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Ricochet
Jessica Andersen
TIME WAS RUNNING OUT… Bear Claw Creek's young girls were disappearing and forensics expert Alissa Wyatt was in way over her head. Now her only choice was to partner with Detective Tucker McDermott — the very same man she'd sworn to keep her distance from. But suddenly, the tables turned.Alissa became a madman's next target — and her only hope to stay alive lay within the safety of Tucker's strong arms. As the danger mounted, the killer on her trail was nothing compared to the feelings provoked by reuniting with Tucker…or the consequences she'd face if she walked away once again.
Ricochet
Jessica Andersen
ISBN: 9781408947463
Ricochet
© Jessica S. Andersen 2006
First Published in Great Britain in 2011
Harlequin (UK) Limited
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, including without limitation xerography, photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the prior consent of the publisher, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this work have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.á.r.l.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for information on upcoming books, contests and to say hi!
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Alissa Wyatt—Bear Claw City’s new crime-scene artist wants to put down roots, but instead attracts the attention of a sinister serial kidnapper.
Tucker McDermott—In trying to protect Alissa from escalating danger, the footloose detective winds up with a partner…and a whole lot more. Will the growing attraction be enough to keep him in town? More important, will they both live long enough to find out?
Johnny Ferguson—The serial rapist vowed revenge when Alissa helped capture and convict him years earlier. Now he’s out and looking for payback.
Cassie Dumont and Maya Cooper—Alissa’s two best friends and coworkers in the forensics department want to keep her safe and catch the kidnapper, but interdepartmental politics may endanger them all.
Detectives Piedmont and Mendoza—The partners don’t trust Alissa or her friends. How far will they go to prove that Bear Claw doesn’t need a new forensics department?
Bradford Croft—The unassuming man lives next door to the first kidnap victim. He was previously convicted of a sex offense, but the evidence doesn’t seem to directly link him to the kidnappings.
Michael Swopes—With a rap sheet and a suspicious purchase, Swopes seems like a strong suspect. But where is he?
William Parry—The chief of the Bear Claw police department will do anything to weld his officers into a team and find the Canyon Kidnapper.
Contents
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
COMING NEXT MONTH (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
The collector unlocked the door with fingers that trembled, not from the cold but from excitement. He eased the shed open and let the cold winter sun splash across the soiled floorboards, let it touch the girl’s bare, chilled foot.
She stirred and her dusky-blond eyelashes fluttered as though she still fought the drugs that swam in her bloodstream.
His lips curved into a smile and he whispered, “Perfect.” She was perfect. Young and scared and too weak to run away, just the way he liked them. “She’s perfect.”
But you can’t keep her, a voice said nearby, or maybe inside his head. Stick to the plan.
The collector scowled. “I don’t want to. I’m going to keep her. She’s mine. I picked her out. I took her. I can keep her.”
No you can’t. Stick to the plan—or else.
It wasn’t the tone of anger—whether real or imagined—that changed the collector’s mind. It was the slice of fear that slipped into his chest, colder than the Colorado winter, reminding him of what would happen if he disobeyed.
“Okay, fine. Never mind. I’ll do it.” He opened the shed door wider and shook out the blanket he’d carried from his van. He leaned over and wrapped the girl, not to keep her warm, but to cover her from view, just in case. Then he lifted her off the dirty floor and carried her out into the light. He felt the snow crunch beneath his boots, heard the others calling to him from their sheds, and smiled.
Everything was going according to plan.
Chapter One
Alissa Wyatt pulled her VW into the back parking lot of the Bear Claw Creek Police Department—BCCPD—five minutes after the task force meeting was set to begin.
Damn. She hated being late. She yanked off her BCCPD ball cap, twisted her honey-colored hair into a businesslike bun and shoved her sketches into a nylon portfolio. Then she bolted for the back entrance, trying not to slip on a patch of ice and rock salt.
The fierce Colorado mountain winter was cold and raw, but to Alissa, it felt like coming home. Granted, home was a relative term in her experience, but that was the goal here, to make a home. To find a place for herself.
She shouldered through the heavy door and sped past the desk clerk, heading for the back conference room at a fast walk. Though Chief Parry might overlook her tardiness, the others wouldn’t. Bear Claw Creek’s finest had been slow to welcome the three women who made up the new Forensics Division. Not because of their sex, but because Alissa and her two best friends from way back in the Denver Police Academy had been brought in to replace Fitzroy O’Malley.
The now-retired Fitz was an icon. A one-man crime lab who’d been a fixture in the mountain cop shop since long before most of the veterans had been rooks. And now those rooks-turned-veterans resented the three-woman team that had been brought in to run the newly expanded Bear Claw Creek Crime Lab.
Worried about the impression she might make, Alissa broke into a jog while she shrugged out of her bulky parka.
“You’re late,” a voice said from behind her. The dark, masculine tones grated along her nerve endings, sending up sparks where sparks had no place being.
She froze midstep, set her teeth and turned. Everyone knew Detective Tucker McDermott could move as silently as a wolf when he chose to, but it was still unnerving.
Rumor had it he could hunt as well as a wolf, that he never gave up until he caught his quarry—at which point he moved on to another territory. Another hunt.
Typical, she thought with a twist of irritation that had very little to do with the man in front of her and everything to do with men in general. But fair or not, McDermott bugged her for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was his sheer presence. A hint of wildness clung to him as he stood opposite her in the hallway, making her think of mountain air and a hawk’s cry, even when he was dressed for work.
The professionally starched, cream-colored oxford didn’t mute the iron strength that shone in his six-foot frame, in the taut muscles of his shoulders and chest, and in the wide-palmed hands that held a pair of fat folders. Though he wore trendy slacks and polished leather boots, the city veneer didn’t sink beneath his skin. His dark, wavy hair was too long for convention, his skin too burnished for a desk job, even in the depths of winter. And his eyes were the gleaming brown of Bear Claw Canyon at sunset.
