The eighteen-wheeler had slid sideways across the highway near the top of Dixon Pass, until the back wheels of the trailer slipped off the edge, while the rest of the truck sprawled across both lanes. The driver had somehow managed to stop, and gravity and one large boulder had prevented the rig from sliding farther. The road was at its narrowest here, with almost no shoulders and no guardrails. The driver, who had bailed out of the cab, now stood in the shelter of a rock overhang, staring through a curtain of falling snow, hands shoved in the pockets of his leather coat, while they waited for a wrecker to come and winch the rig all the way back onto the road.
“The wrecker should be here in about ten minutes,” Ryder told the driver, ending the call from his dispatcher. “What are you hauling?”
“Insulation.” He wiped his hand across his face. “Yesterday I had a load of bottled water. All those heavy bottles probably would have shifted and taken me on over the side.” His hand shook as he returned it to his pocket.
“You got off lucky,” Ryder said.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
Ryder moved away and, shoulders hunched against the falling snow, hit the button to call Darcy. He needed to let her know he was going to be late. She should let herself into the house with the key he had given her and make herself at home. Even though they had both agreed this stay would only be temporary, he wanted her to feel she could treat his place as her own. He let the call ring, then frowned as it went to voice mail. Maybe she was with a late patient and couldn’t be interrupted. He left a message and stowed the phone again as a man in a puffy red coat and a fur hat strode toward him through the falling flakes.
“How much longer is the road going to be closed?” the man asked in the tone of someone who is much too busy to be stalled by petty annoyances.
“Another hour at least,” Ryder said. “Maybe more. It depends on how long it takes to move the truck.”
“You people need to do a better job of keeping the highway open,” the man said. “Isn’t that what we’re paying you for?”
“I’m charged with keeping the public safe,” Ryder said.
“They should keep these big rigs off the road when the weather is like this,” the man said. “They’re always causing trouble.”
Ryder could have pointed out that passenger cars had more accidents than trucks, but decided not to waste his breath. “A wrecker is on the way to deal with this truck,” he said. “If you don’t want to wait, you can turn around.”
“I can’t turn around,” he said. “I have business in Eagle Mountain.”
“Then you’ll need to go back to your vehicle and wait.”
The man wanted to argue, Ryder could tell, but a stern look from Ryder suppressed the urge. He turned and stalked back toward his SUV. Ryder didn’t even give in to the urge to laugh when he slipped on the icy pavement and almost fell.
Ryder’s phone rang and he took the call from Travis. “I checked at the ranch and none of our snow machines are damaged,” Travis said. “And Rainey swears Doug was helping her in the kitchen all yesterday afternoon. I haven’t heard yet from Gage about Ed’s snowmobile.”
“Thanks for checking,” Ryder said. “Did your caterer make it?”
“She called Lacy a little while ago and told her she’s stuck in traffic. Apparently, a wreck has the highway closed again.”
“Yeah. We’re going to get it cleared away in an hour or two.” He looked up at the gently falling snow. “I’m hoping the highway department can keep it open. Looks like we’ve got more snow.”
“I’ll try to get by Alex and Tim’s place tomorrow to talk to them,” Travis said.
“I’ll do it on my way home this afternoon,” Ryder said. “It’s on my way.” He really wanted to talk to those two before they slipped out of town.
Two hours later the wrecker had winched the eighteen-wheeler to safety. The driver, and all the cars that had piled up behind him, were safely on their way, and a Colorado Department of Transportation plow trailed along behind them, pushing aside the six inches of snow that had accumulated on the roadway. As long as the plows kept running and no avalanche chutes filled and dumped their loads on the highway, things would flow smoothly.
Ryder turned traffic patrol over to a fellow officer and headed back into Eagle Mountain. He tried Darcy’s phone again—still no answer. Maybe she’d forgotten to charge it, or was simply too busy to answer it, he told himself. He resisted the urge to drive straight to his house, hoping to find her there, and stuck with his plan of interviewing Tim and Alex.
But first, he had to stop for gas. He was fueling the Tahoe when a red Jeep pulled in alongside him. “Hello, Ryder,” Stacy said.
“Hi, Stacy,” he said. “You’re getting off work a little late, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’ve been off hours,” she said, getting out of her car and walking around to the pump. “We closed up early and I went into Junction to do some shopping. I made it back just before the road closed again, but then I had more errands to run here in town.” She indicated the back of the Jeep, which was piled high with bags and boxes. “It’s been a while.”
