A Wanted Man

Stopping in front of the barn, she retrieved a small flashlight she always kept in her car and got out. Closing the door, she put on a pair of leather gloves and looked around. Moonlight cast shadows where the meadow met the thick line of trees. Anyone could lurk within the trunks. If Jax had seen her drive by, would he follow her here? She wasn’t even sure he was still at the cabin. Most likely, he’d stayed in Salt Lake City for the workweek. She was being paranoid, and perhaps for good reason.

Her boots crunched over the dry gravel and she heard a stream running about a hundred yards down the hill. The white paint on the house was peeling, the trim warping and falling off. The boards over the door and windows gave it a haunting look. A big cottonwood tree shaded half of it from moonlight.

At the barn doors, she lifted the wood bar and pushed one side open. It creaked and gravity took it swinging against the side of the barn with a bang. Something scurried inside the barn and a bird squawked as though startled from sleep. She heard it fly away but didn’t see it. Checking the road, seeing no headlights or hearing anything, Penny went inside the barn. It was pitch-black in there. She flipped on the flashlight.

The truck was still there.

Jax must have believed her when she’d said she hadn’t gone inside. She berated herself for jumping to conclusions. He might not be guilty, after all.

Searching the barn, she spotted the tack and went there to find something to break a window out of the truck. She found a rusting metal rake and carried it over to the passenger’s-side window. Swinging hard, she bashed in the glass, spraying the seat. She reached in and unlocked the door manually, and then opened the glove box. It was completely empty. Weird. She looked under seats and in the middle console. Nothing. It was as though someone had thoroughly cleaned it before stowing it here.

Getting out of the truck, she began taking pictures with her smartphone. She took several shots of the dent and made sure she got the serial number in the dash and then tucked her phone back into her front pocket. She hurried from the barn, looking around before she closed the door and hooked the latch. Turning, she searched the treeline and road. A flash of light caught her eye. Someone walked through the trees with a flashlight. She could make out his shadowy form coming to a stop at the edge of the clearing.

Walking briskly, she saw the flashlight go dark. Had Jax walked through the woods? Impossible. He hadn’t returned. Or had he...? Maybe he’d anticipated she’d come here, or at least been suspicious. Or was it Jax at all?

Back in her car, she spun her car around and raced down the narrow dirt road. As she came to Jax’s driveway, she saw no movement around the log house and only a few lights were on.

She made it to the highway and almost felt in the clear when she noticed a car behind her. Had whoever had the flashlight followed her? She sped up, passing a few cars and weaving back into the right lane. The car behind her did the same thing.

Penny slowed down. The car slowed down as well and allowed more distance to separate them.

All the way to Salt Lake City, Penny kept track of the other car, a dark Jeep Wrangler she didn’t recognize. Rather than drive home and lead a potential killer to her residence, Penny headed to the Salt Lake City Police Department. When she parked in front, she watched the Jeep zip by, darkness and tinted windows preventing her from seeing the driver.

Chapter 2

The short, bubbly applicant had an exhausting, fast-talking, high-pitched voice. Kadin Tandy looked past her curly hair and heavily made up face, her voice drifting off into white noise as he looked through the window of his Rock Springs, Wyoming, office. He could see part of the street and some of the oldest buildings in town, red-and-tan brick trimmed in varying colors, rooflines square and some with signs that lit up at night. Heat waves rippled on the pavement and Rosa Romero unlocked the door of her Mexican restaurant, The Spicy Habanero. Her green chili was the best he’d ever had.

Having his office here made him feel at home—as at home as he could, anyway. He’d rented the upstairs apartment so that he could spend more time working. Dark Alley Investigations had been open a couple of months now and he’d accumulated enough cases to warrant some help. And then he’d received that call from Detective Austin Cohen, the lead in the Sara Wolfe case. He’d attempted to read the file before the applicant arrived but hadn’t gotten past the first paragraph. The little girl might as well be his own.

Would he have this kind of trouble with every child case? He felt like a useless coward for reacting the way he did. He could help those parents. Why didn’t he? Why couldn’t he? Why did he even have to think about it?

