Storm Warning

by Michele Hauf

  Returning to the living room, she walked around the prone body on the floor. The attacker was coming to, groaning. Another knock on the door sounded. Amelie jumped. A pair of gentle, warm hands settled onto her shoulder.

  “It’s Alex, my assistant,” Chief Cash reassured her in a deep voice that hinted at the strength she desperately required. “Why don’t you sit on the couch.” He touched her upper arm, and she winced. “Looks like you got hurt. Your sweater is torn. I’ll take a look after I get the perp out of here.”

  He opened the door, and the waiting police officer nodded and introduced himself to her as Amelie settled onto the couch. He was tall and attractive. Not handsome sexy, more like boy-band cute. The thought summoned her out of the heavy tension that had made her clutch the tactical pen. She set the pen on the coffee table and inspected her sweater.

  She’d been hurt? She hadn’t noticed while shivering in the bathroom. Yet now that Jason had pointed it out, she felt the sting of pain in her biceps. Her sweater was torn and bloody. And...yes, the pointed tip of the pen was bloodied, so she’d caused her attacker some damage.

  The two men picked up the suspect by his upper arms. He growled and struggled against the handcuffs. Both officers had to move him out of the cabin, kicking and gyrating across the threshold. As they exited, the attacker called, “I will be back for you!”

  Amelie swore and turned to clasp her arms about her legs, pulling them tight against her chest. Her heart thudded up to her throat.

  She knew something dangerous. It was locked away in her brain, and only she possessed the key to dredge out the information.

  Chapter Six

  Standing on the front stoop, Jason watched Alex back the patrol car out of the double-wide drive. Alex gave him a thumbs-up as he headed toward town. He’d secure the perp behind bars, and Ryan Bay could help book him and start an interrogation.

  He leaned back inside the cabin and called, “I’m going to take a look around the cabin and surrounding area. Look for clues. You okay alone for a bit?”

  “Of course.”

  The answer was the right one, but it sounded shaky. To be expected.

  “Give me half an hour. I’ll stay close. If you need me, just shout out the door.”

  Wind and snow crystals scoured Jason’s face as he rounded the side of the cabin, following the faint traces of boot prints that were neither his nor did they belong to a female. Another hour of wind and the tracks would be gone.

  An outjut of stacked pine logs formed a two-sided protection from the wind and elements for the generator. He lifted the blue tarp cover and looked over the machine. Some snow had drifted up about the base, but it all looked in working order. He might turn it on to check it out, but it was windy, and he wanted to beat the storm before it erased all evidence Smith had left behind.

  Picking up his pace through a foot of fluffy, dry snow, Jason passed the detached double garage behind the cabin. He sighted sunken boot prints. They did not reveal sole design because the snow and wind had already filled them, but he could see they walked toward the cabin. Scanning ahead, he noticed the line of tracks and veered toward the line of white-paper birches that edged a forest fifty yards ahead. The footprints disappeared for ten feet, but then he could pick up the sunken smooth imprint when he flashed the flashlight beam over it. But he didn’t need the tracks when he spied the snowmobile in the woods.

  Hastening his steps, he entered the woods, which blocked the wind. Thankful for that reprieve, he huffed out a breath. The cold was something he was accustomed to, but when the wind beat directly at his face, it took a man’s breath away.

  Tromping over fallen branches and loose snow made footing difficult. The snowmobile still had the keys in the ignition. A rental sticker on the hood told him it had come from the gas station. Smith had likely intended to do the deed and head back to the snowmobile for a quick getaway.

  Jason sat on the snow-dusted vinyl seat cushion and flashed the light beam about the sled. The gas station kept its rental machines in tip-top condition, even if they were decades old. This one was fully gassed up. The seat was comfy and not torn. The outer fiberglass hood was not scuffed, save for a small crack where the windshield connected.

  The footprints, which now he could plainly see were from cowboy boots, took off from the sled and walked straight on toward the cabin—no pacing about the vehicle, deciding to get up his courage. The man had been focused, set on his task. He’d wanted to get at this second Yvette.

  Had it been the same man coming after yet another Yvette? The implications pointed toward some type of serial stalker. A man obsessed with Yvettes?

  He tipped open the cover of the small supply box on the back of the seat cushion. Nothing inside. If the man had intended to use a weapon against Yvette, he would have brought it along with him into the cabin. Jason hadn’t removed any weapons from him when cuffing him and patting him down.

  Jason flipped the box cover shut. He would check on Yvette, and—hell, she had been bleeding.

  * * *

  BACK INSIDE THE cabin, Jason kicked off his boots. When he wandered into the living room and sat next to Yvette on the couch, he sensed her shivers before seeing them. She was still frightened. The tactical pen lay on the pine coffee table. He would secure that as evidence.

  “You were very brave,” he said in his reassuring officer’s tone. Something a guy cultivated with experience. “Can I look at your arm?”

  She nodded but didn’t speak as he carefully pulled away the torn knitted threads from her arm. There was a good amount of blood, but it looked like it might be road rash. Nothing deep. She must have rubbed against something rough when struggling with the perp. All the furniture in this cabin was fashioned from heavy, bare pine logs, so it was feasible she could have fallen against a chair leg or arm.

