Forgotten Secrets (18 page)

Thayne hit the brakes. “Now what?”

“We’re here.”

Brett opened the door, but Shep jumped out and rounded the SUV. “Stay put, Mr. Riverton.”

Thayne shut off the engine. Riley opened the door and grabbed her satchel. The strong scent of lilacs overwhelmed her the moment she stepped out of the vehicle.

She stepped onto the ground, her feet sinking into red mud. Exactly like that found in the machine shop at Riverton Ranch.

“Thayne,” she shouted, and pointed to the ground, flicking the mud from her shoes. “The poisoned horse was here.” She bent down next to a stream and took a water sample to be analyzed.

“There’s no need to collect samples. I’ve done extensive testing. Copper is the culprit,” Brett said quietly.

“From your mines?”

Brett shook his head. “There lies the irony. None of these mines contains significant copper deposits. The metal shouldn’t be in the ground or water in more than normal concentrations.”

She walked behind Brett, keeping a close eye on his progress. He walked slowly over the rocks, stopping every ten feet or so to take a shuddering breath. The gurgling of flowing water followed them through the woods.

Thayne led them into the trees. Bright purplish flowers littered the ground. The honey-fruit scent nearly overwhelmed Riley. Another few steps and something else wrinkled her nose.

A scent she recognized all too well.

“Stop,” she shouted and scrambled in front of Brett and Thayne.

Thayne had stopped, his expression flat.

“Death,” he whispered. He palmed his Glock and pushed Riley behind him.

She grabbed her pistol. “Do either of you have a weapon?” she asked in a whisper to Brett and Shep.

Shep nodded and opened his vest. A Colt .45.

“Keep watch.”

The thick thatch of trees kept visibility to less than a few feet in front of them. Thayne silently stepped over the ground cover. He paused. The putrid smell of decomposing flesh grew stronger, along with the rush of a waterfall.

One step beyond the trees, and a vision from a fantasy appeared. Water rushed down rocks, flowing into a mirrorlike pool surrounded by purple, pink, blue, and white flowers.

Just across the clearing, halfway into the woods, a body lay facedown, the woman’s dress torn to shreds but still visible.

Plum. The same color Thayne had described Cheyenne wearing the day she’d been abducted.

Then Riley saw the victim’s hair. Her heart stuttered, and she closed her eyes in pain.

Cinnamon-colored hair, halfway down the woman’s back.

Just like Cheyenne’s.

“God no.” Thayne’s voice shook. “Ch . . . Cheyenne!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The forest floor tilted. Thayne shook his head back and forth, over and over. This wasn’t happening. That cold, unmoving body couldn’t be Cheyenne. It just couldn’t.

Brett shoved through the trees behind Thayne.

“No. Oh God, no!” Brett fell to his knees and would have sunk to the ground if Shep hadn’t propped up his boss.

Unable to process what his eyes took in, Thayne simply stared, frozen.

In the middle of a firefight, adrenaline and instinct took over. Fight or flight. Gut decisions kept you alive.

This was different.

His sister was dead.

Riley touched his arm. “Let me go.”

Her request shook him out of his shock. He gripped her hand tightly. “No. You can’t. Whoever did this could be nearby.” His mind had numbed, but his body knew what to do. He clutched his Glock like an old friend and surveyed the trees lining the clearing. He had to protect Riley . . . and . . . He gulped. The body.

The rustle of leaves shuffling snapped his attention to the left. His hand tightened around the weapon.

A squirrel skittered to a spot beneath a pine. The little animal paused, raised his head, sniffed the air, and darted off.

Thayne relaxed his grip slightly. He took a step toward his sister.

Riley placed her hand on his shoulder. “Let me take care of the victim, Thayne. She’s why I’m here.”

He struggled to process her words, but her tone was as gentle and coaxing as her hand stroking down his back.

He stilled and sucked in a long, deep breath, blinking to stop the burning tears at the back of his eyes. He couldn’t look away from the bloody, crumpled body. Part of him didn’t want to be certain, to deny the truth facing him, even though over the last twelve hours his certainty that they’d find Cheyenne had dwindled. His faith had taken quite a few hits, and hope seemed like a fool’s journey leading to disappointment.

“I’m doing a perimeter search first,” he said, clinging to procedure. Secure the scene. Always. He surveyed the area. Shep had propped his boss against a tree, but the tremors had returned. “With his condition, we can’t afford a surprise.”

