Alaskan Showdown

by Sarah Varland

  On the other hand, if all the other bodies they found had been buried, then they’d know this hiker’s burial had been an exception for some reason. Something nagged Levi’s brain about that, told him that this exception could tell him something about the case, but he didn’t know what yet. They were nearing the parking lot for a trailhead when Adriana, who’d been quiet since they left the police department, spoke.

  “So this was the first murder?” Adriana frowned, like she was trying to put it all together.

  “I worked on a set of serial-killer cases that started with this one. Of those, yes, it’s the first. But two days ago, in the cold-case room, I found several old cases, from more than two decades back, that look extremely similar to the cases I’ve been working. There were three of those. If this one is related, it would be the fourth chronologically. That we know of.”

  “So you think the same killer was killing years before you were on the case or started working here?”

  Levi nodded. “Yes, but somehow they hadn’t been connected before.”

  Her frown deepened and this time it was less concentration and more judgment. “How did someone not notice that?”

  He shrugged. “You have to understand, cases have many pieces, important details, so it’s easy to overlook connections if you don’t have a reason to suspect any. In this instance, no one who was at the department back then is still at the department. So no one made the connection and the boxes sat in the cold-case room.”

  “Until you did.”

  He nodded.

  “Then you found them and then got shot at.” She frowned. “And then...”

  He could see the wheels in her head turning. Yes, then she’d discovered the missing hiker at the bottom of a lake, and the woman’s hands had been tied in a way reminiscent of his serial-killer case.

  “My missing hiker.”

  He didn’t like the way she used personal pronouns and took ownership of her search. No wonder she carried the toll so heavily if she took every single loss personally, like she was losing someone she cared about again. He understood it might be some kind of PTSD related to her loss of Robert, but he still wondered if it was the healthiest way to deal with it. He’d found in his line of work that you had to be able to step back emotionally to survive. It didn’t mean you cared about people less. It just meant that you knew that separating yourself was sometimes necessary in order to help others.

  “You mentioned her hands were zip-tied,” Adriana said with too much calm in her voice. Levi felt his shoulders tense as he watched her grip on the handle on the side of his car tighten. He’d agonized over how much information to give her, but she had insisted she could handle it and she was an adult.

  “Yes.”

  Her eyebrows pulled together. “Definitely not typical. So your thought is...” She waited for him to explain.

  Levi opened his mouth to explain that it was too soon to draw conclusions when his mind finally landed on the implication that had been nagging at him.

  He’d been right to tell her that the killer’s MO hadn’t necessarily changed. When multiple bodies had been discovered buried and only one in a lake, it didn’t make sense to assume everything about the pattern had changed.

  Which should make him ask the question—why had this hiker been found in a lake? Why hadn’t she been last seen at a coffee shop?

  The answer hit him with the force of a slap.

  Because Lara Jones hadn’t been one of the killer’s intended victims.

  “I think,” he continued as his mind kept working out its conclusions, “that while Lara Jones was hiking she found something she shouldn’t have, like another body or the burial of one. Either would fit. And to keep her quiet, after zip-tying her to stop her from leaving, the serial killer murdered her also. But disposed of her in a lake because it was convenient and she wasn’t one of his or her typical victims, so the MO mattered less.”

  He waited for her to comment, but she said nothing. He pulled the car into the trailhead parking lot and drove into a spot, noting that the lot was fairly empty, which made sense for a weekday. Searching here made less sense to him now that he’d had his realization about Lara Jones, but he needed more information from Adriana first before he figured out their next move.

  “Where was her car found?” he asked.

  “The Evergreen Point trails. Near the lake.”

  Close enough that there were trails where someone could dump a body into the lake without ever being seen.

  There. That was where they needed to start. He was sure of it.

  “Do you mind if we come back to this search?” Levi asked her, not waiting for an answer before he put the car back in Drive.

  “You don’t want to search around here first and see if the killer hid more bodies near the first you found?”

  There she was, frowning again. She did that a lot when she was thinking, he’d noticed, which explained why he’d assumed their personalities were completely different. It turned out that was her thinking face.

  Seemed like maybe she wasn’t the only one who had made incorrect assumptions about someone. He was guilty of that, too.

  “Oh...” Her voice trailed off and she looked up at him. “You think there is a new body, a new death in this latest round of serial-killer cases. And that Lara Jones discovered the body.”

  Her voice was grave, her face utterly expressionless in a way Levi would have thought wasn’t possible.

  “And then was killed because of it. Making her not an intended victim that would fit the killer’s MO, but just someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and needed to be silenced.” He nodded as he spoke.

  Adriana’s eyes were wide. “Go. We need to find out.”

  She felt it, too—the need to give people closure, to stay on top of things.

