Alaskan Christmas Cold Case

by Sarah Varland

  If it was something in the water, Erynn would start drinking bottled. She had no desire to take a risk like that, had no time for it anyway.

  Because her entire life from the age of sixteen on had been about one day finding the man who’d killed her friends and her father.

  She wasn’t going to give up now. Not when she finally had a lead to chase.

  SIX

  Noah inhaled to catch his breath when they finally reached the top of the trail. The mountain pass stretched out in front of them, the glacier field vast and covered in December snow.

  If they were able to remember where the body had been, despite it being three years later with a fresh layer of snow, it would prove they had someone on their side.

  Noah had never doubted God’s presence, not the way he knew some people struggled with it. No, God was real, present, all-powerful. Those aspects of faith were so ingrained into his consciousness that he doubted he’d ever waver on those points. But God being full of love and caring?

  Eh, Noah could never be sure. He sort of tried to live the best he could, to trust God for his salvation since he was aware of the fact that it was by grace alone, but he assumed he was responsible for sorting out his own life. The details were Noah’s to handle. Surely, God had bigger issues to deal with.

  Like that of the death of a woman who lay somewhere in front of them. Ten yards, twenty yards? Less? The topography of the glacier wasn’t static, and the changes in the last few years could be numerous.

  He’d reacted to Erynn’s desire to come up here. Had he been thinking clearly, he’d have gotten a team together, found some people skilled in glacier travel and been ready for the body recovery. There was no need to be there until then.

  Noah turned, about to tell Erynn they had come for nothing. But she wasn’t beside him anymore. She was ten feet away, closer to the glacier’s edge than he was, thought her feet were still on solid ground, underneath a layer of snow. At least he thought so. She was staring out ahead of her and the expression on her face was...

  Crushed. That was the only word that came to mind. In that second, when she must not have realized he was watching, he saw more vulnerability than he had in the entire time he’d known her. Saw the way the years of feeling hunted, of wondering when her worst nightmare was going to return, had taken their toll.

  He stepped closer. She jerked at the noise his spikes made on the ice, turned toward him, her usual confident mask perfectly in place again.

  Noah wanted her to trust him enough to be without it. Didn’t want her to hurt. But if she did, he wanted to know. Wanted her to want that, too.

  He needed to hike. Alone. Sort out all these feelings and figure out why a secret he’d kept hidden for years had finally demanded today to be let out.

  And did she feel the same? She hadn’t said anything to give him hope, but she hadn’t denied anything, either.

  “We need to get a team up here,” he said aloud to remind himself to focus and to give him something to say to Erynn, a reason to have stepped closer.

  She nodded, her eyes leaving him and going to the expanse of snow and ice. “I was realizing that, too. It was foolish to come up here.”

  “Not entirely. We got to see the scene again, remember what it’s like. We’ll be better prepared because of it.”

  A half smile quirked at the corner of her mouth, her lips red in the cold and distracting him from what he should be thinking about. He reminded himself her safety was at stake and brought his mind back to where it should be. “You’re trying to make me feel better since it was my decision to be hasty and come up here.”

  “Maybe.” He wasn’t going to deny it. Noah shrugged. “It’s true, though. Nothing’s wasted.” Something his parents had always said. Although they had always said, “Nothing’s wasted with God.” He’d never been sure exactly what they’d meant, but had nodded like he knew he was supposed to rather than ask for an explanation.

  “Thanks, Noah.” Something in her tone made him look up at her, but if her face had given any indication of her feelings, it was gone now.

  Noah made himself smile. Act natural. But he knew nothing between them would ever be the way it had been.

  “Let’s go for now,” he said, and she didn’t argue.

  They reached the trailhead faster than he would have expected, and a cursory check of the car said it hadn’t been tampered with. There was always an outside chance and Noah did not like to take risks.

  He waited until Erynn was safely inside the car before he climbed in, taking one last look at the empty parking lot, listening to the winter wind howl through the open space, since even the parking lot itself was above the tree line.

  “Everything okay?” she asked as he pulled out of the gravel parking lot.

  The woman he loved would prefer not to know that he loved her, and someone wanted her dead.

  It was a loaded question to try to answer. So he just didn’t. Let Erynn assume what she wanted.

  She did not comment. Apparently didn’t care enough to bridge the gap of his silence. Noah didn’t know why he was surprised.

  The drive back to town went quickly and Noah hurried Erynn inside the Moose Haven Police Department with him.

  “We need to get the team up there to retrieve the body as soon as possible,” Erynn muttered as they walked inside. Thinking out loud wasn’t unusual for her, Noah knew, especially when she was deep in a case mentally and she was either alone or surrounded by other people in law enforcement.

  “I know.” They needed the lead, that part didn’t need discussing or affirming. Besides, a December storm was blowing in, and the body, which would be difficult enough to locate now after years of settling snow, would be nearly impossible to find in the blinding storm forecasters were predicting for this weekend. They couldn’t afford to sit around for days waiting for the recovery to take place. This was their best shot. They needed to take it.

