Only Once (A Sadie Price FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 4)

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

Sadie walked through the Anchorage Field Office with Agent O’Hara eagerly in step beside her. O’Hara had been a little starstruck by her ever since she had arrived, and he currently had a look on his face that reminded her of an excited puppy. She hoped he managed to get over it before they reached the murder scene, because she needed him clear and focused, not following her around like a lost love.

Although she liked O’Hara, Sadie had always preferred to work a case alone, or at least as much as was possible without putting herself in serious danger or jeopardizing the case itself. When she was immersed in a murder investigation, she found that she was ultra-focused, and wanted to be free of the distractions of others. When she had put in a transfer to return to her home state of Alaska—a move that many saw as a step backwards in her career—she had expected that she would get more chances to do just that. The Anchorage Field Office covered a huge jurisdiction and had fewer agents than other offices.

Yet since she had been back, she had been partnered on nearly every case with the local sheriff, Logan Cooper, and sometimes the deputy too, his sister, Jane. Local cops were usually the worst partners for an FBI agent, in her experience, because they inevitable saw the Feds as interfering in their local area and trying to take over.

The Coopers had been no exception. At least at first.

After a dangerous murder case had used all of their combined resources, they had become friends. Sadie was often amazed by how well she worked with the sheriff.

Sometimes, she thought they worked together a little too well.

She felt heat rise to her face as she thought of their conversation a few weeks ago on Caz’s porch. Cooper had pretty much asked her for a date, but she had never had the chance to respond. Instead, she had been called to her dying father’s bedside.

He hadn’t mentioned it since, and as she had been based back at the field office, she had barely seen him, except when he came into the saloon with Jane. The saloon was owned by Caz, who was another new friend and now Sadie’s landlord, a tattooed, butch woman with a tough exterior and a soft heart. She was a single mom to a little girl named Jenny, whom Sadie had a large soft spot for.

Sadie had come to Alaska looking for some kind of redemption and had ended up finding a home.

The closure she needed still eluded her, though. Her estranged father had been the only one who could tell her anything about her sister’s death, and who might have information that could help her solve what Sadie knew in her heart was a murder.

But he had died before he could tell her anything, instead leaving only a crudely drawn map that was proving hard to decipher. Sadie had given up on it and passed it to Cooper to work on a week before.

She realized that she wasn’t going to get the chance to say goodbye before she flew off to the north. They were leaving to go to the helipad now.

“What do you think?” O’Hara asked, cutting through her thoughts. He was in his mid-twenties, half a decade younger than Sadie, but she thought he looked younger. Or perhaps it was just that he didn’t yet have that jaded look that all agents got sooner or later, especially if they were working big cases.

Murders, drugs, trafficking. All the good stuff, Sadie thought wryly.

She deliberately avoided thinking about the Mangler again.

“Difficult to say until we get there,” Sadie told him. “There’s very little to go on at the minute. Once we know exactly how the derrick hand was killed, and how the hell he got up on that crane, we might have something to go on.”

“Golightly thinks it isn’t going to be straightforward.”

“They rarely are,” Sadie said with a sigh. As much as she could feel her adrenaline rising at the prospect of a new case, the thought of the desolate location unnerved her a little. Anything could happen to the men on the rig, really, and who would ever know?

Suddenly, she was glad she wasn’t going alone.

They reached the entrance doors and Sadie stepped outside into a burst of bright sunshine that made her blink rapidly. At this time of year, they only had a few hours of sunlight a day, but right now the sky was clear and dazzling, the sun sparkling off the snow on the ground like it was crystal.

Momentarily blinded by the cold light, she didn’t realize who had stepped in front of her.

“Price. I was hoping to catch you. I needed to bring some documents over to the agent heading up the local child p*********y case.”

Sheriff Cooper. Seeing him silhouetted by the sun and dressed in dark jeans and a buckskin coat with his sheriff’s badge pinned conspicuously to the front, his green eyes twinkling against tanned skin, Sadie felt caught off guard.

“Cooper,” she said, watching his full lips curve into a devastating smile. The sheriff was one of those rare men who genuinely didn’t realize just how good-looking he was. “You couldn’t use e-mail like everyone else?”

He shrugged, grinning. “You know what the internet signal is like back at the station. We don’t get the funding that you guys do. We’re on a shoestring budget over there.”

