Chapter Two #2
Ryker used the keypad to wake the digital screen but had to stop when his phone buzzed. A message from the lab.
“The wallet, mask, flyer, and dummy just got to the lab,” he said, skimming the text as the cold case room’s screen blinked to life. Then he paused, his brow creasing. “The tech thinks the threat on the mask might’ve been written in blood.”
Emma straightened, her eyes narrowing. “You’re kidding.”
Ryker shook his head. “Wish I was.”
She cursed under her breath. “Whose blood?”
“Hopefully,” he said, still scrolling, “we’ll have that answer soon.”
Another message pinged in. He read it twice, then frowned even deeper.
“They traced the call,” he added. “The one from the so-called utility worker to you. It came from a burner. And get this, there wasn’t a utility worker dispatched out there. Not from the county, not from private service. No one sent anyone.”
Emma groaned, dragging a hand down her face. “Dammit. I fell for it. The call came in, and I just… went racing out there like it was real.”
Ryker leaned back against the table, his mouth tipping into a half-smile. “To be fair, we didn’t exactly go charging in like action heroes. We hunched down from the cold, muttered about the tarp, and wandered out there.”
That reminder pulled a faint sound from her, not quite a laugh, but close enough.
Ryker tapped the screen beside him to start pulling up files, but his mind was still on the burner phone. The flyer. The mask. The message in blood. Someone had put real time and hate into staging that scene.
And he was betting they weren’t even close to done.
Ryker tapped a few keys on the wall screen, pulling up Ethan Ross’s old case files. His photo appeared, clean-cut, confident, a little too smug, and Ryker hated how easy it was to picture that face stretched into the lifeless mask that they’d found under the tarp.
He glanced over at Emma. “The voice on the call from the utility worker,” he started. “You said it was muffled, but… do you think it could’ve been Ethan?”
She didn’t answer right away. Just stared at the screen, at Ethan’s face staring back at her, frozen in time. Then she gave a slow shrug.
“There was a lot of background noise,” she admitted. “Like wind or static. And the voice was low, distorted. Almost like it was run through a filter.”
“But?” he pressed.
She huffed out a breath. “Maybe. It’s possible. There was something familiar in the cadence. Something that made my stomach knot up.”
Ryker caught the subtle shift. The slight shiver she tried to cover with a rub of her arm.
“You must think I’m a lousy cop,” she muttered. “Not being able to recognize my ex-fiancé’s voice.”
Ryker tilted his head, a slow smile forming. “Not necessarily.” Then, in a gravel-deep, gritted version of his own voice, he said, ”Deputy Bonetti… meet me at the Calhoun Ranch. It’s urgent.”
Emma blinked, startled. Her brows lifted. “Was that supposed to be…?”
“Batman,” Ryker said, dropping back into his regular voice with a smirk. “Specifically, the Christian Bale growl version. You know, for drama.”
A reluctant huff of air left her. “You’ve been practicing that, haven’t you?”
He gave a small shrug. “Only in the mirror. And when traffic’s bad.”
The tension in her shoulders eased just slightly. Not much, but enough for Ryker to see that the moment had landed just a flicker of humor through the fear.
“But seriously,” he added, tone shifting back to steady, “even if it was Ethan’s voice, he’d know how to disguise it. And if he’s trying to get in your head, he’s counting on you second-guessing yourself.”
Emma looked at the screen again, at Ethan’s case file, and nodded. “Then I won’t give him the satisfaction.”
Ryker turned back to the digital wall screen, bringing up the archived file on Ethan Ross’s disappearance. The cold case database synced with the Outlaw Ridge network, displaying documents, time-stamped notes, photos, and news clippings in a crisp, organized grid.
Ethan’s face stared out from the corner profile, department ID photo, thirty-two at the time of his disappearance. Ryker expanded the incident timeline, reading aloud as he scanned.
“Last confirmed sighting: four years ago, February 12th. You and Ethan were here in Outlaw Ridge for a wedding. He vanished sometime after midnight.”
Emma stepped closer, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the screen. “We were living in Austin then. He was still on the job with APD, same as me. The wedding was his cousin’s, a big, loud thing at the VFW. The reception was at that bar off Main Street. Sal’s.”
Ryker tapped into the corresponding witness statements and brought up the relevant notes. “Multiple witnesses saw you and Ethan arguing at the bar. Loud. Heated. Some thought it was a breakup.”
“It was,” she admitted. Her voice didn’t waver, but there was steel behind it.
Ryker glanced at her. “I was there, you know. At the bar.”
Emma blinked, turning toward him. “You were?”
“Yeah. Came in for a beer with some Strike Force guys. Heard raised voices. Didn’t realize it was you two until someone muttered your names. I heard the volume, not the content.”
Emma nodded, her eyes distant now. “The content wasn’t subtle.
I found a nude photo on his phone. Some woman I’d never seen before, posing like she thought she was the main event.
She sent it while we were on the dance floor.
He was checking his messages while I was two steps away, smiling like an idiot. ”
Ryker muttered a curse under his breath.
Emma continued, her tone flat as if giving a briefing and not dredging up a hellish past. “That was our last public moment together. I lost it. Not proud of it, but I was done. Told him to get out of my life, called him every name I could think of. He left the bar. Never made it back to my dad’s house where we were staying. ”
Ryker brought up the report from that night, Ethan’s car was found abandoned the next day behind the old mill, the engine cold, doors locked. No blood, no signs of a struggle. Just… gone.
