Ashley brushed away from the man's grasp as he reached out, trying to grab her, now recovered from her well-placed blows. She ran blindly into the woods, her pursuer pausing momentarily before following. Had he grabbed her gun, planning to kill her with her own service weapon or had he taken time to find his knife, planning to hack her to pieces? Run, Ashley, run!
Ashley bounced off trees as she dashed through the forest. She was unable to follow the open trail in her abject blindness, the branches once again smacking her face. She could hear her pursuer gaining ground behind her as she found herself entangled in the underbrush. Her navigation of the forest was thrown off track by her weak vision, leaving her running in what she was certain was the wrong direction.
Fighting her way back into an open part of the forest, Ashley tried to make a dash for the field, which she knew was somewhere in front of her, or at least she hoped it was. However, just as she emerged from the underbrush, her foot was snared, sending her crashing to the ground.
She lay motionless for a moment, listening for the sounds of her pursuer as she gulped for air. There he was, just to her left. He was coming up fast, running at a full trot.
Knowing it was do or die, Ashley pushed herself back to her feet and began to run with everything she had within her. If she could make the field, maybe, just maybe, someone would see her. Perhaps someone would hear her screams for help. In the woods, she realized she would have no chance.
Despite running as fast as she could, Ashley felt like she was in one of her nightmares as the sound of the killer’s footfalls got closer. She could feel his presence behind her, his hands pawing at her shoulders as he got to arm’s length. She looked back over her shoulder to see the form of the demon on her heels. She wasn’t going to make it.
Suddenly, she felt the presence hit her full speed from behind, knocking her to the ground.
“No!” Ashley yelled as she felt the man fall on top of her. The two tumbled along on the forest floor before they stopped rolling. The man was now straddling her chest.
Instinctively throwing up her hands to repel the attack, Ashley found herself looking directly into the demon’s red eyes. She ripped at his face, grasping the mask that covered his true identity, as he tried to force down her arms. Her feet kicked wildly, but to no avail as he sat on her chest and out of harm’s way, already knowing the danger of her well-placed kicks.
Holding down her uninjured hand, her wounded one of little use, the demon reached for something. It was the knife! She could see its outline in his hand. This was it!
With one last burst of energy she ripped again at the mask as she now heard her own screams piercing the night air. She seized the opening beneath her attacker’s chin and pulled the mask away from his face, exposing his true identity.
She lay paralyzed with shock as she gazed into the eyes of the unmasked demon, even as he raised his knife for the kill. One of them was about to die.
BEST FRIENDS FOREVER
ONE WEEK BEFORE
Rock River, Texas
The bodies lay bathed in the amber glow of the morning sun. The light filtered through the bleachers, casting a shadow on the covered remains. The corpses remained at the scene of the crime all evening following their discovery by the groundskeeper just before midnight. They would soon be taken for autopsy, before the west Texas heat had a chance to come to bear on them. The coroner was already beneath the bleachers, body bags ready, waiting for one last officer to view the crime scene before he would whisk them away to the medical examiner’s office.
Law enforcement officials had come en masse before the sun rose that morning, lining up to examine the macabre scene. They viewed the bodies by the lights of Nunley Stadium and a bank of hastily-installed spotlights set up by the local rescue squad. Unlike most Friday nights during football season, the lights remained on throughout the evening, long after the gridiron battle between the home-standing Rock River Pioneers and East Ridge Cougars was settled. The glow from the stadium, located on a small rise just outside Rock River, signaled something was amiss in the normally quiet town.
Ashley ducked under the yellow crime scene tape. She was careful to avoid hitting her head on the metal crossbeams that lined the underpart of the bleachers as she made her way to the bodies, which were concealed beneath the coroner’s tarp. She would be the last to view the bodies before they were removed from the stadium. Her late arrival was due to a four-hour drive from her home in Austin. While having access to the department’s helicopter, which would have made the trip in less than an hour, she chose to keep her feet on the ground. It wasn’t so much the flying she feared as being closed up in the small aircraft cabin during its flight through the blackness of the Texas night. Something about being cooped up and not able to see what was coming made her feel uncomfortable to the point she would face driving alone at night across the deserted western prairie rather than taking to the air for the short "hop and a jump" to her destination.
“Agent Reynolds?” the coroner asked expectantly.
He started to extend his hand before realizing he was wearing rubber gloves, leaving him to give his visitor an awkward half-wave. “We were just about to remove the bodies.”
Ashley flashed the coroner a faint smile, realizing her late arrival had delayed the removal. She was the only member of the viewing party. The other investigators had long since gone and were hopefully tracking down leads.
“Thanks for waiting,” Ashley responded, pushing back her long black hair from her eyes.
A gust of wind swept through the bleachers, exposing the bloody hand of one of the victims from beneath the tarp.
“I won’t be a minute,” she pledged as she eyed the stiff appendage.
For Ashley, it wasn’t so much about seeing the scene of the crime since a host of investigators had already pored over the area collecting evidence. Instead, this was more of a personal visit, as she knew one of the victims lying covered on the ground in front of her.