Riley nodded and unholstered her weapon while Thayne took one last look over at Brett. The guy looked as if he might keel over right there. Any last doubt Thayne had that Brett knew what had happened to Cheyenne had vanished. Not that he’d really believed Brett was behind her disappearance. He trusted his instincts. They’d kept him alive for more than a decade.

His instincts hadn’t helped Cheyenne, though. God, what was he going to tell his father? His grandparents? His brothers?

“Don’t move until I come back,” he said to Riley. “Keep watch.”

With silent steps, Thayne methodically checked the perimeter. On a heading due west, he paused. The ground cover had been disturbed.

Someone had come this way and attempted to camouflage their tracks. Thayne squatted next to the area.

They knew the woods—and how to track. He slipped his pen from his pocket and shifted a layer of vines to the right. The edges of a footprint became visible. Perhaps a hiking boot. Not a large size. Maybe a ten? And a thin guy, maybe 150 or so.

Thayne noted the location but didn’t disturb it any further. He completed the surveillance and returned to the clearing. “The area’s clear,” he reported.

Riley lowered her weapon, as did Shep.

“I may have a partial footprint. I think it belongs to whoever did this.” He let his gaze return to the remains. He still couldn’t bear to think of the crumpled form as Cheyenne.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

He gritted his teeth and nodded.

On the way across the clearing, Riley snapped on her gloves.

Thayne bowed his head.
God, please let us be wrong. Please.
He didn’t pray all that often, less than he was brought up to, that’s for sure, but sometimes prayer was all a man had to hold on to.

Riley held his gaze for a moment before giving him a last sympathetic glance. She stiffened her back and knelt beside the body. He could see the reality in her face. She hadn’t wanted the search for Cheyenne to end this way, either, but had suspected it would all along. He could read it in Riley’s eyes.

She rocked on her heels, then pulled out a measuring tape from her satchel. “Cheyenne’s five nine, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Weight about one thirty?”

He nodded.

Riley looked up at him. “This isn’t Cheyenne,” she said. “This girl is only five six and extremely thin. No muscle tone to her legs. She was almost wasting away.”

“Not Cheyenne.”
Not Cheyenne.
Thayne had to keep repeating the words to himself. They still had a chance to find his sister alive. Thayne blinked against the sudden burn in his eyes.

At the same time, Brett dropped his head in his hands. When he looked up, tears welled in his eyes. “Not her?” His head tilted back, and he looked up at the sky. “Not her.” He seemed to be mouthing something and sagged back in utter relief.

“But it’s her dress,” Thayne said.

Riley tugged at the dress’s collar. “Probably. But the size is all wrong for this girl. And this is a Dior. That doesn’t fit with the closet I examined at her house. She didn’t spend a lot of money on her wardrobe.”

“She hated shopping.” Thayne couldn’t imagine Cheyenne having the patience to try on designer anything. Let alone spend the bucks to purchase it.

Brett cleared his throat. “That’s Cheyenne’s dress. I bought it for her in Las Vegas.”

Thayne hunkered down beside Riley. “Why is this girl wearing Cheyenne’s clothes? What does she have to do with her disappearance?”

“I have no idea,” Riley said. “Her condition doesn’t align at all with my theory that they kidnapped Cheyenne because she’s a doctor and they needed medical care. The girl has sallow skin. There are marks on her wrists and ankles. She was restrained before she died . . .”

Riley didn’t speak for a moment. “Bastard,” she whispered under her breath and lifted the woman’s hand.

Thayne had seen his share of missing limbs as a result of IEDs, but nothing quite like this. Her fingertips had been cut off, not from an explosive, but one by one.

With a gentle touch, Riley pushed aside the victim’s hair and opened her mouth, wincing before sitting back on her heels. “Her killer pulled her teeth. She’ll be very difficult to identify without fingerprints or dental records and with all the bruising on her face, unless her DNA is on file.”

The poor girl’s final moments must have been horrific.

“Who are you?” Riley asked quietly, staring unblinking at the body.

Riley’s dedication to her job blew Thayne away. She confronted this kind of brutality all the time. He didn’t know how she kept going case after case. Thayne had found a way to live with the violence of war by focusing on saving his teammates and those who were in danger from the enemy, but what Riley did every day meant she faced death at the hands of psychopaths. Yet here she was, treating this stranger, this victim, with the gentleness and caring of a dear friend, while her sharp eyes analyzed every detail with the detachment of a scientist.

