Cold Hearted (Cold Justice Book 6) (33 page)

Darsh had moved the boxes from his office into the conference room and set up Agent Ashley Chen in there too. She was his excuse for relocating and keeping things on a strictly need-to-know footing because of cyber-security issues.

“Got everything you need?” he asked her.

“Everything except peace and quiet.” She sent him a quelling glance.

He shrugged, unrepentant.

Chen was an interesting character. Quiet. Studious. Definitely self-contained. Determined to prove herself. She was far superior to him with computers and technology, and that’s what her background was rather than law enforcement. She’d examined Rachel Knight’s phone but didn’t find any ominous texts or emails. The list of callers was small, and Rachel had received a call around five AM from a payphone at the university. They’d subpoenaed the landline information.

Had someone enticed Rachel Knight to meet them in that secluded park in the pre-dawn? She was so skittish. Darsh was surprised she even left the house alone. It was more likely she’d spiraled into depression and lost all hope, then purposely walked into the forest on the brink of a major snowstorm.

He hoped they found her alive, but he couldn’t make it his priority when they had a killer to catch.

“Got anything on those background checks yet?” he asked Chen.

She paused and looked at him like he was an idiot. “I’m still entering the names of all the people you want checks on. The list is long. This isn’t television where you think something and the next minute it’s magically done.”

He winced then muttered, “Alex Parker would have done it by now.”

Her eyes narrowed further. “Unfortunately for you, Agent Singh, Mr. Parker was busy handling some details for ASAC Frazer while he’s on leave. You’ll have to resign yourself to dealing with me.”

Another ballbuster. God he loved working with strong women, but he was grateful he was only attracted to one of them—even if she was driving him crazy by not answering her cell. “Anything on the rope?”

Agent Chen’s fingers paused over her keyboard, and he could almost hear her beg for patience. “I’ve requested the buyer information from all online retailers. When I hear back I’ll cross-reference that with this
giant
list of background checks. Is there anyone who isn’t on the list, by the way?”

He pulled a face, but she didn’t smile back. He looked at his watch again. He was tired and hungry. He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night and had spent most of the day worried about Erin. Dammit. He gave into the urge and grabbed his coat. “Want me to pick up some dinner?”

“Sure.” She didn’t look up this time, and her fingers moved at lightning speed over the keyboard.

“Chinese?” He said it to needle her and was rewarded with a glare.

“Hmm…why don’t you track down a good curry instead?” Her arched brow said she got the dig even if she didn’t find it funny.

“Gonna kick my ass with your crazy Ninja skills?” He allowed himself a smirk. He was winding her up, looking for a sense of humor that made putting up with the attitude worth it. Not everyone had one, not when it came to race and gender issues.

She stopped working and turned to him. “I’d rather just shoot you and be done with it.” She eyed him, assessing. “I take it that’s your way of breaking the ice? Or are you always an ass?”

“Depends who you talk to.” He thought of Erin. “Anything you don’t like?” At her confused gaze he added, “To eat?”

She stretched out her neck as though she’d been sitting in the same position far too long. “I like everything except tomatoes.”

“Tomatoes?” he asked. “Who doesn’t like tomatoes?”

“Crazy Asian-American chicks apparently.”

He grinned. “You added the ‘crazy,’ not me. I’ll be back in an hour.”

She nodded, already back to her bionic typing. Maybe she wasn’t as uptight as they thought. Maybe Alex Parker unnerved her because, for all the self-deprecating humor and easy grins, the guy was more than just some cyber-security expert. Maybe Agent Chen had something to hide and knew one of the few people capable of uncovering it would be Parker.

Everyone had something to hide.

Darsh headed to his car, trying not to think about how pissed he was with Erin. Didn’t she care about her job? Hadn’t she told him she didn’t know what she’d do if she couldn’t wear a badge? What the hell did she think would happen if she neglected this investigation?

On the top step of the building, he paused and stared around in shock. At least a foot of snow had fallen since he’d come into work this morning. The idea of Rachel Knight being lost in the wilderness made him swallow back the feelings of anger. But the idea Erin was voluntarily out in this also pissed him off. People were trained for this shit. She was a detective, not Super Woman.

The snow had pretty much abated, except for the occasional straggling flake.

He headed out of town toward Fox Creek Park, lucking out when he tucked in behind a snowplow and gritter going up the hill. He hung back, headlights cutting through the darkness into a wall of winter white. It took twenty minutes until he got to the parking lot, only to find the place completely deserted. Rachel Knight’s Jetta had been taken to the cop shop on the back of a flatbed truck that morning.

He sat staring at the pitch-black forest. Could Rachel be a victim of this killer? Had he changed his MO? Or had she succumbed to the despair and fear he’d seen in her every action yesterday?

He tried Erin’s cell again, and her landline. Dammit, maybe she was just avoiding picking up his calls, which would be unprofessional as hell. Another thought unsettled him. What if she started to think of him as being as obsessed as her ex had been?

Darsh gritted his teeth. He refused to go there. Erin was a good cop. They were working a case. They needed to communicate.

He did a big circle of the parking lot and came out back onto the main highway. This side hadn’t been plowed yet so he followed the ruts and crawled back up the hill and then around the corner to go down the mountainside. He concentrated on his driving and almost missed the impressions in the snow at the side of the road. From the look of the tire tracks someone had recently gone off the road.

His heart thundered.

He pulled over onto the shoulder and put on his hazards, grabbed his flashlight. No way would Erin have slid off the road, but the fact she wasn’t answering her cell… Nah, she was a good driver. Experienced in snow with a heavy four-wheeler. But distracted, he thought. Very distracted. And tired.

