01 Storm Peak (33 page)
Legs wrapped around his waist, arms twined around his neck, she smiled down at him and kissed him, open-mouthed. Then she smiled at him.
“Let’s try that one again, shall we?” she said.
FORTY-THREEI
t was wet and cold in Virginia. Agent Annie Dillon hung her raincoat on the hook on the back of her office door and settled down in front of her computer. The message “Have a good weekend, Babe” scrolled endlessly across the screen. She grunted at it. The weekend hadn’t been wildly successful. She’d caught a large piece of near frozen ground with a five iron and damn near wrenched her left wrist out of its socket. It hurt like hell at the time. By Sunday night, she couldn’t move her left hand at all without intense, searing pain.
t was wet and cold in Virginia. Agent Annie Dillon hung her raincoat on the hook on the back of her office door and settled down in front of her computer. The message “Have a good weekend, Babe” scrolled endlessly across the screen. She grunted at it. The weekend hadn’t been wildly successful. She’d caught a large piece of near frozen ground with a five iron and damn near wrenched her left wrist out of its socket. It hurt like hell at the time. By Sunday night, she couldn’t move her left hand at all without intense, searing pain.
As a result, she’d spent most of Monday morning with doctors, X-ray technicians and physiotherapists. Now it was nearly midday and she was hours behind in her work. She brought the computer online from its standby setting, unlocked her top drawer and took out the sheets of part numbers that she’d received on Friday. She sighed as she glanced down the ranks-four columns to a page, forty-three lines to a column.
She flicked through the pages to get a quick count, and frowned. The last two pages were a different format—an address sheet from a sheriff’s department in some godforsaken place called Routt County, out in Colorado.
Frowning, she read the note and reached for her phone. She could pass this on to one of the research interns but she felt a little guilty about it. It was her fault that the request had gone unanswered for almost three days. She’d do it herself.
She dialed the library and requested a copy of any information they might have on a Wilson Purdue. Telling the clerk that the job was urgent, she requested the file ASAP
It arrived fifteen minutes later, a single sheet. She glanced quickly at it to make sure it was complete, not really taking in any details. Then, making a note of the Routt County Sheriff’s Department fax number, she headed for the fax room at the end of the corridor.
S
everal hundred miles away in Denver, Carrie Tolliver was back at work after an absence of several days.
everal hundred miles away in Denver, Carrie Tolliver was back at work after an absence of several days.
Carrie was an administrative assistant with the Denver Fire Department. She looked after paperwork, filing, interdepartmental communication and requests from other authorities for assistance or information.
But a flu epidemic was sweeping Denver and health authorities had estimated that city residents had a one in three chance of catching the bug, sooner or later.
Carrie had caught it sooner. She fought for a day against the aching head, the soaring temperatures and the dry rasping throat.
Then, finally, she gave in. She went home, gulped down a handful of aspirin and fell into bed for four days, rousing herself at irregular intervals for soup, hot tea and more aspirin.
Now, she was back at her desk, working her way through the mountain of paperwork that had built up in the time she’d been away.
One form caught her eye as she sifted through yet another stack of departmental mail. It was a fax page, with an unfamiliar crest. She slipped it from the pile and studied it more carefully. It seemed that the Routt County Sheriff’s Department had requested background information and an ID photo of a former Denver Fire Department paramedic named Anton Mikkelitz. It seemed a routine request. There was no urgency indicated on the form. However, as she glanced at the date of the fax, she realized that the request had been made nearly a week ago. It had obviously gone from desk to desk before ending up on hers. At that rate, she thought the request deserved some priority
She took a note of the name and walked through to the personnel department.
It took her another quarter-hour to find the personnel sleeve for Anton Mikkelitz. She’d started out by looking in the current employee files, not realizing that he’d left the department several years previously. Finally, she found it, took the top sheet, with home address, age and personal details, and the five by four copy of the ID photo and returned to her own office.
She attached the photo to a larger sheet of paper, fed it and the details sheet into her fax, checked the return number on the fax sheet from Routt County and punched it in. She waited for the metallic shriek that told her the faxes were connecting, then hung up the receiver and watched the sheets of paper roll into one side of the fax and out the other. Technology, she thought, was a wonderful thing.
It might have been an even better thing if it had provided Routt County with a fax that could receive two messages at once. Because as Carrie Tolliver was sending the details of Anton Mikkelitz through, Annie Dillon was attempting to fax a file on Wilson Purdue to the same number. She sighed with frustration as the busy signal beeped back at her. She broke the connection, hit the redial button and waited.
Just as the second sheet in Denver was feeding into Carrie Tolliver’s fax.
Again, Agent Dillon heard the mocking tone of the engaged signal. It was a sound that seemed to be designed specifically to annoy, she thought. She let it beep for several seconds, then broke the connection again. Her finger was reaching for the redial button once more when the fax rang. She started with surprise, then realized that the function display panel on the machine was registering “Receiving.” The first of an eighteen-page report on new office communications procedures was coming in from Washington, DC. She saw the cover sheet as it rolled out, read the legend “page one of eighteen,” and sighed in exasperation. She could have left the fax machine on auto redial but she didn’t know that. She picked up the Purdue file and returned to her office. Routt County would just have to wait a little longer.
FORTY-FOURT
here was something wrong. Lee knew it. She could sense it, feel it and see it in every line of Jesse’s body. He was ill at ease with her, and his gaze slid away from hers when they met in the parking lot outside the Safety Building.
here was something wrong. Lee knew it. She could sense it, feel it and see it in every line of Jesse’s body. He was ill at ease with her, and his gaze slid away from hers when they met in the parking lot outside the Safety Building.
