Cold Case Cowboy

“Three days,” Sasha agreed. She started for the desk. “I’ll call Ms. Painter after I check in.”

Dana accompanied her across the plank floor. “You can call, but you won’t be meeting up with her anytime soon. She left town late yesterday morning. Lucky woman,” he added, in an eerie echo of Barbara’s earlier sentiments.

“Lucky because she missed the blizzard?”

“That, too.” Dana addressed the redheaded receptionist. “April, this is Skye’s architect from Denver. Give her a good room and a hot dinner on the house.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Hollander, but I don’t want to take advantage.”

“Dana, and you’re not.” He returned his gaze to the door. “Are you sure you didn’t pass Nick coming in?”

“Very sure. I was watching, for both my SUV and your Sickerbies.”

The lobby phone rang. Tucking the receiver into the crook of her neck, the redhead handed Sasha a key. “Room 27, second floor.” She raised her voice. “Hang on, Dana. Sheriff Pyle’s on the line. He’s asking about Detective Law.”

“Who isn’t?”

Sasha debated as he took the handset, then gave his arm a tap. “Do you have Nick’s cell phone number?”

“Hang on, Will.” He covered the mouthpiece. “He didn’t answer when I called, but go ahead. It’s the Denver area code and NICK LAW.”

Straightforward and simple, she acknowledged. Two qualities she admired.

Taking out her cell phone, she walked away from the desk.

A moment ago, a woman had been sitting in the brown horsehair chair. Now two men stood beside it. The one with dark hair combed away from his face and a short, tidy beard struck her as vaguely familiar. The other had his collar turned up and a stained cowboy hat pulled low on his forehead. His shoulders hunched as he shuffled his feet. He kept his hands in the pockets of his parka and used his elbows to gesture.

Head tilted, Sasha studied his companion. She felt certain she’d seen or met him somewhere. He had a bookish look about him. Maybe he was a friend of her mother’s.

When he caught sight of her, his brows went up. He said something to the man in the hat and started toward her, his right hand outstretched.

“Sasha Myer, hello. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Head cocked, she lowered her phone. “It’s Max, isn’t it?”

“Max Macallum. I’m flattered you remember me. Or did Skye tell you she hired my company to work on the access problem for her resort?”

“Skye and I haven’t spoken about anything except design features and layout.” Her eyes sparkled. “My memory of you involves our respective Christmas parties unfolding at the same time in the same restaurant. Your party ran out of vermouth before dinner, so you, being partial to martinis, snuck in and raided our bar.”

“Then collided with you in my rush to escape unnoticed, and caused you to break a very expensive high heel. I hope you got it repaired.”

“The bartender helped me out. Have you been in town long?”

“Three days.”

“Waiting for me, huh?” She grinned. “I feel so guilty.”

“You are a little late.”

“It’s been mentioned.” She leaned her hip against a support beam. “I got tied up on a site in Minnesota, then it snowed and they closed the airport. Flights got canceled, fog rolled in. More delays. I called Skye five times. She didn’t seem put out.”

“She likes your work. It doesn’t matter, anyway. She’s not here. Left town yesterday, missed all the excitement.”

It was the second cryptic remark she’d heard since her arrival. “How much excitement can there be in a town of only three thousand residents?”

Max spread his hands. “I’d have asked myself that same question until—”

Dana cut in. “Will Pyle hasn’t seen Nick! Neither have his deputies.”

“Look, I promise I didn’t drive past him on my way in. Although…” Sasha gnawed on her lip “…my Land Rover is white, and so’s the snow. And the road. And everything else.” She considered for a moment, then shook her head. “I’d have seen him.”

“Did you try his cell phone yet?”

“Dialing now.”

To get better sound, she walked toward the door. She noticed the man in the stained cowboy hat had vanished.

Nick answered on the fifth ring. “Law.”

“Myer.” Pulling off her long wool scarf, she shook out her hair. “Where are you?”

“Do I detect a note of concern in that lovely voice?”

“Not unless you habitually confuse concern with irritation. There’s a guy here named Dana whom I’m sure thinks I coldcocked you and stole your truck. The sheriff’s already called the front desk looking for you. Some kind of excitement is brewing, and it seems as though Skye Painter and I are the only ones who missed it. So I repeat, Detective Law, where are you?”

“Just turn around.”

