by Diane Capri
“Nothing?” Mandy whispered from behind him.
“Not so far.” He stepped forward and scanned the room again. It was only then that he saw the wet boot prints on the cracked cement floor. A blast of adrenaline rushed through him as he shone the light to follow the boot prints. He paused when the prints stopped at the wall.
What the hell?
He crept closer, pulse knocking wildly. The boot prints ended not at a wall, but at a wooden panel leaning up against the wall. He gingerly lifted the panel aside with his free hand. Mandy gasped when the move revealed a narrow door with a latch on the outside.
He mustered every last drop of courage he possessed and slid the latch open with a snick. Then, he swung the door wide.
“Anyone in there?” he called, body tense and at the ready as he held the flashlight like a club.
He heard no shuffling or movement or sounds of human habitation. He stepped into the room and trained the light on the interior.
A single, stained mattress lay on the floor beside a rusty space heater. The dank smell he’d noticed in the main cellar was laced with the faint scent of human body odor. And something metallic he couldn’t quite place.
After two passes with the flashlight, he found the source.
A pool of congealed blood on the floor right by his feet.
This was where Rebecca Anderson had been murdered. The blood wasn’t even dry yet.
CHAPTER SIX
“My God,” Mandy whispered as they both stared down at Rebecca’s blood.
A macabre nightmare had come to life. The situation settled over him like a lead blanket.
Trent’s mind raced as he tried to think of the next move. He knew he needed to alert someone on staff, but who could he trust? The only person he was sure of in this house of horrors was the woman standing beside him.
He was desperately trying to puzzle out the best course of action when Mandy’s phone chirped. She flinched at the sound and then began rifling through her pockets until she found the glowing device.
“It’s a text from Jess,” she murmured as she thumbed down, scrolling over the lengthy message. “She’s delayed due to the storm. And Alex Lloyd has a solid alibi tonight. He’s in Denver at a retirement dinner for his dad. More than a hundred witnesses. She also made a couple of calls and, according to her sources, Jim Kubiak doesn’t have a criminal record.”
Her body tensed and he peered over her shoulder to read the rest of the text.
BUT, Carl Asher is listed as the manager there. He did prison time for sexual assault in ’04. Dangerous. Help on the way. Be careful until cops arrive.
Carl Asher? The fussy desk manager with the silly mustache? Not possible.
Trent ran through the series of events that had led them here. He had told Carl about his investigation. And after he and Mandy went into the bar this afternoon, Asher had plenty of time to kill Rebecca.
The door at the top of the steps swung open, and footsteps sounded down the stairway.
Trent blinked, shielding his eyes as a high-powered flashlight sent his pupils into overload.
He blinked a few times and Asher came into view, gun first.
“Couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? Now I’ve got a mess on my hands.”
Trent was about to do whatever it took to buy time, but Mandy was way ahead of him. She grabbed Trent’s hand, shined the flashlight into Asher’s eyes and let out an ear-piercing screech.
Asher didn’t hesitate. He swung the gun wildly in Mandy’s direction.
Trent acted on pure instinct.
He lunged forward and knocked the flashlight out of Asher’s hand.
Asher fired, and the shot went wide, burying the slug into the wall a few feet from Mandy’s head.
Asher let out a roar and ran at Trent like a bull.
Mandy flung the flashlight at his head.
The light flickered and went out as Asher howled in fury.
Trent lunged at him in the darkness.
The two men grappled while Mandy shouted for help, but her cries were lost in the noise of the storm.
Asher landed a vicious blow to Trent’s solar plexus, and he bent over, temporarily stunned and breathless.
Asher acted on a dime, breaking away. The sound of footsteps echoed through the blackness as Trent tried to track his movements, but by the time he realized where Asher was headed, it was too late.
The cellar door by the generator swung open, and Asher launched himself out into the blizzard.
“Mandy, go upstairs and get Jim, Sean and any of the staff who are willing to help!” Trent shouted, sprinting toward the open cellar door. “If Kubiak doesn’t get the generator going, set out flashlights in the snow around the lodge so I can find my way back.”
“Don’t go out there!” Mandy pleaded, scurrying after him and grabbing his hand. “He’s not going to get far in this weather. He’ll come back.”
“Go up and tell the others what’s happening. Put the flashlights out in the snow where I can see them.” He pulled free and headed out into the blizzard. He called over his shoulder. “I’ll be back soon.”
The blinding snow was so thick that, even though Asher had only a thirty-second head start, he had disappeared.
Trent reached into his pocket for his cell phone. Only six percent battery left. He could use the phone’s flashlight now or wait until he fought his way back. He’d rely on Mandy to light the way for his return.
He pressed the button, shining the phone’s light toward the ground in front of him.