“So, where were you last night?” she asked, trying to keep her voice easy. That was when Jesse’s eyes had refused to make contact with hers. He suddenly noticed that one bootlace wasn’t sufficiently tight, dropped to one knee, undid it and made a production of re-tying it, getting it just right.
“Last night?” he said, then replied with a question of his own. “Were you trying to reach me last night?”
She hated this. She’d actually begun the conversation quite innocently. She’d assumed he’d gone out for a beer or a meal at the Tugboat. All she wanted to do was to bring their relationship back to normal. She’d realized after she’d hung up on him the night before that she’d overreacted to the situation. She’d spent the next hour wondering why the thought of Abby had made her so defensive, so much on the alert. Then, around eight, she’d phoned Jesse to apologize for her attitude. To set things right between them again.
And got nothing but an unanswered ringtone.
She’d tried again around nine with the same result. After that, she’d gone to bed early and laid awake till around one, feeling like a fool. She’d made up her mind that, first thing in the morning, first chance she got, she’d set things right. Just start up a normal, unimportant conversation to let Jesse know things were fine between them. And to give him a chance to let her know the same.
And then, damn it, before she could stop herself, she’d picked the one topic that made her sound as if she were checking up on him. Where were you last night? Jesus! she thought, what a question to ask him. It smacked of accusation. And now, just to make it worse, it seemed that Jesse had been somewhere, with someone, that he didn’t want to discuss. She tried to lighten the subject, made her voice very matter-of-fact, tried to make it sound unimportant.
“No. Just called you back around eight. Figured you’d gone out.” She gestured to the Book Store Coffee Shop on the corner, determined to get off the subject of Jesse’s evening. “Want to grab a coffee? The muffins should be just coming out of the oven right about now,” she added with a slightly forced cheerfulness.
Jesse chose to ignore the invitation, and the opportunity to change the subject. He seemed to come to a decision. He rose to his feet, and this time, met her gaze. His eyes were a little angry she thought.
“I went out,” he said flatly. “I took Abby to dinner.”
And there it was. Their eyes were locked. She didn’t want hers to be searching for an answer, but she knew they were. And she saw the answer in Jesse’s anger, his stubborn refusal to accept the sidetrack she’d offered. She shrugged, tried to look casual.
“Fine,” she said. “I guess she deserved it after the good PR she gave us.
“I guess she did,” he said.
The smile was locked on her face. She couldn’t let it slip, couldn’t let on that she knew. He’d taken Abby out. They’d had dinner. They’d fucked. She felt like a gargoyle with that ridiculous smile plastered to her face. They’d fucked? Why not think of it as “they’d made love”? Maybe it was more than just physical. Maybe there was still a spark there and the situation had fanned it back into a flame. She nodded several times, meaninglessly.
“Well …” she said, finally. “Coffee?”
He shrugged. “I’ll take a rain check,” he said. “I’ve got to go back to square one, start going through the list of suspects again.”
“I guess so,” she agreed, glad that they were finally talking business, glad she could unfasten that idiotic smile and put it away again. “I’ve got a few calls to make. I’ll see if I can give you a hand in an hour or so, maybe review what we’ve got so far.”
He nodded heavily. “Ain’t much,” he said. “I’d like to know where that Purdue fellow has got to in the last few years though. He’s our best hope at the moment.”
They mounted the back stairs and went inside. Lee breathed a sigh of relief to be in out of the cutting wind. She loosened the zipper of her jacket.
“Thought you were going for coffee?” he asked as they reached the door to the conference room he had claimed. She shrugged.
“Maybe later. Remembered I had a few too many things to attend to.” She turned away heading for the end of the corridor and the door to her own office. “I’ll catch you later,” she said back over her shoulder. He nodded, said nothing.
He stood for a few seconds, hand on the doorknob, watching her walk away. Her long-legged stride had a feline grace about it. Below the short waistline of the jacket, her behind stretched the denim of her jeans into a perfect, rounded shape. He felt a surge of desire for her, then shook his head in self-disgust.
Jesus! Can’t you make up your goddamned mind? Angrily, he flung the door open and went into the conference room, shutting the door behind him a little more forcefully than he’d intended.
He slumped into the nearest chair and stared moodily at his notes on the whiteboard. The photos of suspects and victims were taped along the bottom of the board. He noticed one gap in the photos and leaned forward to peer closer. Mikkelitz, he noticed dully. The former paramedic from Denver. He was sure he’d put through a request to the fire department for a copy of his ID photo. He shrugged. Probably got lost in someone’s in tray he thought. He made a mental note to call Denver later and put in the request verbally.
He guessed that the next step would be to take all the ID photos and canvass the witnesses he had available, to see if any of them looked familiar. Mrs. Hollings would be the best chance, he thought. At least she’d seen the killer’s face, if only for a few seconds. But he’d also try the lift attendants and the gondola attendants who’d seen the mysterious cross-country skier. Maybe they’d remember something. Maybe one of the photos would trigger a memory.
Maybe.
Maybe hell would freeze over one day.
Damn Abby! Why did she have to come back now, just when he and Lee had finally got themselves sorted out.
He loved Lee. At least, he thought he did. No, he was sure of it. Almost sure.
So, he asked himself, if he loved her, if he was so sure, how come he’d spent the previous night screwing Abby till the early hours of the morning? His groin hardened again at the thought of it. What did he feel for Abby? It was physical, sure. He had the evidence of that between his legs. Hard evidence, he told himself grimly.
But there was something more than just a physical attraction. Maybe it was history. He’d loved her once, he knew that. Maybe he was falling in love with her again. Maybe she really had decided to give up her ambitions for a network spot. They’d talked about that and she certainly sounded genuine.
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