His voice came into her other ear; however, a lifetime of similar ambushes kept her from jumping. Brows arched, she swung slowly on her heel to confront him.

“Welcome to Painter’s Bluff, Detective. Why the delay?” She sniffed. “I don’t smell any liquor, so you didn’t stop for a beer. I didn’t pass you, so my SUV must be fine. And you don’t strike me as an addle-brained cop, so I can’t believe you got your hotel wires crossed.”

“Nick!” Dana hastened over. “You made it.”

Nick unzipped his lined leather jacket. “I stopped by the clinic on my way in.”

Concerned, Sasha gave him a once-over. He was even more gorgeous out of the snow. “Did you hurt yourself hooking up our vehicles?”

A frown appeared. “I wanted to see something. Someone, actually. She was about your age and height. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, of Swedish descent.”

A slippery tendril wound its way through Sasha’s stomach. “Was. Past tense. I take it she’s dead.”

For an answer, he curled his long fingers around the nape of her neck. “Her name was Kristiana Felgard. Her body was discovered up at Painter’s Rock early this morning. She was murdered.”

Chapter Two

“I think we’re dealing with a serial killer.”

In the Mountain House bar, Nick went over the grisly details. “The case has gone cold twice since the first murder eight years ago,” he said, “but back then the media dubbed the perpetrator the Snow Globe Killer because at each murder scene he left a snow globe with an angel inside.”

Sasha felt trapped and edgy, but refused to let either feeling show. “Dana said the police found nothing at the scene of Kristiana Felgard’s murder, so your theory already has a hole in it.”

A big one, she hoped. Because ever since Nick had appeared tonight, her stomach had been tied in knots.

Nick slid her a sideways look. “There was an imprint in the snow to the right of the victim’s head. That’s where the killer always placed his mementos. The impression is consistent with the bases of previous snow globes.”

She wanted to leave. More than that, she wanted Nick and Dana to stop looking at her as if she had a big red X on her chest.

She drew a deep, steadying breath, caught the smells of leather, whiskey and wood smoke from the bar’s enormous stone fireplace.

The room felt like an old saloon, warmed with polished oak tables and a mirrored bar that spanned the entire back wall.

Everything was gouged and timeworn and, given Skye Painter’s reputation, no doubt authentic, down to the glasses currently being placed in front of them by a rather baffled-looking server in high-heeled cowboy boots.

Sasha waited until she’d left and the drinks had been rearranged. “The waitress is a blonde. Why aren’t you terrifying her with your serial killer story?”

“Mandy’s color comes from a bottle.” Dana looked through the crowd to the entrance. “She’s a lovely woman, a grandmother of three whose husband passed away last month, which is why Skye hired her. Believe me, Mandy Cullen’s not our boy’s type.”

“No, according to Nick, your boy prefers women with Scandinavian ancestry.”

Nick eyes remained steady on hers. It was unnerving how he did that.

“He does, Sasha. In every case I’ve investigated I’ve found a Swedish or Finnish connection. And you already told us you’re Swedish.”

If she hadn’t been so freaked, she would have been tempted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

She’d come to Painter’s Bluff to design a resort and now she found herself the target of a serial killer. Or so the cop and mayor sharing the booth with her believed.

“My grandmother’s only half-Swedish, Nick. Her father came from Finland. He built ships in Sweden, but he was born in Helsinki.”

Nick’s eyes didn’t waver. “There you go then.”

Her hackles rose. “No, there I don’t go. You said it’s been five years since this guy’s murdered anyone.”

“That we know of.”

“But you would know, wouldn’t you? You’re a homicide cop.”

“I was a homicide cop. I work cold cases now. They’re my specialty. My partner and I have been working on this particular case for the past nine months. Six weeks ago, just after Thanksgiving, a woman was attacked in Aspen.”

“Attacked,” Sasha repeated. “Not killed?”

“She managed to get away, but she couldn’t tell us much. It was getting dark and her attacker was wearing a wool mask when he grabbed her. She’d been skiing all day and took the lift up to one of the more difficult slopes, hoping to squeeze in another run before meeting her friends for dinner. He skied right into her, then dragged her into the trees. She was disoriented, but not as badly as he believed. When he started to tie her up, she fought him.”

“And either pulled off his mask or scratched him. No description, so I’ll go with scratched.”

