The smell of firewood burning drifted through the air from every direction, reminding Brett that everyone was trying to ride out the storm and stay warm. Had Heidi brought the wounded animal inside to keep it warm or had she taken it up to the main lodge?
Brett looked over her shoulder, shifting her hood after she’d released her hold on the rope. She swiped the beam of the flashlight over the area, though she found no one else around. That wasn’t surprising. All the other guests were probably enjoying a late dinner and trying to patch up Chris and Louise’s relationship so that tomorrow’s ceremony could continue without further delay.
Brett would knock one more time, just in case Heidi was still inside. She might need help bringing the little critter up to the central cabin.
“Heidi?” Brett called out with a bang of her fist to the frozen wood, certainly not expecting the door to unlatch and swing open from the simple force of her knock. She instinctively used her shoulder to push open the entrance upon sensing the heat from inside…only there was no fire. There was only darkness…and the distinct smell of copper. “Hello?”
Heidi must have already left to join the others, leaving her fire to burn itself out. Brett was well aware that leaving a roaring fire burning in the hearth when no one was present wasn’t the brightest of ideas, but this campground had no electricity at the moment. The only structure she knew of with a working generator was the main lodge, but that didn’t help the individual cabins once the main power to the camp had failed.
It also didn’t help to extinguish the strong odor of what could only be blood.
Had Heidi been unable to save the animal, or had she sought help from the others? Brett’s curiosity always got the better of her, and now was no exception to that rule. She quickly swiped her arm in one long motion, only wanting to confirm that the animal hadn’t been left behind. It took more than a few seconds for the sight before her to penetrate the deep-seated denial that her mind instantly created.
The gruesome image trying to form in her mind was of Heidi’s sightless, cloudy, dilated eyes staring directly into the beam of Brett’s flashlight, but that couldn’t be right.
Her friend couldn’t dead.
That wasn’t right.
“Heidi?” Brett took a step closer because the name falling from her lips came out as nothing but a whisper as her breath billowed in the air. Heidi wouldn’t be able to hear her. She hadn’t been loud enough to be heard properly. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Heidi?”
Brett’s boot slipped out from under her. She tried to catch her balance, but there was nothing for her to grab ahold of as she swung her arms wildly and caught nothing but air. She landed hard on her side where her hip took the brunt of her body weight. Unfortunately, her flashlight once again slipped away from her grip and rolled a couple feet away.
Panic had already started to infuse itself, because there was no way she could accept the scene which was painted in front of her. This had to be a horrible joke—a very sick and cruel joke. That didn’t stop the horror of what could possibly be reality bubble into a scream that never released. Brett was too busy scrambling for the flashlight and crawling toward the beam that was now directed toward herself.
“What—”
Brett stared in revulsion at the red, thick coagulating liquid coating her hand. She’d first thought her palms had landed in the melting snow she’d brought in with her boots, but this…this was all blood.
Heidi’s blood.
“No, no, no,” Brett chanted over and over as she finally picked up the flashlight and swung the light back toward Heidi.
Was this real?
Oh, my God!
Heidi’s lips were parted as if she were silently screaming, while her eyes were trained on something no one on this earth could possibly see. Her normally ivory white skin had lost its vibrancy, reminding Brett of the glue her class used to make arts and crafts. She’d never be able to glue glitter on construction paper again without recalling this grisly image.
Blue. The color of Heidi’s lips and her discernable veins were blue.
Her friend was almost certainly dead.
And the blood.
There was so much blood.
Brett swallowed against the bile in her throat as she attempted to stand without falling. She recognized the need to call for help, but she couldn’t get her body to agree to move. No one would hear her anyway.
All she could manage to do was stare in horror at…death.
Death had come knocking without a wedding invitation.
Heidi was too young to have her life cut so short.
Terror unlike anything Brett had ever experienced settled over her like a cold blanket at the thought that someone had done this to Heidi. There had been no wounded animal. The blood outside had been Heidi’s and someone had brought her inside to bleed out.
Icy spindles wrapped themselves around Brett as she finally grasped the understanding that this hadn’t been an accident.
Someone had done this to her friend.
Someone had committed murder so far away from the rest of the world.
And that someone had to still be here in the campground, trapped by the storm…trapped here with her.
*
He hadn’t had time to finish what he’d started.
Anger morphed into rage, but he had no outlet.
Not now that the body had been discovered.
That had been taken from him the moment Brettany Lambert had walked into Heidi’s cabin. He’d been trying to cover the tread of the boot marks he’d left in the snow when he’d heard a muffled cry, alerting him to the fact that he hadn’t been alone anymore.
Brettany had walked right by him, not even realizing she had been arm’s length away from the sharp blade of his knife. He should have stabbed her then and there, dropping her in the snow.
Now, he had to watch from afar as the beam from her flashlight finally faded from his sight as she entered Heidi’s cabin. He waited in the darkness for the satisfying scream to carry through the air.
It took longer than he thought it would.
CHAPTER TWO
‡
“You did this on purpose.”
