Snowblind Justice

by Cindi Myers

“And he’s going to blame law enforcement for the violence,” Brodie said. “We’re making him do this because we won’t leave him alone.”

  “Yes,” Emily said. “I think you’re right.”

  Travis looked back toward the Volvo, the silence stretching between them. Dwight shifted from one foot to the other. The rumble of the road machinery sounded very far away, muffled by distance and the walls of snow.

  “Dwight, take Emily back to the ranch, please,” Travis said. “Brodie and I will wait for the wrecker to tow the car to our garage for processing.”

  Emily stiffened, and Brodie expected her to argue with her brother, but she apparently saw the sense in not standing out here in the cold with nothing to do. She headed toward Dwight’s cruiser, leaving the deputy to follow.

  Brodie waited until Dwight had driven away and he and Travis were alone before he spoke. “If you have something to say to me, say it,” he said.

  Travis took a step toward Brodie, the brim of his hat shading his face, hiding his expression. Brodie braced himself for a dressing-down. Travis would tell him he had no business sleeping with Emily, that he was here to do a job and not to seduce his sister, that he had used their friendship to take advantage of Emily—nothing Brodie hadn’t already told himself or heard before, five years ago, when he and Travis had also argued about Brodie’s relationship with Emily. He would let Travis get out all his words and not try to defend himself. Once Travis had exhausted his anger, maybe they could have a civil discussion about Emily and Brodie’s feelings for her.

  But Travis didn’t say anything. He reared back and belted Brodie in the chin, sending him staggering.

  Brodie let out a yelp of surprise and managed to stay upright. He rubbed his aching jaw and stared at the sheriff, who was flushed and breathing hard, hands at his sides, still balled into fists. “I reckon you think I deserve that,” Brodie said.

  “You don’t think you do?”

  “I had a long talk with your sister last night—before we went to bed together. She told me about the baby.” He paused, gathering his emotions. The reality that Emily had been pregnant with his baby—that he could have been a father—was only just beginning to sink in. “I never knew, I swear. She said she wrote to me, but I never got the letter. If I had, you wouldn’t have been able to keep me away from her.”

  Travis glared at him, wary.

  “You know I asked her to marry me, right?” Brodie said.

  Travis nodded.

  “And she turned me down. I didn’t dump her—she dumped me. But I would have come back to help her with the baby—in whatever way she wanted me to help.”

  He could tell the minute the fight went out of Travis. The sheriff’s shoulders sagged and he bowed his head. “I’m sorry I let my temper get the best of me,” he said.

  Brodie rubbed his jaw again. “Maybe it was good for both of us.” He offered his hand.

  Travis stared at Brodie’s hand. “Maybe it’s none of my business, but what happens with you and Emily now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. A lot of that is up to her. But it’s not going to be a repeat of last time, I promise. Is that good enough for you?”

  Travis grasped his hand, then pulled him close and thumped him on the back. “You and Emily are adults, so what you do is your business,” he said. He pulled away and his eyes met Brodie’s—hard eyes full of meaning. “But if you hurt her again, I promise, I will hunt you down.”

  Brodie had no doubt of the truth behind those words. “You don’t have to worry,” he said. “Now come on. The killer is the only man you need to worry about hunting down right now.”

  * * *

  “YOUR FIANCÉ ATE my prosciutto.”

  Saturday afternoon, Emily and Lacy looked up from the place cards they were hand-lettering for that night’s wedding rehearsal dinner. The caterer, Bette, stood before them, hands on her hips and a stormy expression in her eyes. “How do you know Travis ate it?” Lacy asked.

  “Because I caught him finishing off the last of it before he headed out the door this morning.”

  Lacy set aside the stack of place cards. “The poor man has been working so much, eating at odd hours. I hope you didn’t fuss at him too much.”

  “I didn’t. But I need that prosciutto for the dinner tonight.”

  “If you think the grocery in Eagle Mountain will have it, I can run and get it for you,” Emily said. “I need to go to the office supply store, anyway.”

  “They don’t have it,” Bette said. “But Iris at the Cake Walk said she had some she would sell me. If you could fetch it for me, that would be a big help. I have too much to do to get ready for tonight to leave.”

  “Of course I’ll get it.” Emily looked at the place cards spread out in front of her. “Lacy and I are almost finished here.”

  “Don’t go to town by yourself,” Lacy said. “Find one of the ranch hands to go with you.”

  “All right.” Emily wanted to protest that she would be fine on her own, but the other women Alex had killed would have probably said the same thing. And the possibility that the EW on Alex’s list might mean her made her even more cautious.

  She and Lacy finished the place cards, each hand-lettered, with a tiny silk rose glued to the corner. “They turned out really nice,” Emily said as she passed the last of the cards over to Lacy.

  “They did.” Lacy sighed. For a bride on the eve of her wedding day, she didn’t look very happy.

  “What’s wrong?” Emily asked.

  Lacy looked up, her eyes shiny with tears. “I’m being silly. I mean, women have died, and here I am, worrying about my wedding. It’s ridiculous.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes, blotting the tears.

