Tain shook his head. “I called for an ambulance. Winters, he was in and out. All he said was they’d roughed him up. He passed out again before he could tell me who. It wasn’t until we got his car back to town and started going over it that we found the bullet, and by then it was too late to search the woods. I was worried about a neck injury, and I thought the blood was from hitting his head, so I didn’t move him, and I didn’t realize…
“The doctor confirmed that some of the injuries were from the car accident, but that there was pre-existing head trauma and indications he’d been kicked in the chest. Whatever happened out there, Winters barely got out alive.”
“And that still wasn’t enough to go after them?”
Tain shook his head. “When he came to, he didn’t remember what had happened. Sullivan thought Winters had been following up on a lead for my case, but Winters hadn’t told me anything. He didn’t have anything solid. Sure, Sullivan sent Campbell and Aiken out there. They asked if anyone had seen Winters, and they said no. They let them take a look around.”
“So it all looked clean, there was no proof, and Sullivan didn’t realize it connected to the task force investigation.” Ashlyn thought about that. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened.”
“No? You mean, like I can’t blame myself for what happened to Jenny?”
“We don’t know what happened to her.”
“You talked to Mrs. Wilson yourself.”
“She told me about Jenny in the cabin a few weeks ago, but she wouldn’t even tell me which of you Jenny had been talking to. I have no idea why she thought the body at the inn was Jenny’s. She didn’t give me any evidence, Tain.”
“She didn’t have to,” Tain said. “I saw the tattoo on the ankle. It wasn’t all burned off.”
Ashlyn frowned. “But there was no record of a tattoo in the file.”
Tain leaned back against the seat. “She’d gotten it a few months earlier. Only people who would have likely known would be Bobby and Eddie, and nobody questioned them. I saw it when I talked to her at the shack. A butterfly. ‘Something beautiful and free.’ That’s what she said.”
And short-lived.
“But…you didn’t ID her to Sullivan.”
“Somehow, they found out about the bust. The Native leaders started talking, and they knew things I hadn’t told Summer. There was a leak in the department, and we didn’t know who it was. The best chance we had of finding the leak was by withholding information and planting false leads and seeing what happened.”
“And the search warrants you were trying to get…”
“Blind Creek Inn and the staff building where Jenny lived.”
“But you had nothing more than an anonymous tip.”
“Nolan wouldn’t budge.”
“You’ve been working with Sullivan, still trying to find a way to take down the smuggling operation?”
Tain paused. “Yes. But that’s it. Just because it was my lead.”
“Does Sullivan know about Jenny?”
“Not that she wasn’t really missing.”
“Tain—”
“I went to Native groups to get funding to hide Jenny. I kept it all off the books.”
God, what a mess. He’d done everything he could think of to make sure nobody found out that Jenny had talked, and it had still gone horribly wrong.
“You never told Sullivan there was a link between the smuggling operation and the missing girls?”
“How could I? I didn’t have any proof.”
“What I don’t understand is, why did you tell me to go through the missingpersons files,” Ashlyn said.
“I couldn’t find them. You were spending most of your time in office, and it was the one place you were probably safe.”
“Did you know Nolan had them?”
Tain shook his head. “All I knew was that Nolan was suspicious about the task force, and after Winters got hurt on the job he started digging.”
“He found out you’d put together the names of the girls, and that someone was leaking information to Native leaders, put two and two together but came up with six.” Ashlyn thought about her first night in town, remembered the look on Tain’s face when he’d seen Nolan talking to Summer. “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t trust him. Nolan was brought in after the investigation started. He doesn’t live here. He couldn’t have tipped anyone off about the failed bust.”
“I just thought it was better if people thought I was difficult, that I didn’t have any idea who was involved.”
“You didn’t want them to think you were getting close.”
He held up his hands and said, “Huh. Thing is, I’m still not close.” Tain looked at her. “I know Nolan’s not involved, but he’s still hiding something.”
Tain had put a lot of cards on the table, but she hadn’t offered him the answers she’d found. To his credit, he hadn’t pressed her. At a guess, he was feeling vulnerable and had reached out to the one person he knew was clean, who had nothing to hide.
When she looked up, he was watching her. She reached for the bag she’d tossed in the backseat and pulled out the files that she’d set on top.
After she found the one marked KAITLIN COLLINS she passed it to him and watched as he flipped it open and read it wordlessly. When he was finished he looked up at her.
“It doesn’t explain everything.”
Ashlyn reached into her pocket and removed the messages Constable Melissa Keith had left on her desk. “You called 911 the night of my accident. You know Nolan went to the Johnson house.”
“He’d been suspicious for a while and he’d started asking questions. If he’d been looking for the abductors instead of looking for the leak, he might have solved this already.”
“Not without the missing pieces,” Ashlyn said. “That day in the woods, when we found the first bodies. You tried to get rid of us.”
“To make sure you didn’t find anything that would lead you to Bobby Hobbs and Eddie Campbell.”
“But why, Tain? If we had the evidence we could have gone after them.”
