Case File: Canyon Creek, Wyoming

Chapter Fifteen

Her timing was lousy all the way around.

If she’d gone to Wyoming in the spring, she could have returned to a wildly busy office to take her mind off everything she went through on her vacation. The past week would have been a whirlwind of fishing-camp bookings, clients looking to schedule guided fishing trips, and several of her brothers running in and out of the office between fishing trips and maintenance calls.

But by late October, the season was coming to an end, and the phone calls slowed to a trickle, leaving her too much time to think about Riley and the way things between them had ended.

Maybe it would have been easier if their brief fling had blown up in a huge, dramatic fight. At least there would have been passion, tears and the chance to get good and mad. But watching him walk away, knowing with every cell in her body that he felt the same connection between them that she did, had been a sort of quiet, relentless torture she hadn’t yet escaped.

She pushed back her desk chair and crossed to the filing cabinet on the pretense that there was something in the office she hadn’t filed in the week since she returned home. But the cabinet was immaculately organized, thanks to her desperate attempt to keep her mind off Riley for the past seven days.

Admitting defeat, she slammed the drawer shut and turned around to look at the empty office.

The phone rang, an unexpected reprieve. She hurried to answer it. “Cooper Cove Properties.”

“Hey, Skipper, it’s me.” It was her brother Aaron, using her much-hated childhood nickname because he liked to hear her growl. But this time, her heart wasn’t in it.

“Hey, what’s up besides the crime rate?”

“You’re funny,” he retorted. “It’s down, for your information.”

“In spite of you?” she teased, knowing how much he prided himself on his job as a Chickasaw County Sheriff’s Deputy.

“Because of me, naturally.” He took the teasing with good humor. He was the youngest, except for her, which had often made them natural allies over the years. “But that’s not why I called. Have you talked to Mom yet?”

From the excited tone in his voice, she guessed it wasn’t bad news. “No-what’s going on?”

“Sam’s moving back home.”

“Officially?” She grinned. “When?”

“He got the job he wanted in the Jefferson County District Attorney’s office.”

Some of her excitement faded. “But Birmingham’s an hour away. We won’t ever get to see Maddy.”

“The job is an hour away, but he’s going to commute. He’s already got his eye on a house on Mission Road in town. Nice place-I swung by to take a look for him. Nice big yard, easy drive to the lake. It’s perfect.”

“Tell him to take it!” The more brothers to distract her from her miserable life, the better.

“I plan to.” Aaron’s voice softened. “So, how are you really doing?”

The concern in his voice made tears prick her eyes. She blinked them back. “I’m good. The concussion was nearly two weeks ago.”

“I’m not talking about the concussion. It had to be unnerving to be on a serial killer’s hit list.”

“It was, but I’m home now, safe and sound, and if there’s any justice, the cops in Wyoming will have him behind bars any day now.”

“They haven’t got him yet.”

She frowned at the phone. “And you’d know that how?”

“I might have given the Teton County sheriff a call this morning,” he admitted.

She couldn’t decide if she was relieved or disappointed that he hadn’t called Riley instead. “But they’re still on it, right?”

“Absolutely. And the sheriff thinks you should be perfectly safe now that you’re home.”

“Good to hear.” The office door opened and Mariah entered, waggling her fingers at Hannah. “Listen, Mariah just got here, and you need to get back to work. Great news about Sam. Now if we could just get Luke home, I’d have all my ducks in a row.”

She winced a little, mentally, at her choice of words. Riley had said something very like that to her, at a time that now felt like a lifetime ago. She ruthlessly shoved the memory out of her mind and rang off. “That was Aaron,” she told Mariah.

“He told you about your brother coming home, no?” Mariah laid her backpack on her desk and smiled at Hannah. “Jake told me the news. I can’t wait to meet him.”

“That’s right, you haven’t met him or Luke yet.” Mariah and Hannah’s brother Jake had met less than a year earlier, and eloped to Gatlinburg a couple of months after that. At the time, Hannah had secretly questioned whether a marriage based on two months’ acquaintance was a good idea, but after almost eight months, they seemed to be working out well.

