Lullaby for the Nameless (Nolan, Hart & Tain Thrillers)

by Ruttan, Sandra

  His way of answering her question without referencing whatever suspicions he had about Craig’s sister should have been a neon warning sign then, but she’d assumed he was being an overprotective big brother.

  After all, there were enough arrest records on file to paint Craig’s stepfather—his sister’s biological dad—in a very bad light. During the weeks she and Craig had spent searching the Campbell property Tucker Collins—Craig’s stepfather—had been arrested for assault. It turned out it wasn’t the first time he’d faced charges, and he had a history of hitting members of his family.

  A few days later Kaitlin’s file had been updated and closed.

  She’d returned home, and despite Ashlyn’s own subtle research, she knew little about what had actually happened to prompt Craig’s sister to run away. Had Kaitlin’s father hit her, or had it been something worse?

  Funny that in his own way, Craig had been running for months.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The car bumped along the road to the old Campbell property, the wheels occasionally spinning as they sought purchase on the sides of deep, soft potholes.

  Part of Ashlyn coaxed the vehicle through each dip in the road, as though sheer willpower could make it navigate the terrain, while the other part asked if she knew what she was doing.

  At what point had Craig’s opinion become so important to her? Or did she not even realize how she felt until she saw him again, months later?

  And now? How did she feel now?

  She pushed the doubts to the corner of her thoughts and focused on another question. Where would he be?

  There were four options on the property, and arguments could be made for each, although she was ready to dismiss the house. It was the first thing you reached. You had to go past it to get to the cabins, and farther still to reach the walk-in freezer.

  That’s what they’d done with it. Turned it into a freezer, where they’d had enough room to store some of the girls.

  The cabins were an obvious choice, and as brazen as Parker was, she expected more of a game from him.

  Which left her with the freezer or the burial ground.

  She turned a bend and could see the front of the old house. The roof was sagging, and the porch looked ready to give up. It had probably sat empty through the better part of two winters, hence the wear and tear.

  Craig’s vehicle was ahead of her, parked on the side of the road. No, not parked. The driver’s door was hanging open.

  Ashlyn got out of her car, pulled her gun out of its holster and walked toward the Rodeo.

  She scanned the road and the edges of the woods. Nothing.

  Her fingers tightened on the gun.

  The sense of déjà vu as she looked inside Craig’s Rodeo, shattered glass shards scattered all over the floor and the bloodstained seats, was overwhelming.

  Process of elimination. If Parker had Craig and Craig was wounded, he’d pick the burial grounds. It was closer.

  On the ground there were drops of blood, leading to the treed area that led to the burial grounds.

  She followed the path. The woods had an eerie stillness to them. Not the kind of midday quiet that might be disrupted by the occasional chirp of birds or scuffle of leaves. It was the kind of quiet where everyone, or every thing, holds its breath collectively.

  The way her heart hammered in her ears, she was certain Parker could hear her coming. Ashlyn knew it was ridiculous, but she still couldn’t shake the feeling.

  Tain and Craig had been drawn into this, but the moment she’d heard it was Parker, she knew. He was there for her.

  Craig was already out there, injured. Without knowing how long he’d been at the property, how bad his injuries were, it could be worse.

  There was no way she could let Tain take the risk she was taking.

  She moved slowly, trying to avoid crunching the leaves and twigs scattered on the ground as she scanned the area in every direction, watching for any sign of movement.

  To her right, something caught her attention. A large, dark splotch against a tree.

  Ashlyn looked around as she knelt down and reached out with her free hand.

  She touched the substance and lifted her fingers to her nose.

  Blood.

  If Craig had stopped to try to wrap his wound…

  Or even to catch his breath…

  She stood and scanned the ground in all directions. The blood trail was gone.

  Ashlyn knew she was close to the burial grounds. Through the woods, she could see the small clearing where they’d found the girls. To the right, there were trees and rocks, but she found no sign of blood as she scanned the obvious gaps in the forest.

  Craig could be hiding anywhere.

  A flicker of movement to her left caught her attention and she spun around, gun ready, but there was nothing there.

  Ashlyn took a step forward toward the clearing.

  Snap.

  She turned, looking for the source of the sound. Something—or someone—not far behind her had cracked a twig, but she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  It must have been her imagination.

  The rocky outcropping that overlooked the gorge was where Parker sat. It was a ballsy place to be, out in the open, a rifle across his lap.

  As though he had nothing to fear.

  She crouched down and started inching her way around the woods on the edge of the clearing to get a better view.

  Parker looked at his watch. “You know, I would’ve thought she’d be here by now. Noble guy that you are, I’m sure you’d rather bleed to death alone in the woods.”

  Silence. If Craig was still alive he wasn’t taking the bait.

  “You got a real martyr complex, Nolan. Let me tell you something, this guy Hobbs, he had it all worked out.”

  Ashlyn stopped behind a large tree.

  “Women screw men to get what they want. And then they find other ways to screw ’em. The girls Hobbs brought here, they all failed him. All except one.”