If she had closed the clinic early, then Darcy probably hadn’t been with a patient when he called earlier. So why wasn’t she answering her phone? “Do you know where Darcy headed after you closed?” he asked.
“She said she had things to do,” Stacy said.
“Did she say what?”
“Easy there, officer. Is something wrong?”
He reined in his anxiety. “I’ve tried to call her a couple of times and she isn’t answering.”
Stacy frowned. “That isn’t like her. She said something earlier about needing to get all the clinic supplies out of Kelly’s duplex. I guess now that the highway is open again, Kelly’s parents want to come and clean it out. Maybe she decided to take care of that.”
Maybe so. Though that still didn’t explain why she hadn’t answered his calls.
He headed for Tim’s aunt’s cabin next, determined to get that interview out of the way. The gray Toyota with the dent in the front quarter-panel sat parked in the driveway of the cabin, a frosting of snow obscuring the windows. Ryder parked his Tahoe behind the Toyota and made his way up the unshoveled walk to the vehicle. A deep indentation ran the length of the driver’s side front quarter-panel, the metal gouged as if by a sharp object.
Ryder straightened and made his way to the front door. Alex answered his knock, dressed in black long underwear pants and top. “Hey,” he said. “What you need?”
“Can I come in?” Ryder asked. “I need to ask a few questions.”
Alex shrugged. “I guess so.” He held the door open.
Tim was sprawled across the sofa, wearing green-and black-check flannel pants and a Colorado State University sweatshirt, a video game controller in his hands. He sat up and frowned at Ryder. “What do you want?”
“The highway is open,” Ryder said, stepping around a pile of climbing gear—ropes and packs and shoes. “I figured the two of you would be headed back to Denver.”
“We took advantage of the great weather to go climbing.” Alex sat on the end of the sofa and picked up a beer from the coffee table. “We don’t have to be back in class until the end of the month, anyway.”
“What do you care?” Tim asked, his attention on the television screen, which was displaying a video game that seemed to revolve around road racing.
“What did the two of you do Sunday?” Ryder asked.
“What did we do Sunday?” Tim asked Alex.
“We went climbing.” Alex sipped the beer.
“Where did you go?” Ryder asked.
“Those cliffs over behind the park,” Alex said. “And before you ask if anyone saw us, yeah, they did. Two women. We went out with them that night.”
“I’ll need their names and contact information,” Ryder said.
“Why?” Tim asked. “Did another woman get iced?” He laughed, as if amused by his joke.
“Have you visited Silver Pick Recreation Area while you’ve been in town?” Ryder asked.
“We checked it out,” Alex said. “We didn’t see any good climbing.”
“Good snowmobile trails,” Ryder said.
“We talked about renting a couple of machines,” Tim said. “Too expensive. Climbing’s free.”
“Since when are you concerned about us having a good time?” Alex asked.
“We’re looking for a snowmobiler who threatened a couple of people out at Silver Pick Sunday afternoon. He tried to run them down with his snowmobile.”
“It wasn’t us,” Alex said.
“Maybe it was the same idiot who smashed my truck,” Tim said.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “What are you doing about trying to find that guy?”
“I don’t think there’s a guy to find,” Ryder said.
“What?” Tim sat up straight. “Are you calling us liars?”
“I took another look at that dent on your truck,” Ryder said. “It’s too low to the ground to have been made by another car. And too sharp.”
“It is not,” Tim said.
“The more I think about it, the more it looks like it was made by those big chunks of granite that edge the parking lot near the ice climbing area out on County Road Fourteen,” Ryder said. “It’s easy enough to do—don’t pay attention to what you’re doing and you can run into one of them, scrape the heck out of your car.”
“You can’t prove it,” Tim said.
“I’ll bet if I went out there, I’d find paint from your truck on one of the rocks,” Ryder said.
Tim and Alex exchanged looks. “Why would we bother making up a story and getting the police involved if it wasn’t true?” Alex asked.
“If someone else caused the damage to your car, maybe you thought you could get your insurance to pay for it under your uninsured motorist coverage,” Ryder said. “It works like that in other states—for instance, in Texas, where you said you were from. But it doesn’t work that way in Colorado. In Colorado you have to have collision coverage in order for the insurance to pay.”
“No way!” Tim looked at Alex. “You told me we could get the insurance company to pay. Now what am I going to do?”
Alex ignored his friend. He looked at Ryder. “If you think you can prove something, have at it. Otherwise, why don’t you leave us alone?”
