CHAPTER TWENTY
Kol
I’M TELLING YOU, I THINK THIS CASE IS CONNECTED,” PETE argued.
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose as I sat at the conference table. There wasn’t enough coffee in the world to deal with him today. “It doesn’t track.”
“Because she has blond hair?” Pete snapped. “Travis didn’t have a consistent victim profile.”
That much was true. Even if his largest victim pool consisted of women in their twenties with dark hair, he also targeted men, older women, and all different ethnicities.
“You’re right,” I began, hoping that might appease Pete’s ego. “But there is a strong geographic profile.”
Pete scoffed. “That geographic profiling stuff is a bunch of bullshit. It hasn’t even been proven to work.”
My back molars ground together. I’d have liked to tell him that my brothers and I had used it on countless cases, and it had been a game changer.
It had led to us discovering linked cases, even identifying the area where an unsub lived or worked—information that Dex then anonymously dropped into an investigating officer’s email inbox.
But no one knew about our little side project. And that was how it needed to stay.
“Call it whatever you want, but you know good and well that Travis only kidnapped victims from a circle of towns and counties where he could insert himself in the cases. You’ve seen the profile. He needed to be a part of the case.”
“Profiling,” Pete huffed. “It’s a pseudoscience at best.”
He’d better not say that to the people who spent countless years training and honing their skills. And I’d seen profiling lead to numerous breakthroughs. Not to mention all the stories Dex had shared from his time supporting the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the FBI.
“Fine,” I clipped. “Don’t call it profiling. Just call it halfway decent investigative work and look at the damn commonalities.”
Pete opened his mouth, most likely to spew more bullshit, but my phone rang, cutting him off.
Roger’s name flashed on the screen. I swiped the cell off the table and answered quickly. “Archer.”
“Hey, man. I caught a case that has my spidey-senses tingling.”
Everything in me went on alert. “What is it?”
“Twenty-three-year-old woman with dark-brown hair went missing from a campsite near Three Creeks Canyon Trail. Her boyfriend said she went off to pee and never came back.”
Everything in me stilled. Three Creeks Canyon Trail was where Brae and Nova had been hiking when Nova was taken. “It’s probably a coincidence.”
“Probably,” Roger agreed. “Still wouldn’t mind your eyes.”
“I’m on my way. Which campsite?”
“Aspen Falls.”
“Got it.” I stood from my chair, ending the call.
“What is it?” Pete demanded.
Damn it all to hell. If he hadn’t heard the call, I never would’ve taken him with me, but now there was no avoiding it. “Missing woman, Aspen Falls off Three Creeks Canyon Trail.”
Pete’s eyes lit with excitement. “Seriously?”
My gaze narrowed on him. He sounded like a kid who’d just been told dinner was ice cream sundaes. “Take your own vehicle. I have stuff to do after.”
I stalked out of the conference room but didn’t miss Pete’s muttered “asshole” as I walked out.
I might be an asshole, but it was a hell of a lot better than being an opportunistic bloodsucker.
My truck hugged the curve of the gravel road as I made my way deeper into the wilderness. Fall in Starlight Grove was the time of year I loved most. The golden glow of aspen leaves turning. The crisp bite to the air.
But today, everything seemed sharper. More shadowy.
As I pulled into the small parking lot at the campsite, I saw a host of vehicles.
It looked like the local search and rescue team was assembling at one end.
There were several Juniper County Sheriff’s Department vehicles as well, along with two Juniper County Crime Lab SUVs.
Roger wasn’t messing around, and I was relieved to see it.
Pete was already parked, having passed me on the two-lane road leading to the campsite—as if it were some sort of competition. He could have at it. All I cared about was finding the missing woman.
I pulled into a spot at the very end of a row, hoping I wouldn’t get boxed in if additional vehicles showed up. I climbed out of my truck and grabbed my pack from the back of the cab, just in case. You never knew when you might need to pivot to a search.
My pack was always ready to go. Water. Energy bars and trail mix. First-aid kit. Emergency blanket. Sat phone. Bear spray. But my weapon never left my hip.
Slinging the pack over my shoulder, I headed toward the sound of voices. I found Roger and a deputy talking to a distraught man who looked to be in his mid-twenties. He ran a hand through his hair, leaving canyons behind. “It’s like she just vanished. How does that happen?”
“Try to breathe,” Roger told him. “We’re doing everything we can to find her.”
The female deputy next to him lifted her phone a little higher. “Can you walk us through your trip one more time?”
Roger turned and headed in my direction, looking tired as hell. “Hey, man. Thanks for coming.”
“Tell us what happened,” Pete demanded as he stepped up to our huddle.
Roger’s gaze flicked to the man before he turned back to me. “They woke up around seven this morning. No one else had been at the site.”
“It’s a little late in the year for camping,” I surmised.
