Cold Case Affair (5 page)

The phone clicked.

M
uirinn powered up Gus’s laptap.

After fleeing Jett in the cab yesterday she’d spent the afternoon tidying her grandfather’s attic office, and the evening going through the newspaper company books. Her sleep that night had been fitful, and she’d awakened late in the morning to learn from Mrs. Wilkie that Jett had quietly come around at 5:00 a.m to replace the fuel sump in the truck.

Clearly, he’d been avoiding her.

It was for the best.

Muirinn exhaled in exasperation as she pulled her hair back into a severe ponytail. She was utterly mortified by what had come out of her mouth yesterday. Even more disturbing was the spark of need she’d glimpsed in his eyes, the tenderness she’d felt in his touch.

It was all still there—their old bond, the raw, simmering attraction. She and Jett were like flame to fireworks. Always
had been. There was just no way she could be in his presence, or he in hers, without things exploding.

She’d send him a thank-you note for fixing the truck, because her promise to herself—her
vow
to him—was to stay the hell out of his life until things settled down, and his wife and child returned.

She rubbed her face angrily, and clicked open the file labeled
Tolkin
.

And with slow, mounting horror, she began to read what her grandfather had written.

According to Gus, the crime scene photographs labeled
missing
in the brown envelope, had “disappeared” from the Safe Harbor Police Department’s evidence room twenty years ago, during the violent snowstorm that delayed the FBI postblast team’s arrival for forty-eight hours.

Since then they’d been in the possession of retired and recently deceased SHPD officer, Ike Potter.

Over the last few years, Ike, who’d been suffering from cancer, had become a close friend of Gus’s. They’d played chess regularly at the Seven Seas Club. It was during these chess games that Ike had learned the sheer extent of Gus’s obsession with the Tolkin murders and his desperate need for closure, to find out who had killed his son.

This knowledge had begun to wear Ike down, and on his deathbed, Ike had told Gus that he had wanted to come clean, to make peace with the past. And he’d told Gus his story, entrusting him with several crime scene photos that had been kept in a safe deposit box up until that point.

Muirinn scrolled further.

The night of the blizzard, Ike had returned to the police station to pick up a plug-in cable for his vehicle. That was when he’d witnessed a fellow SHPD officer in the dark, with a flash
light, removing the photos from police evidence. The officer had however been interrupted by someone else coming down the hall, and he’d hurriedly trashed them with department waste that was destined for routine incineration in a few hours.

Ike had waited until the coast was clear, then he’d retrieved the photographs and hidden them himself while he tried to figure out what was going on.

The photos were of bootprints taken outside and inside the Sodwana headframe building, and of prints inside the mine allegedly made by the bomber.

Muirinn’s pulse accelerated.

It was Ike’s belief that the prints documented in these photos had been compromised by someone in the SHPD before the FBI team could get in, contaminating the scene and thus sabotaging the investigation.

Muirinn scrolled faster through Gus’s notes, tension squeezing her chest like a vise.

But Ike had died before finishing his whole story. And for some reason, he’d never blown the whistle until speaking to Gus.

There was also no mention of
which
SHPD officer had originally taken the photos from evidence. Muirinn had no means of knowing whether he—or she—was still even a cop. Twenty years was a long time.

Blown away by what she’d just read, Muirinn sat back to catch her breath. According to Gus’s notes, more than one person in Safe Harbor had covered the tracks of the man who had killed her dad, and her mom by default. Nausea—and rage—began to swirl in her stomach.

She turned back to the computer. But the notes ended, the last questions posed:
Did bomber use Sodwana shaft to access D-shaft where bomb was planted? Did accomplice stand guard at headframe?

Accomplice?

Perspiration prickled over Muirinn’s skin.

This was even worse than she’d imagined. This was a conspiracy. The burglar must have been after this information.

And there was certainly no way she could trust the cops now.

Hurriedly, Muirinn emptied the photographs onto the table, spreading them out. She separated the photos labeled
missing
from the rest, and she picked up the image of bootprints made outside the Sodwana headframe building.

Were these the prints of an accomplice?

She selected another photo—of the prints in black mud allegedly made by the bomber himself. A chill crawled over her skin as she wondered whether the man who’d made them still walked the streets of Safe Harbor.

She got up and started pacing in front of the windows, her heart beating fast. She wondered just how far someone would go to keep this old secret buried.

Could they have killed Gus for this?

Who could she turn to? Not Jett. No way. She’d made a vow—she wasn’t going to mess up his family.

She clasped her hand over the little bone compass at her neck. Whatever the answers, she owed it to Gus to find them, to see through what he’d started and secure the closure he’d sought so desperately for the last twenty years.

She owed her dad.

Her mom.

And Muirinn owed it to herself to finally put the past to rest. That Tolkin blast had torn her life apart. It was part of the reason she’d come to hate Safe Harbor, and had so desperately needed to leave it. And leaving had cost her so much.

Including her first child. And Jett.

