Chapter 12
It was hardly a waterfall, little more than you’d get from a healthy faucet, but it was consistent, clean and cold.
She’d be able to get the pills down. Spence climbed the last few feet slowly, carefully.
He scrounged a broken branch off the ground and tossed it ahead to see if it drew any fire from their invisible hunter. Nothing.
The Midnight Sun wouldn’t allow for the cover of full darkness, but the tall trees made it seem darker than the perpetual summer twilight normally would, so while he could see, he was still on uneven ground and paid attention.
Every couple of yards, he paused, listening carefully as he approached the small, clear spot around the rockslide that formed the path of the rivulet.
Listening for any out-of-the-ordinary sound.
Like somebody reloading a rifle.
He suppressed a shudder as the image of the bullet wound in Hetty’s leg slammed into his mind once more, shoving aside all else.
He’d never seen her hurt or injured before, other than a sprained ankle she’d incurred playing basketball in school.
After a beautiful, leaping dunk shot, she’d been jostled by an opposing player and come down wrong.
Being Hetty, she’d made them tape up the ankle and gone back in to finish the game.
Which they’d won, thanks to that shot of hers.
And during it all, she’d never let out a sound. She’d barely even winced. So that, if nothing else, told him the level of pain she was enduring now.
These won’t make me groggy, will they?
Shot in the leg and she worried about that, when just about everybody else he knew would be asking for a large dose of groggy.
He scanned the ground around the small water flow and was starting to wonder if what she’d thought she’d seen had somehow been a trick of the light. If perhaps the trees had cast enough shadows in the everlasting twilight to make it seem as if—
And then he saw it himself. What she’d seen. Who she’d seen.
He swore under his breath.
The body was only partially buried, the head and arms—no, just one arm—were above ground.
It was barely recognizable as a woman, and he was only guessing at that because what hair was left was long and wavy.
Oddly, it also looked as if the tresses had once been spread out neatly, although now there were leaves and probably less benign things tangled in it.
She’d been fed upon, which was hardly surprising out here.
He had to look away. He didn’t think he was easily disturbed, but this did it.
This desiccated corpse that looked as if it had been…
arranged, got to him on more than one level.
Then, as something belatedly registered, he glanced back, thinking he couldn’t have seen what he thought he’d seen.
But he had. The one arm that was above ground was the left.
And encircling the bones of the left ring finger was a gaudy, huge diamond ring.
Or at least something that was supposed to look like one.
The part of his brain that was still functioning was telling him the ring had to be fake.
Because why else would whoever had put this woman here leave the diamond behind if it were real?
If it was, the piece would be worth tens of thousands, and he just couldn’t see a killer walking away from that.
So whoever had left her here, with that ring, either hadn’t known or hadn’t cared.
Or…had put it there on purpose?
He gave a sharp shake of his head and yanked his gaze over to the calming trickle of the waterfall.
It seemed pristine…untouched, but what wouldn’t after that sight?
No wonder Hetty had screamed. He almost had, and he’d known what to expect.
Well, almost; he’d never seen a body like this, in this decomposed condition, but at least he’d known it was there. Thanks to poor Hetty.
He grabbed his cell phone. It might not get a signal here, but the camera still worked.
Not for nothing did he have a sister and cousin in law enforcement, who often spoke of crime scene photos and how the sooner they were taken, the better.
Obviously this poor woman had been here a while, but still…
Besides, putting the phone between him and the ugly scene made looking at it a tiny bit easier.
After taking several images from several angles, he shoved the phone back in his pocket, went and took a long drink from the stream himself, then filled the cup and headed back to the cave.
And wondered all the way if whoever was after them now had something to do with that corpse.
Was he protecting this site, afraid if the body was found, so would he be?
Had he chosen this place because of its remoteness?
Or were the two totally unconnected? Was it just a freak accident that had left a body half buried there?
Was this anonymous gunman hunting them for some other nefarious reason?
That didn’t seem likely, as Spence could think of no reason for someone to shoot at him or Hetty, but he freely admitted he might not be thinking with total clarity.