  “I found the snowcat the perp drove out here in the woods. I’ll have a tow come get it after the storm threat passes. I think you should come to town with me and have Marjorie, my dispatcher, look at that. Just to be safe. And I do need you to give me an official statement.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Marjorie used to be a nurse,” he encouraged.

  “It’s just a bruise. And I know you have questions—standard police procedure, and all that—”

  “I really do need to talk to you while the incident is fresh in your mind. It’s just odd. The guy was following you. He sat outside on Main Street, watched you walk across from the grocery store, stayed there while you had a bite to eat and then...” He sighed heavily.

  “I’ve never seen that man before, Chief Cash.”

  “Then why did you let him inside the cabin?”

  “I called out and he said he had a delivery and asked if my name was Yvette.”

  “A delivery?”

  “Said it was from a new friend. I assumed it was from you. We had talked about pie.”

  “You thought I sent you pie?”

  “It sounded reasonable at the time. I opened the door, and then he lunged. You arrived a minute or two later. Merci Dieu.”

  “So he called you by name?”

  She nodded.

  “Your full name?”

  Yvette thought about it a moment. “No, just my first. I did have the clarity to grab the tactical pen before answering the door.”

  “So you were suspicious.”

  “I was until he said the—er, my name. Then I believed he was a deliveryman.”

  “Right. So, he started to choke you immediately? Or did you have a conversation first?”

  “No, he immediately went at me. I was able to struggle and move the two of us across the room toward the table, where you see the mess.”

  “Those papers on the floor...” Jason looked over her shoulder. “Important?”

  “Uh, no. Just some journaling stuff. Why? You think he was after something
of mine?”

  “I don’t know. You have to tell me.”

  “He didn’t speak after I’d let him inside. Didn’t ask for anything, like where my valuables were. I don’t believe he was here to rob me. He wanted to hurt me. Possibly even...”

  Jason nodded and tugged out his notebook to make a few notations.

  “How many people know you’re staying here?” he asked.

  “One,” she said, then offered him a shrug as if to apologize for that low number.

  “No friends? Family?”

  She shook her head, keeping her lips tight.

  “Sounds kind of odd,” he remarked. “Single woman off alone in a country foreign to her, and only one person knows about it? Boyfriend?”

  She shook her head again, choosing silence. A silence that niggled at Jason’s trust. Why not provide the person’s name without his prompting?

  “Who knows you’re here, Miss LaSalle?”

  “Just my boss. This was a retreat,” she added quickly. “A photography excursion. A last-minute decision sort of thing, so I didn’t announce it to everyone I know. Just...got the time off I needed, and...here I am.”

  “Here you are. You work as a photographer?”

  She nodded.

  He wasn’t buying it. Wouldn’t a photographer have equipment? He hadn’t noticed any cameras in the open-layout cabin. “Your boss is a photographer as well?”

  She shrugged. “It’s a hobby. I’m trying to expand my portfolio.”

  Jason closed his notebook and stuffed it inside his coat. “Anything else you want to tell me about what happened?”

  “No.”

  “So he was only in the cabin a few minutes before I arrived?”

  “Yes. Or it felt that long. I can’t be sure, but I’d guess that’s about as long as I’d last against someone so strong.”

  “Fine. I have to head in and help process the suspect.” And he’d been on his way to talk with the victim’s friends before the detour out here to the cabin.

  “I’m going to call you in an hour,” he said. “To check in with you. You should be safe now.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.” She glanced to the papers strewn on the floor.

  “Will you also promise not to open the door for anyone except the mailman?”

  “That’s a deal. Write down your number on one of those papers before you leave.”

  He stood and picked up a paper from the floor. It was a lined notebook page. He read the header. “Pros and cons?”

  “Just doing some journaling.”

  Wanting to read more, but respecting her privacy, he tugged the pen out of his coat and scribbled down his number on the back of the paper.

  When he handed her the page, Jason felt her shiver again. “What is it, Yvette? There’s something else. I can feel it.”

  She exhaled heavily. “Did you hear what he said when the other officer took him away?”

  Smith had called out that he’d be back for her. The audacity.

  Her serious blue eyes searched his. Seeking a comforting reassurance that Jason gave her without asking. It was easy, because he couldn’t imagine being alone in this country, with no friends, and having been attacked.

  “This town is small, but I take protecting the residents seriously,” he said. “Do you want me to stay awhile?”

  “No, I’ll be fine. And you do need to take care of that man. Lock him up, will you?”

  “That’s my job. Just call me, okay?”

  He headed to the door and pulled on his gloves. As he shoved his feet into his snow boots, he turned to look at her. She still sat on the couch, back to him, gaze focused out the tall windows that overlooked a snow-frosted birch forest not far behind the detached garage.

  Was he doing the right thing? Leaving her here alone? The perp had been secured. But he couldn’t know whether or not Smith had been acting alone. He’d make a point of checking in with her soon.

  Jason couldn’t shake the fact that there was a stranger staying in Frost Falls, and for some reason she had attracted danger to the small town. He believed that she didn’t know Smith.

