Snowblind Justice Read online

  “Once.”

  A sharp pain pinched her chest. Who was this woman who had captured his heart? And why did it hurt to hear about her? Emily wet her lips. “When was that?”

  “A long time ago.”

  She thought she heard real regret in his voice, but why was she feeling sorry for him? “I don’t believe you,” she said. “You can have any woman you want. If you commit to one, you have to give up all the others, so why should you?”

  “What about you?” he asked. “Are you serious about someone? Or have you ever been?”

  He was the only man she’d made the mistake of falling for. “I’m getting my degree and focusing on my career. I don’t have time for a relationship.”

  He moved closer, blocking the firelight, the sheepskin collar of his heavy leather coat brushing against the nylon of her down-filled parka. Layers of fabric separated them, yet she felt the contact, like current flowing through an electrical cord once it was plugged in. She couldn’t make out his features in the darkness, but was sure he was watching her. “Now who’s avoiding commitment?” he asked.

  She told herself she should move away, but couldn’t make her feet obey the command. “I’m not avoiding anything,” she said.

  “Except me. You don’t have to run from me, Emily. I would never hurt you.”

  Hurt wasn’t always a matter of intent—maturity had taught her that, at least. This knowledge made it easier for her to forgive him, but she wasn’t going to forget anytime soon how easily he had wounded her. She would have told anyone that she had gotten over him long ago, then he showed up here at the ranch and all the old feelings came surging back like the tide rushing in. No good would come of revisiting all that.

  “I have to go check on the food,” she said, finally forcing herself to take a step back, and then another.

  He didn’t come after her, just stood and watched her run away. Maybe he didn’t pursue her because he didn’t really want her, she told herself as she hurried toward the buffet table.

  Or maybe he didn’t chase her because he was so sure that if he bided his time, he could have her, anyway. That, on some level, she had never really stopped being his.

  * * *

  BRODIE LET EMILY walk away. Maybe what they both needed right now was space. He had never expected to be so drawn to her. He had thought he was over her years ago. He’d been angry and hurt when she turned down his marriage proposal, and had spent more than a few months nursing his hurt feelings and wounded pride.

  And now that he was back in town, Emily’s family acted as if he was the villain in the whole bad scene. Had Emily made up some story about him dumping her, instead of admitting that she’d turned him down? She didn’t strike him as the type to lie about something like that, but as he had told her, they had both done a lot of growing up in the past five years.

  He helped himself to a kabob from the buffet table and tried his hand grilling it over the fire. Gage, a skewered sausage in hand, joined him. Of the two brothers, Gage had been the friendliest since Brodie’s return to Eagle Mountain. “How’s it going?” Gage asked.

  “Okay.” Brodie glanced around to make sure no one could overhear. “I’m trying to figure out why your family is giving me the cold shoulder. I mean, they’re all polite, but not exactly welcoming.”

  Gage slanted a look at him. “You dated Emily for a while, right?”

  “Yes. Five years ago. And then we broke up. It happens. That doesn’t make me the bad guy.”

  Gage rotated the sausage and moved it closer to the flames. “I was away at school when that all went down, so I don’t know much about it,” he said. “I do know when I asked about it when I came home for the holidays, everybody clammed up about it. I got the impression you dumped Emily and broke her heart. You were one of Travis’s best friends, so I guess he saw it as some kind of betrayal.”

  “I asked your sister to marry me and she turned me down,” Brodie said. “That’s not exactly dumping her.”

  “Does Travis know that?”

  “I’m sure he does. Emily didn’t have any reason to lie about it.”

  Gage shook his head. “Then maybe you’d better ask Travis what’s on his mind. You know him—he keeps his feelings to himself, most of the time.”

  “Maybe I will.” But not tonight. Brodie looked across the fire to where Travis sat with Lacy in the golden glow of the fire, their heads together, whispering. The sheriff looked happier and more relaxed than he had since Brodie had arrived. Amazing what love could do for a person.

  Someone shouting made him tense, and he turned to see Dwight helping Rob Allerton into the circle of firelight. Rob dropped onto a hay bale and pushed Dwight away, as Paige rushed to him. “What happened?” she asked, gingerly touching a darkening bruise on his forehead.

  “I left my phone back in our cabin and decided to go get it so I could show someone some pictures I have on it,” Rob said. “As I neared the ranch house, I noticed someone moving around by the cars. At first I thought it was someone leaving the party early, but as I drew nearer, the guy bolted and ran straight at me. He had a tire iron or a club or something like that in his hand.” Rob touched the bruise and winced. “I guess I’m lucky he only struck me a glancing blow, but I fell, and by the time I got to my feet and went looking for him, he had vanished.” He looked up and found Travis in the crowd gathered around him. “I think he did something to your sheriff’s department SUV.”

  Brodie followed Travis, Gage and most of the rest of the guests over to the parking area in front of the house. Travis’s SUV was parked in the shadows at the far end of a line of cars and trucks. The sheriff played the beam of a flashlight over the vehicle, coming to rest on the driver’s-side door. Someone had spray-painted a message in foot-high, bright red letters: ICE COLD.