Sadie rolled her eyes but grinned back. Bantering with Cooper made her feel calmer and grounded back down to earth after what had so far been a heavy morning.

“Get over it, Sheriff. This is Agent O’Hara, by the way. O’Hara, Sheriff Cooper. We’re on our way to the rigs out on the Beaufort coastline.”

Sheriff Cooper raised an intrigued eyebrow, but knew better than to ask, at least in front of O’Hara, who was looking from Sadie to Cooper with a slightly puzzled expression. He also looked, she thought, disappointed.

Sadie hoped the young agent didn’t have some kind of crush on her. That was going to be awkward.

“Do you know how long you’ll be gone?” The sheriff kept his tone light, but Sadie heard—or hoped she did—a tinge of disappointment that mirrored O’Hara’s expression.

“No idea. Hopefully it will be a cut and dried case.”

“Because you have such a great track record with those,” Cooper said, only half joking. The bright sunlight seemed to suddenly dull as Sadie thought of the last case they had worked together. It should have been enough to put her off men altogether. It had certainly left her questioning her own judgment, and at the same time her father’s death had brought up a maelstrom of long buried emotions that she was still struggling to process. It wasn’t a surprise that Cooper hadn’t raised the question of a date since.

She was glad he hadn’t. Wasn’t she?

“Well, there’s always a first time,” she said lightly.

Cooper nodded, then sensing her mood he changed the subject. “I was hoping to catch you, so it’s just as well I did come over. How did the investigation go?”

Sadie hesitated and looked over at Agent O’Hara, who coughed awkwardly. “I’ll go and wait for you over the road, Agent Price. Nice to meet you, Sheriff Cooper.”

Cooper watched him go, looking amused. “Fresh out of Quantico?”

“A year, I think. This could be his first big case. The Internal Affairs investigation was cut short by the call coming in from the rig, but I couldn’t call it.” Sadie shook her head. “I feel like there should be every reason not to worry, but I’m also sure that the lead investigator wants to hang me out to dry.”

“So, you have to do it all over again?” Cooper looked sympathetic.

“I already told them all I could, but I’ve got a feeling they’ll make me repeat it anyway,” she said with a sigh. Although at first, she had been glad of the interruption, now she realized she could be just prolonging the inevitable.

The end of her career. Possibly even jail time. She shuddered at the thought and pushed it hurriedly to the back of her mind. Right now, there were other things that needed her attention.

The main one was hanging somewhere over the Beaufort Sea.

“I was working on your father’s map last night,” Cooper said. “I think I might know where it starts. Hopefully by the time you get back, I can be sure.”

Sadie met his eyes and saw the warmth in them. “Thank you,” she said, meaning it. Her sister’s death was a reopened cold case now, thanks to the sheriff, and something that they were both working on together. His opening up the files had given them the lead that had led to her father drawing this map.

If they could just decipher what was essentially a page of squiggles, it might just lead them somewhere.

“I had better go,” she said, although part of her didn’t want to go anywhere. “See you, Logan.”

She didn’t use his first name often, and she saw a flicker of surprise in his eyes that turned into pleasure. They stared at each other, and something passed between them, until Sadie dropped her eyes and Cooper gave an embarrassed cough. The moment—whatever it had been—was over.

“Call me if you need me,” he said. “I mean, I know you rely on me to solve your cases.”

“You wish,” she said, grinning, and then jogged over to the road toward O’Hara, raising her hand in a wave. She didn’t look back, even though she wanted to.

O’Hara smiled at her uncertainly. “Are you and the sheriff…?”

“Friends?” Sadie asked lightly. “Sure we are. As I’m sure we will find out, you work a tough case together and you are either going to end up friends for life or sworn enemies. Let’s go and get this helicopter, shall we?”

It was going to be a long trip. It was six hundred miles to the rig, and she wasn’t looking forward to spending seven hours on a helicopter, some of it over an icy ocean.

As they made their way to the pad, Sadie tried not to think about Sheriff Cooper and the way he had just looked at her, much less figure out what it all meant. With the interrupted investigation this morning and his news that he was close to deciphering her father’s map, she had enough going on. Right now, she needed to focus on getting out to the rig and getting stuck into this case.

She had a murder to solve.

And that meant there was a killer still out there.