  But what wasn’t she telling him? What woman left for another country and only told her employer? Felt wrong. But he could attribute her nervousness to having just gone through a traumatic event. He’d give her some space.

  “An hour,” he said as he opened the door. “I want to hear from you!”

  * * *

  PULLING THE TRUCK along the side of the police station, Jason dialed up the radio volume just as the meteorologist announced everyone should head out for groceries. The blizzard was on its way and would be full force by tomorrow afternoon, possibly even the morning. He turned off the engine and got out with a jump. An inhale sucked in icy air. It was too cold for a storm, but the weather was always crazy in the wintertime.

  Making a quick stop inside the station’s ground level, Jason grabbed another krumkake from the plate on Marjorie’s desk, then stepped right back outside. He swung around the building corner and opened the heavy steel back door. Down a short hall and then to the right, he clattered down the stairway that led to the basement cells. He hated this setup, especially when he had a drunk or violent perp to contain. More than a few times, he’d almost tumbled to the bottom with the prisoner in hand. Not the most well-designed police station, that was for sure.

  The heater kept the cinder block–walled basement at a passable sixty-eight degrees and each of the three cells even held one of Marjorie’s homemade quilts, along with a fluffy pillow. Jason had spent a night in one of the cells a few months earlier after a long night of reading over boring expense reports.

  “We have a new guest in the Hotel Frosty?” he asked Alex and Ryan as he joined them before the middle cell.

  “Just got him locked up. He’s a fighter,” Alex said. “Bay had to help me fingerprint him.”

  Jason noticed the black ink smear on Alex’s jaw. “I see that. You get anything out of him, Bay?”

  The man’s focus was on his laptop again, set on a small table beneath a landline phone that hung on the wall opposite the cells.

  “Not yet.”

  “All he’s said,” Alex added, “was a whole lot of words that were not favorable toward my mother.”

  “Is that so?”

  Jason stepped up to the cell bars. Inside, the perp leaned against the back wall, one leg bent with his sole flat against the wall. Cowboy boots, not snow boots with traction on the soles. Idiot. The man lifted his chin. A position of challenge that didn’t give Jason any more worry than if he’d spat at him.

  “You are under arrest for assault,” Jason stated. “James Smith, eh? I ran a trace on your plates earlier. You live in Duluth and work at Perkins. What’s a line chef doing in Frost Falls strangling women?”

  The man mumbled something and ended with two very clear swear words.

  “He doesn’t like your mother much, either,” Alex said.

  Jason smirked. “My mother would arm wrestle this skinny guy under the table if she heard him talking like that.”

  The Cash family—all three of the boys and both mother and father—was an athletically inclined bunch. Their father had been a marine before purchasing the Crooked Creek land and settling into dairy farming and to raise his family. And their mom, well, she was always trying new martial arts classes and once had flipped the eldest son, Justin, onto his back in an impressive move that had left their brother red-faced and Joe and Jason laughing like hyenas. Jason was never ashamed to admit it had been his mother who taught him some keen defense moves, including the more relaxed tai chi she practiced religiously.

  The prisoner lifted his chin haughtily and then flipped them the bird.

  “This is going to be a fun afternoon.” Jason nodded to Ryan. “Why don’t you get the paperwork started and bring down the DNA ki
t. You get mug shots?”

  Alex blew out a breath and offered an unsure shrug. “Bay was taking the shots. Not sure.”

  “My camera was out of focus,” Bay provided on a mumble. “I’m going through the shots right now. Might be one usable image.”

  “I get it,” Jason said. “We’ll mark this one down as uncooperative. Wait for fingerprints, then we’ll check the CJRS.” The Criminal Justice Reporting System was the US database for tracking and identifying criminals and those with police records.

  “Will do, boss.” Alex started up the stairs.

  “And next time you come down, bring some of those krumkakes, will you?”

  “If there’s any left when I get through with them.” Alex’s chuckle was muffled by the closing of the upper door.

  Jason turned, crossed his arms over his chest and couldn’t help a smile. The man giving him the wonky eye might very well be a murderer.

  “You interview the dead woman’s friends?” Ryan asked as he joined Jason at his side.

  “Haven’t gotten that far yet.”

  “Storm’s moving in. I hate Minnesota. I put in for a position in an Arizona county office.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be happy to have you,” Jason said. Bay was distracted, or probably didn’t care much about the situation. Burnout? Maybe. Or it could be the weather. Damn cold was enough to make any man lose focus on what was most important.

  And right now, Jason had added a beautiful Frenchwoman to that list.

  “I should head out before it gets nasty outside,” he said. “Ask this guy about girlfriends named Yvette. Or maybe it’s his mom he’s trying to strangle? Check the family stats on him.”

  “Will do,” Bay said as Jason left him and headed out.

  Chapter Seven

  Amelie dialed the international number, and it went straight to her boss’s voice mail. It was nearing midnight in France. Jacques needed to know about the attack on her, but, when fleeing France, she’d been instructed to keep any voice messages she left general and vague. He’d warned her not to communicate with him unless the situation were dire.