Not so personal that he couldn’t work it objectively, though.
“Let’s look at what you’ve been up to the last year or so.”
Sure, saying something like that was compartmentalizing at best, didn’t at all allude to the fact that they’d lost touch. Nice, Wicks. Very nice.
She stood up, motioned toward the box of files he’d carried into the room. “Those are the cases I’ve worked?”
Judah nodded.
She shook her head. “Why?”
Judah couldn’t remember how much detail he’d gone into with Piper the day before, about what he was thinking with this investigation. “I think you keep interrupting someone’s plans. I think someone is trying to kill people in ways that look natural, and you are thwarting it when you rescue them. Yesterday seems to have been a trap. There was never a climber in danger. The number that called was a burner phone that one of our officers found in a dumpster in town. The entire scenario was invented to get you in a vulnerable position and kill you.”
Piper’s face was unreadable. She was silent.
While she was a complicated woman, full of all those layers that intrigued him way more than they should, he’d always thought she wore her heart on her sleeve, her feelings on her face.
Now he wasn’t sure.
It added another layer, more mystique, strengthening the attraction.
“It’s unnerving to have someone twist it around this way, what I’m doing. And even more so to think that this isn’t the first time it’s happened.”
“I’m not sure if I’m right,” Judah reminded her.
“You’re good at what you do. If this is the first place your mind goes, I’d say there’s a fairly good chance you’ve got it pegged.”
He just looked at her, not sure how to respond. She hadn’t seen him at work; their relationship hadn’t lasted long enough for that.
A small smile inched across her face. “Judah, you taught me what I know about reading a route on a climb, looking for deviations in the rock that might go unnoticed by some people, subtle angles that will provide friction. If you say you’ve noticed something here, I’m inclined to believe you.”
And now he still didn’t know how to respond.
Piper’s small smile burst into a full grin, her smile like sunshine to him, just like it always had been. “Just say thank-you and tell me more about my case.”
He found himself smiling now, the motion more foreign than it had been once upon a time. “All right. The case.” He nodded. “I want to look back at what you’ve been working on for the past year or so.”
“Not more than that?”
He shrugged. “We might not need to go back that far. If we can find a pattern in more recent cases, and nothing suspicious in ones further back, that will help us narrow our search down.”
“But what you’re thinking is...”
“Like I said, you probably keep interrupting someone’s attempted murders. Or...” He hesitated and she caught it.
“What?” she immediately asked, shoulders squared like she was ready to face anything.
“Has there been anyone recently...” He paused again. “Anyone you haven’t been able to rescue?”
“You don’t have to couch things for me, Judah. I have seen a lot more than you think I have.” She looked away.
“I know your job is just as gritty as mine.”
She nodded slowly and something flickered in her eyes but disappeared just as quickly, and he didn’t know what it was.
She’d been referring to her job when she’d talked about having seen more than he thought, hadn’t she? Judah knew next to nothing about her past before she moved to town. He knew her favorite ice-cream flavor, the fact that she secretly loved rainy days and that when she was a kid she’d wanted to be a white water rafter in the Olympics.
But he didn’t know about...well, everything else.
“So you really want to know if there’s anyone who has died before I could rescue them.” She stated it like a fact, but he nodded in case she still needed an answer.
“Yes.”
Piper blew out a breath. “Yeah, there have been a few. Two or three within the last few months.”
“Let’s start with those.”
Piper moved to the plastic filing container, started flipping through it. “How far back?”
“Just get me the most recent ones.”
She pulled out three files. “These are from the last few months.” She swallowed hard and sat down in a chair, then lifted up the file on top and held it up for him to see. “Start with the most recent?”
“Yes.”
FIVE
The three most recent cases where Piper had lost a victim were all fairly straightforward. Judah didn’t think any of them looked like foul play disguised as something accidental.
“You’ve worked a lot,” Judah said to Piper, hoping easy conversation would do something to help the tension he could see building in her shoulders.
“Yep.” She answered without looking up from the folders she was paging through. “It’s my job.”
“People must get themselves into situations they can’t handle a lot,” he commented.
This time she looked up, her eyes flashing fire. Then she blinked, looked away. “Sometimes it’s beyond their control, I’m sure. Not everyone who needs to be rescued is responsible for the trouble they’re in. Sometimes people just make a bad choice and it has consequences.”
Okay... Judah wasn’t sure they were still talking about search and rescue work. If ever there was a comment that deserved a follow-up, that was it, but it wasn’t Judah’s place to ask and he didn’t think Piper was going to volunteer the information. Suddenly, though, he wished they weren’t working this case, that it was a rainy afternoon and he could ask her out to coffee and ask that question and others. Why SAR work? Why had she agreed to climb with him immediately when he had met her? What made her trust him?
Just then she shut the file and stood. “I need to go for a walk. Stretch my legs a little.”
“Not alone.”