And after Wyoming, she didn’t have much room to talk.

Mariah smiled at Hannah again, but as always, the smile didn’t quite overcome the sadness always present in her coffee-colored eyes. She’d been a widow with a small child when she met Hannah’s brother Jake, and it seemed even her obvious love for her new husband hadn’t quite erased that sense of loss. “It’s odd to have such a large family. Back in Texas, there were only my parents and me.”

“Having seven kids is pretty odd these days, no matter where you’re from.” Hannah grinned.

Mariah settled behind her desk and pushed papers around the blotter, no doubt looking for something constructive to do. Hannah was about to tell her to use her time doing homework or reading ahead for her next class when Mariah looked up shyly, a faint blush staining her olive skin.

“I’ve been thinking about something you told me. About the case in Wyoming.” Her lightly accented English had a musical quality that Hannah always found soothing. “You said you saw a psychiatrist in Wyoming-a hypnotherapist?”

“Right-when we tried to set the trap for the guy, the cover story was that I was seeing a hypnotherapist to recover missing memories.” Hannah smiled. “It reminded me of you and your hypnosis tricks.”

Mariah’s smile was tinged with thoughtfulness. “It is not so much a trick, actually. It is a way to let your mind relax and open. Perhaps you really should try it.”

The thought still gave her the willies. She took such pride in her self-control that losing it, even a little, was frightening. But courage was about doing the right thing, even in the face of fear, wasn’t it?

She didn’t want to think of herself as a coward.

“What do you need to do it?” she asked aloud. “Can we do it right here and now?”

Mariah’s eyebrows notched upwards, but she gave a quick nod. “I think I can find something-” She dug through her desk drawer until she emerged with a yellow pencil. “This will work. Come, let’s go to the conference room.”

Hannah followed Mariah to the small sitting room that served as the booking office’s conference room. Mariah motioned for her to sit in the cozy armchair, while she took a seat on the sofa across from her.

“The main thing I want you to do is breathe. In and out, slow and steady.” As she spoke, Mariah tapped the eraser end of the pencil rhythmically on the coffee table.

Dr. Pendleton had done something very similar when Hannah was talking to her in her office, she remembered. Had it been an attempt to ease Hannah’s obvious tension?

“Close your eyes, clear your mind and concentrate on breathing in tempo with my taps,” Mariah said.

Hannah did as Mariah asked, focusing on the slow, steady intake and exhale of air in rhythm with the tapping pencil. After a few moments, her limbs began to feel heavy.

“You are relaxed and open. You are aware of everything around you. There is nothing you have seen or heard that you cannot access. Do you believe me when I say that?”

She did, Hannah realized. “Yes.”

“Good. Because all we’re doing here is answering questions. Answer them as well as you can. No pressure at all. Now, I want you to remember the day you were attacked. Was it a sunny day?”

“Yes, but it was late afternoon. The sun was dropping behind the mountains and there were shadows all around me.” She saw the road spreading out in front of her, the endless wilderness on either side of the highway.

“When did you notice the car?”

“I checked my rearview mirror and there he was.”

“What did the car look like?”

“It was big. A sedan. I think it might have been dark blue. I really only noticed the blue light on the roof.”

“Did you see the man inside the car?”

“No. The windshield was darkened.” Had she told the police in Wyoming about the tinted windows? She felt herself begin to tense up.

“Breathe, Hannah. When we are done, you can ask yourself the questions that make you anxious, but for now, the anxiety is gone. Breathe it away.”

Hannah did as Mariah told her, and soon the tension passed.

“He came to your car. What were you doing as he was walking toward you?”

“I was getting my license and registration information.”

“Did you glance in any of the mirrors to see what he looked like?” Mariah asked.

“No. It happened so fast-he was there within seconds.”

“What did you do when you found the license and registration papers?”

“I turned to the window.” Anticipating Mariah’s next question, she added, “He was already right by the car. All I could see was his shirt, his midsection and his hand. I saw his belt buckle-a rattlesnake.” Funny how clear it was in her head now. “His belt was brown leather. No markings.”

