Snowblind Justice

by Cindi Myers

  “Sure. What can I do for you?”

  “Let’s order lunch and I’ll fill you in.”

  They ordered at a window at the back of the room, then collected their food and returned to the table. “Travis asked me to put together a kind of profile of Alex Woodruff,” Emily said when they were situated. “Not as an official profiler, but because I knew him slightly from the university and he hoped I’d have some insights. You probably spent more time with his partner, Tim, than anyone else, so I thought you might have some thoughts I could add to my assessment.”

  Jamie spooned salsa over her tacos. “I never even met Alex,” she said.

  “I know. But I think more information about Tim would help me clarify some things about their relationship.”

  “Sure. I’ll try. What do you need to know?”

  “I read your report, so I know the facts about what happened when Tim and Alex kidnapped you, but I’m more interested in other behavioral things.”

  “Like what?”

  “When you came to, you and your sister were alone in the cabin with Tim?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he told you he was waiting for Alex to return?”

  “That’s right. Well, he never named him, but we knew his partner was Alex.”

  “Did you get the impression that Alex was the leader—that Tim was looking to him to make the decisions?”

  “Yes. Tim got a phone call from his partner—from Alex—who apparently told him he had to kill us by himself. Tim didn’t like this, so then they agreed that Tim would bring us to wherever Alex was waiting, and they would kill us together.”

  “Do you think the idea of the killings started with Alex, or was it Tim’s idea?”

  “Definitely Alex. Tim said the first killing freaked him out, but then he started to like it. Or, at least, he liked getting away with the crimes.”

  “Alex must have recognized a similar personality to his own,” Emily said.

  Jamie nodded. “I guess it’s like they say—birds of a feather flock together.”

  “My understanding is that Tim acted as the decoy, dressed as a woman, while Alex came up out of the woods and attacked women?” Emily asked.

  “Yes. And Tammy Patterson’s description of her ordeal confirms that.” Tammy was a reporter for the Eagle Mountain Examiner who had managed to get away from Alex and Tim after they waylaid her one snowy afternoon.

  “I don’t think the two were equal partners,” Emily said. “Alex was dominant. He’s the man who chose the targets, and probably the one who did the actual killing. Tim was his helper. I wonder if Tim would have eventually killed on his own, without Alex around to goad him into doing it.”

  “I don’t know,” Jamie said. “But I believe Tim was prepared to kill me and Donna on his own. At least, that’s what he told Alex.”

  “How is your sister doing after this ordeal?” Emily asked. Donna was a pleasant young woman with developmental disabilities who worked at Eagle Mountain Grocery.

  “She’s doing good.” Jamie’s smile at the mention of her sister was gentle. “She had some nightmares, but Nate has moved in with us and that’s helped. She gets along really great with him, and she says having him in the house at night makes her feel safer.” She blushed. “He makes me feel safer, too.”

  Emily hadn’t missed that Jamie had been sitting next to Nate Harris at the meeting this morning. “It’s great that the two of you got together,” she said.

  Jamie rotated the small diamond solitaire on the third finger of her left hand. “We’re going to be married in the spring and Donna is almost more excited than I am.”

  “Congratulations.” Emily couldn’t quite hide her surprise. The last she had heard, Jamie and Nate had only recently started dating. “You obviously don’t believe in long engagements.”

  “We were high school sweethearts, you know,” Jamie said. “We broke up when he went away to college. I thought it was because he was eager to be free of me and date other people. He thought he was doing me a favor, not leaving me tied down to a man who wasn’t around. Anyway, I guess we needed that time apart to really appreciate each other.”

  Emily nodded. So Jamie and Nate weren’t strangers who just got together. They had dated and split up before—like her and Brodie. Except the situation with Brodie was entirely different. The circumstances of their split, and everything that had happened afterward, made things so much more awkward between them now.

  Jamie’s radio crackled with words that were, to Emily, unintelligible, but Jamie set down the glass of tea she had been sipping and jumped to her feet, her face pale. “I have to go,” she said.

  “What is it?” Emily asked, as the alarm from the fire station down the street filled the air. “What’s happened?”

  “An avalanche on Dixon Pass,” Jamie said, already moving toward the door. “Gage and Brodie may be caught in it!”

  * * *

  AS THE WAVE of white moved down the hill toward him, Brodie tried to think what he was supposed to do. He had taken a backcountry rescue course once, and he struggled to recall what the instructor had said.

  Then the avalanche of snow was on him, hitting him with the force of a truck, sending him sprawling, struggling for breath. Instinct took over and he began swimming in the snow, fighting to reach the surface before it hardened around him like concrete. He fought hard for each stroke, his thoughts a jumble of images—of Gage’s startled face just before the snow hit, of his mother the last time he had seen her and finally of Emily.

  Emily, the hardness gone out of her eyes when she looked at him, head tilted to look up at him, lips slightly parted in a silent invitation for a kiss...

  Then he popped to the surface of the snowslide, like a surfer thrust forward by the momentum of a wave, gasping in the achingly cold air. A tree branch glanced off his shoulder with a painful blow, then a rock bounced off his head, making him cry out.

