Temptation Trails - Page 126

His forehead creased with concern. “What do you mean, someone lured you out here?”

It sounded half-crazy when he said it out loud. But that was exactly what I was thinking.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe the trespasser was still there. Didn’t want to get caught.”

I glanced back at the property. Obviously that made sense. But that explanation didn’t satisfy the sense of unease in my gut.

Kade still looked concerned. He pointed to my arm. “Should you get that looked at?”

“Nah. Just a scratch.”

“Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced, but he went back to his car. “Careful out there.”

“You too.”

He got in and left, but I lingered for a moment, gazing at Rich Pine’s property. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on. I just couldn’t put my finger on what.

CHAPTER 31

Garrett

The glow of my laptop provided the only light in my dining room. The sun had gone down, but I hardly noticed. My mind was feverishly fixed on the cold case. There was a ticking clock out there somewhere, I was convinced of it. The killer was going to strike again.

Whether or not my superiors believed it, I knew. That package on Harper’s doorstep had been a taunt. He was still out there and he was going to kill again.

I couldn’t let that happen.

Harper was upstairs asleep, and Owen had gone to a friend’s house for the night. He hadn’t been in trouble since the shoplifting incident, and I’d all but forgotten I’d threatened to ground him until he turned eighteen. He’d picked a good time to clean up his act. If I’d been dealing with a cold case murder, a pregnant girlfriend, and a wayward teenager, life would have been even more complicated than it already was.

Wincing slightly, I shifted my arm. The laceration wasn’t serious. It had scabbed over in the several days since the visit to Rich Pine’s property. The bruises were just that—bruises. They’d heal.

I still didn’t know if the incident had been a coincidence. If I’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Harper was worried her bad luck was rubbing off on me. I’d told her not to worry about that—that even if it did, I’d handle it. I wasn’t concerned about an amorphous concept like luck.

You can’t arrest bad luck. A killer, though? I could arrest that. Lock it up and make sure it never hurt anyone again.

Especially my woman.

My eyes were tired with strain but I ignored the discomfort. I’d been poring over the old case files, rereading interviews, reports, and field notes. Looking for anything that would point me in the right direction. Anything that might give me the break I needed to find whoever had killed Jasmine.

Other than making sure I hadn’t been seriously injured when the pile of junk toppled on me, my superiors weren’t particularly concerned. Just an accident. I’d been lucky. When Rich Pine got back into town, they were going to reach out and see if he needed help cleaning up his property a bit so something like that didn’t happen again.

I hadn’t pushed the issue or tried to argue that someone had done it on purpose. I had no proof. No evidence. Just a hunch. And my instincts, sharp as they usually were, did not amount to a case.

Besides, I was slightly concerned they were going to start thinking I was paranoid.

And hell, maybe I was.

Thankfully, Harper hadn’t received any more anonymous packages. If someone sent her flowers at this point, I’d probably lose my shit. Especially if they were white.

But it did make me wonder—could I find out who bought those flowers? It had been ten years, but that was still a lead I needed to follow up on. The flower shop in town had been open for twenty-five years and was still in business. If there was even a chance they had purchase records going back far enough, I needed to look into it. No stone unturned, as they said.

I pulled out a printed map of the trail system around Tilikum. I’d marked where Jasmine’s body had been discovered, as well as where I’d found the bracelet and the location of the old barn and root cellar. They made a triangle, each about a mile apart.

There was no record of the barn or root cellar having been searched during the original investigation. It made sense. The assumption had been she’d been taken off the trail and killed where her body was later found. Beyond trying to find signs of the killer’s escape, the investigators wouldn’t have felt a need to search a wider area.

But he hadn’t left anything behind.