He saw Asher’s tracks in the snow ahead, but the wind and fresh snowfall already had wiped them out in places. Trent moved forward in slow, lurching steps, following Asher’s path like a trail of birdseed.
“Come on, Asher,” he called out into the white abyss. “You’ll die out here in the cold.”
He didn’t expect a response, and he didn’t get one. But he trudged on. Already, his fingertips were numb, and his limbs sluggish. How long could he resist hypothermia, he wondered, even as he walked farther from the lodge’s warmth.
The cold bit relentlessly. The barrage of icy snowflakes stung his cheeks, his hands, and every inch of his exposed flesh. His lungs hurt with exertion and each sharp inhale of frigid alpine air.
Still, he pressed on. Every minute or so, he shot a glance back the way he’d come. He could no longer see the lodge, or anything except blinding snow in all directions. He faced forward in the whiteout.
All he could do was focus on the task at hand or lose himself to panic.
Find Asher.
Set one foot in front of the other.
He repeated the words in his mind, eyes trained on the ground in front of him, trance-like, until he realized that Asher’s tracks were no longer covered over with fresh snow.
Something had happened. He was closing the gap, and quickly.
His heart raced as he caught sight of a small dark shape in the snow, a few feet ahead. He plunged toward it, a sense of triumph coursing through him.
A man’s boot, wedged in a deep drift of hard-packed snow.
“I know you’re close Asher,” he called loudly, projecting his voice to carry over the blustering wind. “You’ll lose that bare foot to frostbite. You’ve got to get indoors. Let’s end this now. There’s nowhere to go from h—”
Trent’s words were cut short. Movement in his periphery jerked him to a halt. He barely had time to brace himself as Asher rushed from his blind side, taking him to the ground like a linebacker.
“You c-crazy bastard,” Asher stammered with cold. He gripped Trent’s coat in his fists and slammed his body against the soft snow. “You don’t even know that girl, and now you’re going to die for her.”
Trent’s head landed hard on a rock. His vision blurred as a white-hot shaft of pain split through his skull. He tried to focus on what Asher was saying, but his mind felt scrambled.
Asher reached to his waistband with one hand, closed his fingers around Trent’s throa
t with the other, and squeezed.
Blackness closed in around him, and he fought it with everything he had.
In the distance, perhaps from the lodge, he heard a single gunshot. Another. Had Mandy sent Kubiak to rescue him?
Trent mustered all his strength and used his size to his advantage. He rolled hard to the right. The move sent Asher toppling off him into the snow. Asher’s gun went flying.
Trent clambered to his feet. He nearly lost his balance as nausea swept through him. But he pushed forward and bent to jerk Asher to his feet.
The smaller man had the strength of a wolverine. He fought wildly, fists flying in a flurry of punches to Trent’s face and stomach.
In their scuffle, Trent’s still-illuminated cell phone skittered across the snow.
As he defended himself against Asher’s attack, he strained to use the weak blue light to find Asher’s gun.
He gasped. His cell phone sat precariously on the edge of a cliff just two yards away.
Asher fought so hard because he knew the cliff was there.
Trent realized they were on the very edge of the mountain and, for the first time, he fully understood that one of them would die.
Asher sent his elbow crashing into Trent’s nose. The move blinded him as his eyes teared and searing agony shot through his whole face. Reflexively, he released his hold on Asher.
Trent wiped his eyes with his forearm. When he could finally see again, he looked at Asher. Three few feet in front of him. Gun in hand.
“Time’s up, superhero.”
Trent swallowed hard. “Everyone knows it’s you, Asher.” He swiped at the hot gush of blood running from his battered nose with his sleeve. “You can go down for one murder or two. But you’re not getting out of here.”
Asher grinned, breathing heavily, his neatly waxed mustache covered in white powder above stained yellow teeth. “You’d be surprised what I manage to get away with. Hell, I kept that girl on this mountain for a month, and no one was the wiser. Cops in and out, even the family came one weekend.”
Trent fought the urge to rush forward and knock them both over the edge.
Keep him talking.
“How? How did you do it?”
“My family has a fishing cabin a couple of miles away. I was keeping her there, but then the blizzard was brewing. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get to her if we got snowed in at the lodge and she’d freeze to death.” Asher shrugged. “So I drugged her and carried into the cellar. The lodge was almost empty anyway. Figured she’d keep and once the weather cleared, I’d take her back. But then you showed up. It’s your fault she’s dead, you know.”
A wave of rage rushed over Trent. “Yeah. Without me, then what? You could’ve kept her as a prisoner in your cabin forever?”
“Well, until I got sick of her at least. But what’s done is done.” Asher’s trigger finger moved slowly in the cold, but his intention was clear.
