Czytaj książkę: «Alaskan Christmas Cold Case»

ONE

Someone had been watching her. All morning, maybe even for the last few days. Goose bumps would run down Erynn Cooper’s arms at the oddest time. In the grocery store, while she was walking from her truck in the parking lot to the trooper building in the mornings...

And she was afraid she knew who. He—or she—had been responsible for five deaths already, six counting her father’s.

She’d always known he would come for her.

Erynn closed the door behind her, debated locking it, but knew that wasn’t why she was in town. She was not running; she was simply trying to live her life, fill her dad’s shoes in any way she could by bringing criminals to justice, helping people feel safe. And keep her ears out for any leads on the cold case that had led to her dad’s death.

Most days she felt like she could barely fill half of one of Mack Cooper’s shoes. Why had he been the one to die so young?

And what would her life have been like if he hadn’t? She wouldn’t have become a trooper, Erynn didn’t think, but what would she have been?

She’d never had the chance to consider it, not really.

She sat at her desk, shoved aside the little Christmas tree her partner had apparently added while she’d been home sleeping, and poured herself a cup of coffee. She had already told him she wasn’t big on Christmas decorations. Apparently he didn’t care. Every day this week it had been something new. First twinkling lights, then snowman stickers on the windows. Now the tree. Erynn shook her head and took a sip of coffee, startling as her phone chimed the arrival of a text message.

Noah.

You weren’t at the diner last night. Everything okay?

Almost every Saturday night the two of them, along with some friends, played board games at the diner while drinking bad coffee and talking about their weeks. She hadn’t wanted to go last night since yesterday had been odd and she’d felt out of place all day, like something was wrong.

It hadn’t been until this morning that she’d pinpointed the feeling: she was prey and someone was hunting her, or at the very least watching her. But she hadn’t wanted to face Noah when she hadn’t felt her best. Despite her efforts, the man knew her too well. And she didn’t want him getting any closer to her, prying into her life any more.

It would only make things more dangerous for both of them. Her life. His career.

She took a deep breath then a sip of coffee. She had a job to do, and she needed to focus and do it.

Hours passed uneventfully. Erynn glanced at her watch. Less than an hour until she was done for the day. Then what? Go home and hide in her apartment again? Or see if she could find who was watching her? She had her training on her side, wouldn’t be caught off guard.

Then again, her dad had probably thought the same. Pain stabbed her heart and she shook her head. If only this feeling would shake off so easily.

The door creaked open.

In stepped her past in the form of Janie Davis. Erynn felt her jaw tense and a headache start at the corners of her temples. She blinked, but Janie was still standing there. Back from the dead, or so it appeared. And, with her appearance, the heaviness that had crowded Erynn’s high school years, like clouds hanging low over the ocean on a stormy day, also returned.

She’d known Janie from their time in foster care years ago. Erynn couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Seeing her past find her here, in her office, at work, would have shaken her enough...but Janie Davis had died three years ago, her body having been found near Moose Haven, on a glacier. Erynn had been one of the officers who had worked the case, along with Noah Dawson and the rest of the Moose Haven Police Department. Except clearly she hadn’t died. Because here she was in the Moose Haven Trooper Station.

Would she ever escape her past?

“What are you doing here?” Erynn shook her head, stood and moved to the windows, pulled the blinds and then looked back at her unexpected visitor. “Never mind. Don’t answer yet. I need another set of ears here.” She hated to do it; it went against every ounce of energy she’d spent this week, keeping him at a distance. But Noah’s was the best law enforcement mind for miles around, besides hers. And his team was good, too. She trusted them and she needed help, preferably from another agency, because if she was right about why Janie was there...this was about to blow up in their faces and they’d all need to work together.

She slid her cell phone from her pocket, deciding texting was the fastest way to get Noah’s attention.

S.O.S. I need you at the Trooper station.

He took only seconds to text back.

You’re safe?

Erynn glanced up at the blonde, whose gaze hadn’t left her.

Not sure.