  “You’re not being silly.” Emily squeezed Lacy’s hand. “The wedding is going to be beautiful. By tomorrow afternoon, you’ll be married and it will be beautiful.”

  “I’m so worried something is going to happen to mess things up,” she said. “Not just the wedding, but Travis—this killer hates him.” She sniffed. “I know he has a dangerous job, and I told myself I could handle that, but when I think about something happening to him...” She pressed her lips together and looked away.

  “Travis is smart and careful, and he loves you so much,” Emily said. “Nothing is going to happen to him.” She said a silent prayer that this would be true.

  Lacy nodded and stood. “You’re right. And my worrying won’t accomplish anything.” She gathered the place cards into a neat pile. “Thanks for your help with these. I think I’ll go see if Bette needs me to do anything in the kitchen.”

  Emily wished she had had more to offer her friend than words. If only she could figure out where Alex was hiding. Finding and arresting him would allow Travis and Lacy to start their marriage off right, with a honeymoon away from all this stress and no lingering worries about local women dying.

  She gathered her purse, slipped on her coat and went in search of someone to accompany her to town. She searched the barns and outbuildings, and stopped to check on Witchy, who was contentedly munching hay, her leg showing no signs of further inflammation. No one was at the bunkhouse or in the machine shed. Maybe the men had decided to make themselves scarce while the last frantic preparations for tomorrow’s wedding were being completed.

  On her way back from the barn she walked past the row of guest cabins. The door to Brodie’s cabin opened and he stepped out onto the porch. Odd that he’d be here this time of day. “Brodie!” she called.

  He turned to face her and she winced. The left side of his jaw was red and swollen. “What happened to you?” she asked, hurrying up the steps to him.

  He gingerly touched his jaw. “I put ice on it, hoping to get the swelling down.”

  “What happened?” When she had left him and Travis on Dixon Pass, they had been waiting for the wrecker to arrive.

  “It’s no
big deal.” He took her arm and urged her down the steps alongside him. “By tomorrow you won’t even know it happened.”

  “You’re not answering my question.” She studied the injury more closely. She was no expert, but she was pretty sure someone had punched him. “Who hit you?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Had he tried to arrest someone and they fought back? No, he wouldn’t bother hiding that information from her. In fact, she could think of only one person he might try to shield. “Did Travis punch you?” The last word came out as a squeak—she couldn’t quite hold back her shock at the idea. Travis was so even-tempered. So aggravatingly calm almost all of the time.

  But he definitely hadn’t been pleased to find her and Brodie together this morning.

  “It’s no big deal,” Brodie said again.

  “Did you hit him back?” She clutched at his arm. “Lacy is going to be furious if you broke Travis’s nose or something on the eve of the wedding.”

  “No, I didn’t hit him back.” He stopped walking and turned to face her. “I figured he needed the one punch to let off some of the pressure that’s been building up with this case.”

  “Then he should go split wood or something—not punch you.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We cleared the air, and everything is okay now.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  He caressed her shoulders and spoke more softly. “I told him I never got your letter about the baby—that if I had, I never would have left you to deal with that alone. I still hate that you had to go through that by yourself.”

  The pain in his voice brought a lump to her throat. She moved in closer and his arms went around her. They couldn’t do anything to change the past, but at least now she knew he really hadn’t deserted her when she needed him most. She wondered what would have happened if he had received her letter and come back to her. Would they have married, anyway? She knew she’d been right to turn down his proposal, but would knowing a child was on the way have changed her mind? She closed her eyes and pushed the thought away. The answer to that question didn’t matter now.

  Brodie patted her back. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Travis still shouldn’t have hit you,” she mumbled against his chest.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It was something we both needed, I think.”

  She raised her head to look at him. “Men are weird.”

  He laughed. “Now that that’s settled, what are you up to?”

  “I promised Bette I’d run to town and pick up some prosciutto for her. I was looking for someone to go with me. Want to volunteer?”

  “Absolutely. What is Bette doing with prosciutto?”

  “Something wonderful, I’m sure. It’s for the rehearsal dinner tonight.”

  “I’d almost forgotten there’s a wedding tomorrow.”

  “How could you forget? There’s a big silver-and-white wreath on every door in the house—and the door of your cabin. Not to mention the wedding gifts in the hall and everyone running around like crazy people trying to get ready.”

  “I said almost. Besides, I’ve been focused on other things.”

  Right. Everything always came back to the killer. Alex would probably be thrilled to know how much he was directing all their lives. She couldn’t even go to the store by herself because of him. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go. I have a million things to do before the dinner tonight.”

  On the way into town they didn’t discuss Alex, or the wedding, or even the weather—all topics Emily felt had been exhausted in recent weeks. Instead, they talked about their lives on the other side of Colorado—she in Fort Collins and he in Denver. “In the spring there’s a great farmers market every weekend,” she told him. “I go sometimes just to hang out and people watch.”

  “Do you ever go hiking out around Horsetooth Falls?” he asked.

  “It’s been a while, but it’s a great area.”

  “We should hike it together sometime,” he said.

  Her heart gave a funny little flutter. “Yeah. Yeah, we should.”