She raised an eyebrow, as though slightly amused by how emphatic that response had been. “I had been planning to ask if you thought it was a safe enough idea, but I have a feeling we’re going to be sitting here all day. I need a break and some exercise.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Instead he stood also, motioned for her to precede him out of the room, and locked the door behind them.
They made their way through the police department quickly. Judah wasn’t much the type to stop and talk to people when he had something on his mind, but he did give a few smiles and nods in the direction of coworkers who looked up as they walked by. He didn’t try to be rude or antisocial or anything like it. He just didn’t need to be surrounded by people talking all the time the way his brother seemed to need to.
When they reached the outside, Piper lengthened her stride. It wasn’t quite a power walk, no hands pumping up to her face in fists, but it was quick. Judah hurried to catch up, then matched her pace. She said nothing. Neither did he. The summer air was cool on their faces. The sun was shining. It was probably a nice, normal day for a lot of people and it would be so easy to pretend that it was for them, too, to pretend that Piper had just wanted to take a walk with him...
Judah shoved that thought away. He had been the one to end whatever was between them. There was no reason to look back and wish he’d made different choices. What was done was done. Now all they could do was move forward. Piper had been right to bring up the past and ask if they could be friends. And that was what Judah needed to focus on: being her friend.
Well, and first and foremost keeping her alive and figuring out who didn’t want her to stay that way.
They passed by the library, a coffee shop, some parking lots. She was heading toward the edge of town and he fol
lowed her in that direction. She took a trail that led down to the river and Judah glanced down at his fitness tracker. Over two miles so far.
“Are we ever going back to the station or just running away?” he finally asked.
“I just...” She slowed her pace. Shook her head and looked toward him but didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I needed to think.”
She walked toward the river and sat down on a rock. Judah followed. Fourteen-Mile River rushed by in an angry current. There weren’t many things that scared him, but rivers in Alaska were one of them. Unlike some of their Lower 48 counterparts, there was rarely anything lazy or peaceful about the rivers here. They were mostly a glacial, gorgeous blue and filled with heavy silt, moving at a pace that most grown men couldn’t stand up against. It wasn’t unusual for someone to be lost to Fourteen-Mile River every couple of years. Piper sat fifteen feet or so from its bank, staring at the water.
Could he ask her what was wrong? No, he didn’t know her well, but that was the kind of thing people asked generally, right?
“You okay?” he inquired, hoping he kept his voice casual enough that she wouldn’t feel he was prying.
“Not really. Looking at those cases is hard, you know? Every single time I go out on a call, I know I could lose someone and let someone down. The cases we are looking at...they were really close. And some of them I failed. I hate to fail. I don’t want to be a failure.”
Her voice was almost despondent. Judah knew she was good at her job, but no one was perfect, and first responders weren’t superhuman. They could only do as much as they could do. He’d lost a fellow officer at the start of his law enforcement career. And he’d seen people die minutes before police were able to arrive at a scene. He knew what it was like to ask “what if,” to wonder if there was anything he could have done differently to give another outcome.
He knew what she meant, what she felt.
But what was there to say to that? Judah reached a hand down, almost out of instinct, and patted her shoulder, surprised at how naturally it came to him, to touch her.
Piper didn’t jump at his touch, didn’t shift away. Instead she looked up and smiled. “Thanks.”
He left his hand there a second longer. Nodded and then moved it away. “You’re welcome.” He waited another second, then spoke. “You know, Piper, in our line of work, I think we need our faith more than ever.”
She looked at him. Waiting. He continued.
“We aren’t God, Piper. We can’t save people, not really. All we can do is be where we are supposed to be, and let God work through us. Our responsibility is to be willing to let Him use us. But He saves them.”
She nodded, and they sat in silence for another few minutes. Finally, Piper exhaled, stood. “Thanks, Judah... We should get back, I guess. Go try to figure out which cases have me in danger.”
Judah wanted to tell her not to worry about it, that he would do it on his own. She looked emotionally spent. But her perspective was what was going to help them narrow their focus to cases. What had she noticed during certain rescues? What had seemed off? Things like that would find them answers sooner than anything, and for that he needed Piper.
Ideal or not, they were a team for now.
Besides, she had wanted to help and something told him Piper needed to know that she had an active part in this investigation and that she wasn’t just a victim. That word and Piper didn’t even fit together in his mind.
“Yeah, we should.” He let out a breath, trying to remove some of the tightness from his shoulders. He wasn’t sure he’d managed to relax them since he’d seen Piper nearly fall off the cliff yesterday.
She offered a small smile and started to walk. “Sorry about the break.”
“What about it?” He looked over at her. She wasn’t looking at him, but she looked almost embarrassed. Judah didn’t know what she could possibly feel bad about. He understood her needing to step back after what they’d been reading about for the last while. Sometimes in the middle of a case he needed to get away for a few minutes, to process.
“Needing it, I mean. I need to toughen up a little more than I thought, I guess.”