Now she had a new baby on the way, a business to run. And she had a home she could really call her own—the childhood home that her father had crossed the picket line and died to keep, the home that Gus had stepped in to save from foreclosure after her parents’ deaths. This just made her more determined to stay. Muirinn truly had something to fight for now, and she was not going to let whoever had destroyed her past destroy her future, too.

She moved closer to the window, staring absently at Jett’s deck in the distance as her mind raced, and she was suddenly distracted by a sharp flash of light. Then another.

Muirinn went to a corner window where Gus’s powerful telescope stood atop a tripod.

She swung the massive scope over to Jett’s property, bent slightly and peered through the sight, adjusting the focus.

Surprise rippled through her.

Jett.

Standing on his deck, wearing only drawstring shorts slung low and baggy on taut hips. And he was aiming binoculars at her house…directly at the window in front of which she’d just been sitting.

Had he been watching her all this time?

But now she was watching him, and he was totally unaware. “Gotcha,” she whispered.

She quickly sharpened the telescope’s focus.

Her grandfather’s equipment was state of the art—she could make out the individual ridges of muscle on Jett’s sun-bronzed torso. He looked as though he’d just stepped out of a shower, hair damp and hanging over his brow.

From the privacy of her corner window, Muirinn couldn’t help but study him, panning the telescope slowly over the length of his body, going lower and lower down his abs, fol
lowing the whorl of dark hair into his shorts. Heat pooled low in her abdomen and she felt her nipples tingle.

Jett suddenly angled his binoculars over to her window.

Muirinn’s breathing stalled.

Jett’s body stiffened as he caught her looking at him from the side window. But he didn’t lower his binoculars. He stared right back at her, a slow wry smile forming on his lips.

Stepping back quickly from the lens, she dragged her hands over her hair, face flushing hot. Panic started to circle.

Muirinn quickly reached forward and dropped the blinds. As if that could wipe out what had just happened.

She paced the dining room, swearing to herself. Truly, the best thing for both of them would be for her to get out of here, to leave Safe Harbor. Soon.

But she wasn’t going to do that.

Gus had wanted her to come back.

And she had too much to fight for now. Damn, she had a
right
to be here, to make a life in Safe Harbor if she so chose.

She shot another glance at Gus’s laptop, thinking again about the murders.

How had she manage to end up between a rock and a hard place like this, anyway? Frustration mounted in her, and it turned gradually to anger.

Jett had a responsibility to his family, too. He had no right to spy on her like that.

Snapping the laptop shut, she glanced around. The hidden drawer under the table was still the best place to secure the computer and photographic evidence. She slid the laptop back into the secret compartment, but before she locked the drawer and pocketed the key, she removed four of the photographs labeled
missing
and slipped them into the side pocket of her cargo pants. Then she unlocked her grandfather’s gun cabinet.

She was going to see that mine for herself.

She needed to stand exactly where her grandfather had stood. She wanted to match the photos to the Sodwana site, walk Gus’s last steps,
feel
what he might have felt.

The mine lay farther north, and the area was isolated. Her grandfather had taught her to go prepared when going anywhere in the Alaskan bush, so Muirinn removed a .22 rifle and a box of ammunition.

Perhaps once she’d been to the mine, she’d manage to make some sense of it all.

Jett sat at his glass-topped trestle desk, the blueprints for his wilderness lodge spread out in front of him—his big dream project. But he couldn’t concentrate on his future.

He hadn’t been able to concentrate at all since Muirinn O’Donnell walked back into his life.

He picked up his scopes again and went back to the window, excitement trilling dangerously like a drug though his blood. He could not get her words from yesterday out of his mind. They’d lodged inside him like a big barbed hook, bleeding a trickle of hope deep into his system.

A rueful grin tugged at his lips as he saw that she’d drawn the blinds. His smile deepened—he hadn’t been able to stop himself from toying with her when she’d caught him red-handed with his binoculars aimed at her house. Locking eyes with her through those scopes had been intense, sexual, even over the distance. Damn, she’d made him hard just by looking.

It had always been that way with Muirinn. She sparked the playful in him. The daring. The lust.

The goddamn pain.

Easy on the eyes, hard on the heart—that was Muirinn O’Donnell.

And now that he knew she was available, and that she still clearly wanted him, it raised the stakes.

Big time.

He swore softly.

Going near her again would be akin to touching fire. He’d get burned, and he knew it.

Even worse, Troy would get burned.

Jett put the scopes down, and returned to his desk. But he still couldn’t focus on his project. And the more he sat there, the more he felt like an ass for his little episode with the binoculars.

He grabbed his shirt, yanked on his jeans and scooped up his keys.

He drove his truck over to Muirinn’s house under the pretext of apologizing for scoping her out; besides, he needed to head into the village anyway, to pick up some supplies. But deep down Jett just needed to see her again. She was his addiction; always had been.

But as he pulled into her driveway, he saw that Gus’s truck was gone, and Mrs. Wilkie was bustling down the front steps of the porch, bag in hand, looking flustered.

He rolled down his window, hooked his elbow out. “Lydia?” he said.