Roger nodded. “Fuckin’ cold at night. But Heidi, our missing person, went off to relieve her bladder and never came back.”
“How’s the boyfriend look?” It was always the first question that needed an answer.
Roger scrubbed a hand over his face. “Doesn’t read as guilty, and he has no record. But you never know.”
Pete scowled at both of us. “Shouldn’t search and rescue have started already?”
Roger sent him a look that said he thought Pete was an idiot. “Takes time to assemble a team, divide quadrants. They need to prep for a safe search so we don’t end up with more casualties.”
I crossed to the boyfriend, Roger and Pete following behind. “Do you remember which direction Heidi walked in?”
The man with the red-rimmed eyes just pointed toward the forest. “That way.”
I started walking, Pete hot on my heels.
“What are you doing?” Pete asked.
“Tracking, hopefully.” Something I liked to do alone. “Why don’t you listen in on the boyfriend’s interview?”
“So you can cut me out of the good stuff?”
“No,” I ground out. “So we can cover all our bases.”
Pete didn’t move for a moment.
I didn’t want to have to pull rank—it was an asshole move—but I did it anyway. “I’m the senior officer, and I’m asking you to listen in on the boyfriend’s interview in case this is related to the case we’re working.”
It was likely a coincidence, as I’d told Roger. But it could be someone inspired by Travis’s heinous crimes.
Pete glared at me, his eyes flashing in anger before he stalked back to the boyfriend.
Roger let out a low whistle as he approached. “Looks like that’s been a laugh a minute.”
“Don’t even get me started,” I grumbled.
A throat cleared. “Excuse me, Special Agent Archer? Would you mind if I followed behind you? I promise not to get in your way. I just want to be ready to collect any evidence we might need.”
The woman who walked toward us was tall and willowy.
Her light-brown hair was streaked with blond and pulled back into a ponytail.
She looked to be in her early to mid-twenties and peered up at me nervously through black-framed glasses.
She had interesting eyes behind those frames, a light hazel, but one eye had a lot more brown, almost making it look as if her eyes were two different colors.
“Livie, you don’t gotta call him Special Agent,” Roger grumbled.
“It’s respectful,” the woman hissed.
“You can call me Kol,” I said, holding out a hand.
She blushed. “I’m Olivia Bishop, crime scene investigator and lab tech. But most people call me Livie.”
It was rare for someone to be both an investigator and a tech, but with how rural our community was, a handful of folks in the crime lab did double duty.
“It’s nice to meet you, Livie. As long as you’re quiet and stay behind me, you’re welcome.”
Roger rolled his eyes. “Kol’s gotta do his psychic mind meld with the land.”
I flipped him off. “You’re the one who called me in, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah, get going,” Roger mumbled. “I’ll stay behind you, too.”
I started moving in the direction the boyfriend had pointed. Scanning the surrounding forest and brush, I saw a little unofficial trail our vic would have likely taken. “What was she wearing?”
Roger pulled out his phone. “Sweats. Green top, blue bottoms.”
Sweatpants and sweatshirts didn’t lose strands as often as other kinds of material did, but it might still give us something.
“Was she wearing a shirt under the sweatshirt?” Livie asked.
Roger frowned. “Yeah. A plaid pajama top. Red, black, and pink.”
Livie made a note on her phone. “That might shed more easily than the sweats.”
I sent her a grudging nod of respect and refocused on the work at hand. Stepping onto the trail, I crouched low and scanned everything in front of me. The morning sun broke through the trees, casting a patchwork of light and shadow on the underbrush.
One of the patches of light illuminated some brambles, and on one of them, I caught sight of some long, brown strands of hair. I pushed to my feet and strode ahead. Pointing to the branch, I turned to Livie. “Bag and tag? Could be hers.”
Livie jerked her head in a nod, lifting a camera from around her neck to take a couple of shots before pulling gloves and an evidence bag from her pack.
I kept on going, surveying the path in bits and pieces. We repeated the process when I found a red and pink thread, another strand of hair, and a few footprints in the deeper dirt.
Livie crouched to snap a shot of the latest footprints. As she straightened, she stumbled slightly. I reached out to steady her, and her cheeks flushed. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. This trail is uneven.”
She bobbed her head in a nod. “Yeah.”
I moved deeper down the trail, seeing a spot where a few branches had been broken when someone stepped off the path. There was a cluster of trees that would’ve made the perfect makeshift restroom.
And then I saw it.
All-terrain vehicle tracks. My blood went cold. “Rog,” I said, my voice low.
“What?” He was by my side in a second.
“Look.” I lifted a hand toward the tracks.
He let loose a stream of curses.
Travis had used an ATV to kidnap a number of his victims. He’d incapacitated them and then tied them to the back of his four-wheeler.
“Copycat?” Rog asked.
I hoped like hell it was. But one thing swirled in my mind. After Dex shot Travis, and he fell into the river?
No one had ever found his body.