by Cindi Myers
Maybe so. Though that still didn’t explain why she hadn’t answered his calls.
He headed for Tim’s aunt’s cabin next, determined to get that interview out of the way. The gray Toyota with the dent in the front quarter-panel sat parked in the driveway of the cabin, a frosting of snow obscuring the windows. Ryder parked his Tahoe behind the Toyota and made his way up the unshoveled walk to the vehicle. A deep indentation ran the length of the driver’s side front quarter-panel, the metal gouged as if by a sharp object.
Ryder straightened and made his way to the front door. Alex answered his knock, dressed in black long underwear pants and top. “Hey,” he said. “What you need?”
“Can I come in?” Ryder asked. “I need to ask a few questions.”
Alex shrugged. “I guess so.” He held the door open.
Tim was sprawled across the sofa, wearing green-and black-check flannel pants and a Colorado State University sweatshirt, a video game controller in his hands. He sat up and frowned at Ryder. “What do you want?”
“The highway is open,” Ryder said, stepping around a pile of climbing gear—ropes and packs and shoes. “I figured the two of you would be headed back to Denver.”
“We took advantage of the great weather to go climbing.” Alex sat on the end of the sofa and picked up a beer from the coffee table. “We don’t have to be back in class until the end of the month, anyway.”
“What do you care?” Tim asked, his attention on the television screen, which was displaying a video game that seemed to revolve around road racing.
“What did the two of you do Sunday?” Ryder asked.
“What did we do Sunday?” Tim asked Alex.
“We went climbing.” Alex sipped the beer.
“Where did you go?” Ryder asked.
“Those cliffs over behind the park,” Alex said. “And before you ask if anyone saw us, yeah, they did. Two women. We went out with them that night.”
“I’ll need their names and contact information,” Ryder said.
“Why?” Tim asked. “Did another woman get iced?” He laughed, as if amused by his joke.
“Have you visited Silver Pick Recreation Area while you’ve been in town?” Ryder asked.
“We checked it out,” Alex said. “We didn’t see any good climbing.”
“Good snowmobile trails,” Ryder said.
“We talked about renting a couple of machines,” Tim said. “Too expensive. Climbing’s free.”
“Since when are you concerned about us having a good time?” Alex asked.
“We’re looking for a snowmobiler who threatened a couple of people out at Silver Pick Sunday afternoon. He tried to run them down with his snowmobile.”
“It wasn’t us,” Alex said.
“Maybe it was the same idiot who smashed my truck,” Tim said.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “What are you doing about trying to find that guy?”
“I don’t think there’s a guy to find,” Ryder said.
“What?” Tim sat up straight. “Are you calling us liars?”
“I took another look at that dent on your truck,” Ryder said. “It’s too low to the ground to have been made by another car. And too sharp.”
“It is not,” Tim said.
“The more I think about it, the more it looks like it was made by those big chunks of granite that edge the parking lot near the ice climbing area out on County Road Fourteen,” Ryder said. “It’s easy enough to do—don’t pay attention to what you’re doing and you can run into one of them, scrape the heck out of your car.”
“You can’t prove it,” Tim said.
“I’ll bet if I went out there, I’d find paint from your truck on one of the rocks,” Ryder said.
Tim and Alex exchanged looks. “Why would we bother making up a story and getting the police involved if it wasn’t true?” Alex asked.
“If someone else caused the damage to your car, maybe you thought you could get your insurance to pay for it under your uninsured motorist coverage,” Ryder said. “It works like that in other states—for instance, in Texas, where you said you were from. But it doesn’t work that way in Colorado. In Colorado you have to have collision coverage in order for the insurance to pay.”
“No way!” Tim looked at Alex. “You told me we could get the insurance company to pay. Now what am I going to do?”
Alex ignored his friend. He looked at Ryder. “If you think you can prove something, have at it. Otherwise, why don’t you leave us alone?”
“I’ll leave for now,” Ryder said. “But you’ll be hearing from me again.” Tomorrow he would go to the parking lot and try to find the rock they had hit. Filing a false report to a peace officer was at best a misdemeanor, but the charge would be a hassle for the two young men, and having to deal with it might teach them a lesson.
From the cabin to the place Ryder rented was only a short drive. His heart sank when he saw that the driveway was empty. He hurried into the house, hoping to see some sign that Darcy had been there, but everything was just as he had left it. No suitcases or bags or any of Darcy’s belongings. He pulled out his phone and dialed her number again. Still no answer. What was going on?
* * *
DARCY WOKE TO familiar surroundings, sure she was in her own bed, but with the terrible knowledge that something was very wrong. When she tried to sit up, she discovered that her hands were tied to the headboard, and her ankles were bound together. She began to shake with terror, almost overwhelmed with the memory of another time when she had been tied to a bed, unable to escape her tormentor.
“Don’t struggle now. You don’t want to hurt yourself.” Ken leaned over her, his smile looking to her eyes like a horrible grimace.
“What are you doing?” she asked. The memory of being in Kelly’s kitchen flooded back. She had been looking at cat food and the next thing she knew, she woke up here. “Did you hit me on the head?”