Because he’d seen the file detectives had put together on his daughter’s case.

Because he’d tortured himself with those images until he captured her killer.

Because the pain had not lessened in three years.

He still ached with loss, still yearned for the impossible, to see and hold his little girl again, to go back to the time before her abduction and be ready to miraculously save her. Daddy to the rescue.

Except it hadn’t happened that way.

“Mr. Tandy?”

Kadin jerked his gaze from the window to the applicant.

“Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?”

The woman had to know he’d wandered off somewhere far away from this interview. “No. Thank you for coming by.” He stood, needing to get rid of her, to be alone so that he could get thoughts of Annabelle out of his head. “I’ll call you if I need to talk to you again.”

The woman looked disappointed. People knew when they were being rejected. “Oh. Okay.” She stood up. “Thank you.”

He walked the woman to the door and as he watched her go to her car, he spotted Lott Trumbauer getting out of his blue Jaguar. A trust-fund baby who was a fishing guide, Lott spent a lot of time on the banks of the Green River. That was how they’d met. Kadin had gone fishing and had run into Lott with a family, teaching them how to fish. They’d struck up a friendship. That was fifteen years ago.

“Great,” he muttered. Just what he needed. More badgering. Lott had been talking to Kadin’s mom about the shocking news of his resignation and move back to Rock Springs.

He went to his corner office next to the conference room where he’d just conducted the interview. He had a view of a side street from here. That was where he stood until he heard Lott enter. Then he turned as his friend’s booted feet creaked over the old wood floor and he stopped at the office door with a smile.

“Nice,” Lott said. A tall, charming jet-setter with bright blue eyes and dark brown hair cut short, he wasn’t married but always had a girlfriend. They never lasted more than a few months. Kadin had attracted women like that before he married his one and only love. Maybe he still did now that he was single again and just didn’t notice. Lack of interest did that. He had too much to do, anyway.

“What brings you to town?” Kadin asked.

His pal stepped into the office, checking out the barren walls. “How’s business?”

The diversion tactic told him enough. Lott had come to talk unpleasant things. “I’ve got three cases.”

“All cold?”

“Cold enough.”

Lott stopped at his desk. “I saw a girl leave here in tears. Are you interviewing again?”

“She was crying?”

“You have a way of doing that. I can’t figure out if all your murder investigations have desensitized you, or if you’ve just installed a switch to shut off your emotions.” He gestured with his hand toward the bare walls. “Are you ever going to decorate this place?”

Kadin grimaced. He cared about how he made people feel, and truly hadn’t meant to hurt the girl. It was an interview, for God’s sake, not the budding of a new romance. As for decorating, he’d only furnished one conference room and his office. “I haven’t had time to do more.”

“You could make time.”

“Why are you here, Lott? Talking to my parents again?”

His friend grinned but not with genuine humor. He was caught. “Your mother is worried about you. She called again.” Kadin blinked and turned toward the view. A man walked by in the afternoon, late-summer heat, a dry heat in this western town.

“I’ll call her.”

“She asked me to check in on you. I don’t think they understand why you moved back here.”

His parents had wanted him to stay out East. He’d grown up in Massachusetts.

“I lived here for ten years.”

Lott nodded. “That’s what I told her. She thinks you’re obsessing over their deaths.”

“And that by moving here I don’t put it behind me?” Kadin looked back at his friend, who cocked his head in a yeah-I-know gesture. “There are some things I don’t want to forget. And that’s everything I had when we lived here. Them. Before...”

“I get it, Kadin. You should call your mom and tell her. Then maybe she’ll stop using me as a messenger.”

Lott was like a second son to his parents. They had been around a lot more than Lott’s had. In some ways, Kadin thought his pal had learned how to live from them, and his healthy attitude about money was one indicator. He didn’t take it for granted and he valued being productive.

“Sorry you had to come all this way,” Kadin said.

Lott stared at him, somber. “It’s okay to be different after what happened to you, Kadin. All the people close to you want is for you to heal. Start a new life. Not forget them, just...move on.”

Kadin just nodded, waiting for him to stop.

