Ricochet. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ only man height in spots, but the waterway at the bottom meandered and doubled back on itself, breaking off into tributaries and feeder streams without warning.

      Because of it, there were thousands of tiny, cracked caverns and overhangs, a hundred places for hikers to lose themselves in the two-thousand-acre Bear Claw State Park.

      A hundred places to hide a girl. A body.

      Near the snowy spot where they’d parked their official four-wheel-drive vehicles, Alissa curled her hands into fists and fought the urge to run for the canyon, to scream the missing girl’s name. There were procedures to follow, and experience had taught her that protocol beat instinct every time in police work. A gut feel might lead to the perpetrator, but judges and lawyers cared about procedure. Words like intuition could get an important case thrown out, a violent criminal released.

      The memory of just such a case soured the back of her throat.

      Before the task force headed into the canyon, Chief Parry divided them into pairs. With the way Alissa’s luck had been running, she wasn’t surprised when the chief paired her with McDermott.

      The detective didn’t argue. He merely scowled and jerked his head toward their search area, a multibranched point where the waterway widened and slowed. “Come on.” He dropped down into the canyon, which was nine or ten feet deep, where their search was to begin. When Alissa paused at the edge, he frowned. “You want me to catch you?”

      She shook her head. “No.” Hell, no. “Just give me a minute. I want to get a feel for the scene.”

      Though skeletal analysis and reconstruction was her specialty, her official title in the BCCFD was Crime Scene Analyst. Captain Parry was counting on her to see, and record, the details others missed.

      Sometimes the smallest detail could make or break a collar. A conviction.

      She stood on an open expanse of rocky ground, half a mile from the main entrance to Bear Claw State Park. They had driven in, but parked well back from the lip of the canyon, which was maybe forty feet across at this point.

      She saw no other tire tracks in the week-old snow. No footprints beyond those of the searchers. “He would have needed an ATV to get in here, a snowmobile or a four-wheeler,” she said to herself. “Unless he carried her in.”

      If the girl was even in the canyon. The note could just as easily be an ugly prank.

      Alissa let her eyes drop lower, to the crumbling canyon edge and the bare, frozen dirt nearby, where the wind had swept the area clean and drifted snow beside the ice-strewn waterway. It was a pretty scene, a coldly brutal one that reminded her of the frigid power of a mountain winter. But it told her very little about the crime or the perpetrator.

      Satisfied, she sat at the edge of the canyon and ignored McDermott’s offered hand to drop lightly to the frozen ground below.

      “Fitz took pictures,” he said, voice dark with challenge. “Photographs are reliable evidence. Sketches aren’t. Memories aren’t.”

      “You think I don’t know that?” She pulled her gloves out of her pockets and shoved her hands into them, though it didn’t lessen the chill. She was tired of the BCCPD’s attitude, annoyed by the closed-mindedness of the other cops. Fitz did it this way. “I’m not Fitz, but I’m damn good at my job. Don’t lecture me.”

      “I’m not,” he fired back, eyes dark with temper, and maybe something else. “It’s just…” He blew out a breath. “Hell, I don’t know what it is.”

      Except he did. They both did. The memory of that night at the dance club shimmered between them like a living reminder of passion. Of heat.

      She slanted him a look and decided to tackle it head-on. “This doesn’t need to be a thing, you know. We danced. No big deal.”

      Except that was a lie. It had almost been a very big deal for her.

      She’d gone to the club that night with Maya and Cassie. The girls had been split up by their assignments after the academy, and though they’d kept in touch with calls and visits in the six years since, it hadn’t been the same. They’d often talked about working together, so when they heard rumors of Fitz O’Malley’s unexpected retirement, they’d put in a proposal and three transfer requests. A month later it was official. They were the new BCCFD.

      They had met in Bear Claw that weekend to look at apartments, and had gone out for a celebratory drink after. One drink had turned into three over a couple of hours, along with food. Not enough to get Alissa blitzed, but enough that when the music started, she was right in the mix, bumping and grinding along with the dancers while Cassie and Maya cheered from their table.

      Alissa had noticed the man’s eyes first, dark and intense as he’d stood at the edge of the crowd. He wore casual jeans and an open-necked shirt, covering a tight, honed body that spoke of strength and the outdoors. She saw him shake off an invitation from a shaggy-haired blonde and another from a slick brunette, but his eyes never left hers. When she crooked a finger, he’d met her halfway.

      As they had danced, she reminded herself she didn’t do bar pickups. Hell, she hadn’t done much of anything in the past year, since her supposedly serious boyfriend had taken a job out of state. He’d buggered off with barely a goodbye, making him no better than her father, who’d at least pretended he was going to keep in touch.

      “It’s not about what did—or didn’t—happen that night,” McDermott said, interrupting old, sour memories that deserved interrupting. “My only concern is finding these girls and catching the bastard who’s taken them. I have nothing against you except that I work alone. I don’t want a partner, so stay behind me and let me do my job.”

      He strode off without waiting for an answer, leaving her to fume, as old and new irritations battered her heart.

      “Let him do his job,” she muttered, still standing where they’d dropped down into the canyon. “Great. Another cowboy. Maybe he’ll get the guy, but the guy won’t stay gotten, will he? He’ll walk, just like Ferguson did.”

      At her last posting, a serial rapist had been preying on college girls, and the Tecumseh Springs PD had formed a task force similar to the one she was in now. They’d gotten the guy—a punk named Johnny Ferguson, who lived with his mother and hated the world—but there had been a glitch in the chain of evidence, a cowboy moment when the lead cop had gone on instinct rather than procedure and blown the case to hell.

      Since then, she had valued precision over gut feel, evidence over emotion. It was an odd contradiction—an artist who didn’t venture outside the box—but it worked for her. And that was yet another reason she should stay far away from Tucker McDermott, who had the reputation of being all about instinct, sometimes at the expense of procedure.

      Knowing it, she steeled herself to follow him down the canyon, toward the sound of other searchers’voices calling for the missing girl.

      Lizzy…Li-zzzy. The cries overlapped in mournful echoes, making the canyon seem alive. Making it seem as though something—or someone—was out there. Waiting. Watching.

      Alissa held back a shiver, knowing that it wasn’t even certain the girl was nearby. The note could be nothing more than a hoax.

      Or a trap.

      The feeling of watching eyes intensified, and Alissa scrambled СКАЧАТЬ