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With a nearly feral roar, he lifted an ice-crusted boulder and heaved it aside.
“There!” Cassie yelled. “There she is!” She darted toward a scrap of cloth and a laced boot. “Get down here and help me!”
The others surged forward, but Tucker elbowed them aside. “I’ve got her!” He dropped into the hole and touched the limp body of the woman he was supposed to have been backing up. Who was supposed to have been backing him up.
This was why he didn’t work with a partner. He was no good at teamwork.
He whispered a prayer, or maybe a threat, as he checked her over and found nothing obviously wrong. She was stirring when he lifted her up and out of the hole. His muscles strained, though she couldn’t weigh much more than 110, 120 pounds. He looked down and realized her hand was caught on something. He saw a flash of denim and shouted, “There’s the girl!”
His shout brought a flurry of activity, of renewed digging, but Tucker focused on the woman in his arms. She moaned as he hauled her up and out of the ragged hole and carried her to the side of the canyon, where he could lay her flat as the BCCPD helicopter landed nearby.
She didn’t stay down long. Within moments she was batting at his hands and struggling to sit up. But her attention wasn’t focused on the rescued girl, whose motionless body was being strapped to a backboard for loading into the chopper.
No, Alissa was staring at the place where the kidnapper’s bomb had blown away part of the tributary canyon wall.
“Look!” She pointed to the scarred rock and dirt.
He saw it then, and let out a soft curse at the object that had tumbled from the disturbed earth.
It was a human skull.
ALISSA WAS COLD and sore and scared, but she’d think about it later, when she was alone and nobody could see her lose it.
She’d been buried alive. She deserved some hysterics, but she’d learned to put off the tears long enough to deal with the immediate problem. When she was younger and her mother had been struggling to keep them together, the problem had usually been money—an irate landlord or a cold Denver apartment in January.
Now the immediate problem was a crime scene. Actually, it was two crime scenes, one on top of the other.
Who did the skeleton belong to? How had the person died? How had it come to be buried there? And what were the chances that the rigged explosion would accidentally open another, far older grave?
Very slim, which suggested they had been meant to find the grave. But why?
McDermott touched her arm. “They’ve got Lizzie loaded on the chopper. They’re waiting for you.”
“I’m fine,” she said automatically, though her lungs ached at the words. She moved away from his touch, uncomfortable with how her chilled body yearned to lean into his warmth. She glanced at him and saw that his eyes were as dark as she had remembered, only with irritation, not passion. “Thanks for pulling me out.”
She would never admit that thinking of him had kept her sane in those last few minutes. She’d used him as a mental crutch, that was all. A focus.
Instead of accepting her thanks, he snapped, “I wouldn’t have needed to if you’d waited for me. What were you thinking? Never leave your partner like that.”
Irritation sparked. “If you’ll remember, you left me behind, not the other way around!”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, though they both knew it did. “Just get your butt on the chopper.”
She gritted her teeth. “I’m not going to the hospital when there’s a crime scene to work.”
“Let one of the others do it. Isn’t that why the chief hired three of you? So there’d be redundancy in the Forensics Department?”
“No,” Cassie said, neatly stepping between them. “He hired us because our skills complement each other, and because the BCCPD needed an upgrade.” She turned her back on him and locked eyes with Alissa. “You should go with the girl. She’ll need to talk to someone.”
It was ironic that Cassie was playing the mediator. The tall, blond evidence specialist was usually the abrasive one, the sharp-tongued edgy one, who made enemies more easily than friends and never hesitated to express her opinion. If she was toning it down, it meant she’d been worried. Very worried.
Alissa clasped her friend’s hand and smiled. “It’ll be okay, but thanks.” She glanced over and saw a petite, dark-haired figure climb into the helicopter. “Lizzie doesn’t need me right now. Maya will help, and her parents will be waiting at the hospital. I’ll go in later and see if I can get a sketch. For now I’ll stay here and work the scene.” She shot a look at Tucker, who stood nearby, glowering. “You got a problem with that?”