Ashley knelt down by the first of the covered remains. She knew that beneath the tarp was the body of her friend. The hand extending from under the covering was that of Jana Ferrell. She didn’t even have to look beneath the tarp to know it was her. She could see a promise ring on the finger, a ring that belonged to her dear friend. Jana always wore the ring since it was given to her by a man she dated back when she and Ashley were at the academy together. While the boyfriend was ancient history, Jana doggedly continued wearing the ring as a constant reminder to "never trust anybody", especially if that "anybody" was of the male variety. Further solidifying Ashley’s expectation of who was on the other side of the tarp was the forty-caliber, which was on the ground near the body. It was standard issue.
Ashley took a deep breath as she pulled back the tarp, dreading what was beneath. While she had seen many bodies in her line of work, this would be the first time in her relatively young career that it was a friend on the other side of the sheet. There would be no separating work from personal life in this case, the two colliding under the bleachers of the rural football stadium as the tarp rolled back.
She repressed a gasp as she saw Jana’s face. The beautiful, dark-skinned thirty-year-old’s eyes were fixed in a dead stare. Her throat had been slashed. Blood covered her shirt and the ground underneath her body. It was obvious at first blush that she had bled to death from the gaping neck wound. Her death, Ashley surmised, had been mercifully quick as the slash had ripped open her jugular and carotid. The blade nearly decapitated her friend given the depth of its penetration.
Ashley bit her lip, half out of sadness for the loss of her friend and half out of anger, wanting her killer to suffer the same fate. What kind of monster would do something like this?
“Pretty bad, isn’t it?” the coroner asked, interrupting Ashley’s personal moment. “There’s nothing more dangerous than a cop killer. If you’ll kill a cop, you’ll kill anybody.”
While somewhat offended by the interruption, Ashley realized the coroner’s a
ssessment was right. They weren’t just looking for a killer; they were looking for a cop killer. Since this was the state of Texas, a state well-known for its liberal use of the death penalty, the killer had to realize the payment for his crime would be his own life. Plus, one other thing made this crime special, making it what some might call a high profile crime – Jana was a Texas Ranger.
Ashley hadn’t even rubbed the sleep from her eyes before her supervisor dropped the bomb during his early morning call to her home in the suburbs of Austin.
“Jana’s dead,” Major Thomas Cowell revealed while Ashley was still trying to get her bearings after being rousted from her slumber by the early morning call. “She was working on a case in Rock River. They found her and another victim just a while ago.”
The major realized the girls were friends, but it wasn’t just a courtesy call. Instead, it was a call to duty because Ashley was also a Texas Ranger, one of the foremost profilers in the department.
“I know it’s going to be difficult but I need you to get on down to Rock River ASAP,” Major Cowell directed in his unmistakable booming voice. “If you’re going to have an issue with this then you need to tell me now, otherwise I need you to get en route.”
His orders sent Ashley on a race across the state which now landed her over the body of her fellow agent. She wasn’t about to refuse the case. She owed it to Jana to find out who had cut her down in her prime. She also owed it to the state of Texas to bring in the person, dead or alive, who had murdered one of its finest.
Her briefing, received as she drove in and out of spotty cell phone coverage while crossing the Texas frontier, provided little assistance. It left her ill-prepared for what she would see once she reached the scene.
All she knew was Jana was working a homicide case and was following up a lead in Rock River. She had failed to report to dispatch after checking out of her unit around seven that evening. Her body, along with that of a teenage male identified as Jimmy Granderson, was found underneath the bleachers of the Rock River football stadium several hours after the game. Both had been stabbed to death. The killer was still at-large. That was all she knew as she looked into the face of her fallen friend.
The entire scene was surreal. There was Jana, lifeless and in a pool of blood, murdered in a town Ashley had never even heard of, let alone visited despite being a proud native of the Lone Star State. It wasn’t an ending befitting one possessing so much potential, so much life.
Jana had it all. She had looks, brains and a way with people that made Ashley envious since she was blessed with the brains but a smaller helping of the other two qualities. The pair first met at the law enforcement academy four years earlier and became friends when they were flung together as roommates, being the only two females in their class. It was a pairing of fate, the two becoming fast friends sharing the same dream– becoming Texas Rangers.
They arrived at the doorstep of their common goal by very different paths. Jana was raised on the poor side of the tracks in Austin, her family struggling to support her and her six brothers and sisters. It was actually Jana’s athletic prowess that brought her to Texas A&M on a full track scholarship where she excelled, named All Big Twelve her senior year.
Hers was far afield from the path journeyed by Ashley, who was born to a middle-class family, living much of her childhood in the suburbs of Austin. Ashley relied on her brains and her status as valedictorian of her high school class to get into the University of Texas and graduate Magna Cum Laude. Put simply, Ashley was a brain, a prodigy in any field she applied herself to. Unlike Jana, who discovered her calling while in college, Ashley always knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. She wanted to be like her dad – a Texas Ranger. And with her excellence in college, she had no problem joining Jana in the class as a second-generation ranger.