But this couldn’t be Erin.

Whoever this was could be seriously hurt so he needed to get a move on. He got out of the car and hoped the plow didn’t come back this way in the next five minutes and bury his car. And, he realized with a feeling of dismay, if the plow
had
done this stretch of highway he’d never have seen the tire marks. Never have known someone might be in need of assistance. He jogged back to the spot and clambered through the knee-high snow bank.

Peering over the edge down the steep slope, he saw a huge trench of snow had been churned up. Fuck. Something had definitely left the roadway in the last hour or so. He shone his flashlight beam into the darkness, but there was nothing visible from up here. He pulled out his cell and called it in to the dispatcher. She told him to wait on the line, but he ignored her. Pocketing his phone, he started down the steep bank and had to hold onto pine tree branches to stop himself from sliding down the improvised ski run. He continued cautiously, hoping he didn’t end up going over the edge of a cliff hidden beneath a foot of snow.

The land leveled out a bit, and he skidded down the slope, hanging on to damaged branches, telling himself over and over that it wasn’t Erin down here in this ravine. He believed it right until the moment he saw the backend of a white Ford F-150 crushed against a sixty-foot fir. Every cell inside his body warped, and he felt like he’d been thrown through space. He slithered his way down to the mangled wreck.

“Erin. Erin!”

Fear shot through him and made it impossible to think. He got to the passenger side of the truck, which was closest, and grabbed the door handle, tried to wrench it open, but it was buckled and not going anywhere. He fought his way up the hill and around to the other side of the truck that seemed half the length it should be. The door was wide open. Glass showered the area, glistening like ice, air bags deployed. But no sign of the woman he’d come to care about.

“Erin!” He swung around, searching the area with his flashlight beam. “Where are you!”

There was a sound on the wind. He tilted his head toward it, starting back up the slope even though it could have been something up on the road playing tricks with his crappy hearing. He jogged uphill now, desperate to find her. How could anyone have survived that crash? Where the hell was she?

“Over here,” came the sweetest gravelly voice he’d ever heard.

He swung the beam across the pale snow and found her propped against the trunk of a pine tree. Relief burst through him so intensely he could barely speak. She was in the well of the tree, surrounded on three sides, out of the wind. He scrambled toward her, almost unable to believe she was actually there. Her skin was pale as bone and there was blood on her chin. He’d never seen a more beautiful sight.

He fell to his knees beside her. “Are you okay? Stupid question, don’t answer that, but tell me if anything really hurts.” He ran his hands over her limbs.

“I’m fine, except cold and shaken up.” The hitch in her voice told him exactly how ‘fine’ she was feeling. “I did, however, recently discover how desperately I don’t want to die.”

“The only good thing about near-death experiences.”

“I can’t believe you found me,” she whispered.

He swallowed. “I can’t believe I found you either.” He was having a few epiphanies of his own. Like how the idea of losing her tore his insides to shreds. “Where’s your phone?”

She waved her hand toward the truck. “Somewhere.”

He wanted to haul her against him but didn’t dare move her. He touched her cheek. “Jesus, even though you survived the crash you could have frozen to death out here.”

“Nah.” Her voice cracked. “Once I survived the wreck I knew I was going to be fine. Believe it or not, I was making my way slowly—very slowly, I admit—up the bank.” She smiled tiredly, her eyes huge and haunted. “And as I was crawling up this goddamn hill, I made a few decisions.”

“Like what?” Talking was good for her. The last thing he wanted was for her to pass out.

“I decided to stop being a coward.”

“Coward? You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met.” There were no obvious broken bones, but she could have internal bleeding or a head injury.

“Not with relationships. Even before I married Graham I was always afraid of making a mistake and falling for the wrong guy. Caution got me nothing but heartbreak. I’d like to carry on seeing you. To give us a chance like you said.” Her smile aimed for cute but went a little wonky at the edges. “Unless you changed your mind.”

He touched her cheek. “It takes a car accident to have a chance with you, huh?” His voice was gruff. “Maybe next time I can try flowers and dinner?”

“Let’s just say my life flashed before my eyes, and my only regret was being too chicken to see if this thing between us could work out.” Her eyes twinkled with humor although Darsh was worried she had a concussion. “I mean even if we fizzle out after a few months, we’d still have the great sex, right?”

This was a big step for her. Hell, it was a big step for him, too. If she wanted to pretend it was mainly physical, then he’d let her. For now.

He gently lifted her chin and kissed her on the lips, careful of her cuts and bruises. “It’ll be worth it.”

Her eyes watered, and her teeth chattered. Where the hell were the EMTs?

“I’m sorry I pushed you away this morning.” Her mouth turned down at the edges. “Like you said, I’m a bit of an emotional coward.”

He tried to stop her as she crawled out from beneath the tree and pushed to her feet, but apparently she was done waiting for help. “You were wrong about one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“This was no accident.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Some bastard drove me off the road, and I’m going to figure out who so I can put his ass behind bars.”

He steadied her as she insisted on trying to climb back onto the road. It wasn’t just independence, it was what she was used to since marrying her asshole ex. Doing it alone, relying on no one but herself. He glanced behind them at the totaled truck, and rage grew inside him, gaining momentum. When she fell to her knees and started crawling, he’d had enough of her stubbornness. He ignored her complaints, picked her up in his arms, and carried her.

R
achel stumbled to
her knees in the snow. It was nighttime. The rope chafed her lips, but her numb fingers couldn’t unpick the tight knot in her mouth no matter how hard she tried. The miracle of being alive was slowly fading into despair. She was lost. She’d been struggling through the snow for hours. She was cold, sore, and so incredibly frightened of dying out here alone.