She didn’t sound like herself. There was a hesitancy, a lack of confidence, that wasn’t characteristic of her.
“You don’t need to apologize for anything. What we’re asking...what I’m asking for—help looking for what might have started this—would be hard for anyone.”
She started to brush off his words, he could tell, so Judah stopped. Waited until she halted, too, and faced him.
“I’m serious, Piper. Don’t apologize.”
She studied him for a second, must have decided to believe him. Because she nodded once and kept walking.
And Judah was left wondering what made her feel that way. And made him think there had never been another woman who fascinated him quite like this one did.
* * *
They’d been poring over case files for hours, broadening their search from just cases where Piper had lost a victim, to all of the times she had been called out on a rescue over the last year. The walk had revived her some, but it still looked to Judah like Piper was much more tense than normal. She wanted to read through the notes on every rescue in their entirety, in case something jogged her memory, she said, so the process was taking longer. He didn’t blame her for wanting to be thorough. At the moment this was the best chance they had at figuring out who was behind the attack on her, and she didn’t want to lose this opportunity to find a lead to chase. So Judah had called in a pizza order for lunch and they’d eaten that, then started looking at cases again.
He was starting to wonder if this was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Or something comparably hopeless.
No sooner had the negative thought crossed his mind than Piper spoke. “This one.”
Judah leaned toward her, reading what she’d been looking at. The victim had been a thirty-eight-year-old woman named Nichole Richards who had gone missing on a camping trip. Piper and her former teammate Caleb had recovered her body, caught on some branches that overhung the river near the spot where the woman and a friend been camping, according to the report.
“Yeah?” he asked, trying not to put too much pressure on her, but knowing he couldn’t keep the hope out of his voice. Especially after hours of nothing.
Piper nodded. “Yes. Her body... I remember her having bruises in several places, including her face, almost like she’d been in a struggle. The ME looked at the body, and while the bruises were premortem, he also thought they were consistent with falling in the river, hitting some rocks.” She shook her head. “It just rubbed me wrong. But I thought—” She cut herself off, then started again. “I thought maybe I was reading the situation wrong.” The tone of her voice had changed. It was more deliberate. Calm.
Her familiarity with bruises made him uncomfortable, especially when he thought back to last night and the way she’d been quick to apologize, almost berating herself.
Piper was light and fun and carefree.
What had happened to give her another angle to her personality, to make her seem almost afraid of disappointing someone? To make her familiar with bruises that someone would leave on someone else’s face?
He couldn’t think about that right now, not if he wanted to do a good job on this case. If there was something in her past she wanted him to know about, she would tell him. So he tried not to think about it, and kept his voice steady. “I think you’re onto something,” Judah said. “May I see the file?”
Piper passed it to him. He read it again, looking for details this time as far as where the body had been recovered, where she’d gone missing from.
“No answers about why she’d left her campsite?”
Piper shook her head. “The friend didn’t know where she’d gone. They’d turned in early that night, before ten, and planned to hike the next day.”
Judah understood why there hadn’t been anything that could be done about it at the time. If the ME said the cause of death was drowning, and there had been no concrete evidence that someone might have assisted that death, there was little evidence anyone could have used to build a case on it. She had no wounds on her neck, so no one had choked her, and besides, Judah knew the ME would have been able to tell if she stopped breathing before or after she went underwater.
But he was confident Piper’s instincts were right about this one. Something didn’t add up.
“Strange the body was able to be recovered at all,” he commented. Fourteen-Mile River emptied just south of Raven Pass into Cook Inlet, a tidal body of water that no doubt hid many bodies and secrets.
“It was amazing. Pure coincidence that her body caught on that tree.” Piper shook her head. “The chances weren’t good. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I like being able to give people closure when I can’t save someone.”
Or the wrong place at the wrong time for Piper’s safety, as the case seemed to be.
“Great, let’s set this over here.” They’d been through over half of Piper’s recent rescue missions. “Need another break?”
“I’m good. You?”
Was she? She’d just reread that entire case file, along with a stack of others, several that he’d seen that had resulted in someone’s life being lost. That had to hurt.
Still, Judah wouldn’t like it if someone questioned whether or not he could handle something. So he tried to treat her the same way he would like to be treated.
She kept looking through the files, stilled when she looked at one of them.
“That one, too?” Judah asked, moving closer so he could read it.
Piper had cocked her head to the side, considering. “I’m not sure. Maybe? Something about it felt odd.”
Judah read the summary. It was a recent rescue. Randy Walcott. Thirty-two-year-old male, canoeing while under the influence, in a lake just north of town. Tragic, but something that happened at least once a summer. Unlike most people, though, this guy hadn’t died. The call had come into SAR and Piper had responded immediately, before backup had arrived. It was a violation of protocol, and she’d received a reprimand, but if she’d been any later, the man wouldn’t have made it.
Alaskan Mountain Attack Page 5