After a bit, Lott grinned. “I didn’t just come to give you another lecture. I’m going down to the Green River to do some fishing.”

Lott had frequently come to visit him and his wife and daughter on that excuse. He hadn’t just come to see them, he’d come to fish. But Kadin wasn’t fooled. His mother wasn’t the one who’d put him up to this visit. He’d been talking to his parents ever since Arielle had overdosed, checking in without Kadin knowing.

“Okay.”

“So.” Lott perched on the corner of his desk. “Business is good, huh? How is it that you already got some cases?”

Kadin moved to stand before him. “They called.”

“You’ve gotten a lot of media coverage.”

Kadin recognized the congratulations. His daughter’s disappearance and murder had attracted a lot of attention. When news broke that he was venturing off on his own to fight similar crimes, the media had swarmed him. But that only masked what was really going on.

“I’m fine, Lott.”

“Are you?”

He really hated talking about this. A thousand knife stabs might as well pierce his chest. Then that heavy weight came next, along with an overwhelming sense of helplessness. “Yes.” Just thinking his wife’s name brought that terrible day back. Finding her already dead. After enduring so much tragedy already. He’d nearly gone insane. The only thing that saved him was moving to Rock Springs, Wyoming, a quiet, wildly beautiful place that asked nothing of him other than to breathe.

“I mean it, Kadin. You have to move on, not close yourself off to the world and immerse yourself in cold case murders.”

“I am moving on.” As much as he could. The only way he knew how.

“Shut off from everyone who cares about you. I don’t mean to sound like a sap, but I miss my friend. He disappeared the day his daughter did.”

Kadin didn’t know how to say he’d never be the same man he once was. He just knew. And that man hadn’t gone until the moment he learned Annabelle’s body had been found.

Body...

Her twelve-year-old body. Not Annabelle. Her body. Such powerful, unfathomable grief had racked him, for days, for months, a slicing machete going to work on his insides. Trapped in his lost and desolate mind with no way out, he hadn’t noticed how far Arielle had slipped into oblivion. Then the day had come when he’d found her. All of that emotion had imploded on him. He’d felt it bleed out of him until only empty darkness remained. Everything had become mechanical after that. Until he’d stumbled across some photographs of Annabelle when they’d lived in Wyoming.

“I was a cop before my daughter went missing,” Kadin said. “I’m doing what I’m meant to do.” His talent was being put to good use. And if he could use it to help others who were going through the same thing he had experienced, then that had to be good. That was his only joy. Every time he caught a murderer, he avenged his wife and daughter.

“You’re alone here,” Lott reminded him.

“No, I’m not. I know practically everyone in town. Besides, I’m hardly ever home. Not every cold case is in Sweetwater County.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to bury yourself in these investigations, Kadin. When is it going to be enough?”

Lott, like everyone else, didn’t understand. Home and family had different meanings to him now. Warm and full of optimistic love before the tragedy, starkly realistic after. That was why he’d opened this agency. This agency was for the people who knew life’s darkest reality. People like him.

“Look,” Lott said in his silence. “I know you hate talking about this. I’m worried about you. Your parents worry about you. I stop in every once in a while to check on you. I’ve done my duty. Now, since I’m staying through the weekend, how about we camp and fish this Friday and Saturday?”

“You’re staying that long?” Lott didn’t usually stay longer than a day or two.

“Yeah, I met a girl the last time I was here. You might be seeing me more often.”

Figured, a woman had drawn him here. Women drew him everywhere he went.

“Are you free this weekend?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Lott angled his head, a quiet demand for more information.

“I might take on another case.” He didn’t feel like explaining the Sara Wolfe case.

The front door jingled. He’d left the old bells there so that he’d know when someone arrived. Whoever had entered couldn’t have chosen better timing.

Kadin started toward his office door to go see who’d arrived.

“Don’t forget you have other things in your life besides hunting down killers,” Lott said as Kadin passed. And then as he followed, “Camping. This weekend. No talk about the past, I promise.”

“Another reason I moved here. To get away from old friends.” Lott would know he was kidding. Sort of.

