That’s good to know.”
TWO
As they drove along Stanton, Jenna kept her attention riveted on the forest. The pine trees dusted with the first powdery snow reminded her of Christmas as a child, and she wished her parents had been alive to meet the man she’d married. She figured they’d approve and pushed back the memories of finding gifts under the tree and scanned the forest for any signs of Maisy Jones.
“Up ahead.” Kane lifted one finger from the steering wheel and pointed. “That must be the truck.”
As Kane turned the Beast around and parked behind the truck, Jenna looked in both directions. The Dodge truck was parked in the middle of nowhere. On one side of Stanton was Stanton Forest and on the other the land spread out from back-to-back ranches. The only houses were the other side of the Triple Z Roadhouse and then a few closer to the motel before habitation joined the outskirts of town. It was unusual for hunters to leave their trucks on this side of the road. Most would park near a forest warden’s station or drive a ways into the forest. The local council maintained a ton of off-road parking lots, placed at the beginning of marked trails for campers and hikers. It seemed unusual for a young woman to leave her truck so far from assistance. She climbed out and followed Kane to the vehicle. The truck was locked. Jenna walked a ways along the highway and then brushed snow away from the dirt on the side of the road. She found footprints in the frozen mud. “I had a hunch. If I decided to walk, I wouldn’t walk on the road, not with eighteen-wheelers flashing by. I’d stick to the verge. The footprints are small and there’s a chance they could belong to Maisy. Why would she leave her truck?”
“Maybe she ran out of gas.” Kane shrugged. “Although she’d just passed the roadhouse, so that makes no sense.” He turned to look at the truck. “I’ll go take a look.”
Jenna followed him. “It’s locked.”
“It’s an old truck, getting into it will be easy.” Kane pulled lockpicks from his pocket and went to work. “Okay, I’m in.” He smiled at her and bent inside the cab, playing with wires.
The engine shook and rattled but didn’t start. Kane straightened and walked around to the back of the truck and bent to examine the exhaust pipe. Interested, Jenna followed. “What are you looking for?”
“Sabotage. Someone wanted this truck to break down.” He pulled on examination gloves and eased a wad of something wrapped in wire from the tailpipe. “I’m surprised it started at all, but the way this is made, rather than the exhaust shooting it out, it expands when hot, blocks the pipe and the engine dies.”
Jenna went to the Beast to grab an evidence bag and held it open for Kane. “If someone did this to her, she’s in big trouble.”
“Yeah, typical serial killer ploy. Make the victim vulnerable and then lure them into your vehicle.” Kane stared into the distance. “Unless they took her down between here and the motel, which is reasonable to assume because once there she’d be safe, Duke won’t be able to track her in the snow. We’ll have to search on foot.”
Jenna pulled out her phone. “Rio, we need to search the side of the road from the abandoned truck. Bring something to clear away the snow.”
“On our way.”Footsteps echoed through the speaker.“I have info on Maisy Jones. She is staying at the motel, but no one has seen her since Monday. I got the manager to check her room, and all her things are there. She took the room on a week-to-week, saying she had a job at the Triple Z Bar. I called them and the proprietor figured I was checking up on her qualifications. He insisted she was trained and had completed an online course to serve liquor here. He said she worked Monday night six till midnight but didn’t show last night. The proprietor locked up when she left just after twelve Monday night and said she was heading for her truck.”He cleared his throat.“I asked what she was wearing. He said jeans and a black sweater. She had a jacket but it wouldn’t have kept her warm in the snow. He mentioned it to her and she told him she had a thicker one back at the motel. I asked if she was carrying a purse and he doesn’t recall.”
Jenna nodded. “Good to know and it fits into the scenario we have here. Kane figures her truck was disabled, so she had to abandon it. She could be fine but I’m not risking it. We’ll need to make sure she’s okay. We have time. It’s not as if we have a ton of work to do. Get here ASAP.” She disconnected.
Jenna stared at the footprints frozen in the damp soil. “It snowed overnight. I went to the bathroom just after midnight and it was snowing, so this happened right after she left the Triple Z Bar.”
