Ty had to be out of his mind. There was no way he should have let her get on his sled with him, but there they were...him driving the sled with her sitting behind him with her arms around his waist. He could think of a hundred reasons why this was a bad idea, but the single reason to say yes—that his best friend was missing—was enough to make him act against his better judgment.
Besides, Holly was the most stubborn woman he’d ever met. If he tried to argue against it, he’d spend the next hour talking and she’d still probably get her way. It was better to just bite the bullet and put Moose’s needs ahead of his own.
He glanced back at Holly, who was tucked down behind him to lessen the wind on her face. It was smart, but somehow her blond hair flipping around annoyed him.
Then again, most things about her annoyed him. Spending time with Holly was akin to nails on a chalkboard. Everything she did drove him up the wall. She was hardheaded, brusque and always thought she was the only one who had the right answer. With her, it was her way or the highway.
Truth be told, though, when her mask fell away, she was also one of the most caring and giving people he had ever met. And even now, after all these years, he couldn’t deny the fact that she was stunningly beautiful. A piece of her hair caught the wind, and he watched it flip around as he drove. He could still remember how soft it had felt the nights he had run his fingers through her locks.
“You doing okay?” he asked, slowing down and tapping her on her uninjured leg to get her attention. She was wearing his helmet and it was a little big, but he hadn’t allowed her on without at least some level of safety gear that covered her entire head. They had already saved her once; he didn’t need to put her life in danger any more than necessary once again.
She nodded, the helmet loose and wobbling on her shoulders so much that she stilled it with her hand.
It was cold without his helmet, but as long as she was good, so was he. He pulled his beanie down farther over his ears.
He sped up, trying to follow the tracks in the snow in front of them in his bouncing headlights. Riding at night was always fun, but it came with an entirely different set of dangers—sticks became lances and cracks in the snow were like steel traps. Added to that danger was having her on his back, which affected the sled’s balance and stability in the deep snow.
He tried to control his nerves. From the get-go on this call, things had just been off. Maybe he was the one who had caused this all to go a little sideways.
It will be fine. Moose is going to be okay. He tried to talk himself down off the ledge.
He and Moose had been friends since they had gone to the law enforcement academy together. Moose hadn’t risen up the ranks like he had; he had jumped around from department to department because his wife at the time hadn’t loved living on the east side of the state. She needed mountains, or so Moose said. They’d ended up here, but as soon as Moose had gotten a house, the wife had served him divorce papers.
Now he’d been working in Big Sky for about a year and the divorce had finally been settled.
For the last six months, Moose had been going through what Ty could only call Moose’s groupie phase. He’d taken more women home in the last few months than Ty had in his entire life. That was, until recently when, according to Moose, he’d found a good one.
How good? Well, this was Moose he was talking about so that was up for debate.
He slowed as they started down the steep grade at the end of the ridgeline, near the location where they had found Holly.
Holly.
She squeezed him as they passed by the area where he and his team had found her. He wondered how it made her feel. If it had been him, he would have been embarrassed, relieved and grateful. He kind of got those vibes from her, but there was something else there that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Her arms loosened around him and, as they did, he found he had almost liked them tighter. He was tempted to turn and tell her to hold on more, but he restrained himself. Things between them were already weird enough without him making things worse.
As they drove, and he cut back and forth on the mountain, he couldn’t believe he found himself this close to her once again. She was one girlfriend who hadn’t left his thoughts, but he had never imagined running into her. She was out of his league, and always had been.
The last time he heard anything about her, she had been dating an anesthesiologist out of Bozeman. The guy had been jet-setting around the globe with her, and he’d seen a few pictures on her social media of them standing on the different islands around the Pacific Rim between ski trips in Vale and Whistler.
If she was dating those kinds of guys, he wasn’t sure why she had even come back to make her home in Big Sky. On a positive note, she was working as a physical therapist at a local place. Maybe she liked to keep a certain level of her own autonomy and independence without being beholden to some jackass anesthesiologist.
Whatever it was, and whether or not she was still with the dude, it was none of his business. He needed to simply keep his mind on watching the overhanging branches and downed logs—though, he had a feeling that those weren’t the only dangers he faced.
Cindy and Chad were parked at the first location, and as he pulled up, he found them munching away on protein bars and energy gels like they knew, just as well as he did, that it was going to be a long night.
“Hey,” Cindy said, watching Holly as she took off his helmet and slipped it under her arm. “I’m glad to see you were up for a ride. You must be feeling better. How’s the cut on your leg?”
“It’s just a flesh wound. Nothing major.” Holly smiled, reassuringly. “Thank you for everything. Seriously, I’m sorry for what happened.”
Cindy waved her off. “It’s what we do.”
Chad, Cindy’s boyfriend, nodded. “Besides, we love coming up here. It’s fun...until something like this happens. Though—” he paused, looking over at the trail leading from their location “—I’m sure we will find Moose. Knowing him, he ran out of gas or something. He was in charge of his own sled today. You know how he can be.”
Ty chuckled, but the knot in his gut didn’t go away.
“The other team we had working the bottom are heading home,” Cindy said.
“How many were there?” he asked, trying to play it cool. That was what he got for being late this morning and not asking more questions.
“There are four on the other team. Frank Vallenti, Valerie Keller, Dan Wood and Smash—don’t ask how he got the nickname, you know it involves women.” Cindy put up her fingers like she was counting.
