CHAPTER TWO
1929 Words
CHAPTER TWO
Rylie Wolf sat in the conference room of the FBI field office in South Dakota, the contents of a cold case file of a murdered hitchhiker spread out before her. Her mind swam with possibilities as she stared into space, without seeing.
“Think fast,” someone in the conference room said. Or at least, she thought. She wasn’t paying attention. She was too busy, trying to put together the pieces of this case that had been plaguing them for the past week, ever since she’d come back to work after solving the case of the serial killer who’d strung his victims up on mileposts along highway 86.
“s**t,” the voice grumbled suddenly, stirring her from her thoughts.
Her partner, Michael Brisbane, was frantically grabbing fast-food napkins from the center of the table, trying to corral the creeping spill of a busted OJ container. It rested on its side, sadly defeated, a few inches away from her case file.
She jumped to action, yanking her papers away from the spill. “What are you—” She groaned, “Nice job, Brisbane! What were you trying to do?”
He threw a mountain of napkins on the biggest part of the spill and sighed. “I thought I was trying to be nice and give my partner an OJ. But I didn’t realize she was on another planet. Sorry for being nice.”
“Oh.” Rylie smiled as he tossed the sopping napkins into the trash. “Thanks, anyway. I was just thinking.”
“Clearly,” he said with a laugh, grabbing the other OJ from his pocket and pushing it over to her. “Here. Have mine.”
“Oh, no. I’m not thirsty. But thanks.”
“I’ll take it!” Beeker, the FBI’s IT guy, said from the corner, his nose still buried in his computer. The kid was in his early twenties, and had probably been recruited to join their ranks right out of high school. He didn’t know much about hygiene or professionalism, which was apparent from his long chin-whiskers and rumpled STAR WARS t-shirt and jeans.
“You have legs. Get yourself to the vending machine and get one yourself,” he said to Beeker, as he opened it, tossing back a swig. Then he motioned with his chin. “What case is that? Is that about the tip Clive McDougal gave us?”
“Yep. Chrissy Johnson,” she explained, pushing it across to him.
“Clive. What a scumbag,” he mumbled, shaking his head as he read the file. “So what about it?”
Her partner wasn’t one to toss around derogatory epithets lightly, but in this case, that one was well-deserved. Clive was a first-rate scumbag. While hunting down that serial killer, they’d stumbled across the case of a man who’d kidn*pped a young girl, but luckily, Rylie and Michael Brisbane had rescued her before it was too late. But he’d been facing life in prison, and so he gave them a variety of tips in an effort to get a reduced sentence. One of them was the name of another trucker who he thought was involved in the disappearance of other hitchhikers: most recently fifteen-year-old Chrissy Johnson, in Montana.
The guy’s name was Vin. He drove for Swiftline Express, out of Missoula. Rylie and Michael had done a bunch of investigating and calling and had found a few possibilities. The most promising one was Gary Vinton. According to the trucking company’s logs, he’d been in the general area during a couple of the murders.
But then he’d dropped off the edge of the earth.
From their research, they’d learned he collected his last paycheck and never showed up for work again, abandoned his last known address, and just disappeared, without a word to anyone. No one—his wife, his family members, his friends--had seen him in months.
So no Gary Vinton. She paged through the file on him, turning to the most recent photograph, taken a few years ago. It showed a thirty-something year old guy with a fairly long, scraggly beard, and a muscle shirt baring thick, tattooed biceps. His arm was around a pretty blonde in short shorts and cowboy boots. They were standing in front of his rig, which they’d learned happened to be rented from Swiftline Express.
The next thing she knew, her partner was snapping his fingers in her face.
She blinked. “What?”
He pointed out the door. “You got a call. Out there. Didn’t you hear?”
She stood. No, when she got involved in a case, everything seemed to disappear. She hated to leave the file alone, even for a second, so she jogged out to the front desk, where the receptionist was waiting. “Line five,” she said, motioning to a nearby phone.
Rylie picked up and depressed the button. “Hello?”
“There’s my baby girl.”
“Hal?”
“That’s right,” he said in that slow, easy way of his. “You haven’t called me in a while. Got the feeling that maybe you forgot about me.”
She smiled. “Never! How could I?” He could always bring a smile to her face, even during her worst days. “Why didn’t you call me on my cell?”
“I did. You never pick up.”
She laughed. “And it’s far too much to ask you to leave a message, huh? Or text?”