He tried to go carefully, quietly, keeping hidden, but he was suddenly in a rush to get to Hetty. When he got back to the cave, he gave her the water and watched as she downed the pills. As soon as she had, she looked at him carefully.
“You found her.”
“Yes.”
“You agree it’s…a woman?”
“I think so.”
“How long do you suppose she’s been there?”
He grimaced. “No idea. I think freezing temperatures affect…decomposition. And up until a couple of months ago, we were still getting three or four feet of snow up here.”
Hetty lowered her eyes and he thought he saw her shudder. “It was…awful.”
“Yes,” he agreed softly. “Sometimes I don’t know how my sister does what she does, or my cousin.”
The thought he’d shoved aside while focused on the unsightly discovery came back to him now. The reality of what he’d been looking at, the dead body half buried on an Alaskan hillside, had made the memory of the Colton family tragedy fade, but now it came back. Hard.
His expression must have changed because she asked, “What?”
“I was just remembering…a family story.” He hesitated, but decided it may be a good distraction. For her, from the pain and the shock, and for him, from the long night ahead alone with Hetty. “Did you know I had an aunt?”
Her brow wrinkled. “I remember your dad mentioning his sister who died, before they ever came here, before you were born. And Lakin told me that was the reason for the fishing trip with your dad and uncle.”
“Aunt Caroline was the reason they left San Diego.”
“That’s quite a switch, from sunny San Diego to Alaska.”
“They needed a big change.” He paused, took a deep breath and went on. “Because in San Diego, my aunt and my grandparents were murdered.”
Hetty let out a shocked gasp. “Spence,” she said with a shake of her head. “I didn’t know that.”
“They don’t talk about it much anymore.”
“Who did it? Did they…ever catch him?”
“They did. His name was Jason Stevens. He was an obsessed fan of my aunt’s.”
“Fan? She was famous?”
“When she was still in high school, Caroline was…discovered, I guess they call it. She became a model and was very successful very fast. Did a lot of ads, until it seemed like her picture was everywhere. And with that came a lot of attention, not all of it good. Stevens stalked her for months, and she was a wreck over it, my dad says. But…their parents didn’t take it seriously. ”
He had to stop for a moment. He’d never known his aunt, but he’d been very aware of the pain of his father and his uncle during the first few years of his own life, when they were trying to rebuild here in Alaska.
Hetty, bless her, didn’t push or prod, she simply waited, silently. Bracing himself, he went on.
“The police found his journal, and he’d been planning this for over a year.
His delusion was that Caroline was his girlfriend and her parents were keeping her away from him.
The original plan was to break in, kill them and take her away with him.
He got the first part done. He stabbed them to death in their own bed.
Then he drugged Caroline, dressed her and started to carry her out of the house. But…she woke up.”
“And she fought,” Hetty said softly. “She was a Colton, so she fought.”
It was odd, to feel a spark of warmth amid this shocking, sorry tale, but her words had done it.
He was also a little puzzled that she hadn’t yet asked why he was telling her all this.
But now that he’d started, he kept on. Because if there was anyone he knew who would listen and understand, it was Hetty.
“Yes, she did. And he ended up strangling her to death. Then he put her on the living room couch, sat down beside her and arranged them in…a loving pose. Then he committed suicide with an overdose of what he’d drugged her with. Uncle Will and Eli found them.”
Her eyes widened even further, reflecting what light there was. “No wonder Eli does what he does.”
Spence nodded. “Took me a while to put the two together, but yeah.”
“You weren’t even born when all this happened.”
“No. And they didn’t talk about it, like I said.”
“Too painful,” she guessed. “I’m so sorry, Spence.”
He shrugged. It wasn’t burrowed as deep into his psyche as it was with his father, Uncle Will and Eli, who had been eight years old at the time.
Mitchell had been barely five and Parker only a baby, so their experience was much like Spence’s.
But Eli had been older, and had been at the scene.
He used to think he could never imagine what it must have been like for his cousin to see those bodies.
Now he had a much clearer idea. He was going to carry the image of that woman out there for the rest of his life.