They both knew he did, and he probably had a point. She was tired and sore, and damned if her camera wasn’t down there somewhere, amidst the busted-up ice and rock.
He scowled and turned away. “No problem. I’m not your keeper. Do what you need to do and leave me out of it.”
And he was gone, taking the faint, lingering warmth with him.
Alissa watched him climb to the top of the canyon and work his way toward the back of the blown-out tunnel, where the bomb experts were already congregating. Then she held out a hand to Cassie. “Let me borrow your camera, okay? Mine’s trash.”
Cass cocked her head. “Want to talk about it?” She wasn’t asking about what had happened in the tunnel.
Alissa shook her head. “Nothing to talk about. Let’s do our jobs.”
TUCKER WATCHED the two women work the scene together. There was no doubting they were a team. Cassie handled the evidence collection, having dragooned several task force members into digging, witnessing the collections, starting the chain of evidence and transporting the items back to a waiting vehicle.
Items. It sounded so much neater than bones, but that was what they were uncovering. A skeleton had been buried in a shallow grave at the side of the ice tunnel.
The searchers brought in heaters to melt the frost layer and used hand trowels, then brushes, to uncover the bones. The soil was bagged for sifting, and the bags were carefully labeled with exact coordinates.
Alissa helped when needed, but otherwise stood aside and recorded the process with photographs and detailed notes. She listed where each bone was found, how deep it was buried and how far away from the others. When the exhumation was complete, she could use her notes along with her new computer programs to recreate the scene in its entirety.
Which, Tucker admitted, would be a step up from Fitz’s glossy photographs, and the hand-drawn schematics he used to tack on a flip board for the jury’s view.
It wasn’t that he had anything against progress, Tucker thought, as he watched Alissa record the position of a femur. And it wasn’t as if he missed Fitz all that much. Hell, if the old coot wanted to retire, who was he to complain? It was…
Admit it, he muttered inwardly. It’s Alissa.
She rattled him. Unsettled him. Fascinated him, though he had no business being fascinated with a local when he’d put in for—and been granted—his next transfer. The only thing keeping him in town right now was the task force. Once the girls were found and the kidnapper was in custody, he’d be in the wind.
Growing up, he’d hated the moves from one military base to the next, hated the look on his mother’s face when his father’s next set of orders came through. These days it was the opposite. His parents were happily settled in Arizona, while he was the one skipping around.
But he liked it that way. Liked his freedom. His independence.
As though she sensed his thoughts or his gaze, Alissa lowered the camera and looked across the distance separating them. He felt their eyes lock, felt a click of connection in his chest. He wanted to go to her, to tell her how he’d nearly gone out of his mind digging down to her.
Instead he turned away and focused on the second crime scene, where two members of the bomb squad were excavating what was left of the tunnel. Chief Parry stood nearby with his hands jammed in the pockets of his uniform parka. He frowned as Tucker joined him.
“Bastard rigged a trip wire to Lizzie’s ankle and shoved her into the tunnel. We got a few fragments of the device. Trouper’s taking them.”
Tucker nodded. “Reasonable.” The BCCPD had a good relationship with the feds, particularly the FBI. After the second kidnapping, when it became clear that this was more than a disgruntled teen hitting the road for Vegas or points west, they had called for help and gotten Trouper, a lean, graying agent who’d done his damnedest to help without stepping on toes.
Parry glanced over toward the rapidly emptying grave site. “They find anything with the bones?”
Tucker shrugged. “More bones, maybe a few scraps of cloth. They’re having trouble with the ice.”
The chief grunted, which was his fallback answer to most everything. “The skeleton will go to the ME for a preliminary workup, and then we’ll let Wyatt have the skull. Maybe we can get a recognizable face from it.”
Tucker stuck his hands in his pockets. “Fitz said there was no way to reconstruct a face from a skull.”
“Fitz also wasn’t a big fan of blood-spatter trajectories and DNA. If it wasn’t a fingerprint, he didn’t want to know about it,” Parry said with uncharacteristic asperity. “And I wish you guys would get off the Fitz kick already. You know as well as I do that he was a pain in the ass and long past retirement. Yeah, he cleared a hell of a lot of cases, but he was a damned dinosaur. You should be kissing these girls’ butts for bringing in new techniques, not bitching because they do things differently. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t have hired them!”