  Recovering the body years ago, when it was only a recovery effort, had been deemed too dangerous. It wasn’t uncommon in Alaska for bodies to stay in their final resting places in the backcountry if it was deemed too unsafe for volunteers to retrieve them without risk to themselves. Now that they had reason to believe that the Ice Maiden had been murdered, retrieving the body was a higher priority.

  Erynn walked straight to Noah’s office, like she owned the place. He didn’t blame her for her confidence; she’d been there so many times over the years it made sense that she was as at ease here as in the trooper building. And it made something squeeze in Noah’s heart every time. Which was ridiculous. What, she didn’t feel comfortable enough to trust him with her personal life and stories of her past, but she felt comfortable in his office? He should smack himself on the head, a Gibbs-from-NCIS-style slap. Her being relaxed here did not mean anything for their chances of a relationship. They had no shot at that.

  A fact Noah couldn’t quite get his entire heart to believe, not when he’d never felt this way about anyone before. Didn’t anticipate feeling this way about anyone else again.

  Most women he knew, while lovely people, just didn’t...match him the way Erynn did. She wasn’t intimidated by his take-charge personality—she had one of her own to match. They fit, the two of them. It had been obvious to him almost from when they first met that she was special. Out of his league, too good for him, gorgeous beyond reason.

  Erynn cleared her throat and he looked up, met her eyes. Thankfully he didn’t see anything in her expression that indicated she’d developed an ability to read his thoughts. He might have tipped his hand a bit with her, but he didn’t want to confess to the full depth of his feelings, let her know that he was convinced she was “the one.” He did have some measure of pride and that rejection this morning had been more than enough for him.

  “Who are you thinking of asking to retrieve the body?” Erynn asked as she settled into a chair acr
oss from his desk. Noah walked behind the desk and picked up his work phone, started to dial.

  “I’m going to talk to Kate to see if she can coordinate an effort.”

  Erynn raised her eyebrows. “The same Kate who is living in Anchorage?”

  “She’ll know who my best contact is down here.”

  “How about the Search-and-Rescue guy who took her place?”

  Noah shrugged. “I just want to confirm with her what the best course of action is. She was the best at her job, the best anywhere around. I still can’t believe she gave all that up. And don’t fully understand why she did. Moving to Anchorage, sure, but changing careers?”

  He dialed Kate’s number, explained the situation and listened as she gave her recommendations. She sounded happy. Noah was glad for that, even if she was the first of the Dawson siblings to move out of Moose Haven. It was a strange reality that was going to take some adjusting, but Noah knew she was where she should be.

  A cop. Living in Anchorage. Married to his old friend Micah Reed.

  Who’d have guessed any of it? Life could be funny sometimes.

  He told his sister goodbye and ended the call.

  Erynn spoke up immediately. “About Kate and what you said earlier about her giving up her job here...”

  Noah waited.

  “I think sometimes people have more behind their decisions than we know. And with how private your sister is? I doubt she’d have explained her reasons for switching careers, even to you guys, but I’m sure she probably had them.”

  Noah opened his mouth to argue, closed it again as he realized Erynn could be right. But, more important for his situation right now, Erynn was telling him something true about her, giving him a glimpse into how her mind worked.

  It was a gift he wasn’t planning to refuse.

  “Thanks for explaining.” He met Erynn’s eyes, held them even as he could tell she wanted to look away. “I didn’t know.”

  Erynn looked away, brushed a strand of dark red hair behind her ear and looked back at him, her face a mask of generic professionalism. “So what did she tell you?”

  “Same thing you guessed. She said the guy who took her place, Sam Tomlinson, is good at his job and can do what we need him to do.”

  “She didn’t give you a time frame, did she? For how long recovery will take?”

  The way she shifted in her chair wasn’t lost on him. Neither was the way she looked away as she asked the question, the way her voice sounded too casual, like she didn’t have so much riding on the answer.

  “She didn’t. But she told me she knew Sam would understand we’re under a lot of pressure to do this as fast as possible.”

  “But safely. I don’t want anyone else to die because of...”

  Because of her? It was not hard for Noah to guess how she’d have finished that sentence, but he was already shaking his head. “Erynn.”

  “Don’t, Noah. I don’t want to hear it, okay? I’m not like your sisters. There’s no amount of reassurance in the world that could make me ‘bounce back’—” her tone and the air quotes she used were filled with sarcasm “—the way they did from the tragedies they’ve been through. I’m sorry each of them had to go through that, you know I am, but this is my life, this has been my life for decades. It’s not something happening to me right now, this killer, being hunted by him... This is so big a part of who I am that I wouldn’t know how to let it go if I tried, all right?”

  She stood, shook her head. “So please stop thinking you can fix this. Catch the guy, by all means, but even that won’t fix this. Not entirely.”

  “Where are you going?” Noah asked.

  “I need to go to my office.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  She opened her mouth to argue and apparently thought better of it.