“We still don’t know who leaked the information. If someone at the station heard, and they were involved…”
It could jeopardize everything.
“Hell, for all I know they got spooked and that’s why they’ve been dumping bodies.”
She thought about what Keith had told her, about Nolan transferring to the task force before Tain.
“Nolan started after the main group, but before you did. Was he part of the team, or was he investigating the team?”
Tain paused. “I don’t know.”
“But you thought it was possible.” Ashlyn stared out the window for a moment. Tain hadn’t just tested the limb; he’d crawled all the way out onto it. His fate was in her hands. No matter what his reasons, he’d contributed to filing a false report and withheld pertinent information about an ongoing investigation from his supervising officer. “If he was investigating the team, it was Aiken, Campbell and Oliver he was looking at.”
Tain nodded. “He probably stirred it up with me so nobody would be suspicious.”
“You’d be the one they’d watch. You had the original lead on the smuggling.” She thought about what he’d said. Everything fit. It all made sense, except one thing. “Why tell me this now?”
Tain looked down at his lap and remained silent.
Ashlyn reached over and touched his arm. “The bullet in my dashboard. It wasn’t meant for me, was it?”
“I don’t think so.”
She reached over the seat and removed the other file she’d found in Nolan’s desk, the one she’d never dreamed of finding, and passed it to Tain.
“You need to read this.”
He took it from her silently and she watched as he opened the folder and started reading.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Eighteen months ago
Ashlyn parked in the driveway next to the cabin she was staying in and walked to the door, w
here she performed the automatic tasks of inserting key in lock, twisting the doorknob and entering the house. As she pulled off her shoes she heard a vehicle nearby and glanced out the window. Nolan had parked his Rodeo and was heading inside. Ashlyn left her shoes in the hallway, then walked down the short hall, tossed her coat on the kitchen counter and returned to the entrance. It wasn’t until she bent down to put her shoes on the shelf in the closet that she noticed the floor.
There were faint prints on the beech tile, obviously smudged by her movements when she entered. A glance at her socks confirmed her suspicions.
All the tired muscles were at attention then, and she felt the tension coursing through her veins as she reached for her gun. Whoever it was had entered like a pro. She hadn’t noticed anything when she’d unlocked the door.
The thudding of her heart echoed in her ears as she moved forward, to the hallway.
Thu-thump thu-thump thu-thump. The speed increased as she tilted her head, first enough to see into the bedroom, then so that she could see the opening to the bathroom. The stairs were on the opposite side of the wall she was against, and she felt fear give way to doubt.
It was a short walk along a path through a wooded area to the small house where Tain was staying. Woods that could conceal. She thought about the loft of her own cabin. Weren’t there two windows on the back side that overlooked the path?
And the time it would take to get in the car and start it would leave her vulnerable. She’d be a sitting duck.
The fact that nobody had tried to shoot her already was the counterargument, but if someone was lying in wait they were probably hoping to flee undetected, that like Mrs. Wilson’s remains, Ashlyn’s body would have enough time to grow cold before someone even discovered it. Shooting her in the car or in the woods would be a last resort, but if they realized she suspected their presence they’d probably take the chance.
She wondered if she’d be thinking about someone trying to kill her if she didn’t know about the bullet in her dashboard, and thought of the gash on her arm.
She thought of the sound of Nolan’s Rodeo pulling up only moments before. It took only a split second for her to make up her mind and she eased herself back from the wall, moving carefully toward the door while keeping her eyes on the corner ahead of her.
When she felt the door behind her Ashlyn reached back with her left hand, grabbed the knob and twisted it. She moved forward as she pulled the door open and kept her eyes on the hallway, ears straining to hear any sound of movement from within the cabin, gun ready in her right hand.
She bent down and grabbed the shoes, twisted her left foot around the door and pushed it open a little wider, and backed out onto the step.
Damn. Her cell phone had been in her coat pocket.
A glance at his cabin revealed the trickle of smoke rising from the chimney, the faint shadow against the curtains of the living room. When she’d found out where he was staying, she’d been glad of the extra distance, but now she silently cursed the fact that she’d been given a cabin across from him, instead of beside him.
Ashlyn slipped her shoes on and started backing down the steps as she scanned the windows of the cabin. There was no sign of movement, no evidence of disruption, no indication someone had even been inside.
She saw nothing out of the ordinary, but that wasn’t reassuring.
The gravel crunched softly under her feet as she backed away from her cabin, her eyes turning from side to side, scanning the trees between the little cabins. She was in the open, exposed.
When she reached the driveway she paused. The door to her place was in the front, but the door to Nolan’s was around the side. If she went to the door she’d break visual contact with her cabin, and that meant that if someone was inside they’d have a chance to leave without being seen.
Ashlyn winced as her foot hit an exposed tree root and risked a glance at the ground so that she could try to avoid tripping again. Step by step she inched closer to the building until she could reach up and rap on the living room window with her fist.