The chief kept his voice low so they wouldn’t be overheard, but there was no question that he was serious.
And knowing that the chief had a valid point, Tucker felt a low burn of shame. “But, Chief—”
“No buts. I want you with me on this.” Parry leveled a finger at Tucker. “If you lead, the others will follow. I want you to give those women a break, particularly Wyatt.”
Tucker shifted uneasily. “I don’t have anything against Wyatt.”
The captain grunted. “Baloney. You glare any time you’re within fifty feet of her, and you do a damn good job of not letting that happen too often. Since you’re usually a pretty level guy, I figure there’s one of two reasons for that. Either you’re hot for her or you hate her guts. Which is it?”
The chief’s question hung on the air between them as the cold day dimmed toward a colder dusk. Tucker hid the wince—or tried to—and said, “Neither. I’m just not sure she’s the right cop for the job. She’s awfully young—” and tiny, delicate, breakable “—to be in charge of evidence collection.”
“She’s older than you were when you took the oath, McDermott. She has eight years on the job in Tecumseh, and more training than Fitz ever bothered to get.” Parry shot him a look. “So what’s your real problem with her?”
Knowing he wasn’t going to win, Tucker set his teeth. “No problem, Chief.”
“Good,” Parry said in a voice that told Tucker he didn’t believe a word of it. “Then you won’t mind working with her on this case. You’ll be good together—you see the big picture while she focuses on the details.”
Damn, Tucker thought. He should’ve seen this coming a mile away. He shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Well, I do, and that’s what’s important, isn’t it?” Though Parry’s voice remained quiet, his slate-blue eyes held a hint of steel in their depths. “I need her at the hospital to interview the girl. Go with her.” Now a hint of frustration, of worry worked its way into the chief’s expression. “I’m not doing this to ride your ass, McDermott. I need the team working together, and right now it’s not. If we’re not working together, we might not find this guy in time.” Edgy concern snapped in his tone. “We might not find the other two girls in time.”
Tucker felt it, too. The sense that an invisible timetable had been moved up by the kidnapper’s mocking note. Was it simply a taunt, or did it mean something else?
Hell, he didn’t know. And damned if the chief wasn’t right—as usual. The task force needed to work together, not against itself. So Tucker nodded grudgingly. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Of course you will,” Parry said. “It’s an order.”
ALISSA WAS STOWING her gear in Cassie’s truck—and trying to hide the winces—when a strong arm grabbed her pack and Tucker’s voice said, “You’re riding with me.”
She hated that, even after an afternoon as physically and emotionally bruising as this one, her pulse still kicked into overdrive at his nearness. Because of it, and because of the pounding aches in her back and neck, she turned and scowled at him. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” He didn’t look happy about it, either. “Chief Parry wants us together on this one. He wants us to go to the hospital and talk to Lizzie.”
“That’s where I’m headed,” she snapped, “but not with you.”
“Sorry.” He slung her pack over his shoulder and gestured towards his vehicle—a black SUV with oversize tires and mud flaps emblazoned with the letters BCCPD. “Chief’s orders. He wants his team working together on this.”
“Oh.” She tried not to slump as she understood. She, Cass and Maya hadn’t been able to make friends, so the chief was going to do it for them. Damn, she hated being manipulated, hated that she hadn’t been able to work it out on her own. Worse, she hated that part of her was excited at the idea of partnering with McDermott, even temporarily. Knowing it spelled trouble all the way around, she shook her head. “I can drive myself to the hospital and hook up with you later. There’s no reason for us both to go—she might not even be conscious yet.”
“True, but orders are orders.” He slung her pack in the vehicle and left the passenger door ajar.
“Fine.” She climbed stiffly into the SUV.