“Not bad, Detective Myer. Long story short, we were able to get his DNA from the blood and skin under her fingernails. We had a suspect in mind. Unfortunately, his DNA didn’t match. The investigation continued through Christmas, but for all intents and purposes, the case has gone cold again.”

Sasha felt as though she’d been thrown into a patch of quicksand, one that was sucking her in deeper and deeper. She spread the fingers of both hands on the table. “Okay, say Dana was right to call and tell you about Kristiana Felgard’s death. Here you are in Painter’s Bluff, a police officer from Denver who specializes in cold cases. Why on earth would the killer still be in town? I wouldn’t hang around, would you?”

“No, but then I’m not a killer.”

“Nick, he’d have to be crazy—No, scratch that, obviously he is crazy. He’d have to be stupid to remain at the scene of a murder that he must surely know is bound to attract even more police attention than usual.”

“Havoc,” Nick replied simply. “Some serial killers thrive on it. They get a rush from the act, then relive it through the media attention.”

“You said the murderer strangled Kristiana and left her naked inside a snow angel?” God, but that was a grisly image. “And he’s murdered seven other women the same way over the past eight years?”

Nick nodded, rolling the base of his beer glass on the table. “Two of the victims were discovered in Boise, one in a town outside Minneapolis, another in Otter Lake, Utah.”

“That’s only four.”

“It’s the first of two clusters. He murdered those four women eight years ago, then appeared to stop. Three years later, three more women died. The first was visiting her sister in Lake Tahoe, the second was skiing in Wyoming, the third was killed on the rim of Yellowstone Park. The woman in Aspen six weeks ago was extremely fortunate to escape.”

There were times, Sasha reflected, when an imagination could be a curse. She envisioned eight clones, lying naked in snow angels, with the wind blowing their hair over their faces and their eyes wide open and staring. She could even picture the angel snow globes, like the one her uncle Paul displayed on his console table every Christmas.

Across the bar table, Dana drummed his fingers on the scarred wood. “I told Will Pyle to meet us here at seven o’clock. It’s eight now. Where is he?”

Sasha didn’t know or care. If there was one person she had no desire to meet it was the sheriff. She was having a difficult enough time dealing with the men beside her.

“Maybe the Sickerbies ran him off the road,” she suggested.

“Or hit the liquor store again,” Nick murmured.

Dana rubbed his temples. “Thanks for that, Nick. The Sickerbies into theft. God help us if that’s true.”

Sensing an opportunity to change the subject, Sasha asked, “Were you a local boy once, Nick?”

“In a way. I grew up in Outlaw Falls, about a hundred miles from here. Dana and I went to grade school together. His family moved away before we started high school, but we managed to stay in touch.”

Dana continued to massage his temples. “We made a point of going fishing every summer at Sun Lake—that’s near Outlaw Falls—but the fish got scarce and the licensing laws changed. Now we hike up Hollowback and do the camping thing. My five-year-old’s already pestering me to take him along next summer. Fawn would love it. Fawn’s my wife,” he added. “We’re celebrating our fourteenth—” His pager went off, and he unhooked it from his belt. “And even as we speak, she wants me.” Taking a quick sip of beer, he slid from the booth. “My cell phone’s dead. Gotta use a pay phone.”

“My cell’s charged,” Sasha said, but Dana waved her off.

“I want to call Will, too. Besides, it’s quieter in the lobby.” He stabbed a finger at Nick. “Tell her about Kristiana Felgard’s features.”

“No, don’t tell her,” Sasha said when he was gone. “She has a pretty good idea already. Tell me about camping on Hollowback Mountain.”

Nick shrugged. “Hundreds of urbanites do it every summer, which is probably why Skye Painter wants to build a resort.”

Sasha smiled. “You don’t like cities, do you, Nick?

“I don’t mind them.”

Humor nudged aside fear. “My, but you are an enigma.”

The ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. “Not so much. I work in the city but grew up on a ranch. I like to hike up mountains in the summer, fish when I can. Doesn’t seem overly enigmatic to me.”

“I sense a strong desire for solitude.”

The dimple in his cheek deepened. “Point taken. Rocks and trees don’t ask questions.”

“Or commit crimes.” She regarded him in profile, noticed the length of his lashes and the way his hair curled over his shirt. “Are you married?”

The vague smile held. “Not anymore. You?”