  Ashlyn surveyed the woods to her left. She was running out of places where she could stay covered unless she worked her way to the right. There was a rock a few feet ahead of her, but she needed Parker to keep talking.

  To be distracted.

  “How’d you feel when you found out your little girlfriend lost the baby?”

  Shit. She’d never had a chance to tell Craig…

  “Or didn’t you know?”

  The time had never seemed right, not the few times they’d spoken on the phone when she was at work. He’d come back after the failed search for Lisa Harrington, packed a bag and taken a temporary transfer.

  And another and another…

  Parker laughed. “She gets herself pregnant, plans to screw you out of every cent, but she’s not even telling you she’s havin’ your kid.”

  Nothing but the sound of a soft breeze rustling the trees.

  Craig had walked away from their relationship, and for a time her grief had turned to rage, until she believed she hated him, but here she was, standing in the woods, gun in her hand, praying he was okay.

  Worrying about how he was coping with what Parker had said.

  “See, Hobbs knew the test of loyalty. Millie was the only one who passed.” Parker shrugged. “She took it and strangled it herself right after it was born…That’s why Hobbs let her live. Proof nothing was more important to her than him.”

  Parker was quiet for a moment. Just long enough to let his words sink in. Ashlyn felt a wave of nausea threaten to topple her, and a spine-chilling cold.

  Sometimes, you hear something and know instantly it’s true, despite the fact that you don’t want to believe it.

  “Millie, Millie, Millie. All that guilt. I did her a favor. Put her out of her misery,” Parker said. “ ’Course, it worked out much better for me that he didn’t off Millie. She came in handy.

  “So tell me, Nolan, if she really wanted you, why’d you two break up right after she lost the baby?”
>
  Parker tightened his grip on the gun and picked it up. “Better you see her for the bitch she is.”

  “You think she doesn’t care, why d’you think she’d come looking for me?”

  The voice was labored and somewhere to Ashlyn’s right. She started scanning the trees, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

  Parker hopped down from where he sat, his actions revealing the bulk under his coat, and walked toward the trees and rocks on the other side of the clearing, moving slowly, carefully, as he scanned the woods.

  Careful enough to wear a bulletproof vest, but too cocky to think of the risks of having a loud conversation in the woods. Too cocky to remember he might not hear her coming if he wasn’t listening.

  “Appearances. Can’t have everyone else seeing what a cold-hearted bitch she really is.”

  “You…don’t…know.”

  Ashlyn moved to another tree. Parker turned and for a moment his eyes narrowed as he scanned the woods a little to her left.

  She thought she’d slipped up, but it wasn’t her direction he was looking in. It was toward the area where she thought she’d heard noises before.

  He turned back toward Craig’s voice. “I ought to shoot you again, put you out of your misery. Hell, when I beat that bitch and she miscarried, I did you a favor. You should be thanking me.”

  Silence.

  “No offense, Nolan, but I was kind of glad I didn’t kill you in the woods before. It was risky sneaking out there to leave the body. But I had to make sure you got involved.

  “I didn’t even realize it was you I was shooting at until I heard it at the bar later. Went to all the work of tracking down those remains and planting the clues for nothing. Told ya, Millie was good for some things.”

  Parker looked at his watch. “You aren’t provin’ as useful as I thought you would, though.”

  “Sorry…let ya down.”

  “Sure you are. Don’t worry, Nolan. She’ll come. And this time, there might be better ways to show your old girlfriend who’s boss before I deal with her, once and for all.”

  Something between a roar and a scream came from the woods, and the sound of movement. Ashlyn started to move out from behind the tree, but she felt something grab her from behind. She’d never had a lot of direct contact with Kurdy during the investigation, but in the aftermath he’d been brought in for questioning, and she’d seen him at the station. He’d cleaned up since then, hair a respectable length, clothes with a tidiness that defied the fact that he’d been on the run since allegedly murdering his wife and children.

  He had a shotgun in his hand.

  “Sorry,” he whispered as he raised his gun and swung it down against her head. She staggered backward as the dots of color obscuring her vision grew until they overlapped and blurred together before everything went black.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  She’d been gone too long.

  The first three times he’d thought that, Tain had told himself to relax, that she’d only been gone for a few minutes. Then it was ten minutes. Then fifteen.

  Now, half an hour later, he couldn’t wait any longer. He marched down the hall to the back entrance and pushed the door open.

  The car was gone.

  He turned and walked back down the hall, fighting the urge to break into a run. His cell phone rang.

  “Ashlyn—”

  “Uh…sorry, Tain. It’s Sims.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Look, Constable Hart asked me to follow up on something—”

  “I know. The second canvas.”

  “No, since then. I already told her about that. She wanted me to check on who’d recently purchased a property in Nighthawk Crossing.”

  Tain stopped walking and started listening to what Sims was saying.

  “—same Parker who rents the apartment near the crime scene bought it.”

  “Wait, Sims. Is this the same Parker—”

  “Used to be with the Port Moody police. I told Ash, uh, Constable Hart that when I called before.”

  “How long since you called, Sims?”

  “Forty, forty-five minutes.”