Coen Flynn kicked the toe of his military-issued boot against the porch step to dislodge the packed snow stuck in the tread. He held the satellite phone to his ear as he glanced down, confirming he’d loosened most of the white stuff before walking onto the dry wood. It wouldn’t stay that way for long, according to the meteorologist.
Another storm was expected to arrive over the central Rockies unleashing up to fourteen inches of additional snow through tomorrow evening. It was scheduled to hit sometime in the middle of the night. All the local markets had already been pillaged, house generators had been topped off, and snow blowers were primed and filled to the brim with fuel in preparation of what was to come. This was a typical routine for the residents of this small town, but one Coen could definitely live without.
He missed the sunshine.
He missed the warmth.
And he sure as hell didn’t appreciate that almost his entire team was close to two thousand miles away in Florida.
“You did three stints in Norway after completing cold weather training. The temperatures there were much farther in the negative. You’re lucky you came back with any balls from those deployments,” Brody Novak said wryly, reminding Coen of bitter cold days he’d rather forget. “Calvert thought you could handle a milk run in Colorado, no problem. I agreed at first because of the resorts having all those ski bunnies, but you can report back home as it stands now.”
“Ski bunnies, huh?” Coen didn’t enter the small rental house he’d been using for past week to monitor the comings and goings of Brettany Lambert. Instead, he held the phone against his shoulder as he pulled out a cigarette pack that was basically just for show and knocked one end of the cardboard container against the palm of his hand as he surveyed the two-story home across the street. His mission was simple
—keep Brettany Lambert from being their serial killer’s next target. “I haven’t had to adjust my sac in three weeks. I’d say that’s cause for concern. They may have crawled back up inside of me.”
“Then I’ll schedule a flight for you to come back to Florida,” Brody advised in his attempt to wrangle Coen back to headquarters. “We’ve arranged for other agencies to oversee the monitoring of the potential target list. Your replacement is flying in as we speak. Ms. Lambert will be monitored twenty-four seven by another babysitter, but we’re at a point in the investigation where we can’t afford to expend personnel on unproductive leads.”
“An unrelated murder occurred in the middle of a freak snowstorm and it’s my charge who turns out to be the one who finds the body. I personally don’t think it was so arbitrary, and I think Moss is connected somehow. I’m staying put until my theory is played out.”
Shepherd Moss had been the bane of their existence for months now, and it appeared he was still pulling their strings by manipulating a crowd of admirers.
Coen thinned his lips at his mention of the man’s name.
Hell, he wasn’t a man. He was a fucking monster. He was a soulless entity filled with so much evil that the only merciful thing to do was to put a bullet between its eyes the moment he was seen, sending the creature back to where it came from. The only reason his agency had taken on this type of case was due to the personal connection between Moss and the owner and operator.
Townes Calvert had created Safeguard Security and Investigations, better known as SSI, to take random domestic cases on a much more simpler scale than the fight for freedom the entire team had endured during their stints in the military.
Over the last sixteen years, all the services had been on nearly constant rotation through one theater of war or another. The Marines had been especially hard hit with less resources to draw on. They all knew Marines who had done ten deployments or more, being gone nine months out of every year for a decade.
It got to be that they were more at home in the sandboxes of Iraq or Afghanistan than back in the States. All six team members of SSI had served in the Marines with distinction, lending their similar methods of completing any given task to the success of several assignments. A case this disturbing should really be left up to the Federal Marshals Service (FMS) and their Fugitive Task Force (FTF).
As it stood, the vast majority of their resources nationally were currently spent on finding and processing illegals who were skipping felony bonds in sanctuary cities and eluding ICE officials. They weren’t too concerned with pursuing a psychopath hellbent on seeking revenge, especially when this type of investigation could be outsourced.
It was easier for them to hire an outside agency to specifically augment the Miami FMS office and their FTF in tracking down this high priority threat. Townes had connections leading to lucrative federal contracts; however, Coen had a feeling there wouldn’t be a lot of profit made on this one.
It was personal.
The fact that Shepherd Moss had Townes Calvert in his crosshairs was cause for concern and was the main reason for SSI’s involvement.
“Shepherd Moss has all but taken a billboard out on Interstate 4 claiming that he’s coming after Calvert,” Brody exclaimed, his voice rather heavy with emotion. “We’re going to need all our gunslingers close to the ranch. That means you, wild man.”
There was no way in hell Coen was returning to Florida without seeing to it that Brettany Lambert was safe from whoever murdered her friend seven days ago. Had Moss been up there on that mountain range or was it one of his surrogates? Had Coen finally been within shooting distance and not known it? He wasn’t sure, but he sure as hell was going to find out before he left.
Shepherd Moss was a notorious serial killer who had ended up on the FBI’s Most Wanted list after escaping from federal custody. Calvert had been the one key player responsible for the man’s capture and subsequent incarceration. Unfortunately, it had come a little too late for his last victim—Shailyn Doyle—who had experienced incredible torture and suffered endlessly before finally being found barely alive. She’d been scarred for life, physically and emotionally.