After she counted to five, she reached up to knock again, but the curtain pulled back from the edge and she felt her breath catch as she saw Nolan’s face. As soon as he saw her he glanced at her cabin.
As though he knew.
He held up his hand. The curtain shut out the light from inside again, and she took a deep breath and exhaled.
As she drew a second deep breath, she could hear movement from the side of his cabin, the door closing, footsteps, the crunch of gravel as he followed the driveway.
“You okay?” Nolan asked. He had his gun in his hand, but his arm wasn’t raised.
She nodded. “Someone’s been in my place.”
Nolan paused. “You’re sure?”
“Shoeprints on my landing.”
“Did you call the station?”
“My cell phone is inside.”
He started walking toward her cabin and she followed.
“No sign of forced entry,” he said as he walked up the steps and surveyed the door.
“I never noticed anything until I’d already gone in.”
He pushed the door open, and she pointed to the spot on the floor where she’d seen the prints as she kept her eyes on the hallway in front of them. Nolan bent down and looked at the floor. When he stood and entered, he kept to the far side so he wouldn’t smudge the prints any more than she already had.
Near the landing was a mirror with a ledge and a few small hooks for hanging keys. Nolan eased it off the wall.
From the corner at the far end of the hall, where Ashlyn had entered the kitchen earlier, it was possible to see almost all of the main living area. It didn’t take more than a look the length of two heartbeats before Nolan nodded to her.
She was following and had eased the door closed behind them.
Nolan inched his way along the wall that bordered the stairs, unknowingly retracing her steps from earlier. He reached out with the mirror in one hand and tilted it toward the stairs.
A nod was the only confirmation she got that the stairs were clear.
Checking the rest of the bedroom and bathroom felt like a formality. The bed lacked a spread that reached to the floor, so with the use of the mirror Nolan could see underneath easily, and the closet was on the far side of the room, with the door open. Ashlyn hadn’t fully unpacked, so it took no more than a quick glance to see that all the space contained was a handful of clothes and a couple of unpacked suitcases stacked on the floor.
The shower curtain was drawn back fully and the design of the bathroom meant there was no place for anyone to hide.
Nolan nodded toward the stairs. He tilted his head back to scan the area above them as he climbed one step at a time toward the second level. She followed, easing herself up the stairs slowly, gun ready, ears straining for the tiniest sound. But the only thing that threatened to break the silence was their movements.
When Nolan reached the turn in the stairs he held out the mirror. Ashlyn finished climbing the first section of the staircase with her gaze fixed at the railing on the upper level.
If anyone was up there, that’s where they’d appear.
Nolan turned the corner and she followed. He was about halfway up the stairs when he lay down against them instead of climbing the rest of the way to the second floor.
Ashlyn followed his head. From that position they could see out over the top of the landing, through the doorway to the room. It was a long, narrow attic loft. The space to the left and right of the top of the stairs was storage, filled with shelves built into the walls.
There was only a few feet of floor space on either side of the stairway to hide.
Nolan held up three fingers, put one down, and then only one finger remained. When he lowered it they both jumped up the stairs and he swung to the left while she swung to the right.
The landing was clear.
They positioned themselves beside the door. Nolan reached out with the mirror again,
first tilting it to the far side of the room, then turning it slowly back toward himself. He looked at her as he set the mirror down on the floor behind his feet and nodded.
He entered the room first and she followed, scanning from the wall on her left all the way to the wall on her right. This room had no closet, which meant the only place left was under the bed. Nolan approached it and she bent down as he pulled up the bed skirt.
“Clear,” she said.
For a split second her eyes closed as she drew a deep breath.
When she opened her eyes, she saw Nolan holster his gun. He led the way down the stairs in silence, but as soon as they reached the landing at the bottom of the stairs, he turned to her.
“I think you should call Sullivan.”
She holstered her gun. “I was wrong. I overreacted. Is that what you want to hear?”
He walked through the living area, scrutinizing it more closely than he had when they’d been clearing rooms. She watched him scan the end tables and the bookshelves and the small dining table between the oversized chair and the kitchen.
“You’re a good cop, Ashlyn.”
He brushed past her, into her bedroom. She was on the verge of asking what the hell he was doing when he turned to her.
“What’s this?”
He gestured at the small nightstand beside the bed.
Ashlyn at the beach with her arms wrapped around a smiling two-year-old who looked just like her, give or take twenty-plus years.
“My niece,” she said. “The photo sits on my nightstand, but it’s been knocked over. I didn’t leave it like that.”
“Do you have a plastic bag it can fit in?”
She left the room and went to the kitchen to find one and when she returned passed it to him.
“We’ll see if we can get a print off it.” Nolan bagged it, then looked at her. “Did you see anything else that looked like it had been moved?”
Ashlyn finished scanning the room and shook her head.
“Pack a bag,” Nolan said.
“But—”
He reached out and touched her arm, the same way Tain had only days before. “I’m not taking no for an answer. If you won’t call Sullivan you can’t stay here.”
Lullaby for the Nameless (Nolan, Hart & Tain Thrillers) Page 57