“You couldn’t go far enough to get away from me.” Lott stopped beside Kadin in the lobby, where a woman stood looking around.

Lott whispered a whistle only Kadin could hear.

Few women caught Kadin’s eye anymore, but this one sure did. He had to agree with Lott. On the tall side, pushing five-nine, she had a thick head of wavy auburn hair that would look great spread out on bed sheets, and wide, long-lashed sea-green eyes that would add to the moment.

“Hi. Which one of you is Kadin Tandy?” she asked.

She wore skinny, distressed jeans, with knee-high, spiky-heeled boots and a fancy top with flashy accessories. She wasn’t afraid to be tall and stand out in a crowd. And she must have a creative streak.

“That would be him.” Lott strode to the door. When he was behind the woman, he waved as though the heat were getting to him and mouthed, She’s hot!

“I’ll see you Friday,” Kadin said gruffly.

Lott left, walking backward and pointing both fingers at the woman’s butt and nodding with a mouthed oh yeah.

The woman glanced back and Lott shut his mouth and turned, heading for his Jaguar.

“Friend of yours?” the woman asked.

“One of the best.” Minus the frat house sexual innuendos and constant meddling. “How can I help you?”

She surveyed his business space—the front entry and the vacant reception desk, the open conference room doors, his office and finally the walls. “Haven’t been here long, huh?”

“You’re the second person who said they didn’t like my decorating.”

She laughed good-naturedly. “What decorating?”

“I just moved in.” Two months ago, but who was counting?

She walked farther into the office space. “This is a beautiful building. I wasn’t expecting that.”

What was she expecting? He’d never met her before. “I’m sorry. You know my name but I don’t have the pleasure of knowing yours.”

“Oh.” She laughed again, another big smile. “Penny Darden.” She walked over to him.

“Penny.” He shook the hand she extended. “I assume there’s a reason you came to see me?”

There it was, the grim circumstances that had led her here, dimming her beautiful eyes and sweeping away her cheery smile. A victim’s family behaved that way. Or maybe this woman was a friend. Didn’t matter. Murder never made people happy.

“Sara Wolfe’s parents came to see you,” she said at last, daring to look into his eyes.

He managed to cover up the jarring surprise that gave him. “They didn’t come to see me. The lead detective in her case called me.”

“Oh...of course. I’m sorry.” She seemed nervous. What made her nervous? Him as a man or the Sara Wolfe case?

“Are you media?” he asked.

“No.” She clasped her hands in front of her, a vulnerable action for such a dynamic woman. He felt her energy, could see her basic strength. He saw a lot about people he first met. Those first impressions carried weight.

“I drove here from Salt Lake City after I read about you.”

She’d read about him? So her nervousness came from fascination, not the Wolfe case.

“First of all, I’m really sorry about what happened,” she said softly. “About Annabelle. And your wife. It must not be easy. Losing them like that.”

More dreaded talk. For the second time today, he felt sick to his stomach. He started to get angry. He couldn’t stand sympathy. People offered it when they had no idea what kidnapping did to those who had to live through the torture.

“Just tell me why you’re here,” he bit out.

At the hard clip to his tone, she checked herself. “Right. Sure.” She glanced down and then unclasped her hands and rubbed them on her jeans, shaking off awkwardness. “I actually came to talk to you about Sara Wolfe.”

“Are you related?”

She shook her head. “I heard about her murder on the news.”

“All right...”

She searched his eyes, hesitating but needing something. Without saying anything, she wandered across the small lobby, past a desk to the wall where nothing hung.

“Why don’t we start with who you are?” She’d told him her name but nothing else. “What do you do?”

She faced him. “I’m vice president of Client Services at Avenue One. We’re a big advertising agency, getting bigger each year.”

“How do you know Sara Wolfe?” he asked.

“I—I don’t, I just...read about her murder, and you, after...” She searched his eyes again.

“After what?” he said to help her out.

“One of our biggest clients is Ballard’s Sporting Goods. Have you heard of them?”

“Big sporting goods chain. Yeah.”