  Tain closed his eyes. “So why’d you call me this time, instead of Ashlyn?”

  “I tried to call her, but I keep getting a message saying that the cellular customer is out of the service area.”

  Tain closed his phone without another word and ran into Winters’s office. “She’s gone out there.”

  Winters looked up. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. The guy who bought Campbell’s old property is a former cop with a grudge against us. Her. He was charged with assaulting Ashlyn a few months ago, but they didn’t have enough to get a conviction.”

  “Christ, Tain, I thought you were the loose cannon,” Winters said as he grabbed his coat. “We’re not making the same mistakes again.”

  “Too late for that.”

  “What I mean is, we all get Kevlars, and we take enough backup.”

  Tain looked at the nameplate outside the sergeant’s office and thought of the one that used to be there. Thought of the man who’d paid the price for his impulsiveness and nodded.

  He’d take the risk for his partner, but it wasn’t something he could ask of anyone else.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The return to consciousness was accompanied by a throbbing pain in her head. It screamed as she tried to open her eyes, and she lifted her fingers to her temple.

  A goose egg was already growing where she’d been struck. And there was dampness, blood from the gash.

  Ashlyn forced her eyes open. The dark blotches morphed into recognizable forms, and she realized she was on the ground, where she’d been standing when struck, looking up at the trees.

  She sat up. Her gun lay in the dead leaves beside her.

  She grabbed it as she forced herself to her feet.

  Why?

  The last few moments before the blackness were hazy, but starting to come back.

  Parker’s taunting.

  Craig taking the bait.

  Kurdy…

  Why hit her and leave her?

  Why not kill her?

  Why not take her to Parker?

  She stood for a moment. There was nothing but an eerie silence. She took a step forward, swayed and reached out with her hand.

  There was a body lying in the clearing and another on the ground not far away. Ashlyn staggered back as she processed what she was seeing. The stillness, the pool of blood oozing out over the ground…

  It was too late for him. She forced herself forward, and when she stood over Parker she could see his blank eyes stared up at nothing.

  Dead. No question, but she still kicked the gun away and bent down to check that he had no pulse. That was when she saw the other gun. Set on a rock.

  The gun that had been in Kurdy’s hands.

  A faint moan from the other body to her left broke the silence. She knelt beside Craig and pulled his hand back from the wound, then gently unwrapped the shirt he’d tied around it and kept her focus on his injuries. It took less than a moment for her to rewrap the wound.

  It wasn’t until he lifted his hand again and touched her arm that she met his gaze.

  It was one of those moments when no words were necessary.

  She pulled out her cell phone and fumbled with it until she got it open. No service. As she flipped it shut, she looked up at him and fought the urge to reach for her forehead. The shooting pain mercifully settled to a dull ache. “Can you walk? We need—”

  “Ash…”

  “Shhh. Save your strength,” she said, vaguely aware of the sounds of footsteps in the forest. Someone shouted, “Over here,” while someone else called in on a radio for an ambulance, and then she felt a presence behind her.

  “What the hell happened?” Winters asked.

  Tain knelt on the ground beside her.

  “Kur—” Ashlyn turned, the dull ache turning to a roar again with the sudden moveme
nt. The clearing was empty. “Kurdy shot Parker.”

  “What?” Tain asked. “Why?”

  Why. The question always asked.

  The one they seldom could answer.

  “How is he?” Tain asked.

  She swallowed. “Clean shot through and through, but he’s lost a lot of blood.”

  Craig lifted his bloody hand back up and put it over hers. For the first time since before her assault she looked him in the eyes and saw the ghost of a smile before his eyes flickered and closed.

  In the aftermath of a police-involved shooting, there are a lot of questions to answer, and a lot of time is spent on paperwork and procedure, crossing every t, dotting every i. When the victim is a police officer who’s been suspended everything triples.

  At least, that’s how it felt to Ashlyn. She’d been through it before, after she shot and killed Craig’s partner.

  This time, she had a weapon in her possession that she claimed she hadn’t fired—gunshot residue tests had supported her claims, but that wasn’t conclusive proof, and although none of her fingerprints were found on the gun, that was only more circumstantial evidence.

  Emma Fenton had her exclusive and was only too happy to raise questions about Ashlyn’s actions and whether she was responsible for Parker’s death, but what was undeniable was the set of footprints found at the scene. Footprints that didn’t match hers, Craig’s or Parker’s.

  And the skin and blood they found on the butt of the shotgun. Skin and blood that matched Ashlyn’s.

  When the tests were completed, another unexpected detail emerged: the bullet that had torn through Craig’s shoulder and lodged itself in his Rodeo had been fired from the same gun that had been used to kill Hank Jeffers’s wife and children. Whatever Parker’s game, he’d used Kurdy. Maybe to try to get them involved, maybe to draw them back to Nighthawk Crossing. Kurdy had been innocent of the crime he’d originally been suspected of, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d killed Parker, and whatever he knew about the case would remain unknown until the day the police caught up with him.

  Ashlyn was pretty sure it wouldn’t be anytime soon.