“You reported him missing the following afternoon,” Ryker said.
“Yeah. And from that point on, the town decided I killed him and dumped the body somewhere in the canyon.”
She didn’t say it bitterly, just matter-of-fact. Like a fact she’d lived with so long it didn’t sting anymore.
But Ryker could see the sting anyway, just beneath the surface.
He leaned a hip against the edge of the table, arms crossed, eyes still on the glowing screen, but his focus had shifted to Emma.
“So, here’s where I land,” he said, his voice lighter than the weight in the room. “We’ve got two options.”
Emma looked over at him, one brow raised, waiting.
“Option one,” Ryker continued, holding up a finger. “Ethan’s alive, and he’s being a dick.”
Her mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but close enough to count.
“Option two…” He held up a second finger. “Ethan’s dead. And someone really wants to mess with your head about it, and in the process is being a dick.”
Emma gave a small nod, thoughtful. “And you’re leaning toward…?”
He shrugged. “Not sure yet. But either way, someone went to a lot of trouble. A mannequin, a wallet, a custom mask, a threatening message. All of that sure as hell wasn’t impulse.”
Ryker pushed off the table and turned toward her. “So let me ask the obvious question. Who would want to get back at you that much?”
Emma hesitated, then frowned. “A few defense attorneys, maybe. Couple of ex-cons I helped put away.”
“What about the naked woman in the photo?” he asked. “I mean, hey, you catch her mid-affair, call Ethan out in public, and maybe she decides you’re the reason he left town. Or the reason he didn’t stick around for her.”
Emma gave a quiet scoff, but he saw the gears turning behind her eyes. She wasn’t dismissing the idea outright.
“She wasn’t the first,” Emma muttered. “But she was the one who broke everything open.”
Ryker watched her closely. “Do you remember her name?”
Emma hesitated, then nodded. “I do. It was in the message thread. Janette Ward.”
Ryker scanned the screen and spotted the “Persons of Interest” tab in the upper right corner. He tapped it, but shook his head with a smirk. “They really oughta give this section a better name.”
Emma gave him a side glance. “Like what?”
He went for something light, hoping it’d help with Emma’s clearly non-light mood. “How about ‘The Usual Suspects and Other Pains in the Asses’?”
“Catchy,” she said.
“I thought so,” Ryker replied, already clicking it open. “Let’s see who makes the cut.” And he added Janette Ward’s name to it.
Ryker scrolled through the Usual Suspects and Other Pains in the Asses, okay, the Persons of Interest tab, eyes tracking the familiar layout of photos and names tied to the original missing persons file. He tapped open the expanded list, flipping through each entry.
“All right. Who else would want to make your life a living hell by tormenting you with Ethan’s memory?” he asked.
Emma didn’t answer right away. She was standing still, arms crossed again, her expression unreadable.
He looked over. “You’ve been asked that before, haven’t you?”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah. The Austin cops asked it when he vanished. So did my uncle, Sheriff Bonetti. They asked me over and over: ‘Who hates you enough to want you destroyed?’”
Ryker tapped the tablet controls beside the digital wall, pulling up the original investigator’s notes. “Let’s see what your uncle had to say.”
He brought up Marty Bonetti’s section of the case file. The notes were brief but methodical, classic Marty, from what Ryker remembered. Honest, detailed, and written with more heart than most cops would ever admit to putting on paper.
Beneath the second report, a new profile appeared.
“Here we go,” Ryker said. “Ethan’s family members are listed. Parents deceased. One sibling, Charlotte Ross.”
Emma stepped forward, her posture tightening. “She moved away a few years before Ethan disappeared,” she said. “After their parents died, she cut ties with Outlaw Ridge and started over in New Mexico. Last I heard, she was doing social work in Santa Fe.”
Ryker read the notes aloud. “‘Adored her brother. Protective. Described him as misunderstood. Didn’t believe he vanished on his own.’”
Emma blew out a long breath. “She thought I was lying. About the fight. About everything. She made it clear she didn’t want anything to do with me after he disappeared.”
“Think she’d want revenge?” Ryker asked, watching her closely. “Enough to stage something this elaborate?”
Emma shook her head. “No idea. She was grieving and angry. But this?” She looked back at the photo of the mask. “This is next-level hate.”
Ryker nodded, tapping a few more controls to pull up contact records. “Well, if she didn’t do it,” he said, “maybe she knows who would.”
He was just about to dig deeper into Charlotte Ross’s employment history when his phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. He checked the screen and saw the name. Deputy Hayes Brodie.
Former Strike Force. Solid cop. Even steadier friend. And one of those handful of people that he trusted with his life.
Ryker answered with a clipped, “Yeah?” And he put the call on speaker.
Hayes didn’t bother with a greeting. “We got called out to a scene just outside of Rustwood Road, near the oil field. Someone reported a body under a tarp. I think this is something you and Bonetti are gonna want to see.”
Ryker’s pulse kicked up a notch. “Let me guess. Another mannequin? Mask of Ethan Ross? An over-the-top threatening message meant for Emma?”
There was a pause. Then Hayes’s voice dropped, the usual edge of sarcasm stripped out. “No, Ryker. This one’s real. It’s a body. And he’s very much dead.”
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