“Was the pepper spray in his hand?”

“Yes. He was wearing latex gloves. I got a brief glimpse before-” She stopped as she replayed the moment in her head and saw something she hadn’t remembered before. “He used both hands to spray the pepper spray, almost like a two-handed shooting stance. I’d forgotten that. And on his left pinky finger he wore a ring.”

“You could see it through the gloves?”

“Yes. It was gold with a black stone and a small gold inset on the stone.” She opened her eyes and looked at Mariah, excitement building. “I can’t believe I didn’t remember that. I mean, when I slammed my elbow down on his fingers to get away, I felt the ring crack against my funny bone.”

Mariah put the pencil down on the table and regarded her solemnly. “Do you remember what the gold inset was?”

Hannah broke into a broad smile. “It was a horseshoe.”

NEARLY 30,000 FEET BELOW, Missouri looked like a tiny relief map, criss-crossed by rivers and streams snaking west from the Mississippi River. He was still a few hours away from landing in Nashville, but from there, the drive to Gossamer Ridge, Alabama, would take less than three hours. He planned to stay overnight in Nashville and get an early start on the road.

He had to get to Gossamer Ridge for a morning rendezvous.

She’d been quite helpful, really, telling the newspaper reporter all about her life in Alabama. The family marina, running the booking office, even her quirky little side job as a fishing guide. He supposed she did that alone, too.

Reckless woman.

He’d used this past week not only to prepare for his cross-country trip but also to let the police-and Hannah Cooper-develop a false sense of security. They didn’t expect him to go to such lengths to tie up loose ends. Wouldn’t fit the profile, he thought with a smile.

As the flight attendant passed, she smiled back at him. For a moment, he imagined what it would be like to have her on his table in the basement of his mother’s house. To watch her twist and writhe as her fate became clearer, to realize that her own actions had led her to that place and that outcome.

But the flight attendant hadn’t earned that punishment, had she? At least, not yet. She hadn’t ignored his warnings and sealed her fate.

Hannah Cooper had, however. And he wasn’t one to leave things unfinished.

RILEY GAZED AT THE PAPERS spread across his desk and saw none of them. He’d spent most of the past week in this same position, hunched forward over his desk, moving papers around like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in the pretense that his mind was still on the work and not hundreds of miles away in the hills of northeast Alabama.

New information had come in on the case, most of it eliminating suspects rather than pinpointing anyone in particular. Among the hospital security personnel, only five possibles remained. None of them looked very promising, but they still remained more likely than the other hospital staffers they’d also been looking at.

He picked up the background sheets on the possibles, trying to concentrate on finding something he’d missed the first ten times he’d looked at these sheets over the past week, but all he could see was Hannah’s shattered expression when he’d turned around in the airport terminal to look at her for the last time.

He should have asked her to stay. Or hell, offered to go with her. What was keeping him here anymore, except an unhealthy craving for revenge? His parents were in Arizona. Jack was God knew where.

And Emily was dead.

But he wasn’t. He may have felt as if he were a walking corpse for the past three years, but he wasn’t dead yet. He still had years ahead of him, and living them as if life held no joy at all was the worst possible tribute to Emily’s memory.

For the first time, he felt her censure, the full truth of the words Joe had told him just a few short days ago.

Emily would hate what you’re becoming.

The buzzer on his desk phone sounded. “Riley-get in here.” It was Joe, and he sounded excited.

He headed into Joe’s office and found him on the phone. Joe held up a finger and finished the conversation. “Yes, I think it’ll be very helpful. For sure it gives us another piece of the puzzle to help us cull suspects. I’ll definitely let you know if anything comes of it. Bye, now.” Joe hung up and looked at Riley, clearly excited but also exhibiting tell-tale signs of guilt.

“Who was that?” Riley asked, although in his sinking heart he knew the answer.

“Hannah Cooper,” Joe answered, sending a sliver of pain slicing straight through Riley’s heart. “She remembered something else.”

Riley listened as Joe told him about how Hannah had let her sister-in-law hypnotize her and remembered a ring the killer had been wearing, but all he could think about was the fact that Hannah had called Joe and not him.