  Noah couldn’t appreciate his small victory, though, because the way her shoulders fell told him all he needed to know about her views on the case.

  In Erynn’s mind, she had already lost.

  * * *

  Erynn didn’t know what she needed in her office, didn’t know why she felt the need to be there, unless it was the fact that it was more “her” turf than Noah’s. She’d felt off-balance around him all morning.

  Years of her life were chasing her down, like a bad dream she couldn’t wake from, and she was going to have to face her past head-on. His confession about his feelings was the last thing she needed to deal with right now. Sure, she’d wondered. Okay, she’d more than wondered. She had known for years that he’d be a very easy man to fall for. He cared about people around him, loved truth and justice. He was a man of faith, and while hers had wavered some over the years, it still mattered to her. If ever there had been someone who could show her how to live out her faith when times were hard, besides Mack Cooper, it was Noah.

  But she couldn’t destroy his predictable world. He didn’t deserve someone like her, always running from her past. Someone who still faced nightmares in the middle of the night.

  And in the middle of some days.

  No, Noah deserved better. She was not the settling-down type. Couldn’t be. Not when she knew better than most how very dangerous the world was, how much complacency could get people killed.

  And happily-ever-after? It was the worst kind of complacency. She loved the concept in books and movies, but it had no place in her real life.

  “I’m going to make that call now to Sam, if you don’t mind.” Noah spoke up.

  Erynn shrugged, sat behind her desk and started checking her email. “Sure, that’s fine.”

  Erynn kept working at her desk and waited for his phone call to be over. When he finally hung up, she looked up at him, where he paced near the door of her office. “So?”

  “He says he’ll get a team together and get it done as soon as he can.”

  “Any time estimate?”

  Noah shook his head and Erynn felt her heart sink, even though she should have known the answer. Nothing in this business came with a perfect timeline. It was foolish to expect this would. “He says he’ll do the best he can.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “I guess, go on as normally as we can with the investigation—tugging the threads we have now, like the ME report, forensics at the crime scene and on the notes—until we’ve got another lead to follow. And look into Janie Davis and figure out where she’s been for the past three years, what she’s been up to.”

  Again Erynn felt a stab of pain in her chest, almost as if she’d been physically present for Janie’s death. They hadn’t been close. But they had been from the same place, had had enough of a past in common that there was a still a bond that had been violated. Like some distant relative you didn’t like too much, but they were still family. And no one messed with family.

  She snorted to herself. At least that was the way it was supposed to be. She’d had the bruises to prove that some people had believed otherwise until the state had finally taken her somewhere else.

  That was supposed to be safer. But had anywhere in Erynn’s life been truly safe?

  She stole a glance at Noah, who stood near the door. Maybe that was part of the attraction to him. He was safety embodied in a Moose Haven police chief’s uniform, his broad shoulders strong enough to carry the weight of the world and then some. His arms were solid, muscular from hours in the gym and in the woods, but what spoke of safety the most to Erynn was his eyes. They were dark hazel, like the woods at sunset, and when she looked at them she always knew someone was on her side.

  Yes. With Noah she was safe.

  However, it couldn’t last. Nothing ever did. So, no, the safest course of action for her heart was to ignore his declaration. Stay friends, find some emotional distance while they worked this case together, day in and day out.

  “Hey, I found something interesting.”


  Erynn looked up.

  “Janie posted on her Twitter account yesterday, while she was in Moose Haven.”

  Not what she would have expected to hear.

  “What did she say?” Erynn asked, already typing the address into the browser on her computer, like a lead couldn’t appear before her fast enough. She couldn’t even wait to hear Noah explain.

  He didn’t answer.

  She looked over at him and he shook his head. “It’s a short update. It just says, ‘I’m finished running.’”

  Was the obvious meaning the correct one in this case? Or was Erynn supposed to be digging deeper, finding some kind of message in there, one that wouldn’t be apparent at first reading?

  “Posted when?” she asked.

  “An hour before she was killed.”

  Erynn’s eyes narrowed. “So he was in Moose Haven, probably following her.”

  Noah nodded. “Yes.”

  How long? How long had he been in her town and, most important, was he still there?

  She glanced to her right, at the blinds hanging from the small window that gave her a view of Moose Haven. She reached over and pulled the blinds down. No, they wouldn’t stop a sniper’s bullet, but right now, for her own sanity, she needed to know the killer couldn’t see her.

  When Janie had entered the office, Erynn had let herself believe that her feeling could have been from Janie’s scrutiny. But it was more likely that he had been watching.

  Watching her movements, her daily habits, making notes of the weak points in her routine, when she’d be vulnerable to attack.

  Erynn knew how this worked, had seen it before.

  He watched. Watched. Watched. Waited.

  Struck faster than a snake, left no survivors.

  “What are you thinking?” Noah asked, his voice concerned.

  What was she thinking? She was thinking they had to hurry. That it was too late anyway.

  That she wished that, for once in her life, she could be free of her past.