  He parked at the curb in front of the Cake Walk Café and followed Emily inside. The lunch crowd had dissipated, but people sat at a couple of tables, nursing cups of coffee or polishing off the last of a meal. The café’s owner, Iris Desmet, waved from behind a counter at the back of the room. She disappeared into the kitchen and emerged a moment later with a paper-wrapped parcel. “I warned Bette that I’ve had this in my freezer for a while,” she said as she punched keys on the cash register. “But she said she was desperate, so I told her she could have it for a discount.”

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” Emily said. “Will we see you at the wedding tomorrow?”

  “Of course. There’s nothing like a wedding to cheer people up, and we could certainly use a little of that—though I hear the road may open tomorrow, and the weather forecast doesn’t show any more snow for a couple of weeks. Maybe the rest of the winter won’t be as hard.”

  “I hope that’s true.” Emily handed over her credit card and waited while Iris swiped it, then she signed the receipt and tucked the package of prosciutto into her purse.

  On the sidewalk, Dwight hailed them from across the street. “I thought you’d want to know what we found in the car once we started going through it,” he said.

  “Let me guess,” Brodie said. “One of the Ice Cold calling cards.”

  Dwight nodded. “Better than that—we found some good prints in the paint. They match ones on file for Alex Woodruff.”

  “I don’t think we had any doubt who was responsible, but it’s nice to have more evidence,” Brodie said.

  “When you get a chance, we’ve got a couple of questions for the CBI profiler.”

  Emily put a hand on Brodie’s back to get his attention. “You two talk shop. I’m going to the office supply store to pick up a few things.”

  Brodie frowned. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  “And the store is only two doors down.” She pointed to the building with the oversize gold paperclip over the door. “You can see it from here.”

  He nodded, then turned back to Dwight. Smiling to herself, she hurried toward the office supply. She couldn’t say why she was so happy—there was still a killer on the loose, the highway leading out of town was still closed and everyone around her was keyed up over the wedding tomorrow. And it wasn’t as if she and Brodie had resolved anything. She felt closer to him now, and they’d had a night of great sex. Maybe after this was all over, they’d get together again to hike or, who knows, maybe even go out on a real date. That was still no reason for the almost giddy lightness that made her want to skip down the sidewalk and had her fighting back a goofy smile.

  The bells on the door of the Paperclip jangled as she entered. The owner, Eleanor Davis, who had taught Emily when she was in third grade, waved from in front of a display of earbuds and went back to assisting an older gentleman. Emily wandered down the aisles of office supplies, admiring a beautiful pen here or an attractive notebook there. She could have spent hours in here, running her hands over the displays and breathing in the scents of ink and paper, but settled for choosing a package of colorful note cards, a sturdy wire-bound journal and a purple gel ink pen. What could she say—some women experienced euphoria when buying new shoes, while office supplies did it for her.

  Outside on the sidewalk, she almost collided with an elderly man. “So sorry, miss,” he said, holding out his hands defensively. He stared out at her from behind thick glasses, his expression confused and his eyes bloodshot. His gray hair hung lank to his shoulders and a wisp of a gray beard stood out against sallow skin and sagging jowls. “Clumsy of me, I...” He looked around, blinking. “I think I need some help.”

  The poor dear looked really out of it. Emily glanced across the street, hoping to see Dwight
and Brodie and wave them over, but they must have gone back into the café—probably to get out of the biting wind. She shifted her purchases to one hand. “What can I do to help you?” she asked.

  “It’s my car. There’s something wrong with it.”

  “Let me call someone for you.” She fumbled in her purse for her phone.

  “No.” He put out a hand to stop her. “Don’t go to so much trouble. I know what’s wrong. I just need to find the auto parts store.”

  “There’s one out on the highway,” she said. “Near the motel. But it’s a little far to walk in this weather.”

  “You could give me a ride,” he said. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but it would help me so much.”

  She glanced toward the café again. “I’m with someone,” she said. “But I’m sure he wouldn’t mind giving you a ride—”

  “No!” The man’s hand clamped around her wrist—hard. Startled, she stared at him. The confused look had vanished from his eyes, and he no longer looked so old. Something sharp pricked her side—a knife. “Come with me now, and don’t make a scene,” he said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Emily opened her mouth to scream, but no sound emerged. The old man put his arm around her, pulling her close. The odors of wood smoke and sweat stung her nose, and the knife dug into her side, so that it hurt to even breathe deeply. She dropped her purse, the contents spilling out onto the sidewalk, the package of ham coming to rest in a snowbank. “That’s right, come along nice and easy,” the man—she was sure it was Alex—crooned.

  He still looked like an innocent old man, but nothing about him was harmless. He had a grip like iron—she imagined him breaking her wrist if she tried to jerk away. And then he would slash her open with the knife before she had time to run.

  “Hey!” The shout boomed out, making her jump. Alex turned, dragging her around with him, and she stared as Brodie raced toward them. She had the sensation of being somewhere outside herself, watching a slow-motion movie—Alex opening his mouth to say something, Brodie reaching into his coat and pulling out a gun—the knife pressing harder against her side.