  And talking things out with her had helped clarify the case in his mind, helped him piece things together. If they were going to work together, he needed to keep reminding himself that she was in this just as much as he was. Trust her. Work with her like a real partner.

  But he would also try to remind himself that this was only for one case; that soon enough he’d be on his own again and she’d be back to rescuing the living.

  * * *

  Everything made sense, now that Adriana had all the pieces.

  Levi had a case involving a serial killer. He discovered similarities to a cold case. He hurried to the lake when the strangeness of the missing hiker being zip-tied had been discovered, or in any case he’d discovered that soon after he got there.

  The killer, then, must have been watching. Even before he—or she—had shot at them, Adriana realized with a force that made it hard to swallow. How close had they been?

  Since the shots had missed, it couldn’t have been too close.

  Could it have been?

  Unless the shots were meant to warn.

  For a minute, Adriana wanted to call this all off. She stared out the window, wondered what her team was doing today and if they needed her. Levi had texted last night and told her that he’d talked to her team leader, Jake Stone, about her taking a break from her search-and-rescue duties to work as a contractor for the police department. She had some vacation time saved up so she’d be able to take it for a couple of weeks, and if she needed to work after that ran out, her savings account was healthy enough that she could take a small hit financially.

  She felt like she was doing the right thing. But this was hard, looking for bodies someone had left on purpose. Before now, she would have said she’d seen the heaviest things life had to offer, what with all the searches she’d done that hadn’t ended well. Alaska was a harsh place, where the line between adventure and irresponsible risk was as thin as a razor’s edge.

  But the people she and her team had found dead in Alaska hadn’t been killed maliciously. Their lives had be
en seemingly stolen, but not literally. They had just...died. Risked too much, gone too far.

  These people she was looking for now had been murdered, in cold blood.

  The difference was huge.

  She scratched Blue behind her soft white ears. The dog looked into her eyes and Adriana would have sworn Blue could read her thoughts.

  How would this different kind of search affect her K9 partner? Would it be too much for the sensitive Alaskan husky she’d come to love so much?

  Adriana hoped not.

  She exhaled deeply.

  She couldn’t quit, though. Not knowing that her work could help end this sooner and save someone’s life before it was threatened.

  She’d gotten into search-and-rescue work in the first place to save people like Robert—people who had accidents in the backcountry and needed to be rescued. Even though working with Levi wasn’t quite the same, it fulfilled the same kind of catharsis she was looking for.

  She hadn’t been able to save the man she loved. But there were people she could save.

  Starting now. Lives might depend on her involvement.

  Because the killer would keep killing. There was no doubt about that, after what Levi had told her this morning.

  “Adriana.”

  She looked up, realized the landscape outside the car window was no longer moving, but was still. They were here.

  “Sorry. I was...” What could she say? Distracted? Preoccupied?

  Terrified about what she’d gotten herself into, yet somehow eager to get started so it would all be over?

  “I was thinking,” she said as she swallowed hard. This was enough, this living with her emotions so very close to the surface. There was a job to do, and it was time to go into work mode and focus in.

  Lives were at stake.

  She sat up a little straighter, then petted Blue behind her ears, something that had always seemed to calm both of them down.

  “The Forest Lake system has more than twenty miles of trails,” he told her. Adriana had already known that—she’d searched this area a few years back after a little kid had gotten separated from his mom while hiking. The child had been found within an hour or so of the SAR team being called, thanks to her dog catching the scent.

  The feeling of satisfaction and victory from that would help her now; at least she hoped so.

  “So do you want to start here at the entrance?”

  “Let’s get into the woods a bit, where the scent would be more preserved,” she suggested.

  She walked into the woods, and when she was sure no one else was around, she let Blue off her leash. The dog trotted ahead of her, her body language relaxed, her eyes focused. She was keeping alert, Adriana could tell.

  “Can you talk while she works, or is that against some kind of code?” Levi asked from where he hiked beside her, matching her pace close to perfectly.

  “I can talk.” Adriana glanced at him, seeing that he was smiling slightly. She turned her eyes back to Blue. “I just have to watch her in case she alerts.”

  “How does she do that?”

  His voice sounded genuinely curious, with none of the skepticism she’d heard in the tones of some people.

  “Technically she’s trained for a bark alert, since she’s an air-scent dog and works off-leash,” Adriana explained, glancing at Levi now and then to make sure he was really interested. He still seemed like it. “But sometimes I notice her body language before she actually barks.”

  “She stays pretty close to you, then?”

  “Blue does. That’s not necessarily typical of air-scent dogs. Some of them will run a good bit away, then alert, and the handler has to chase them down.” She laughed. “Blue likes to keep me where she can see me.”

  “Even when she finds a scent?”

  Adriana nodded. “She’ll typically stay within sight of me no matter what. I guess she figures the scent will still be there, even if she waits for me.”