  Wrenching his head around, he saw that he was on the very edge of the slide, which had probably saved him. He struggled his way out of the snow’s grip, like a man floundering out of quicksand. “Gage!” he screamed, then louder, “Gage!”

  Relief surged through him as a faint cry greeted him. He fought his way toward it, clawing at the snow with numbed and aching hands, repeatedly calling, then waiting for the response to guide him in the right direction. “Gage! Gage!”

  At last he located the source of the cries, and dug into the snow, first with his hands, then with a tree branch. He uncovered Gage’s leg, the familiar khaki uniform twisted around his calf, then he dug his way up to Gage’s head. When he had cleared away enough snow, he helped Gage sit up. They slumped together in the snow, gasping for air. A thin line of blood trickled from a cut on Gage’s forehead, eventually clotting in the cold.

  “We need to get out of here,” Gage said after many minutes.

  “We need help,” Brodie countered, and shifted to reach his cell phone. The signal wasn’t good, but it might be enough. He dialed 911 and said the words most likely to rush help their way without long explanations. “Officer needs assistance, top of Dixon Pass.”

  The phone slipped from his numb grasp and he watched with an air of detachment as it skidded down the slope. Gage struggled to extract his own phone, then stared at the shattered screen. “They’ll find us,” he said, and lay back on the snow and closed his eyes.

  Brodie wanted to join his friend in lying down for a nap. Fatigue dragged at him like a concrete blanket. He couldn’t remember when he’d been so exhausted. But the danger of freezing out here in the snow was real. “Wake up, Gage,” he said, trying to put some force behind the words. “You don’t want to survive an avalanche only to die of hypothermia.”

  “There are worse ways to go,” Gage said. But he sat up and looked up the slope, to the scarred area that showed the path of the avalanche.

 
“What do you think set it off?” Brodie asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe that sound we heard earlier. That engine backfiring.”

  “Or the gunshot.” The more Brodie thought about that report, the more it sounded to him like a gunshot.

  “Somebody target shooting in the national forest?” Gage suggested. “Sound carries funny in the canyons.”

  “Maybe,” Brodie said. “But what if someone set off the snowslide deliberately?”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because they didn’t like us taking a look at the old ski resort?”

  “I don’t know who would object. And you saw yourself—no one has been down there in weeks. Since before that older snowslide.”

  “Can we find out when that snowslide happened?” Brodie asked.

  “Probably,” Gage said. “Maybe. I don’t really know.” He tilted his head. “Does that sound like a siren to you?”

  It did, and half an hour later a search-and-rescue team had descended and was helping them back up the slope. The SAR director had wanted to strap Brodie and Gage into Stokes baskets and winch them up the slope, but the two victims had persuaded him they were capable of standing and walking out under their own power, with only a little help from the SAR volunteers.

  An hour after that, Brodie was in his guest cabin on the Walker ranch, fortified with a sandwich and coffee, fresh from a hot shower and contemplating a nap.

  A knock on the door interrupted those plans, however. He glanced through the peephole, then jerked open the door. “Emily, what are you doing here?” he asked.

  She moved past him into the room, her face pale against her dark hair. “I wanted to make sure you were all right,” she said.

  “I’m fine.” He rolled his shoulders, testing the statement. “A little bruised and tired, but okay.”

  She touched his arm, and the purpling bruise where he had collided with a tree branch or boulder in his frantic effort to escape the snowslide. That light, silken touch against his bare skin sent a current of heat through him.

  He moved toward her, drawn by the scent of her mingling in the lingering steam from his shower. Her eyes widened, as if she was only just now seeing him—all of him, naked except for a pair of jeans, his skin still damp, droplets lingering in the hair on his chest.

  She jerked her gaze back to his bruised arm. “You should put something on this,” she said, her voice husky.

  “Would you do it for me?”

  “All right.”

  He retreated to the bathroom and fetched the ointment from his first-aid kit. Did he imagine her hand trembled when he handed it to her? Her touch was steady enough as she smoothed the ointment on, so careful and caring, and so incredibly sensuous, as if she was caressing not only his wound, but the invisible hurts inside of him.

  She capped the tube of ointment and raised her eyes to meet his. Time stopped in that moment, and he had the sensation of being in a dream as he slid his arm around her waist and she leaned into him, reaching up to rest her fingers against the side of his neck, rising on her toes to press her lips to his.

  He had a memory of kissing her when she had been a girl, but she kissed like a woman now, sure and wanting, telling him what she desired without the need for words. When she pressed her body to his, he pulled her more tightly against him, and when she parted her lips, he met the thrust of her tongue with his own. He willingly drowned in that kiss, losing himself until he had to break free, gasping, his heart pounding.

  She opened her eyes and stared up at him with a dreamy, dazed expression. Then her vision cleared, eyes opening wider. She let out a gasp and pulled away. “I can’t do this,” she said, and fled, out of his arms and out the door before he had time to react.

  He wanted to go after her but didn’t. He lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, marveling at the twisted turn his life had taken, bringing him back here, to this woman, after so long.