Now, as Ashley stood beneath the bleachers of the small-town football field, her friend lying amongst the discarded popcorn boxes and soft drink cups dropped from the bleachers by the fans, she struggled to make sense of it all. How had Jana come to her end?
Forcing herself to stop wandering down memory lane, Ashley tried to focus on the task at hand – finding who killed her friend.
“Is this how everything was found?” Ashley asked the coroner, who was unzipping the body bags, obviously ready to begin removing the bodies from the scene before the morning heat set in. “I mean, was anything moved?”
“No ma’am,” the coroner responded indigently. “We haven’t even moved the popcorn wrappers. We were told to wait until the crime scene investigators were through before touching anything.”
Ashley scanned the scene, noticing the bodies were lying at the mid-section of the bleacher area, which amounted to a dead end since the halves were joined by two metal sections. The other victim, still covered by the tarp, lie closest to the dead end, while Jana was a few feet from him. Ashley stood between the dead end and the only entrance to the underside of the bleachers.
“How about her gun?” Ashley inquired, noting the agent’s firearm was lying on the ground beside her, suggesting the gun was drawn when she was killed.
“Like I said, agent,” the coroner said, still irritated by her questioning of his professionalism, “Everything is exactly like it was found before the sun came up this morning.”
“Do we know if her gun was fired?” Ashley wondered aloud, realizing a gunshot may not have been heard over the roar of the crowd above.
“We have no way of knowing for sure ma’am,” the coroner responded. “Once you’re through here, the trace evidence team will come in and bag her hands to preserve any gunshot residue there may be, as well as any evidence that might exist under her fingernails. That’s when they will check the gun to see if it was fired. We should have a preliminary report for you this afternoon once we are through at the pathologist office.”
Bending down to take one more look at her old friend, forcing herself to remain professional and keep her tears inside, Ashley pulled the tarp back over Jana’s face, whispering a promise.
“I’ll get him for you,” Ashley said under her breath, taking care the coroner didn’t overhear her pledge.
Standing up from her friend’s side, Ashley spied the other tarp and carefully made her way over to the covered remains. She ducked the underpinnings of the bleachers while side stepping Jana’s body in the cramped area. Kneeling down at the side of the covered victim just as she had with Jana moments before, Ashley extended her hand and pulled away the tarp. What she saw beneath the covering sent an electric jolt up her spine as she felt heat rush to her face. She caught her breath as her eyes opened wide in panic.
Ashley let out a horrified yelp as she pushed herself back instinctively, her eyes still glued on the body below the tarp. Her panicked retreat was met with a jolt of pain as she struck her head on one of the metal supports, the impact causing her to lose her balance. Still back tracking as her panicked howl continued, she stumbled over Jana’s body, her friend’s corpse sending her falling to the ground in a heap.
“Agent!” the coroner cried out, dropping the body bags as he was surprised by Ashley’s sudden reaction. “What’s wrong?”
All Ashley could do was point toward the body beneath the second tarp, unable to find words to respond. She could feel blood begin to trickle from the back of her head, the warm liquid dribbling through her thick dark hair and onto the back of her neck.
Still not understanding what was going on, the coroner ran over to the second body, trying to figure out what had caused the agent’s reaction.
“What? It’s Jimmy Granderson,” the coroner began, looking back at Ashley who still sat on the ground with a confused look in her eyes. “He’s the team mascot, Pioneer Jake. The team here is the Rock River Pioneers.”
Ashley forced herself to breath, pulling in slow gulps of stale air as she gathered her nerves.
“I wasn’t ready,” Ashley breathlessly began, her face bright red. “I wasn’t ready to see that.”
; The coroner looked strangely at the ranger on the ground. Her reaction was not what he expected from the law enforcement professional.
“It’s just a kid in a mascot outfit,” the coroner said with a touch of surprise in his voice. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Ashley was now more embarrassed than scared, realizing her actions were extremely unprofessional. The problem was, she couldn’t help it. Her fear was deeply instilled, perhaps placed in her before birth.
“I just have a thing about masks,” Ashley responded as she reached back to feel the blood pouring from the back of her head. She pulled her hand back to see a coating of blood covering her fingers.
“Oh my, you’ve got a nasty cut, agent,” the coroner said, now more concerned about Ashley’s welfare than the unusual display he had just witnessed. “Let me get you something.”
Ashley slowly made her way to her feet, her head swimming from the impact with the steel beam.
“Better be careful, that was quite a lick,” the coroner warned as he stepped over to Ashley and began blotting her wound, holding pressure steady to stop the bleeding.
“I’ll be fine,” Ashley assured, taking the cloth from the coroner and holding it to her injury. “It’s just this silly thing I have. Something about masks, mascots and stuff like that just does something to me. I just wasn’t ready for it.”
“I suppose we all have something we’re scared of,” the coroner agreed, relieved that the bleeding from her head wound had slowed. “Speaking of which, you may still need stitches. I hope you’re not afraid of needles, too.”
Ashley allowed herself a little laugh, the mere act making her head throb, telling her that the bump would likely lead to a migraine later in the day.
Friday Night Frights (Jack and Ashley Detective series Book 1) Page 2