“Almost. I did the runaway bride thing, except I was more civilized and left him in his living room rather than at the altar. Do you have a partner?” Amused by the way his eyes narrowed, she clarified, “I mean a police partner.” Then she raised her brows. “Oh, that’s right, you don’t like questions, do you? But I’m not a rock or a tree. You and Dana want to pry into my background, I’m going to pry into yours. Fair’s fair, Detective Law.”

“I ask questions for a reason, Sasha.”

“So do I.”

“You don’t want to talk about Kristiana Felgard. Why not?”

“For the same reason I don’t walk behind horses. If you were me, would you want to spend your first evening in a strange town talking about a dead woman?”

“I would if her death might pertain to me.”

“Guess that makes me totally perverse then. Or maybe I just find it a little spooky that a lunatic killer who couldn’t possibly know I was coming to Painter’s Bluff might want me dead.”

She saw Nick’s lips curve as he watched a group of rowdies at the bar. “Are you trying to goad me, Sasha?” he asked.

Her own smile blossomed. “Maybe a little. If I am, I come by the trait honestly. I also know a loner when I meet one. And I’m truly curious about why a person like you would want to separate himself from the rest of the world.”

“News flash, loners don’t all live in caves.”

“Or even close to it in your case. Why Denver?”

“Why not?”

“Okay, let’s go back further. Why a cop?”

He tipped his face to the ceiling. “You are perverse, aren’t you? And persistent. There’s no deep mystery. I’m a kid from Colorado who watched TV and fell in love with the idea of becoming a cop. The kid grew up, moved to Chicago, learned the difference between reality and fantasy and slowly made his way back to the mountains.”

She watched the play of expressions in his eyes when he turned them toward her. They truly were amazing.

“That’s a very succinct story, Nick, but it’s not an answer. Why a cold case cop?”

“Why an architect?”

She regarded him for a moment, then sighed. “My mother wanted me to design clothes.”

With the glass raised to his lips, he chuckled. “That wasn’t succinct—it was downright confusing.”

“Not if you knew my mother. And our relationship.” She watched Mandy the waitress spill a shot glass of whiskey onto the bar, and relented. “Okay, give, why do you think the man who killed Kristiana Felgard will come after me?”

“I didn’t say he would. I said he might.”

“Subtle difference. Come on, Nick, I don’t even live here. And not that I want any woman to be killed, but in a town of three thousand residents, there must be one or two blond females with Scandinavian backgrounds.”

“The sheriff and his deputies are looking into that.”

“So you’re what? Here in an official capacity, or merely as an interested Denver cop?”

He reached for and captured her right hand. Stroking the back of her fingers with his thumb, he said, “Dana contacted me early this morning. I’m official.” He regarded her through his lashes. “Stories about this serial killer were all over the newspapers eight and five years ago. How is it you never read any of them?”

Tiny threads of electricity raced up her arm. Sasha considered removing her hand from his, but for the moment the sensation fascinated more than it unnerved her.

“Eight years ago, I lived in Atlanta, and Philadelphia after that. The East Coast has murders of its own, serial and otherwise. I moved back to Denver three years ago when two of my Atlanta associates decided to make a lifestyle change and thought I might like to do the same.”

“So you’ve lived in Denver before.” When his thumb grazed her knuckles and made her shiver, she knew she really should pull away. That she didn’t both surprised and intrigued her.

“I was born in Denver. I lived there until my parents divorced and my mother took me to New York. She remarried, divorced again. We moved to Miami. By then I had a brother. Another marriage, another divorce, on to New Haven. Then it was London for a while and Paris, but it was difficult in France. She couldn’t speak the language, and I refused to take the modeling course she enrolled me in. It didn’t matter. Her relationship there failed as miserably as her previous marriages. We went to Stockholm, stayed with my grandmother for a year. I finished high school and moved to Boston to study architecture. That’s where my mother lives now.”

It was more than she usually told people. Unsure why she’d become so garrulous, Sasha gave her fingers a subtle tug. He released her hand but continued to regard her in an assessing way.

“Did you enjoy living in all those places?”

“I liked the people. I make friends easily, so the moving part wasn’t a problem. And who wouldn’t love New York, London and Paris?” From an adjacent booth she heard Mandy laugh as she served her customers, and once again, the image of eight murdered women flitted into Sasha’s mind’s eye. Vexed by her lack of mental control, she released a breath. “Do you have any idea why he killed her?”