“It was for your own good,” Ken said. “If you had listened to me when I offered to let you move in with me, it wouldn’t have been necessary.”
“Let me go!” She struggled against the ropes that held her. The bed shook and creaked with her efforts, but she remained trapped.
“No, I can’t do that,” Ken said. “If I do that, you’ll only call the sheriff, or that state trooper, Ryder. Then I’d have to leave and you’d be here all alone and unprotected.”
“I don’t need protection,” she said.
“But you do. There’s a serial killer in town who’s murdering young women just like you. You don’t want to be his next victim, do you?”
She stared at him, searching for signs that he had lost his mind. He looked perfectly ordinary and sane. Except every word he uttered chilled her to the core.
He sat on the side of the bed, the mattress dipping toward her. “What are you doing?” she asked, trying to inch away from him.
He put his hand on her leg. “I’m going to protect you.”
“Did you kill Kelly and those other women?” she asked. If he was the murderer, was confronting him this way a mistake? But she had to know.
His hand on her leg tightened. “Is that what you think of me?” he asked. “That I’m a killer? A man who hates women?” He slid his hand up her leg. “I love women. I love you. I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you with Kelly. I kept waiting for you to see it, but you couldn’t. Or you wouldn’t.” His fingers closed around her thigh, digging deep.
“Stop!” She tried to squirm out of his grasp. “You’re hurting me.”
“I decided I had to do something to wake you up,” he said, continuing to massage her thigh painfully. “To make you see how much I love you.”
“If you loved me, you wouldn’t frighten me this way,” she said. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“I won’t hurt you.” He leaned over her, his voic
e coaxing. “In fact, I’m going to show you how gentle I can be.” He moved his hand to the waistband of her slacks.
She closed her eyes and swallowed down a scream. There was no one to hear her, and if she screamed, she might give in to the panic that clawed at her. Hysterics wouldn’t help her. She had to hang on. She had survived before, and she would survive again.
How long before Ryder came looking for her? He would be expecting her at his house, but what if he had to work late? She had no idea what time it was, though the window at the end of the loft showed only blackness. If could be seven o’clock or it could be midnight—she couldn’t tell.
But no matter the hour, she had to find a way out of this situation. So far Ken hadn’t threatened her with a gun. As far as she knew, he didn’t own one. He was counting on his size and strength to overpower her, and so far it was working for him, but she had to find some advantage and figure out a way to use it against him.
“You need to untie me,” she said, surprised at how calm she sounded. “I can’t relax and...and I can’t focus on you if I’m tied up.”
“You don’t like being tied up?” He looked genuinely puzzled. “I thought it would be fun.” He grinned. “A little kinky.”
She swallowed nausea. “I just...I want to put my arms around you,” she said.
He sat back, searching her face. “You won’t try to fight me?”
“Of course not,” she lied.
“I’ll untie your hands,” he said and leaned forward to do so. “But I’ll leave your feet the way they are. I don’t want you running away.”
She forced herself to remain still while he fumbled with the knots at her wrists. “Maybe you need a knife,” she said.
“Good idea.” He stood, then winked at her. “Don’t go away. I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be waiting.” Saying the words made her feel sick to her stomach. But she would be waiting when he returned with the knife—then she would do everything to get her hands on that blade. He thought she was passive, but he would learn she was a fighter.
Chapter Twenty
The parking lot of the veterinary clinic was empty, the only tracks in the smooth coating of snow the fresh ones made by Ryder’s Tahoe. He tried the door, anyway, and peered through the glass. A single light behind the front desk illuminated the empty counter. The only sound was the crunch of his own boots on the snow.
He tried Darcy’s phone again, and this time the call went straight to voice mail. He hung up without leaving a message, stomach churning. Where was she?
He headed for her house, but since Kelly’s duplex was on the way, decided to swing by there first. Stacy had mentioned that Darcy had planned to pick up some supplies from there. Maybe she had gotten distracted, or the task took more time than he would have thought. But even as he thought these things, instinct told him something was wrong.
The driveway to the duplex was vacant, and no lights shone from either half. The snow was falling harder now, filling in Ryder’s tracks on the walkway to the door within minutes of his passing. He knocked on Kelly’s door, then tried the knob. It was locked. With a growing sense of urgency, he moved to Ken’s door and pounded on it. “Ken, it’s Ryder! I need to talk to you.”
He turned and headed back across the porch and up the walk toward his Tahoe. But a dark bulk along the side of the duplex caught his eye. He unclipped the flashlight from his utility belt and shone it over a tarped snowmobile. Heart pounding, he stepped through the deepening snow to the snowmobile and unhooked the bungie cord that held the tarp in place.
His flashlight illuminated first the Polaris emblem. Then he arced the beam upward to the spiderweb of cracks in the windscreen that spread out from the neat, round bullet hole.
* * *
KEN CUT THE plastic ties that had bound Darcy’s wrists and laid the knife on the floor beside the bed. She stretched her arms out in front of her, wincing at the pain, and struggled to sit up. Ken pushed her back onto the bed with one hand, reaching for the fly of his jeans with the other.
“Wait,” she cried, squirming into a sitting position. She forced a smile to her trembling lips. “Let’s talk a little bit first. You know—get in the mood.”