An eerie sense of calm settled over Trent. One good thing about being numb with cold. The bullet would hurt a lot less.
He let out a roar and dove sideways at Asher in a football move he remembered from college.
“Trent!” Mandy’s scream came from the direction of the lodge.
Followed by a gunshot the distance.
Asher had doubled over a moment before his twitchy finger pulled the trigger. His gunshot cracked through the night air, echoing through the valley.
The hard shot to Trent’s shoulder pushed him back.
Instinctively, he released Asher as he fell, slapping his free hand to his shoulder.
Asher’s hands scrabbled at Trent’s arm, trying to hang on even as Trent’s body jerked back.
Asher stumbled, blood blooming on his torso where the first gunshot had hit him.
Trent landed hard on his back into the snow.
Asher lost his balance. He tumbled backward into the abyss of darkness. His bloodcurdling scream went on for long seconds before it stopped.
The only sound Trent heard was Mandy calling out as she ran. “Trent! Trent!”
It was only then that his shoulder exploded into a hot poker of agony.
He closed his eyes. It was cold…so damned cold.
He’d been wrong.
The cold hadn’t numbed him at all. His shoulder hurt like hell.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I think he’s waking up.” Mandy’s quiet voice seeped through the humming in his ears as a shaft of light breached the darkness.
He blinked again and winced.
He’d heard the term “everything hurts” before, but this was the first time he could honestly say he knew what it meant. Even his rattled teeth ached.
But he was alive.
He felt a warm hand on his and turned his head to see Mandy and Jess standing beside the bed.
Mandy’s eyes were bright with unshed tears and she grinned at him. “Man oh man, you gave me a scare.”
“Yeah,” he murmured, “I gave myself a scare too. Where are we?”
“We’re at the hospital in Wyoming about an hour from the lodge. The storm ended and Jess got a helicopter to transport you.”
His brain barely made sense of her words.
Mandy’s smile faltered, and it looked like she was about to start crying, but she pushed through. “You were shot in the chest, Trent. The bullet lodged about a quarter inch from your heart. They had to go in and get it and then patch you up.”
His mouth felt like he’d been eating cotton. “Asher?”
Mandy cast her eyes down, but she kept her hand on his arm.
“He landed at the bottom of the mountain. If the gunshot didn’t kill him, there’s no chance he survived the fall.” Jess cleared her throat. “If it wasn’t for Mandy’s marksmanship and quick thinking, you’d be dead and he’d be gone.”
“You came after me?”
Mandy nodded and squeezed his hand. “Of course.”
He thought back to the night on the mountain and frowned, sending a shaft of pain through his head. “Wait…how did I even get back? The last thing I remember is pushing Asher after he shot me and then…nothing.”
Mandy released his hand and busied herself pouring him about an inch of water in a plastic cup. “Some of us were able to get you back to the lodge is all.”
Jess shook her head and shot Mandy an exasperated glance. “My fabulous assistant here is being too modest. She spearheaded a search party. She and Jim Kubiak essentially dragged you back on a makeshift stretcher.”
He whispered, “You could’ve been killed, Mandy.”
She waved him off, cheeks flushed. She held a cup of water with a bendy straw so he could sip. “Jim tied what felt like a hundred ropes together, and we had lots of flashlights. It was no big deal.”
But it had been a very big deal. Guilt settled in his gut as he thought of Kubiak. Big, quiet guy, a little weird and he’d automatically suspected him. As brave as Mandy had been, almost to the point of foolishness, she couldn’t have carried him back alone.
“I sent him a huge gift basket of coffees and baked goods. When you’re better, you can thank him yourself,” Mandy murmured, reading his mind.
He cleared the emotion from his voice with a cough. “And what about Asher? Do the police have everything they need? He confessed to killing Rebecca if they need a statement.”
“They will, eventually.” Jess nodded. “But the bullet they dug out of your chest matched the one that killed Rebecca. Asher dropped the gun out there, and they found it, too.”
He closed his eyes. “Good.”
Mandy said, “Once they got into the lodge and his cabin, turns out you may have stopped a serial murderer, Trent. There was evidence tied to at least two other murders.”
He nodded. He’d been too late to save Rebecca, but saving others was something to cling to. He nodded weakly.
“You did a good job here, Trent,” Jess patted his arm. “Get some sleep. When you’re better, I might have a bit of work for you.”
He managed a smile for her. Now, all he had to do was make this all up to Mandy. He gestured, and she bent over to hear him. “So, I’m thinking our next trip should be Hawaii maybe…”
Coming Soon: FATAL GAME: A Jess Kimball Thriller
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The Heir Hunter Series:
Blood Trails
The Jess Kimball Thrillers:
Fatal Game
Fatal Edge