Ms. Doyle was currently in WITSEC, the United States Federal Witness Protection Program. She was the one woman who federal law enforcement had assumed was Moss’ primary target after his escape. After all the incidents scattered over the last month, it was more than evident that Moss wanted retribution on Calvert most of all.
The battle had been brought to SSI’s front doorstep.
“How is Camryn?” Coen asked, flicking the small flint striker on the Zippo lighter until a short flame came to life inside the windproof cage. He touched the end of his cigarette to the flickering blue and yellow fire. He did his best not to breathe in too much smoke, though that was all but impossible with today’s cigarettes. If you didn’t draw on the damned things, it would go out due to the crap the laboratories put into them. His lungs were probably already coated with black shit, but this was the most logical excuse he could come up with as a plausible reason to be outside wandering around in these brutal temperatures. “I spoke with Sawyer earlier in the day. He mentioned Camryn was still a little sore, but that it wasn’t anything a little ibuprofen couldn’t handle.”
Coen had missed quite a lot while he was in Colorado this past month, such as the fact that Moss had targeted Brody’s sister through a sycophant pawn. Everyone had been a little too busy monitoring the comings and goings of potential victims, so Camryn Novak’s abduction had come as quite a shock. She’d managed to just barely survive, but that particular attack so close to the SSI team would be Moss’ ultimate downfall.
The killer had made this personal, beyond the fact that he blamed Calvert for his incarceration.
There was only one way this would end now.
Someone was going to die.
“Camryn is a fighter,” Brody responded affectionately, his admiration for his sister more than obvious. “She’s here at the compound now, as well as everyone else. We also have surveillance on all extended family members—including your parents and brother—with twice daily updates. We honestly have no idea where or who Moss is going after next.”
Coen winced slightly at the mention of his younger brother. Danny was a mess…or had been the last he’d seen. He was trying his best to sort out his life after falling in with a bad crowd years prior. Something like that certainly didn’t happen overnight. No one was to blame but Danny. It took years to recover from that kind of mistake. Changing one’s stripes was almost impossible.
Coen wasn’t about to be mentally drawn down a path of family drama when lives were at stake right here where he’d been assigned, such as the pretty little schoolteacher across the street. He needed his full faculties for something like this, and the predicted storm would be the perfect time for Moss to strike his next victim. Coen was here to make sure it wasn’t Ms. Lambert, regardless of who it was pulling the proverbial trigger.
“I get why Calvert would want to round up the crew, but we’ve already established that Moss’ intellect is off the charts. He isn’t going to attack the estate directly.” Coen shoved the lighter back into his pocket. He had no doubt that pertinent facts regarding the process Calvert had taken to see Moss behind bars had been left out, but that wasn’t important anymore. “We’re not dealing with some random killer who makes rookie mistakes. Hell, the fact that Calvert was able to bring the man into custody in the first place was an anomaly.”
“I agree with you, but there’s nothing in the paperwork that suggests Moss’ arrest wasn’t on the up and up,” Brody pointed out somewhat defensively. “No one had to manufacture any evidence to aid the prosecution.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass how Calvert brought Moss down originally, but this psychopath has already proven he’ll use other killers to get his point across. Look at the lengths he went to in order to personally watch Camryn suffer. Which is why you need to do another background check on all the names I prov
ided you who were up at that campground and see if anyone else besides Brettany Lambert had a past connection with Shailyn Doyle or Moss. I can’t put my finger on it yet, but Ms. Lambert’s life is in danger. I’m not going to pass her off to some flunkie. Moss has us second guessing every move we make. I’m staying put until I know for a fact that Heidi Connolly’s murder wasn’t connected to Moss or one of his acolytes.”
“But you think it is at this point? I’m telling you that Heidi Connolly grew up in Colorado and her path never once crossed over to Shailyn Doyle’s childhood or anything else Moss has touched.” Brody was going to wait a very long time if he thought Coen was going to comment and let go of this train of thought. “You’re such a pain in my ass.”
“You already made my flight reservations, didn’t you, douchebag?” Coen asked, grinning at the thought that Brody would have to spend the next five or ten minutes canceling travel plans. “Hope you added on that travel insurance, buddy.”
“If Calvert doesn’t hire this firm some support staff soon, I’m either going to give myself a hell of a Christmas bonus or he’s going to find our storefront in town full of personnel I’ve hired using his name by the end of year.”
Coen could relate to Brody’s frustration with the lack of proper support. Hell, he was on his own up here in the freaking arctic mountains. He’d had spent a good eight hours last weekend trying to convince the local police chief that the murder of Heidi Connolly was connected to Shepherd Moss. Of course, it had taken a call from Calvert to the State AG to convince the sheriff to allow Coen in on the investigation.
Eventually, Sheriff Whitney realized that he and his men might very well be out of their league in dealing with someone as ruthless as Moss or any experienced practitioner following his specific instructions. In the end, Coen had been permitted to speak to Ms. Lambert in a vain attempt to gain more information about what she might have seen that night, though he’d done it under the ruse of being a state police investigator.
Honest Intentions (The Safeguard Series, Book Five) Page 2