Alive, but no longer his.
“In keeping with what seems to have become a bizarre ritual, the body of Johanna Tate was found yesterday outside of Eden, Wyoming. The victim suffered a single gunshot wound. The coroner has concluded that that was the cause of death. This is the fifth such female body found in as many years. Police are asking anyone with any information about this latest murder victim to please step forward. Any informant’s identity will be kept strictly confidential. Rumor has it that this young woman was a resident of Cold Plains, a town located some eighty miles away, but this has not been confirmed yet.”
A resident of Cold Plains.
Yes, she was from there, Micah thought, bitterness filling his mouth like bile.
As had he once been.
Johanna had been the reason he’d remained in that godforsaken blot on the map for as long as he had. And ultimately, she’d been the reason why he had abruptly left without so much as a backward glance. Because after being his, after planning to share all her tomorrows with him, she’d allowed herself to be charmed away from his side by the very devil himself.
Charmed away by Samuel Grayson.
Never mind that Samuel was his twin brother. He and that underhanded, despicable excuse for a human being were as different as night and day.
He
had never pretended to be anything but what he was, never made any excuses for himself. While Samuel wove elaborate tapestries made of intricate lies to ensnare those he wanted to own, to control for his own unstated purposes.
Crossing to the TV monitor, Micah Grayson turned up the volume.
But the story was over. The dark-haired newscaster had gone on to talk about the unseasonably warm April weather, exchanging inane banter with an overly ripe, barely legal-looking weather girl sporting a torrent of blond hair that appeared to be almost longer than her dress.
Johanna had been allocated less than a sound bite.
Micah hit the off button. The screen on the wall went instantly dark as it fell into silence.
“Damn it, Johanna, I told you he was trouble. I
told
you you’d regret picking him over me,” Micah said in frustrated anger.
That had been the extent of his fight to keep her. Telling her that she’d regret her choice. He’d felt that if he had to convince Johanna to stay with him, then he’d already lost her, and it hadn’t been worth his breath to argue with her.
Taking out his worn, creased wallet, the one that carried his current ID stamped with his current name—one of many he’d assumed since he’d left Johanna and Cold Plains behind—he opened it. Beneath the handful of bills he always kept in it and the false ID was a tiny close-up of a sweet-faced girl with pale brown eyes and long, straight black hair.
Johanna’s high school picture.
The same picture that was embossed in his brain. He couldn’t say that it was embossed on his heart because he no longer had one. One of the hazards of his job. A heart only got in the way, slowed a man down, kept him from a laser-like focus on his assignment.
A wave of fury flared through his veins, and Micah crumpled the faded photo in his hand. He drew back his arm, about to pitch the tiny paper ball across the room, then changed his mind.
Exhaling a long, slow breath, he opened his hand, letting the small wad fall onto the bed. He carefully flattened it out again, then slipped the now-creased photograph back into his wallet.
Samuel couldn’t be allowed to get away with this, Micah swore vehemently. He didn’t know any of the particulars, but Samuel had to be behind Johanna’s death. His twin brother’s prints were all over this. He’d bet his soul on it.
The corners of Micah’s mouth curved in a humorless smile.
If he had a soul, he corrected silently.
Micah knew someone who could look into things. Someone who could take Samuel’s so-called paradise, strip it of all its gingerbread facade and expose it for what it was: hell on earth. Someone who he’d known all those years ago and had himself left for greener pastures, so to speak.
Someone, Micah thought as he tapped the numbers lodged in his memory out onto the cell phone’s key pad, who still had a soul. And who knew, maybe even a heart, too.
The cell phone on the other end rang a total of six times. Micah decided to give it to the count of ten and then try again later.
A man in his profession didn’t leave messages.
But then he heard someone picking up on the other end and a deep voice say, “Special Agent Bledsoe.”
A glimmer of a smile passed over Micah’s lips.
His brother was going down. It might take a while, but he was going down. And he would pay for what had happened to Johanna.
“Hawk, this is Micah. Grayson,” he added in case the agent was having trouble remembering him. It had been a while. “I need to see you.” He paused and then said cryptically, “I’ve got a not-so-anonymous tip for you about those murdered women on the news.”
Chapter 1
O
kay, so where is he?
Special Agent Hawk Bledsoe paced about the hotel room, which grew progressively smaller by the moment. His frown deepened significantly as impatience drummed through him.
He had a really bad feeling about this.
About
all
of this.
To say that he had been surprised to hear from Micah Grayson out of the blue yesterday after so many years gave new meaning to the term “understatement.” Micah and he both had the very same connection between them that had just recently come to light about the five murder victims: they came from the same region in Wyoming. Micah was born in Horn’s Gulf, while he had the misfortune of actually growing up in Cold Plains.
A great place to be
from, Hawk thought cynically, the heels of his boots sinking into the light gray carpet. He made yet another complete trip around the room.
Nothing good had ever come from that town. Except for—
No!
He wasn’t going to let himself go there. Those thoughts belonged in his past, buried deeper than the unearthed five victims apparently had been.
The victims, he’d already decided after reviewing the notes made by past agents, had all been buried as if the killer had expected them to be discovered. Eventually, if not immediately.