Alissa’s artistic soul took a snapshot, saving the image of wilderness contained within walls, even as her instincts for self-preservation sent her back a step at the look of pure masculine irritation in his eyes.
She forced a smile and cursed the churn in her stomach. “Glad to see I’m not the only one running late.”
“Actually, you are. Most of us have been here since last night.” He lifted the folders. “The chief sent me for rental records.”
Alissa hid the wince and clicked her teeth together to stem the explanation. He didn’t need to know that she’d logged over thirty hours in the past two days, talking with the victims’ families and the witnesses—such as they were—trying to assemble photographs and sketches. Trying to get a sense of the crimes. What bound them together. What set them apart.
Patterns and the lack thereof.
What was the use in explaining? She turned away from him. “We should get inside.”
She noted that he didn’t open the door for her, and cursed herself for noticing. But before she could slip inside the packed-full room, he leaned down, close enough that she could feel his warmth and smell the woodsy scent that clung to him like a second skin.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hold the door for you. I remember that you don’t like it.”
The memory of that one stupid night, the temptation of it whispered along the side of her throat like a caress.
Yeah, she remembered, too. And, damn, she wished she didn’t. That had almost been a colossal mistake. So she shot him a glare and hissed, “There’s nothing to remember.”
But as she stalked into the room and ignored the other cops’ stares, his soft, mocking chuckle followed her. Shamed her.
Inflamed her.
Then she saw the photographs of three teenage girls tacked along one wall of the conference room, and Tucker McDermott, that night, and even her problems with her coworkers faded into the background as she was reminded why she was there. Why they were all there.
Three girls were missing, and their time was running out.
If it hadn’t already.
Chief Parry stood at the front of the room, a fit, stern man in his late fifties, with salt-shot brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He didn’t comment on Alissa’s tardiness, but a roomful of eyes followed her to the single empty seat in the corner between Maya Cooper and Cassie Dumont, her friends and the core of the new Bear Claw Creek Forensics Division—BCCFD.
They sat as a unit, separated from the others.
Alissa tucked her portfolio between her feet while Chief Parry gestured toward the board, where the girls’ faces were blown up larger than life. He touched the photo on the far left, which showed a fey-looking blond wisp of a girl with blue eyes and a gap between her front teeth.
“Three girls in three weeks,” he said, voice somber. “Twenty-two days ago, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Walsh was supposed to meet her friends outside the MovieMogul 10. She never showed.” He moved to the middle picture, which showed a slightly chubby brunette wearing dark-rimmed glasses perched over a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her wide nose. “Four days later, seventeen-year-old Maria Blackhorse failed to meet her date at the Natural History Museum. Her parents didn’t call it in for nearly forty-eight hours.” He moved to the picture on the far right, which showed another blonde, this one model-gorgeous in her expensively posed photograph. “Then, two days ago, eighteen-year-old Holly Barrett disappeared sometime between noon and 4:00 p.m.” He turned and scanned the room. “Three girls in three weeks, people. We haven’t found their bodies, but we haven’t found them alive, either. And I’ll bet my badge that their time is running out.”
Alissa didn’t need Maya’s psychology degree or Cassie’s genius with chemicals and blood spatter to tell her that. She’d spoken to the two witnesses who thought they’d seen Elizabeth get into a light-colored van. She’d been to the victims’ houses, talked to their parents.
And, yeah, she had a feeling they were running out of time, too. The longer a kidnapper kept his victims, the better his chances of discovery. Unfortunately, the criminals knew that as well as the cops did and had brutal ways of protecting themselves.
Chief Parry continued, “I want a quick report from each division, and then Agent Trouper will give us a rundown of what’s going on at his end.” The ten-day-old task force contained specialists and detectives from the relevant BCCPD divisions, including Homicide, Missing Persons and Forensics, plus Garrett Trouper, their FBI liaison. Parry nodded toward the corner where the three women sat. “Wyatt, you can get us started with Forensics.”
Great. Just great.
Alissa set her teeth, lifted the portfolio, climbed to her feet and faced the room. She was thirty-one years old and an eight-year veteran of two different city police forces. She could do this.
But she was aware of McDermott leaning against the wall at the back of the room, alone. Aware of the other officers’ eyes on her, men and women both, all wishing Fitz was there instead of her.
They weren’t going to like what she had to report. I’ve got nothing, she wanted to say, no reliable witnesses, no good sketch, no ideas. Nothing.
Instead, she opened the folder, drew out the pitiful list of the suspect’s possible physical traits and a sad description of the van, and handed it to a surly looking uniform in the front row. “Please pass these out for me.” She addressed the group. “As you can see here, the two witnesses at the MovieMogul 10 were only partially helpful. They saw a man and a light-colored van, but couldn’t be certain of either description…”
She continued to speak, but her attention was drawn to a stir of motion at the back of the room. When she looked up, McDermott was gone.
And a frisson of wariness told her something was up.
THE DESK OFFICER’S SUMMONS had pulled Tucker out of an important meeting, but he couldn’t manage to be annoyed by the interruption. He’d been glad to escape the conference room. It was too hot. Too crowded.
Hell, who was he kidding? Any room with Alissa Wyatt in it was too hot and crowded for him. She was a hot ticket, a bundle of energy with the legs of a Vegas showgirl and the light-blue eyes of an artist. Half the men on the BCCPD were panting after her, and the other half wanted her gone.
Tucker straddled the two camps. He wanted her gone, but he didn’t want it to matter. And it wouldn’t have mattered if it hadn’t been for that night, when he’d met her on a crowded dance floor and heard his favorite words, I’m just in town for a few days.
