Telling Secrets. Tracy Montoya

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СКАЧАТЬ witness who asked to remain anonymous said the body was covered by a white sheet and had been stabbed in the chest in a circle-and-cross pattern. Sources say the wounds were consistent with ritual murders.” Finally, the news channel took that awful drawing off the air, focusing on the newscaster’s face, which was framed by a bright blond helmet of hair. “Expert Marvin Wynter, author of Free Your Mind! Deprogramming Former Cult Members, is here to talk to us,” the reporter said. “Marvin, could this be the work of cult killers?”

      The camera cut to a man in his fifties, with shifty little eyes and a thick beard. “Why, yes, all of the signs are there—”

      Not waiting to hear the so-called expert pontificate further, Sophie hit the mute button. One didn’t need to be psychic to see that the guy was nothing but a fearmonger.

      But as for the rest of the broadcast…She sat back against the couch cushions and grabbed a throw pillow to hug to her chest, trying to process what she’d just seen. She hadn’t thought for a minute that her warning to Alex Gray, search-and-rescue tracker extraordinaire, would result in a police sketch of her plastered on the evening news. And in her wildest dreams she hadn’t thought it would lead to a murder victim.

      But it did, and it had. So now what?

      Her pulse pounding in triple-time, she realized that the most rational option was to turn herself in to the police before someone else did—if she still had time. A Ph.D. candidate in art history at the University of Washington–Port Renegade, Sophie was pretty much the stereotypical impoverished grad student, so she lived in an inexpensive but nice and secure apartment complex to save money. Unfortunately, the reason that said apartment complex was such a steal when it came to rent was that it catered to an elderly clientele, and anyone under the age of retirement seemed to stay far, far away from it. So while that meant she could tap into the considerable wisdom of her elders just by wandering down the hall to see who was using the fitness room, it also meant that she was surrounded by more than her share of ladies and gentlemen of leisure who were bored out of their minds—and filled in the gaps in their daily schedules by keeping close watch on the goings-on around them. She’d bet the Port Renegade PD had had at least fifty calls from her neighbors ratting her out in the last five minutes alone, bless their hearts.

      Okay, so she could wait for the police to come to her, she could go to them, or…

      Or. She could go find Alex Gray and explain herself. After their meeting, she’d found it easy enough to unearth information about him—he’d been involved in so many public rescues of hikers lost in the state park, his picture was plastered across several issues of the Port Renegade Tribune-Herald’s online archive. Finding his house would be a snap.

      Now there was a brilliant idea. She’d already weirded him out in a big bad way this morning at the Bagel & Bean. If she approached him again, he’d probably either run away screaming or have her arrested on stalking charges as well as brought in for questioning. Surely going to find Alex Gray had to be one of her worst contingency plans ever.

      Then why wouldn’t the idea leave her alone?

      She was saved from answering that question for herself when the phone rang again. She got up and padded in her stocking feet to the kitchen area of her apartment, where her phone sat. A glance at the caller ID told her it was her mom, and as much as she loved her mother, she just couldn’t deal with her right now, so she let the machine pick up.

      “Sophie?” her mother’s voice rang out in the silent kitchen. “Sophie, why aren’t you answering my calls? I know you’re there—you’re screening me again, aren’t you? Sophie, your face was on the evening news. The police want you brought in for questioning! Sophie, what’s going on? Are you okay? Call your mother once in a while, all right? I’d like to know why my kid is being questioned about a murder. I’m so worried about you. Okay. Call me. I don’t know why you don’t carry a cell phone—” Beep!

      Finally, blessedly, the machine cut her mother off. Sophie touched a button to erase the message and headed for her front door. If she didn’t get out of here, guilt would eat her alive until she called her mom back, and she didn’t want to do that until she’d gotten herself out of this mess. Kate Brennan worried enough as it was.

      Pulling her black midlength leather jacket on, she zipped it up and wrapped a long scarf around her neck. Where to—police, Alex Gray or undisclosed hidden location? Undisclosed hidden location, Alex Gray or police?

      Grabbing her keys off the little hook near the door, she peered through the peephole to make sure no one was lurking in the hall. Reasonably confident that she could make it to the stairwell to the parking garage without being accosted, she exited her apartment, locking the door behind her. A leaden weight seemed to settle in the bottom of her stomach, reminding her that for better or worse, she was inextricably tied to a murder. And what she did now could help the investigation or throw it way off track—or get her in some serious trouble.

      Maybe she was in serious trouble no matter what she did.

      TRY AS HE MIGHT, ALEX COULDN’T erase the disturbing sight of that sheet-covered…thing from his mind, no matter how many times Sabrina and Skylar asked if he was all right, no matter how many mindless South Park reruns he went over in his head, no matter how many times he closed his eyes.

      He’d been inside the ranger station since the morning, after he’d gotten the schoolkids safely back on their bus without them being any wiser. He’d told their teachers he’d seen a bear, and the field-trip chaperones had been only too happy to clear on out rather than risk having one of their charges eaten by errant wildlife. And then, after leading the police to the body, he’d come back to the station and had answered questions: Sabrina’s questions, Skylar’s questions, the park rangers’ questions, the police detectives’ questions. Over and over and over again, further embedding the images in his brain. And they were horrific.

      When he’d gone up the falls, he’d found a body. But not just a lost hiker or a suicide, as was usually the case on the rare occasions when someone died in the parklands. No, this person had most definitely been murdered, but unfortunately, the killer hadn’t left it at that.

      Somewhere between the hours of 6:00 last night and 9:30 this morning, someone had constructed a stone altar, laid the body on it and covered it with a sheet. Then, just to make things nice and scary for the poor schmo who ended up finding the victim, they’d stabbed an upside-down cross pattern through the sheet and into the victim’s chest. The cops Alex had led to the scene had told him that the stab wounds had been inflicted postmortem and that the victim had most likely been strangled, but if that was supposed to make him feel better, it didn’t.

      The police had long ago finished gathering evidence from the scene, and even though it was past time for him to go home for the day, Alex remained inside one of the ranger station offices, sitting at a desk with his head in his hands, waiting to see if he could be of any more use to…anyone. Anything rather than go home and be alone with his thoughts.

      Someone had died. Within a mile of the ranger station, and no one had heard or seen or suspected a thing.

      No one except the woman he’d met outside the coffee shop that morning.

      He’d given her description to police, and they’d said they’d put an APB out on her to bring her in for questioning. Had he met a murderer? And if so, didn’t it just figure that she’d randomly choose to torment him with clues about her crimes?

      A knock at the door brought him out of his thoughts. “Come in,” he called, and Sabrina popped her head through the door.

      “Alex, there’s СКАЧАТЬ