Nick had no trouble following her change of subject. “All we’ve got so far is the obvious physical connection to his previous victims.”

Sasha’s head spun. Facts and fears overlapped. “I’m sorry, did you say Kristiana Felgard was local?”

Nick’s expression gentled. “She was a tourist, Sasha. April said she checked into the hotel late yesterday afternoon. She spoke limited English and was very polite.”

Sasha rolled that over in her mind. “Why do you think she came to Painter’s Bluff?”

“She could have been a heli-skier. It’s a big sport here. She had a helmet and goggles in her suitcase. There’s also the ice sculpture festival that takes place at the end of January. Participants are beginning to arrive for that.”

“So you think what? That the killer followed her to Painter’s Bluff?”

“Or knew her itinerary and arrived ahead of her.”

“Are you saying he stalks his victims?”

“I’ve always thought so.”

“Lovely.” Sasha sank back into her seat. “That means he could know my schedule as well.”

“It’s possible.”

“I wasn’t serious, Nick. I thought you just said this guy wasn’t necessarily after me.”

“I’m not saying he’s been stalking you specifically, Sasha, merely that you fit the profile. If he sees you, you could be at risk. The proverbial two birds with one stone.”

Her laugh contained no humor. “Two women with Swedish backgrounds travel to Painter’s Bluff at the same time. Your nut gets an unexpected twofer, and you get a golden opportunity to catch him.” She watched his eyes. “What aren’t you telling me, Detective?”

He regarded her for a long moment. “Kristiana didn’t have a reservation.”

“Well, that’s… Hmm.”

“Yeah, very hmm.”

Mandy wobbled past in her cowboy boots. She had four steak dinners precariously balanced on her arms.

Before she could evade him, Nick recaptured Sasha’s hand. “Are you hungry?”

For him, she thought suddenly, as electric shivers raced up her arm. “I am, actually. I missed lunch.”

“Then we’ll order. While we eat, you can tell me about your life in Denver and why a beautiful woman like you would prefer to design buildings over clothes.”

Feeling suddenly reckless, Sasha leaned closer to him on the leather seat. “It’s a deal. And afterward, you can tell me why a gorgeous cop like you chose to devote himself to solving cold cases.” Giving in to desire, she brushed her lips temptingly over his. “You can also tell me what kind of a snowball’s chance in hell you think you have of talking me into leaving Painter’s Bluff.”

“S’CUSE ME, ma’am.”

A man bumped Sasha’s elbow as he passed her in the second floor corridor. She recognized the stained cowboy hat and charcoal-gray parka, but beyond that didn’t take much notice of him.

She couldn’t believe it was only ten o’clock. So much had happened since she’d arrived in town, it felt like 3:00 a.m.

Nick Law, a cop who specialized in cold cases, believed that a serial killer was going to target her as his next victim. Hows and whys aside, the fact remained that someone had killed a woman last night. A woman with features similar to her own. A woman, like her, of Swedish descent. He’d left her naked in the snow, inside a snow angel. He’d strangled her. Had he also raped her? Nick hadn’t mentioned that, and Sasha hadn’t asked. She really didn’t want to picture it.

So far, the local newspaper was reporting a death with no reference to a serial killer. There’d been no snow globe left at the scene, or if there had been someone had removed it.

Why?

Nick hadn’t been able to answer that question. The sheriff hadn’t showed, and Dana had gone home after his wife paged him. He’d murmured something about in-laws wanting him to put his computer skills back to work and join them in Silicon Valley.

Alone with Nick after that, Sasha had kissed him.

Why had she done that? She wasn’t Barbara—please, God, not even close. And while Sasha did flirt with men sometimes, she seldom went so far as to touch them. She’d meant to tease Nick, she knew that. What she hadn’t intended to do was enjoy herself.

Nick had given her very little by way of a reaction. Whether he’d liked the kiss or not, she couldn’t tell, though he had stared at her for some time afterward.

A reluctant smile quirked Sasha’s lips. Perversity, it seemed, ran rampant in her family.

She heard footsteps to her left, followed by a woman’s voice.

“Evening, Mr. Rush.” April, the redhead from the front desk, flashed a high-voltage smile at the man in the stained hat as he stood outside room 23. “Truck still not fixed?”