He should be there within minutes. The two law enforcement offices were separated by two blocks and Erynn was all too aware that when it came to Noah and her... Well, it was complicated. Not something she had space in her life for. But she knew he wouldn’t let anything happen to her if he could help it.

“I can’t believe you aren’t happy to see me.” Janie’s voice was much the same as it had been when they were kids living in the same group home, but more grown-up now, a little husky.

“You’ve been missing. We thought you were dead. Found a body and it matched your description...”

“I’m not dead. And I wasn’t missing. I was hiding. There’s a difference.”

Someone knocked on the door.

“Would have been nice if you’d clarified that with law enforcement.” Erynn moved to the door, slid one of the blind slats wider with her fingers to confirm it was Noah, then let him in. They had butted heads more times than she could count in the years she’d been working Moose Haven and he’d been the police chief. But she had his back, knew he had hers.

Today they needed to work together more than they ever had.

Because if the weighty sense of foreboding that sat on Erynn’s shoulders right now had any bearing on reality...they were all in trouble.

And she and Janie were in danger.

“Is this...?” Noah trailed off, glancing at Janie then at Erynn. She knew he’d seen the missing person’s posters and the photos they’d passed around during the search. He also knew about the eventual discovery of the remains they’d assumed were hers in a crevasse in Harding Icefield, the ice field that connected Moose Haven’s Raven Glacier to Seward’s more well-known Exit Glacier.

But he hadn’t known Janie in person the way Erynn had. And, maybe worse, he hadn’t known about Erynn’s relationship to her, either. She hadn’t known how to admit that the case had edged toward personal for her, had danced toward the line of her possibly having to not be on the case.

Because it hadn’t seemed necessary.

Because they’d needed her.

Because she’d cared too much about it to let it out of her hands.

In all the years he’d known Erynn, Noah had never seen her like this. She was the one in control of situations, sure of herself and bossy to a fault. The woman in front of him right now? He didn’t know what could have made her so upset.

However, the fact that someone they’d both thought was dead was standing in the trooper station? It wasn’t a good sign. Scratch that—it had been Noah who had thought they should stop looking at the case, and the rest of the Moose Haven Police Department and the troopers had agreed with him. The case had gone cold; everything had pointed to the possibility it could have been an accident. Erynn’s assertions that they should look more closely at the situation had been ignored.

He was wishing he’d listened to her now.

“This is Janie Davis.” Erynn’s voice was steady but not as steely as usual. Noah waited, not wanting to step into what was technically her case at the moment since Janie had come to her. But Erynn just stood there. Staring. Her face had paled and he watched as she swallowed hard.

There would be time for her to argue with him about this later, but for now he was going to handle things.

“Janie, I’m Noah Dawson, the Moose Haven Police Chief. Can we sit down? We have some questions for you, as you might have assumed, and I’m hoping your presence here means you intend to answer them.”

She shook her head. “I want to talk to Erynn.”

Erynn. Why did she use her first name? Most people would have said “Trooper Cooper.”

Noah looked at his friend. At the woman who had been tying his insides in knots for years—both professionally and personally, whether she knew it or not.

“Since Chief Dawson and I work together on cases often, he needs to be here, too.” Erynn spoke up. “Let’s go into my office.” She looked at Noah, met his eyes, but he couldn’t tell what, if anything, she was trying to convey.

He followed her down the short hallway, into her office, mentally pulling up everything he’d known about the case. They had initially referred to the woman in the glacier crevasse outside Seward as “The Ice Maiden” before linking that case to the disappearance of a woman in Anchorage named Janie Davis. She had matched the description—even though they’d never been able to recover the body. It had been deemed too dangerous, something that was not rare in the Alaskan backcountry.

Maybe he should have pushed for that, told Erynn’s superiors who had flown out that leaving a body left questions unanswered and was unacceptable. People went missing in Alaska, died in accidents all the time. With no solid evidence that the Ice Maiden had been murdered, they’d been forced—or so Noah had felt, anyway—to draw the conclusion that the death had been accidental.

He was questioning that now.