  He nodded and they kept walking. Adriana figured he must be tired of making conversation when he was working, which she understood. She hoped he didn’t feel like he had to talk to her. Sometimes walking through the woods with someone else with no conversation was actually welcome.

  “What made you decide to become an SAR handler?” Levi asked.

  The man was more of an extroverted conversationalist than she was. It was kind of nice, though. With so many people she knew, she was the one who kept the conversation going. She felt the opposite with Levi, and it was a welcome change.

  “I didn’t even know it was a job until I was halfway through college.”

  Had she meant to admit that? She hadn’t really stopped to think before she spoke, a fault of hers for most of her life.

  Even her search-and-rescue team didn’t know this part of her story. They just knew that she came highly recommended from the SAR training team in Anchorage, where she’d learned her trade after Robert’s accident.

  They didn’t know about the accident, either. And Levi did.

  He might as well know everything.

  “I went to college in Oklahoma, where I’m from. When I lived there I met this guy who was from Alaska. We fell in love, got engaged, and when he wanted to go back to Alaska, I went with him. I’d have followed him anywhere.”

  She stopped talking.

  “Adriana, if you don’t want to...” He trailed off.

  He’d asked a simple question. One that should have been safe for small talk, Adriana knew.

  But there was no way she could explain how she’d ended up with the job without going this far back.

  She shrugged like it didn’t matter. Like she didn’t hesitate to open up like this.

  “Really,” Levi said again, his voice firm.

  Maybe he didn’t want to know. Or didn’t want to know her?

  “Anyway, I heard about the concept of using dogs for searches when a student disappeared from our campus and then was found because of a dog. That stuck with me and later on, after Robert died, I decided that was what I wanted to do with my life.” She kept her voice light and gave him the CliffsNotes version.

  Then why did she feel a sting, like she’d come close to having someone to trust with her whole story?

  She looked ahead, watched Blue’s shoulders tense.

  Come on, girl. Find it. Do you have the scent?

  Still, the dog didn’t alert. But she did pick up her pace. Adriana picked hers up to match, careful not to look at the man beside her who was, and would always be, strictly a coworker.

  Because right now, her tense relationship with him, her feelings about the past, her desire to have someone want to know her: none of that mattered. Somewhere in these dark spruce woods, Levi believed there was a new body. That would not only provide another starting point for his investigation, it would also bring with it the heartache of knowing someone else had lost a family member.

  The least she could do was bring closure.

  Adriana watched the dog closely and kept walking.

  SEVEN

  Levi had done something wrong or said something wrong, that much he’d figured out. But what, he wasn’t sure. For now, it was all he could do to keep up with Adriana and her dog. They were walking through an area where the trail had narrowed. He could still walk beside Adriana, but only barely. He was fascinated by her use of the dog and wanted to see how the whole thing worked.

  So far all he’d seen was a dog on a hike through the woods, off-leash. Blue had sped up a little, but did that mean anything? Levi wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure about any of this, really. Not that he was a critic. He believed she could help, didn’t he? He was counting on her.

  But it was still a bit hard to imagine, that a dog could...

  The dog barked.

  “Is that the alert?” He turned to Adriana. Her eyes were straight a
head, on the dog. She was focused and alert, with no hint of a smile. The opposite of relaxed.

  “We’ll talk later, okay? Or not, Levi. Whichever you prefer, but right now I am working.”

  Ouch. Yeah, he had definitely said something wrong. And later he’d figure out what, but right now her dog had taken off and she was running, too. Levi ran after them, hand on the sidearm he wore on his hip. He was pressing it against himself to keep it from bouncing around.

  The dog took a bend in the trail to the left and Adriana and Levi were close behind. Then Blue took off into the woods. Adriana was pushing past branches and Levi kept his hands out to deflect them, since she was in such a hurry she wasn’t slowing them down as she pushed through.

  And he didn’t blame her. Since the dog usually kept her in sight, this was extremely odd behavior.

  They all kept running. For two more minutes? Five? Levi didn’t know, only knew that he was glad he made outdoor recreation and being in shape such a high priority because their pace was intense.

  The dog skidded to a stop, then started pacing. Whining.

  Adriana bent down next to the husky, to catch her breath, it looked like.

  Levi stayed back and waited, looking around to make sure they were alone. Though the woods were thick with trees and he didn’t see anyone else around them, he didn’t feel protected. He felt exposed.

  Worse, he was worried Adriana could be in danger.

  The further into the woods they hiked, the more their options for escape were limited. Alaska’s woods weren’t as thick with brush as some he’d hiked in during his time in the Lower 48, but they still had their fair share of weeds and brush. Here, tall devil’s club and cow parsnip still bloomed, their branches reaching almost as tall as he was. In an emergency, they would block many of the other possible trails.