Why? What was the sense in that? What did these women have in common other than having the bad luck of being from Cold Plains? And of course, other than the fact that they had all been murdered, execution style, with a single bullet to the back of the head. Their sins—whatever they were—had obviously been unpardonable to someone.
But who?
And why?
And where the hell was Micah, anyway? He was supposed to be here. The urgency in Micah’s voice was the reason why he’d driven straight through the night to get here.
It wasn’t as if he’d called the man—a man who he knew through various sources made his living by hiring out to do things that others either could not or would not do—or were just unable to do. Be that as it may, it was Micah who had called
him,
not the other way around.
Called him and had said just enough to get him hooked. That he needed to talk to him about the five murdered women who had been found scattered through isolated areas in Wyoming.
Did that mean Micah knew who was responsible? Or that he at least had a viable theory? He wished he could have gotten Micah to say more, but the man had been deliberately closemouthed, saying he’d tell him “everything” when he got here.
So where was he?
Hawk knew that Micah Grayson had once dated Johanna Tate. Was
that
why the man had gone out of his way to call him? Had he called in reinforcements? As far as he knew, that wasn’t Micah’s style.
Either way, it looked as if he wasn’t about to find out now. He’d gotten no more out of his one-time friend than that: to come meet him in this off-the-beaten-path hotel. Room 705. Micah didn’t believe in saying much over the phone, even one that most likely was one of those disposable models, which could be discarded—and rendered untraceable—at a moment’s notice.
So rather than clear anything up, Micah’s call had merely added to the mystery that was already so tightly wound around the dead women it reminded Hawk of a skein of yarn whose beginning was so well hidden, it defied discovery—or unraveling.
Yarn.
Where the
hell
had that come from?
And then he remembered.
She
had liked to knit. He’d teased her about it, saying things like it was an old-lady hobby. Carly, in turn, had sniffed dismissively and informed him that it suited her just fine, thank you very much. He recalled being fascinated, watching her fingers manage the needles like a master, creating articles of clothing out of straight lines of color.
As he recalled, she had professed to absolutely
love
creating things.
Again, he banished the thoughts—the all-too-vivid memories—out of his head. But not quite as forcefully this time as he had initially. Hawk supposed that it was inevitable. After all this time, he was about to be dragged back to the little pimple of a town he’d once left behind in his rearview mirror.
He recalled driving away as fast as he could all those years ago. At the time, he’d thought he was leaving permanently. Obviously not.
He was making too much out of this. The thoughts he was having about Carly just went to prove that he was human, just like everyone else. Nothing more.
The problem was, he didn’t want to be human. Especially not now of all times. If nothing else, being human, reacting emotionally, got in the way of efficiency. Being human was a distraction, and he had a case to unravel and a murderer—or murderers—to track down. That had to come first. He couldn’t afford to be distracted, not even a little.
Memories and thoughts of what could have been—and
hadn’t
been—had no place here. Or anywhere in his life.
Though his expression gave no evidence of his emotional turmoil, Hawk was too tense to sit down. So he went on pacing about the small hotel room where Micah had said he would meet him.
He’d been waiting for over an hour.
To the best of his recollection, Micah was
never
late. It was one of the things they’d had in common. Because of the directions that life had taken them, they both believed that time was a tool to be used, not frivolously ignored or disregarded.
Micah
wouldn’t
be late. If the mercenary wasn’t here it was because he
couldn’t
be here.
Which meant that something was wrong.
Which in turn meant that he, as the special agent who had recently been put in charge of this case, couldn’t put off the inevitable for very much longer.
The only thing that Micah had confirmed over the phone was what he’d already just learned: that all the victims were women from Cold Plains. In order to conduct the investigation properly, he would have to go up to Cold Plains, Wyoming, himself.
Looks like the prodigal son is coming home,
he thought wryly.
Except that, in this case, he hadn’t been prodigal so much as smart. Leaving Cold Plains had been the smartest thing he’d ever done. By the same token, returning might turn out to be the stupidest.
Hawk looked at his watch again. When he’d gotten here—and found the room empty—he’d mentally promised himself to give Micah approximately ninety minutes to show up. But right now, he was feeling way too antsy to wait for sixty more minutes to slip beyond his reach.
With a sigh, he crossed back to the hotel room door that had been deliberately left unlocked for him.
Damn it, Micah, I hope you haven’t gotten yourself killed,
he thought irritably. Because he was fairly certain that nothing short of death would have kept Micah Grayson from keeping an appointment that he himself had set up.
He needed to see the county coroner before he made his way to Cold Plains, but a visit to Cold Plains was definitely in his immediate future.
Biting off a curse, Hawk let himself out of the room and closed the door behind him.
It seemed rather incredible to Carly Finn that the two times she made up her mind to finally,
finally
leave Cold Plains, something came up to stop her.
And not some mild, inconsequential “something” but a major, pull-out-all-the-stops “something.”
The first time she’d been ready to test her wings and fly, leaving this soul-draining speck of a town behind her and eagerly begin a fresh, new chapter of her life with the man she knew deep down in her soul she was meant to be with, her infinite sense of obligation as well as her never-ending sense of responsibility to her family had added lead to her wings and grounded her with a bone-jarring thud.