He liked the other members of SAR, but he hadn’t worked with Valerie or Dan much. Smash was hilarious and, on a few occasions, they had put some down at Stockman’s Bar. He didn’t drink much anymore, but if Smash invited him, he was going to be there. The guy had a way of speaking that reminded him of a Southern grandpappy, especially when he had a ZYN nicotine pouch under his lip.
“They haven’t heard from Moose, either,” Cindy continued. “We were waiting for you guys to catch up, then we are planning on everyone working the face of the mountain. We will meet at the bottom in two hours. If you find Moose, radio in. Cool?”
“Make sure you stay in contact. We don’t want anyone else going missing,” Chad added.
Ty nodded, watching as Holly slipped on his helmet and pushed her blond curls under the edges. She really was beautiful.
He grabbed his extra set of goggles from under the seat and put them on his head. His cheeks were still exposed, and they would get cold, but it was better than nothing and at least Holly was going to stay warm.
They hit the slopes again, working around the side of the mountain and into the timber. He drove slower than he normally would, taking his time especially around the trees as he made sure not to get anywhere near their bases. If he turned off the engine and came to a stop, he was sure that he would have been able to feel Holly’s heart thrashing in her chest. After all she had been through, she was taking this getting-back-on-the-horse thing like a real trouper.
The snow started to fall, and the wind picked up, making it appear like they were in a shaken snow globe thanks to his headlights. It was so dark and the world around them felt muffled, even dampening the roaring sound of their engine.
Holly tapped his shoulder and he pulled to a stop. He turned. His face was achingly cold, and his lips were starting to chap. He looked back at her. “Everything okay?” he asked, wondering if something had come over the comms or if she was hurting or something.
She pulled up the helmet so he could hear her. “Do you have a flashlight?” she asked.
He reached into his chest pocket. “I have a headlamp,” he said, pulling it out. “Why? Did you see something?”
“I just need a minute,” she said, reminding him that she was human.
He handed her the light, clicking it on. “I’ll step over here,” he said, motioning to the right. “Don’t go too far. The snow is soft in places. I don’t want to have to dig you out, again.”
She didn’t laugh. Instead, she gave him a little nod as she affixed the lamp and stepped off the sled.
Walking out into the storm, he thought about how he had been wrong in teasing her. It was too much, too soon. If she remembered anything about him at all, it was that joking around was how he tended to deal with anything uncomfortable. It was what made his job as both a SAR member and a detective bearable. If anything, he wished he could be funnier—like Moose.
When they found him, Moose was going to be the butt of the jokes around the unit for a while. The last time Moose had done something foolish was when he’d taken a header off the team’s raft and had lost his radio and a myriad of other electronic gear at the bottom of the river. They had called him the million-dollar baby for months, even after their divers had managed to retrieve some of the lost gear.
He figured he’d take advantage of the moment while Holly was doing the same and climbed off the sled. He moved to unzip his pants, but as he did, something caught his eye. There, near the base of the fir, was the tip of a ski. It was yellow and at a strange angle, and he recognized it as the bottom of one of the SAR unit’s sleds.
“Moose?” he asked, calling out into the blizzard.
There was no answer.
The knot in his stomach moved up into his throat and, as he tried to call his friend’s name again, it came out as a croak. He moved nearer to the exposed ski on the machine. He pulled out his cell phone and turned on the light, exposing the world around him. About ten feet past the downed sled, lying under a slowly melting patch of snow, was a body-shaped lump.
Moose’s blue jacket was sticking out and a few feet from his right hand was his helmet.
He moved toward his friend, instinctively knowing what he was about to find.
Even in his wildest imagination, he couldn’t have been prepared for this...
Moose’s head was nearly cut off. His eyes and mouth were opened wide as though he had been frightened to death and he was forever left screaming.
Ty was forced to look away.
He looked toward Moose’s feet. Even under the fresh snow, he could see the pink tinge of blood; it was nearly everywhere he shone his flashlight. Moose hadn’t been dead long—just over an hour at most.
If only he had gotten here sooner. However, even if he had, in the case of an injury like this, there would have been nothing he could have done for his friend.
He took a series of photos with his phone, making sure to get the entire area around the body. He even took a shaking video. In an environment like this, where there was fresh snow coming down and windy conditions, it wouldn’t take long for the entire scene to be covered and any evidence destroyed.
He continued rolling the video as he moved to his best friend’s body and brushed off the thin layer of snow from his jacket. His jacket was cold and the heat from his body had dissipated. The coat was covered in blood and nearly black. In the bright light of his flashlight, it was hard to see, but it didn’t really look like he’d sustained any other injuries. However, until they got the coroner in, it would be hard to say with absolute certainty and he wasn’t about to disturb the scene any more than required.
After confirming his friend was deceased, he took a step back and said a silent word in honor of him. It helped the pain in his chest, but nothing could make that heartache go away.
The snow beneath Moose had soaked up the blood and melted from the warmth of the liquid, but it appeared to have gotten chilled enough that everything sat still—and the only sound was of the falling snow and the wind.
Thanks to the melting of the snow, Moose’s head was tilted back at a strange angle, exposing the sliced flesh. He could make out the rubbery edge of the severed windpipe. Thick red clots of blood had pooled at the edges of the cut and had slithered down his trachea like deathly red snakes.
The angle of the cut was nearly perfectly straight, no slashing or sawing. It was almost as if Moose had run into a wire...or, someone had wanted him unquestionably dead.