“What’s that?” he said, in a way that made her unsure if he was joking. He was over sixty, and probably the most old-school, stuck-in-his-ways person she knew. “I thought you were going to stop in and pay me a visit while you were still in Wyoming?”
She winced. She had promised that, but the idea of going back to her old home made her stomach pool with dread. She’d grown up on the property right next to Hal Buxton’s ranch. He was a down-to-earth, good guy, more of a father to her than her own dad had been. She’d been meaning to visit Hal, the big, burly old cowboy, but didn’t want to dredge up old memories. Plus, if she did that, she’d probably have to visit her dad, too.
So yes. She’d been avoiding his calls. Every time his number popped up on her phone, she let it go straight to voicemail. “Yeah . . . sorry about that.”
“I get it, I get it. This ain’t your home, now.”
It had been, once upon a time, when she was young. She and her older sister Maren and her mother and father had lived happily on that tract of land outside of Cody, Wyoming. But their peace had been shattered one day, at a remote campground. Her mother and friends had been murdered in cold blood, and Maren had simply vanished. After that, her father had completely retreated into himself.
But Rylie didn’t really have a home, anymore. She’d moved to Seattle in effort to escape those old memories, but they never went away.
Now, here she was, solving crimes out of the Rapid City, South Dakota, field office of the FBI, not far from where her life had been completely destroyed. “I don’t really have a home, anymore, Hal.”
“Yeah, well. People say home is where family is. You speak to your dad lately?”
“No. Not in years, Hal. Not since I moved out to Seattle. We don’t have much to say to each other. You know that. He doesn’t even know I’m back here,” she said, as curiosity got the best of her. “Why? Have you?”
“Nah. You know Rick Wolf don’t like me. Besides, he stays to himself. Whenever I go into town, I never see him.”
She cringed, wondering if he was all right. Part of her hated that she still cared about him, since he’d stopped caring about everything, including her, after the horrors of that day. He’d taken to drinking and barely got out of bed. He let his property go to hell, skipped a bunch of payments, and lost it to foreclosure. Now, he lived in the town of Cody, in some broken-down apartments behind the Wal-Mart. Rylie had only heard that in passing—she hadn’t seen him in ages.
But he was still her father. And in a way, she understood. Her life had gone to hell, just as his had. She didn’t think she’d ever get past the memory of her mother and Rose and her best friend, Kiki, lying in a growing puddle of blood outside their family RV.
The memory danced through her mind again, and as usual, she cringed. “Geez, Hal. He could be dead for a year in his apartment, and no one would be the wiser.”
“Nah. Cody’s a small place. People have seen him around, or so I hear through the grapevine. I just haven’t. And that red beater of his keeps moving around the parking lot outside his place. He’s all right. But you know your daddy.”
Yeah, she did. She might not have seen him in years, but he was one leopard who’d never change his spots. He kept away from people. Especially her.
In that way, they were alike. Even just seeing each other stirred up too many unpleasant memories. Better to let them lie.
“Hal? If you do see him, do me a favor and don’t tell him you spoke to me. If he wants to get in touch, he has my number. I haven’t changed my cell phone in years.”
“Right . . . even though you never pick up.”
“I’ve been busy!”
“Sure,” he said, in a way that made her think he didn’t believe a word she said.
Hal had always been intuitive, that way. He could read her like a book, even a state away. “I’m sorry, Hal. Maybe soon? I’ll give you a call when I’m in the neighborhood.”
Which is probably never.
He was probably thinking that, too, but at least, he didn’t press her on it. “Sure, baby girl. Talk to you soon.”
As she hung up, she glanced over to the conference room and saw Michael Brisbane waving frantically. Some men were blandly handsome, vanilla, with pleasant features that were hardly memorable. But every feature on Michael’s face stood out, from his chiseled jaw to his piercing blue eyes. Yet they all worked together in perfect harmony, as if none of them wanted to take center stage. Right now, his sculpted cheekbones were tinged red. It looked like he’d been trying to get her attention for a long time, but of course, she’d been practicing her tunnel vision and completely tuned him out. “What?” she asked, approaching him.
He held up a sheet of paper, a triumphant look on his face. “Just got a tip from the state police in Buffalo. Found a hitchhiker who said she met a guy named Gary Vinton, in a red Toyota Tacoma, on our favorite highway, while she was trying to catch a ride. Said the guy was acting really weird and so she thought she’d report it.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?” She rushed to grab her purse and cell phone. “All right. Let’s get over there. Quick!”
- Writer