No surprise, really. After all, he’d broken her heart. He’d known it even as he was doing it. Why would she ever want to speak to him again?

Yet she’d obviously kept thinking about the case, enough to let her sister-in-law hypnotize her into remembering more.

“I need time off,” he said bluntly.

Joe looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I just told you we got a break in the case, and you want time off?”

Riley stood, propelled by a restless urgency that grew stronger each second he remained in this office. He’d been headed toward this moment for a week, hadn’t he? Every moment spent thinking about her, rewinding every touch, every conversation, every regret for seven endless, excruciating days.

“She could have gone home and not given this case another thought,” he said aloud. “After all she went through, I wouldn’t have blamed her for it. But she didn’t.”

A slow smile of understanding spread across Joe’s face. “You’re going to Alabama, aren’t you?”

Riley grinned back at him, suddenly feeling the urge to laugh aloud. “Yes, I believe I am.”

“Well, I’m going to pass this information along to Sheriff Tanner and see if any of the Memorial Hospital staff wears an onyx pinky ring with a gold horseshoe set into it. You go book a flight and get packed.”

“Call me on my cell if you get any breaks in the case,” Riley said over his shoulder, already halfway out the door.

He found a flight leaving around 4:30 p.m. from Casper arriving in Birmingham before midnight and booked a room for a night at a motel not far from the Interstate. Packing in a rush, he was on the road to Casper by noon.

In twenty-four hours, he’d be with Hannah again. And if he was lucky, and she was forgiving, he wouldn’t ever be without her again.

HANNAH WAS LOCKING UP at the booking office late that afternoon when the phone rang. She glanced at the caller identification display, ready to blow off anyone she wasn’t in the mood to talk to. But the number had a Tennessee area code. Might be a client. She answered. “Cooper Cove Properties.”

“Hi, there.” The voice was male and friendly, with a neutral accent Hannah couldn’t place, though it sounded vaguely familiar. “My name is Ken Lassiter, and I was hoping you might have an opening in your schedule tomorrow morning for a guided crappie-fishing tour.”

She pretended to grab her book, although the truth was, hardly anyone was fishing for crappie on Gossamer Lake this time of year. No matter-she knew good spots to fish any time of the year. “I have an availability first thing in the morning. Can you be here by 6:30 a.m.?”

“I certainly can,” Lassiter answered cheerfully. “Are you the one who’ll be taking me?”

“That’s right.” She braced for a change of heart. Some men didn’t like being guided by women.

“Do I need to bring my own tackle?”

She relaxed. Apparently, Mr. Lassiter wasn’t one of those men. “Not unless you want to. We provide all the tackle and gear as part of the service.” She named a price. “That will get you a full day on the lake. Half a day, half price. You pay up front at the bait shop by the docks. I’ll be here when you arrive.”

“Let’s go with half a day. I’m betting we can get the job done by then,” Lassiter said. “I didn’t get your name-”

“Cooper. Hannah Cooper.”

“I look forward to fishing with you, Ms. Cooper. I’ll see you at six-thirty.” Lassiter rang off, and Hannah wrote the appointment down in the book.

As she finished locking up the office, she found herself looking forward to getting back on the lake. If anything could take her mind off Riley Patterson and Wyoming, it was a day of crappie fishing on Gossamer Lake.

HE HUNG UP THE PAY PHONE outside a store within sight of the Metro Riverfront Park. The late afternoon was pleasantly mild for October; he was glad he’d thought to pack clothes for a warmer climate. Around him, locals and tourists mingled along the city sidewalks, heading for their cars parked along the busy streets or for the bus stop near the river.

Nobody gave him a second look, which was why he’d chosen this place, miles from his motel room, to make his call to the Cooper Cove Marina.

Hearing her voice had been an electric shock to his system. The week he’d given her to relax her guard had been harder on him than he’d realized. While he prided himself on his self-control, he’d never really been one to deny himself necessary pleasures.

And seeing Hannah Cooper again would be a pleasure, indeed.