  Chapter Seven

  Emily dragged herself into the sheriff’s department the next morning, the two cups of coffee she had forced down with breakfast having done little to put her in a better mood. She hadn’t slept much after the party broke up last night—something she probably shared in common with everyone else in attendance at this meeting the sheriff had called. Most of the law enforcement personnel who gathered in the conference room had searched the ranch and surrounding area for Alex Woodruff late into the previous night. Once again, after leaving his blood-red taunt on Travis’s SUV, he had disappeared into the darkness.

  She took her place to Travis’s left at the conference table, nodding in greeting at the others around the table and avoiding lingering too long when her gaze fell on Brodie. She had missed him at breakfast this morning. Her mother had mentioned that he’d left early with Travis. Though the two men hadn’t been friendly since Brodie’s arrival at the ranch, they did seem to work together well.

  Her feelings for Brodie seemed to fluctuate between regret and relief. Regret that they couldn’t pick up the easy exchange they had enjoyed Tuesday evening in the sunroom. Relief that she didn’t have to revisit the tension between them beside the bonfire last night. Other people got through situations like this and were able to put the past behind them. She and Brodie would learn to do that, too.

  Travis stood and everyone fell silent. “I think you all know my sister, Emily,” he said. “She is acquainted with Alex Woodruff and is completing her master’s degree in behavioral economics. I’ve asked her to sit in on some meetings, to help us try to get into Alex’s mind in hopes of anticipating his next move.”

  “I pity you, being in that guy’s mind,” someone—she thought it might be Ryder Stewart—said from the other end of the table.

  Travis ignored the comment and projected a map of Rayford County onto a wall screen. “As I believe all of you know, someone—we’re operating on the assumption that it was Alex—vandalized my department SUV last night at my family’s ranch during a party.”

  “How did he get by the security you had set up?” wildl
ife officer Nate Harris asked.

  “He parked around a curve, out of sight of the guards,” Travis said. “He approached the ranch house on foot, and circled around through the trees. We were able to trace his movements that far at first light.”

  “He must have run track.” Rob Allerton had joined them this morning, the bruise on his forehead an angry purple, matching the half-moons under his eyes. “He raced out of there like a gazelle.”

  Travis projected a color photo of his SUV onto the wall screen. The large red letters stood out against the Rayford County Sheriff’s logo. “He’s always enjoyed taunting us. This seems to represent an acceleration of that.”

  “He knows we know who he is and he doesn’t care,” Ryder Stewart declared.

  “He thinks he’s better than all of us,” Brodie said.

  “We’re looking for anywhere Alex might be hiding,” Travis said. “We’ve ruled out the two sets of forest service summer cabins where we know he and Tim Dawson spent time before.” He circled these sites in red on the image. “We know Alex and Tim used an unoccupied vacation home as a hideout previously, so we’re working our way through unoccupied homes but we haven’t hit anything there, either. We’ve also published Alex’s picture in the paper, on posters around town and on all the social media outlets. We’ve alerted people to let us know if they spot him.”

  “If he’s using someone’s vacation home, the neighbors are bound to see him,” Dwight said.

  “Maybe he’s using a disguise,” Deputy Jamie Douglas said.

  “Alex was in the drama club at the university,” Emily said. “But I don’t think he would hide in a place with a lot of people—not now when he knows you’ve identified him. He takes risks, but they’re calculated risks.” She had lain awake for a long time last night thinking about this, and searched for the right words to share her conclusions. “He knows you’re looking for him, and he wants to be free to come and go as he pleases. That freedom is important to him—he has to be in charge, not allowing you to dictate his movements. Showing up at the ranch last night and vandalizing your vehicle is another way of asserting that freedom.”

  “He could have moved into an abandoned mine,” Nate said from his seat beside Jamie. “There are plenty of those around.”

  Travis nodded. “We’ll check those out.”

  “He could be in a cave,” Dwight said.

  “He could be,” Travis said. “But remember—wherever he is has to be accessible by a road.”

  Emily leaned forward, trying to get a better look at the map. “What’s that symbol on the map, near Dixon Pass?” she asked.

  Travis studied the image, then rested the pointer on a stick figure facing downhill. “Do you mean this? I think it’s the symbol for an old ski area.”

  “Dixon Downhill,” Gage said. “I think it’s been closed since the eighties. When they widened the highway in the nineties, they covered over the old access road into the place.”

  “I think part of the old ski lift is still there,” Dwight said. “But I’m pretty sure they bulldozed all the buildings.”

  “Gage, you and Dwight check it out,” Travis said. “See if there are any habitable buildings there where Alex might be holed up.”

  “I’d like to go with them,” Brodie said.

  “All right,” Travis agreed. “Dwight, you and Nate can work on the mines.” He gave out assignments to the others on the team.

  “What would you like me to do?” Emily asked, as the others gathered up their paperwork and prepared to depart.

  “You can go home and write up your thoughts on Alex,” Travis said.

  A report he would dutifully read, file away and consider his obligation to her met. Her brother might have agreed to let Brodie ask for her help, but that didn’t mean he was going to let her get very involved. “I’d like to talk to Jamie,” she said. “She spent time with Alex’s partner, Tim, when the two kidnapped her and her sister.”

