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Just then, the door opened, and Ash’s big body filled the frame. His expression was a storm cloud when he spotted Connelly. He was on the phone but covered the receiver with one of his massive hands. “Hey, dumbass. What the fuck did I tell you about sleeping on her porch?”
Rylan snickered and pulled open the other side of the double doors.
Connelly ignored Ash and followed Rylan inside to where Zak, Donovan, and Pierce St. James were leaning over a map. “Jesus. Ash is grumpier than usual today. What’s going on?”
“Missing woman,” Zak said and marked off a section of the map. “She went for a run this morning and hasn’t been seen since. RWCR is mobilizing with the sheriff’s department to assist with the search.”
Connelly’s heart dropped into his gut. If Ash was this wound up, he likely suspected this woman was the next victim. And if the killer continued to follow the pattern of the deaths from The Shadows Within, then the next one would be death by claustrophobia.
The character, Rebecca Thompson, was buried alive.
Jesus.
He set down his laptop bag and pulled off his jacket. “What can I do to help?”
Zak didn’t look away from the map and marked off another section that Pierce pointed to. “What do you know about search and rescue?”
“K9 search and rescue? Not much,” he admitted. “But I took part in more than a few rescue ops in the military. Put me to work.”
Zak studied him for a moment, then finally nodded toward the blond man in a backward USMC baseball cap sitting at a bank of computers in the corner of the room. “All right. Hook up with Sawyer. He’s our guy in the chair. You can help him coordinate the search effort.” He folded the map and grabbed a bright red windbreaker with RWCR K9 Search & Rescue printed in white on the back. “Sawyer, we’re headed out to the search grid.”
Sawyer waved a hand in acknowledgment but didn’t turn away from the computers. “Radio when you get there.”
Connelly watched them go, then walked over to Sawyer. A chocolate lab lay under his desk, snoozing with her head resting on his foot. She opened her eyes and watched his approach, but Sawyer didn’t seem to notice.
Did he tap the guy on the shoulder? Clear his throat?
He decided on the latter. “Hey, I?—”
“Jesus!” Sawyer jumped in his seat and pulled off his headset. When he turned, his pale blue eyes stared past Connelly’s shoulder. “Warn a guy next time.”
“Sorry. I didn’t realize you…” Flustered, Connelly trailed off and looked up at the monitors. They showed colored maps, search team rosters, and a profile of the missing woman. “How do you…?” Again, he trailed off, unsure of the etiquette. Was it rude to ask a blind person how they did something a seeing person didn’t think twice about?
Sawyer’s scowl softened into a grin. “Nah, it’s okay, man. I’m used to people sneaking up on me. You were gonna ask how I use the computer, right?” He tapped his headphones. “Screenreader. And I’m not completely blind. I can see movement. It’s complicated.” He spoke in rapid-fire sentences as he went back to typing out commands on a brail keyboard. “You’re Veronica’s friend, the author, right? Connelly Davis? I’ve listened to some of your books. Creepy stuff.”
“Uh, yeah. Zak sent me over to help.”
“You got any search management experience?”
“I was a Combat Rescue Officer in the Air Force.”
“Chair Force, huh? Meh. I guess that’ll do.”
“I spent more time jumping into hostile environments than in a chair. I have the knees of an eighty-year-old to prove it.” Connelly chuckled and pulled up a chair. “You were a Marine?”
Sawyer grinned again. “What do you mean, were? Once a Marine, always a Marine. But, yeah, I’m medically retired thanks to the sniper’s bullet that blinded me. Are you up to speed?”
“All I know is there’s a missing woman.”
Sawyer typed something, and the woman’s profile came up on the main screen. “Her name is Lucy Harper. Thirty-two years old, five-eight, around a hundred thirty pounds. Brunette with heterochromia—one blue eye and one brown. She has no kids or a significant other and works as a park ranger in the Redwoods National Park.”
“So this isn’t just a case of a hiker who took a wrong turn.”
“Nope. Lucy Harper knows her way around the woods. She lives in the next town over but habitually drives to the state park here for her morning run on her way to work.” Sawyer put another map on the main screen next to Lucy’s profile. “She was last seen arriving at the Canyon Ridge Trailhead at six-thirty this morning. At nine, she didn’t show up to work, which, according to her boss, is unlike her. He called the sheriff’s office, and a deputy found the car at the trailhead with blood on the door.”
Sawyer pulled up a photo of the Subaru Outback and the spatter of blood across the pearly white paint of the driver’s side door.
“Looks like someone took her by surprise and hit her over the head.”