Realistically, Noah wasn’t sure what he could have done, pushing to keep a case open that the troopers had thought was closed. The working relationship between the Moose Haven Police Department and the state troopers could have been compromised.

Noah had regrets but didn’t know if he’d change anything, even if he could go back. They’d done the best they could.

Except he wished he had some power to take away the haunted look in Erynn’s eyes. Who was this woman to her? She’d known her before. He was almost sure of that now.

But how did Janie fit?

“We could arrest you for obstruction of justice, are you aware of that?” Erynn took the lead and did it well. She had been shaken earlier but she’d recovered. Noah should have known she would have. She’d taken a seat behind her desk and sat there now, leaned back, arms crossed. He felt his own shoulders relax. She could handle this.

“Wouldn’t just be me being arrested.” Janie met Erynn’s eyes.

Noah didn’t like what he saw there.

Erynn said nothing.

Noah tried to meet her eyes. Decided to step in, maybe rile up Janie enough so Erynn could get hold of herself again.

“What are you implying, Miss Davis?”

“I think you both know.”

“Trooper Cooper is an outstanding officer and has worked too hard on every case she’s ever had. She takes her job seriously and I won’t listen to you saying otherwise. Are you ready to leave now? Because I can show you out the door.”

A sideways glance told him Erynn didn’t look relieved. If anything, she’d paled even more. She shook her head. “You can’t let her leave.”

He knew that already. Didn’t have to like it, but he knew it. If Janie had been hiding and her disappearance from society had something to do with the Ice Maiden’s body...then it likely wasn’t a typical case of someone disappearing in the backcountry. The troopers and police forces would need to reopen the case, see if it could have been a homicide. Which meant that Janie was an important witness in a case that had gone cold years ago. However, what he didn’t know was why she showed so much familiarity with Erynn.

Noah had known Erynn for five years. Trusted her more than he did anyone else, except maybe his brother and Clay, his second-in-command at the PD. Between them, though, it was a tie. And Noah didn’t give his trust easily. It just wasn’t in his nature.

He looked at Erynn. Waited. But she didn’t meet his eyes. Wouldn’t.

He’d have to handle this himself. Talk to Erynn later.

“Let’s start with right now and work backward. You aren’t dead.”

“That’s correct.”

“Are you aware that you’ve been declared so?”

The body they’d found in the crevasse had matched Janie Davis’s description. The woman had gone missing at the same time. They’d interviewed witnesses, tracked her movements up until she’d come to Seward, a town near Moose Haven, and disappeared.

It hadn’t been shoddy police work that had made the case go cold. Or that had led them to believe the death could have been accidental. Someone had known what they were doing, had intended for them to think Janie Davis was dead.

But she wasn’t.

So who was she?

“I was aware,” Janie was saying, her facial expression still so cocky that it made Noah immediately suspicious. He wasn’t willing to discount the possibility that she was involved in a way that did make her a criminal.

“So you’ve come to turn yourself in.”

“It’s not like that.”

“No?” Noah asked.

“I’ve been hiding to protect myself.”

Yeah, because he’d never heard that before. “For three years.” It was a statement, not a question.

“You wouldn’t understand.” Janie looked at Erynn.

Erynn met her gaze.

And not his? How well did she know this person? They didn’t strike him as friends. Someone from far back in her past?

“Why did you come here?” Noah asked.

“Because I’m tired of knowing that he’s still out there, that he could get away with more crimes. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder, of wondering if I’m going to cost anyone else their life.”

“Are you saying the woman in the glacier is dead because of you?” Noah spoke up again, glanced at Erynn, who had stayed quiet. She’d turned into an observer.

Janie shook her head. “No. But I may end up dead because of her. And I’m worried that if I do...Erynn will end up dead because of me. I needed to come here, needed to make sure she had all the information so she could find him, make him stop.”

“No one’s going to let you be killed,” Noah said.

“It’s not a promise you can make, I’m afraid.”

“Why don’t you tell us what you came to say and then let us do our best?”

He watched the woman consider. Waited.

And wondered why someone would be after Erynn.