He frowned but moved his hand away from his fly. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Were you the one on the snowmobile on the ski trail at Silver Pick Sunday afternoon?”
“What about it?”
“I just wondered.” She swallowed, trying to force some saliva from her dry mouth. “I figure you were trying to show me how dangerous it was,” she said. “How much I need to depend on you to protect me.”
His expression lightened. “That’s it.” He sat beside her and took her hand in his. “I didn’t want to frighten you, but I had to make you see the danger you were in. I did it to protect you.”
“And were you the one who ran me off Silverthorne Road?” she asked. “You pretended to be that woman with the hurt mastiff?”
He laughed. “That was pretty clever, wasn’t it?” He leaned closer. “If only you weren’t so stubborn. You would have saved us all so much trouble if you had accepted my help from the first.”
She pushed him gently away, trying hard to hide her revulsion and fear. “Did you try to break in to this place, the night Kelly was killed?”
He frowned. “No. I wouldn’t do something like that.”
Hitting her over the head and kidnapping her, not to mention threatening her with both a truck and a snowmobile, apparently weren’t as bad as jimmying a lock? But she believed him when he said he hadn’t tried to break in that night. But was he the killer?
Ken forced his lips onto hers and slid his hands under her sweater. Her stomach churned and she wondered if it was possible to vomit from fear. Would that be enough to scare him off?
“I’m ready now.” He stood and, so quickly she hardly registered what was happening, shoved his jeans down. She reacted instinctively, drawing up her legs, ankles still bound together, and shoving hard against his chest. He stumbled back and she dove for the floor, grabbing for the knife.
He straddled her, hands around her throat, choking her, as she felt blindly for the knife, which had slid under the bed. Her fingers closed around the handle, as he shoved his knee into her back, forcing her flat onto the floor. And all the while his hands continued to squeeze until her vision fogged and she felt herself slipping away.
A mighty crash shook the whole house, and the pressure on her throat lessened. “What the—”
“Darcy!” Ryder’s shout was followed by pounding footsteps as he vaulted up the stairs.
His weight still grinding her into the floor, Ken swiveled to face the entrance to the loft. Darcy tightened her grip on the knife.
“Darcy!” Ryder shouted again.
“I’m here,” she said, her voice weak, but she thought he heard.
“Get off her!” he roared.
“You can’t have her.” Ken stood, bringing her with him, and clasping her in front of him like a shield. She held the knife by her side, half-hidden in the folds of her trousers, and prayed he was too focused on Ryder to notice.
Less than six feet away, Ryder stood at the top of the stairs, both hands steadying his pistol in his hands. His eyes met Darcy’s, and there was no mistaking the fear that flashed through them. He lowered the gun. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said.
“You’re the one who’s stupid.” Ken moved sideways, away from the bed. “Thinking you could have her. She belongs with me.”
“I don’t want to be with you!” She squirmed, but he held her so tightly her ribs ached.
“Get out of the way,” Ken told Ryder. “Let us pass. And if you try anything, I’ll kill her.”
Why did he think he got to determine who she wanted to be with and what happened to her? Rage at the idea overwhelmed her. In one swift movement, she
brought the knife up and plunged it into his thigh. It sank to the hilt, blood gushing. Ken screamed and released her.
Ryder grabbed her hand and thrust her away from the other man. She slid to the floor as Ryder shoved Ken against the wall, the gun held to his head. “Don’t move,” Ryder growled. “Don’t even breathe hard.”
“I’m bleeding!” Ken cried. “Do something.”
“Sit down,” Ryder ordered, and Ken slid to the floor.
Ryder pulled cuffs from his belt and cuffed Ken’s hands behind him, then grabbed a pillow from the bed and held it over the bleeding. He looked over at Darcy. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. She felt sick and shaky, but she was alive. She had fought back. She would be okay—eventually.
He slipped a multi-tool from his belt and slid it across the floor to her. “Can you cut the ties on your ankles?”
Though her hands were still unsteady, she managed to sever the ties and stand. “I should call 911,” she said.
“Do that.” He saw her hesitation and softened his voice. “I’ll be okay,” he said.
She went downstairs and found her phone and made the call, then collapsed on the sofa and began to sob. She didn’t know why she was crying, exactly, except that it had all been so horrible, and she was so relieved it was over.
She didn’t know how long it was before Ryder came to her. He wrapped her in a blanket, then drew her into his arms and held her tightly. She clung to him, sobbing. “I was s-so scared,” she said through her tears.
“You were great,” he said, gently kissing the side of her face. “It’s over now. You’re safe.”
Some time after that the ambulance came, along with Travis and Gage Walker. A paramedic checked out Darcy and gave her a sedative, while two others carried a howling and complaining Ken down the narrow stairs and out to the ambulance. “What will happen to him?” Darcy asked, the medication having soothed the hard, metallic edge of fear.
“He’s under arrest,” Travis said. “For kidnapping and menacing and probably a half a dozen other charges we haven’t sorted out yet. He’ll be placed under a guard at the clinic here and when the road opens again we’ll transport him to jail to await his trial.”