CHAPTER TWO
1293 Words
CHAPTER TWO
Fifteen years she had been waiting for the clue that would solve her sister’s murder. She felt as though she couldn’t stand another minute.
Sadie clambered to the top of the rock that overlooked the river’s headwaters, feeling frustration welling up within her.
“There’s nothing here to see,” she yelled down to Sheriff Cooper, who was exploring around the bottom of the rocky outcrop. She could hear the bitter disappointment in her own voice. She could also hear Cooper splashing about in the river below and hoped he didn’t alert any nearby bears to their presence. This was one of their main feeding grounds.
It had been that knowledge that had led them here. The crude map that had been drawn by her dying father’s shaky hand hadn’t given them much to go on other than a few vague squiggles of trees and mountains, which could have been anywhere in the wilderness around Anchorage. It was only when she had managed to decipher a cluster of smudges as being, in fact, a bear paw, that they had been able to decipher the location of the X next to it.
Or at least, she thought they had. With the bear paw indicating the headwaters, they had both assumed from the rest of the drawing that the X indicated the large outcrop that overlooked the feeding grounds. There was nothing else here but the river, pine trees, and mountains. Nothing else that stood out.
But there was nothing here on the outcrop either, and Sadie wondered if they had misread her father’s map completely. If that was the case, then they were back at square one.
And then she would never find out who had killed her sister.
“Sadie!” Cooper’s voice cut through her dark thoughts of the past. “Come back down, I think I’ve found something!”
Feeling renewed hope, Sadie clambered back down the rock and splashed through the river to join Cooper, who was wedged behind a rocky ledge.
“What are you doing?” Sadie asked, bemused.
“There’s an opening here,” Cooper called to her, and she could hear the echo from his voice. “It’s a squeeze to get to so it’s easily missed, but it looks as though it opens out into a cave of some kind.”
Sadie felt a rush of excitement at his words. This had to be it. It had to be the X.
But why? What was in there? Sadie hesitated for a moment, torn between needing to know what her father was trying to show her, and wondering what fresh horrors could await.
Another body?
But how would her father know about it, if so? Unless…
The possibility that it had been her father all along who had killed her sister, a possibility that she had barely dared to entertain until this moment, bloomed in her mind. Her father had been a mean bastard, especially after her mother’s death, and as his drinking had progressed, he had grown meaner still.
Yet Jessica had been his favorite, hadn’t she? It was always Sadie rather than her older sister who bore the brunt of her father’s fists. But then, it had always been Sadie rather than her older sister who had stood up to him. Jessica had been the peacemaker, and the one who soothed Sadie’s bumps and bruises after another beating. She was the one who behaved at school and caused no trouble. “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” had been her father’s favorite refrain.
Sensing her hesitation, Cooper wriggled out from behind the ledge and turned to her, his hand outstretched. “Are you okay? I’m sorry, I know this is a big moment for you. We can take a breather before we go on. Maybe even come back another day?”
His eyes were kind, full of genuine concern for her, and Sadie felt a rush of affection for him in spite of the situation. Less than an hour before, they had shared their first kiss in Cooper’s snowcat after weeks of tiptoeing around each other, neither daring to voice their feelings for another. It was a complication that Sadie didn’t need, but once it had happened it had felt inevitable.
She shook her head. “I’ve spent fifteen years waiting to find out what the hell happened to Jessica. I can’t keep waiting. Let’s go in.”
But just as she finished speaking, her cell phone rang. Her work phone. It wasn’t Cooper, which meant the call could only be coming from the Anchorage FBI Field Office, and therefore her boss, ASAC Paul Golightly. Turning away from Cooper, Sadie answered her phone impatiently.
“Agent Price,” she snapped.
As anticipated, Golightly’s gruff tones answered her, dispensing with niceties as usual.
“I need you in Anchorage. Up at the wharf. There’s a body been found. Agent O’Hara will meet you there.”
Sadie suppressed a sigh. “Can’t O’Hara tackle this one on his own?” she asked. She had partnered with O’Hara just a fortnight before on a case up in Prudhoe Bay, and although he was a newly qualified agent, he was sharp.
“I need you,” Golightly said, and Sadie felt her stomach sink as she picked up on his tone. This wasn’t an average murder—if there could ever be such a thing—but something that required her particular expertise. As a Behavioral Analysis Unit special agent, Sadie was called out to anything that looked as though it might require a knowledge of the darkest impulses of human nature.
Serial killers were her usual specialty.
“Go on,” Sadie said, waiting for him to explain.
“The body of a young woman was found wrapped in plastic and hanging from the rafters of one of the old industrial warehouses,” the ASAC told her.
“Wrapped in plastic? And then just dumped?” That was odd, Sadie thought, her mind already whirling through various scenarios.
“There was another body like this found last year, before you transferred up here,” Golightly went on, and Sadie understood why he was calling her. “Exactly the same. But we couldn’t get a lead on the case.”
“I’m on my way,” Sadie said, ending the call. She turned to Cooper, who looked as disappointed as she was, although part of her was also now gearing up to investigate the body in the warehouse, her adrenaline fizzing. She looked from Cooper to the cave, feeling torn.
“Trouble?”
Sadie nodded. “You might want to keep your radio on,” she said. “There’s a potential serial killer on the loose in Anchorage.”
Cooper’s eyebrows flew up his forehead and his face drained of color at the thought. After all, it hadn’t been so long since the last one. But he simply nodded, as practical as ever.
“Come on. I’ll get you back to the saloon so you can pick up your truck.”
Sadie took a last, lingering look at the cave, which almost seemed to be beckoning her now. The key to her family’s secrets and the murder of her beloved sister, which had haunted her for years, could be just feet away. She was so close…
She could feel Cooper staring at her, and she sighed as she turned away from the cave.
“As soon as you can, I’ll bring you back,” he promised.
Sadie nodded, reaching out a hand to touch the cool rock as though bidding it farewell. Whatever secrets it held, they could keep for now.
She swallowed her frustration.
She had a crime scene to get to.
- Writer