She truly amazed him.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take you home. And I’ll find who hurt . . . you . . .” Riley turned the woman’s head ever so gently. “Thayne.” She motioned him over and pointed to the back of the victim’s ear. Blood had caked in her hair, and Riley probed a wound. “It’s a small round hole. This woman was killed with the same type of weapon as the man we found yesterday at the swimming hole.”

Thayne bent over to get a closer look. “Whoever killed Brett’s employee killed her, too. Brett’s connected to Cheyenne’s disappearance, just not in the way we first thought.”

Riley nodded. “He’s now killed twice.”

And would, no doubt, kill again.

Unless they found him first.

Fifteen Years Ago

Screams echoed from all directions in and around the swimming pool. The sun reflected off the concrete and beat down hard. Madison had never seen the pool quite so crowded. Everyone was there.

“Maddy, look at me!”

She spun around, her gaze flying to the pool’s edge. Riley laughed and jumped toward Madison, tucking her legs and letting the cannonball fly.

A wave of water splashed over her head. She grinned and waited for Riley’s head to break the surface.

“That’s your biggest yet, Ri-Ri.”

Her sister shoved her hair out of her eyes and beamed with a smile so wide, Madison thought Riley’s cheeks might split.

She hugged Madison. “Thanks for helping me with my room. And thanks for making Mom bring me,” she said in an undertone.

Madison glanced over at their mother, covered head to toe with sunscreen, a huge floppy hat hiding her face from the light.

“Mom’s having fun.”

Riley sputtered with giggles. “She hates the pool. I’m not sure how long she’ll put up with being out in the heat. Wanna play Marco Polo before she makes us go home?”

“Too many people.” Madison’s gaze swept the crowd. No one recognized her. That made it easier to relax.

“Ah, come on,” Riley whined. “We played every time we came to the pool last summer.”

“Oh, OK.” Secretly, Madison loved the game. But like her mother said, when you grow up, sometimes you have to leave the little-girl games behind.

Not today, though.

Madison closed her eyes. “Marco.”

“Polo,” Riley shouted from a ways away.

Madison didn’t delay turning toward the voice. If she waited too long, Riley would move . . . or the rest of the chatter would confuse the direction. Madison turned toward the voice. She bumped into someone. He let out a curse and swiped her legs under the water. Madison kicked at him. “Jerk,” she said, then shouted, “Marco.”

“Polo!”

With a quick dive toward the voice, Madison reached out blindly. She went under, then jumped up, sucking in a deep breath.

“You playing baby games now?”

Madison’s eyes snapped open. The blonde hair was a giveaway, the disgusted look way too familiar. Madison straightened and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Of course not.”

“Polo!” Riley shouted. “Polo, Maddy!”

Madison ignored the call.

“I was thinking about coming to your slumber party,” Ella, the most popular girl in junior high, said, her nose crinkling. “But I bet your baby sister will crash the party. Are you planning on playing Candy Land?”

“My sister isn’t invited,” Madison snapped. “But you wouldn’t want to come. Truth or Dare might reveal too much about what you let Craig Gentry do to you in the closet at Olivia’s birthday party.”

“Don’t try to sit at our table on Monday, Mad-deee.”

“It’s Madison,” she said as the girl swam away, her blonde curls still dry and falling out of a topknot.

Madison turned around and faced a crestfallen Riley.

“I can’t come? But you promised. After we finished the room, you said I could come.” Riley’s eyes gleamed.

It was probably the chlorine.

“Girls, we’re leaving.” Their mother stood, her eye makeup running down reddened cheeks.

Riley crossed her arms and glared at Madison. “You lied to me.”

Madison rolled her eyes. “Look, we had some fun, but I’m grown up and you’re still a kid, Riley. Maybe when you get into junior high, we can hang out together again.”

Riley splashed Madison in her face and swam to the side of the pool. Her sister glared at her even as tears flowed down her cheeks.

“I don’t need a sister like you, Madison. Why don’t you disappear? I’d be happy again.”

“I just might.”

Neither sister would ever forget those words . . . or how true they would become.

The beautiful clearing where Brett and Cheyenne had loved each other had become a crime scene. One more destroyed memory Riley couldn’t stop from happening.