  “Her statement is in the file I gave you,” Travis said.

  “I want to talk to her,” she said, with more force behind the words.

  Travis gave her a hard look, but she looked him in the eye and didn’t back down. “All right,” he said. “Set it up with her.”

  “I’ll see if she can meet me for lunch.” She started to leave, but he stopped her.

  “Emily?”

  She turned toward him again. “Yes?”

  “Alex Woodruff is very dangerous. Don’t get any ideas about trying to get close to him on your own.”

  A shudder went through her. “Why would I want to get close to a man who’s murdered eight women? Travis, do you really think I’m that stupid?”

  “You’re not stupid,” he said. “But you tend to always think the best of people.”

  She wondered if he was talking about more than Alex now. Was he also warning her away from Brodie?

  “I’ll be careful,” she said. “And I won’t do anything foolish.” Not when it came to either man.

  * * *

  TO REACH WHAT was left of the Dixon Downhill ski area, Brodie and Gage had to park at the barricades closing off the highway, strap on snowshoes and walk up the snow-covered pavement to a break in a concrete berm on the side of the road, where an old emergency access road lay buried under snow. Reflectors on trees defined the route. The two men followed the reflectors to a bench that was the remains of the road that had once led to the resort.

  The resort itself had been situated in a valley below the pass, with lift-accessed skiing on both sides. “You can still see the cuts for the old ski runs from here.” Gage pointed out the wide path cut through stands of tall spruce and fir.

  “Is that the lift line there?” Brodie indicated a cable running through the trees to their right. A couple of rusting metal chairs dangled crookedly from the braided line.

  “I think so. There’s the lift shack, at the top.”

  The small building that housed the engine that ran the old rope-tow lift really was a shack, cobbled together from rough lumber and tin, a rusting pipe jutting from the roof that was probably the engine exhaust. Brodie took out a pair of binoculars and glassed the area. From this angle, at least, it didn’t look as if anyone had been down there in a long time.

  “They used old car motors to power some of these things,” Gage said. “I’d like to get a look at this one.”

  “Does the lift still run?” Brodie asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Gage said. “Though if a mechanic messed with it, he might be able to get it going again. Those old motors weren’t that sophisticated, and it’s been out of the weather.”

  Gage led the way as they descended into the valley. With no traffic on the closed highway above, and thick snow muffling their steps, the only sounds were the occasional click of the ski poles they were using against a chunk of ice, and their labored breathing on the ascent.

  Brodie tried not to think of the mountain of snow on either side of them. “Did you check with the avalanche center before we came down here?” he asked.

  “No,” Gage said. “We probably should have, but I was too eager to get down here and see what we could see.” He stopped and glanced up toward the highway. “We’ll be all right as long as he doesn’t try to climb up and disturb the snowpack up there.”

  Brodie hoped Gage was right. After ten minutes of walking, they were forced to stop, the old road completely blocked by a snowslide, the wall of snow rising ten feet over their heads. “I think it’s safe to say no one has been down here in a while,” Gage said. “This didn’t just happen.” Dirt and debris dusted the top of the slide, and the ends of tree branches jutting out of the snow were dry and brown.

  “At least now we know no one has been here,” Gage said.

  “Is this road the only way in?” Brodie asked.

  “In summer, it might be possible to climb down the roc
k face from the highway,” Gage said. “Though I wouldn’t want to try it.” He shook his head. “Even if Alex could get here, there’s no place for him to stay. That lift shack isn’t going to offer much shelter. At this elevation nighttime temperatures would be brutal. And the only way in and out is to go up this road—which is blocked—or scramble straight up.”

  “Wherever he is, it’s somewhere he can go with ease,” Brodie said. “This isn’t it.”

  Gage clapped him on the back. “Come on. Let’s go back.”

  The trip up was slower going, in deep snow up a steep grade. “We should have thought to bring a snowmobile,” Gage said when they paused halfway up to rest.

  Brodie took a bottle of water from his pack and drank deeply. “And then if Alex had been down there, he would have heard us coming miles away.”

  “He’s not down there.” Gage looked around at the world of white. “I wish I knew where he is.”

  Brodie started to replace the water bottle in his pack when a loud report made him freeze. “What was that?” he asked.

  “It sounded like a gunshot.” Gage put a hand on his weapon.

  “Not close,” Brodie said. “Maybe someone target shooting?”

  “It sounded like it’s up on the highway,” Gage said. “Maybe a blowout on one of the road machines?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Brodie said. They started walking again, but had gone only a few steps when an ominous rumble sent his heart into his throat. He took off running, even as a wave of snow and debris flowed down the slope toward them.

  Chapter Eight

  Emily arranged to meet Deputy Jamie Douglas for lunch at a new taco place on the south end of town. The former gas station had half a dozen tables inside, and a busy drive-up window. Jamie, her dark hair in a neat twist at the nape of her neck, waved to Emily from one of the tables. “Thanks for agreeing to talk to me,” Emily said, joining the deputy at the table.