  And wondering where it all might lead.

  Chapter Nine

  Emily read through the first of the surveys her professor had sent for her to review—then read through it again, nothing having registered on the first pass. Her head was too full of Brodie—of the pressure of his lips on hers, the strength of his arms around her, the taste of his kisses. For all she had been enthralled by him five years ago, she had never felt such passion back then. The Brodie she had faced in his cabin yesterday had been more serious, with a depth she hadn’t recognized before. He was stronger—and far more dangerous to her peace.

  At this point in her life, she thought she could have handled a merely physical fling with a fun, hot guy. But she could never think of Brodie as merely a fling. And she didn’t know if she would ever be able to completely trust him with her feelings. Even five years before, as crazy as she was about him, she had never been able to fully believe that his feelings for her were more than superficial. She was another conquest, another victim of his charm. He hadn’t acted particularly torn up when she had turned down his marriage proposal, and he hadn’t made any effort to persuade her to change her mind.

  Even if he hadn’t received the letter she had sent to him later, if he had really loved her, wouldn’t he have kept in touch? He could have used his friendship with Travis as an excuse to at least check on her. But he had simply vanished from her life. That knowledge didn’t leave a good feeling behind, and it made getting involved with him again far too risky.

  But she wasn’t going to think about him now. She had work to do. Determined to focus, she started reading through the survey once more. She had just finished her read-through and was starting to make notes when her cell phone buzzed, startling her.

  Half afraid it might be Brodie, she swiped open the screen, then sagged with relief when she read her brother’s name. “Hi, Travis,” she answered.

  “There’s someone here at the station I think you should talk to,” he said.

  “Who is it?”

  “Ruth Schultz. She says she knows you.”

  Emily searched her memory for the name, but came up blank. “I don’t think—”

  “Hang on a minute... She says you knew her as Ruth Parmenter.”

  “Ruthie!” Emily smiled. They had been classmates in high school. “Why does she want to see me?”

  “It has to do with the case. Could you come down and talk to her?”

  Puzzled, but intrigued, Emily glanced at the folder full of surveys. Not exactly scintillating reading. And not all that pressing, either, not with a murderer on the loose. “Sure. Tell her I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  Twenty-five minutes later, Adelaide looked up from her desk when Emily entered the sheriff’s department. “Mrs. Schultz is in interview room one.” Adelaide pointed down the hall. “She said she can stay until twelve thirty. That’s when her youngest gets out of half-day kindergarten.”

  “All right.” Emily headed past the desk, intending to stop by Travis’s office first to ask what exactly she was supposed to be talking about with Ruthie, but before she could reach the sheriff’s door, Brodie stepped out and intercepted her. “Travis had to leave, so he asked me to sit in with you and Mrs. Schultz,” he said.

  Running into him this way, when she hadn’t had time to prepare, unsettled her. She took a deep, steadying breath, but that was a mistake, since all it did was fill her head with the masculine scent of him—leather and starch and the herbal soap that had surrounded them last night. She stared over his left shoulder and managed to keep her voice steady. “What is this all about?”

  “She says her younger sister, Renee, is missing.”

  Emily had a vague memory of a girl who had been three years behind her in school—a pretty, sandy-haired flirt who had been popular with the older boys, and thus, unpopular with the older girls. “How long has she been missing?”

  “Four days. At first Mrs. Schultz thought s
he had left town when the road opened and got caught when the road closed again. But she hasn’t answered any calls or texts and that’s not like her.”

  “Maybe her phone lost its charge or broke,” Emily said. “Or maybe she’s somewhere she doesn’t want her sister to know about.”

  Brodie frowned. “Maybe. But Mrs. Schultz is worried because she said Renee knew Alex. She went out with him at least once.”

  Emily sucked in her breath. “That is a frightening thought. But why does she want to talk to me?”

  “Because you knew Renee, and you know Alex. Travis explained you were helping us put together a profile of Alex and he thought the information she had might help. But most of all, I think she’s looking for some reassurance from you that her sister is all right.”

  “I don’t think I can give her that,” Emily said.

  “Probably not. But maybe telling her story to a friendly face—someone who isn’t a cop—may help her.”

  “Then of course I’ll talk to her.”

  Emily remembered Ruthie Parmenter as an elfin figure with a mop of curly brown hair and freckles, a star on the school track team, president of the debate club and senior class president. She had talked about going to college on the East Coast, then taking off for Europe with a camera, maybe becoming a war correspondent or a travel journalist or something equally exciting and adventurous.

  The woman who looked up when Emily and Brodie entered the interview room was still lithe and freckle-faced, though her hair had been straightened and pulled back from her face by a silver clip. She wore a tailored blouse and jeans, and an anxious expression. “Emily, it’s so good to see you,” she said, standing and leaning over the table to give Emily a hug. “You still look just the same. I’d have recognized you anywhere.”

  Emily wasn’t so sure she would have recognized Ruthie. Her former classmate looked older and more careworn, though maybe that was only from worrying about her sister. She indicated Brodie. “This is Agent Brodie Langtry, with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.”