“I’ll leave for now,” Ryder said. “But you’ll be hearing from me again.” Tomorrow he would go to the parking lot and try to find the rock they had hit. Filing a false report to a peace officer was at best a misdemeanor, but the charge would be a hassle for the two young men, and having to deal with it might teach them a lesson.
From the cabin to the place Ryder rented was only a short drive. His heart sank when he saw that the driveway was empty. He hurried into the house, hoping to see some sign that Darcy had been there, but everything was just as he had left it. No suitcases or bags or any of Darcy’s belongings. He pulled out his phone and dialed her number again. Still no answer. What was going on?
* * *
DARCY WOKE TO familiar surroundings, sure she was in her own bed, but with the terrible knowledge that something was very wrong. When she tried to sit up, she discovered that her hands were tied to the headboard, and her ankles were bound together. She began to shake with terror, almost overwhelmed with the memory of another time when she had been tied to a bed, unable to escape her tormentor.
“Don’t struggle now. You don’t want to hurt yourself.” Ken leaned over her, his smile looking to her eyes like a horrible grimace.
“What are you doing?” she asked. The memory of being in Kelly’s kitchen flooded back. She had been looking at cat food and the next thing she knew, she woke up here. “Did you hit me on the head?”
“It was for your own good,” Ken said. “If you had listened to me when I offered to let you move in with me, it wouldn’t have been necessary.”
“Let me go!” She struggled against the ropes that held her. The bed shook and creaked with her efforts, but she remained trapped.
“No, I can’t do that,” Ken said. “If I do that, you’ll only call the sheriff, or that state trooper, Ryder. Then I’d have to leave and you’d be here all alone and unprotected.”
“I don’t need protection,” she said.
“But you do. There’s a serial killer in town who’s murdering young women just like you. You don’t want to be his next victim, do you?”
She stared at him, searching for signs that he had lost his mind. He looked perfectly ordinary and sane. Except every word he uttered chilled her to the core.
He sat on the side of the bed, the mattress dipping toward her. “What are you doing?” she asked, trying to inch away from him.
He put his hand on her leg. “I’m going to protect you.”
“Did you kill Kelly and those other women?” she asked. If he was the murderer, was confronting him this way a mistake? But she had to know.
His hand on her leg tightened. “Is that what you think of me?” he asked. “That I’m a killer? A man who hates women?” He slid his hand up her leg. “I love women. I love you. I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you with Kelly. I kept waiting for you to see it, but you couldn’t. Or you wouldn’t.” His fingers closed around her thigh, digging deep.
“Stop!” She tried to squirm out of his grasp. “You’re hurting me.”
“I decided I had to do something to wake you up,” he said, continuing to massage her thigh painfully. “To make you see how much I love you.”
“If you loved me, you wouldn’t frighten me this way,” she said. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“I won’t hurt you.” He leaned over her, his voice coaxing. “In fact, I’m going to show you how gentle I can be.” He moved his hand to the waistband of her slacks.
She closed her eyes and swallowed down a scream. There was no one to hear her, and if she screamed, she might give in to the panic that clawed at her. Hysterics wouldn’t help her. She had to hang on. She had survived before, and she would survive again.
How long before Ryder came looking for her? He would be expecting her at his house, but what if he had to work late? She had no idea what time it was, though the window at the end of the loft showed only blackness. If could be seven o’clock or it could be midnight—she couldn’t tell.
But no matter the hour, she had to find a way out of this situation. So far Ken hadn’t threatened her with a gun. As far as she knew, he didn’t own one. He was counting on his size and strength to overpower her, and so far it was working for him, but she had to find some advantage and figure out a way to use it against him.
“You need to untie me,” she said, surprised at how calm she sounded. “I can’t relax and...and I can’t focus on you if I’m tied up.”
“You don’t like being tied up?” He looked genuinely puzzled. “I thought it would be fun.” He grinned. “A little kinky.”
She swallowed nausea. “I just...I want to put my arms around you,” she said.
He sat back, searching her face. “You won’t try to fight me?”
“Of course not,” she lied.
“I’ll untie your hands,” he said and leaned forward to do so. “But I’ll leave your feet the way they are. I don’t want you running away.”
She forced herself to remain still while he fumbled with the knots at her wrists. “Maybe you need a knife,” she said.
“Good idea.” He stood, then winked at her. “Don’t go away. I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be waiting.” Saying the words made her feel sick to her stomach. But she would be waiting when he returned with the knife—then she would do everything to get her hands on that blade. He thought she was passive, but he would learn she was a fighter.