“Well, I’ve sort of been seeing the company’s president,” she said. “I met him when we landed the account and started working with him on their ad campaign. Jax Ballard. His older brother founded the company and they run it together.”

“What do they have to do with the Sara Wolfe case?”

Her gaze turned hard and determined, the businesswoman in her coming out. “This is where I have to be very delicate, Mr. Tandy.”

He didn’t have to guess why. “You think Jax Ballard may have something to do with Sara Wolfe’s murder?” No longer sensitive about the case, he felt his detective instincts kicking in. This woman could have a significant lead.

“I need to be sure before...”

“Just tell me what you know.” A little girl had been killed. He’d offer no sympathy to her if she had information that could lead him to the killer.

“I accompanied him to his cabin last Friday night. I walk every day, so I left for one early Saturday morning, before he woke. I followed a dirt road on his property and came upon an abandoned house and barn. I went into the barn and saw a truck parked inside. A white truck with a dent on the driver’s side.”

All Kadin could do was stare at her after she stopped talking, her revelation—and what it could mean—tearing through him, bringing him back to those days and hours when he and the other investigators were closing in on the man who’d abducted and killed his precious little girl.

“I—I’m not saying it’s the same truck. I—I just need to be sure before I go to the police.”

“Did he know you found the truck?” he asked.

“I told him I saw the barn and that’s it.”

Kadin lifted his brow. “He believes you didn’t see it?”

“I’m not sure.”

She’d seen the truck parked—no, hidden—in an abandoned barn and had heard about Sara Wolfe. Then she had taken action. While he didn’t approve of her not going to the police, he did commend her for coming to him.

“I went back.” She began to rummage in her purse.

“Back to the barn?” Kadin stepped toward her as she pulled out a cell phone.

He waited while she navigated.

“I took these pictures.”

He looked at them all and inwardly cheered when he saw the one with the VIN. As he lifted his head, his gaze collided with hers. “What made you decide to risk going back to get these?”

“Evidence,” she said, as though he ought to know.

“You put yourself in danger.”

“I was a little worried Jax might catch me, but what if he moved the truck? When I left the barn, I saw a man in the trees. He was carrying a flashlight. He could have been anyone.”

“A man wandering the woods at night? Alone?”

“I thought it was strange, too. And then he followed me. At least I think he followed me.”

“He followed you? For how long?”

“Until I parked in front of the police station.”

So the suspect might think she went inside and told the police about the truck. That might compel the criminal to do something.

“Good thinking, getting these pictures,” Kadin said. “I’ll get the wheels moving to get a search warrant. We need to look for DNA or fiber evidence. And from the sound of it, we need to move fast.”

“A search warrant?”

“There’s no other way.” Her boyfriend would know someone had told the police about the truck, and that someone was Penny.

She sighed. “How long will the search warrant take?”

“Hard to say. The location is remote and outside Park City. I’ll have to coordinate with the county sheriff.”

“Days?”

“Hopefully not more than two. Tomorrow or the next day. Will you have to work with Jax?”

“Yes, possibly.”

She had a couple of days to prepare. “Just act like nothing happened.”

“It’s more than that. If I’m wrong about this, I could lose my job.”

That seemed rather drastic to him. “How so? You’re doing what has to be done by reporting what you saw.”

“My boss will probably fire me.” She folded her arms, her purse swinging at her side as she bent one slender knee, a picture of vexation. “He’s been acting strange lately, putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on me ever since I landed a few big accounts.”

“He’s threatened by you?” Kadin took in her stance and felt the nervous energy bouncing off her. “There are laws he has to follow.”

“He’ll find some legal way of doing it.”

“Would you let him get away with that?”

She huffed out a laugh and lowered her arms. “No.”

He liked strong women like her. She had a heart but didn’t waste much time on sympathy. He found people—women—like her easier to be with than those who expressed their feelings too much.

“Are you going to take the case?” she asked.

Solving murders of adults differed greatly from violent crimes against children. Kadin felt the encroachment of dark memories and didn’t answer. Would he? How could he not? An innocent young girl had been killed. How could he stand back and let others work the case without helping?