As they drove out of Bear Creek State Forest, she felt the sore spots burn and pound, felt her muscles stiffen up. She’d gone from being trapped under hundreds of pounds of rocks and dirt directly to working the scene. She’d refused to go to the hospital with Lizzie because the other victims needed her more than she’d needed medical attention.
Now, a soft bed and some aspirin was sounding real good.
When McDermott blasted the heat, she expelled a grateful sigh, let her head fall back against the seat and closed her eyes.
And opened them right up again, because the first thing she’d seen in her tired brain was a small patch of yellow flashlight beam and a wall of dirt six inches from her face. She shuddered at the memory.
“I’ve got the heat as high as it’ll go.”
She glanced at him, then away, trying to ignore how intimate the area seemed as the dusk faded to night. “I didn’t say anything.”
And she didn’t say anything else until he pulled up in front of the small house she’d leased for a year, with the option to buy if everything worked out with the BCCPD.
She stared at the lit front entryway, battling the urge to bolt inside, jump into bed and wish the whole day away. “I thought we were going to the hospital to interview Lizzie.”
That was where she wanted to go. Needed to go. Not just to do her job, but also to reassure herself that the girl was alive. To thank her, ironically, for being human company beneath the ice and snow. If it hadn’t been for the feeling of Lizzie’s ankle beneath her fingertips, Alissa thought she might have lost it completely.
“We are,” he said. “But you need to take a shower first. Or at least change clothes and wash your face. You’ll terrify the poor kid if you show up looking like that.”
His voice held a tone of censure, and something else. Something darker and more dangerous, that sent a skitter of awareness shooting through her body.
With a start, she realized he hadn’t asked for directions. He’d known where she lived.
She wondered what it meant, and then decided probably nothing. He was a cop. He knew his neighborhoods.
“Yeah. You’ve got a point.” And, God, would it feel good to soak her bones in the Jacuzzi tub that had sold her on the house. Since there wasn’t time for a bath, she’d settle for a fast shower, but it’d help.
She pushed open the door and stifled a groan as her weary legs went rubbery. Since there was no way she was asking McDermott for help, she forced some strength into her body and shuffled into the house. All the way, she was too aware of him following, not close enough to crowd, but close enough to catch her if she fell.
She felt his presence there in the little prickles of electricity on her skin, in the subtle warmth in her core, and was reminded of another time, when they’d followed each other out of the club with no other thought than to get naked, damn the consequences.
Only, he hadn’t damned the consequences. He’d bailed the moment he’d realized she was a cop and a coworker. Part of her was grateful he’d had the strength. Part of her still yearned for the sizzle. And the whole of her was ashamed that she’d nearly given in to something as pointless as lust with a man who—according to PD rumor—already had one foot out the door.
Been there, done that. Don’t need to do it again, no matter how hot he is, she told herself.
Inside the house, she waved him to the kitchen and ignored the oddness of seeing him standing there, in her space. “Food and drinks are in the fridge—take whatever appeals. Guest bath is at the end of the hall. I’ll be five minutes, no more.”
When she’d picked the house, she’d loved the convenience of having everything on one floor. Now it seemed like a disadvantage. A vulnerability. Even once she was inside the master bath, with its Jacuzzi tub and sybaritic adjoining lounge, she felt exposed.
She stripped naked and jumped into the shower fast, hissing at the sting of water on bruises and scrapes, then nearly moaning as the warmth eased some of the pain. But she didn’t dally. She had five minutes to shower and dress and get the hell on the road to the hospital.
She had a witness to interview. A murderer to sketch.
Two missing girls to find.
Chapter Three
At the Hawthorne Memorial Hospital, Alissa and McDermott were ID’d twice, once at the main desk and once again as they approached the private room where Lizzie lay. Though the kidnapper had left her as bait, there was no telling whether or not he’d try to get her back. Frankly there was no telling much of anything yet.
The whole case was clear as mud, Alissa thought, as she followed McDermott down the hall. The kidnapper appeared to have a plan, but what was it? Would the other girls reappear one at a time? Or were they already dead? Was he using the girls to get to the police—as the canyon attack suggested—or vice versa?