She started. “Jett! Muirinn’s not here.”

He frowned at the odd edginess in her tone. “Do you know where she went?”

“That’s the whole thing, Jett—she went to that awful mine! I…I told her she shouldn’t go alone, but you know Muirinn. She never did listen. She left in a real hurry, and she was carrying one of Gus’s guns.”

“What?
Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. It was a hunting rifle.”

“I mean, are you sure that she went to
Tolkin?
”

“That’s where she said she was going.”

Jett thought about Muirinn’s suspicions—the way she’d practically interrogated Chief Moran.

Had she managed to access Gus’s laptop and found out more? Is that why she’d gone to the mine?

Damn—she’d said she would call him.

Angry now, and more than a little concerned, Jett suddenly slammed his truck in reverse, sped backwards down the driveway and spun out into the dirt road.

He punched down on the gas and headed north to the abandoned mine, a sense of unease digging deeper into his chest.

M
uirinn sped down the dirt road, fine gray alluvial silt billowing out behind Gus’s truck as she made her way up through the gulley, into the valley of the Tolkin Mine.

It felt good to drive with the window down, to have the warm summer wind ripping through her long hair, the big fat truck tires under her. The wilderness of this place was whispering through her again, awakening her consciousness.

After having lived in Manhattan, traveling the world, chasing her image of freedom, Muirinn finally realized how much she’d actually sacrificed. Deep down, she knew that everything she’d ever dreamed of was right here.

But she’d needed to get beyond those granite peaks, transcend it all, see what lay beyond the horizons just to be able to return on her own terms. When she was ready.

Except she
hadn’t
come back on her own terms.

She’d come on Gus’s terms—the terms of his will.

Muirinn drew up at Gate 7, the main entrance to the Tolkin property, and checked the odometer—15.4 miles since leaving home. That was how far Gus would have had to have hiked with his heart condition.

Allegedly he’d done it about a month ago—in June. The weather would very likely have been warm, maybe even hot.

She didn’t buy it.

That, in turn, provoked another disturbing question—had someone brought him out here? A cab, maybe? Perhaps his truck had already been malfunctioning.

But if someone
had
dropped Gus out here, why had that person failed to come forward right away when the alarm was first raised that he was missing?

And the reason she was now heading out to the mine troubled her.

Muirinn got out of the vehicle and walked slowly up to the gate. Heat pressed down on her.

A six-foot-high, rusting, chain-link fence ran the length of the property. A hardboard sign, paint peeling, clanked against a pole in the hot breeze, fading letters proclaiming the Tolkin Mine private property, warning trespassers they would be prosecuted.

The big strike had lasted over a year. Combined with the mass homicide twenty years ago, it had resulted in severe staffing and production problems for the Tolkin Mining Corporation. Development mining—the boring of new tunnels deeper into rock in order to reach fresh veins of ore—had to be scaled back, resulting in a shortage of quality ore. And new gold mines in the north had subsequently opened, producing a far greater yield. The resultant competition had killed the Safe Harbor mine, and Tolkin had finally shut its doors seven years after the bombing.

The property had sat abandoned ever since, crumbling with time and seasons.

For a moment Muirinn just stood there, snared by a surge of memories, the place coming to life with people, frantic, milling around like ants. She could hear sirens, see the acrid smoke boiling up out of D-shaft, feel the spring snow cold on her cheeks, her mother’s hand icy in hers. Chief Bill Moran was walking toward them…

Clouds began to gather in the sky, suddenly darkening the ground. The air grew hotter, closer. The strange thrum of a grouse reverberated against the stillness.

Muirinn shook herself, rubbing the chill of the memory from her arms.

She glanced up at the avalanche-scarred mountains that soared up on either side of the Tolkin Valley. Their plunging chutes looked dark and ominous, although they shouldn’t. They were choked with the vibrant green of deciduous summer growth that had burst from snow-scoured ground, and higher up on the peaks, avalanche lilies—a favorite food of grizzlies—had formed a verdant green carpet.

Muirinn stepped up to the gate.

The chain and lock had long ago been rusted and pried open by vandals. Unhooking what was left of the chain, Muirinn creaked open the massive gate, dragging it wide through the dirt so she could bring the truck in.

She drove through, shut the gate behind her, and traveled along the perimeter fence for about three miles until the Sodwana headframe loomed on a rise ahead, a grim, rusting, metal skeleton in the shape of an
A
, a small derelict building squatting at its base.

Just like the photo.

Muirinn stopped alongside the shed.

The windows were partially boarded up, a metal drum and old iron boxcar resting outside. Plastic flapped in the hot breeze. Her mouth felt dry.

This was a bad place, choked with the ghosts of old miners. She didn’t like to think of Gus here, alone. Or down the shaft.

Muirinn retrieved the rifle from the gun box, loaded it and released the safety. She couldn’t say why exactly. But she felt edgy, as if she were being watched by unseen eyes.

Wind gusted, stirring fine silt up into a soft dervish, and suddenly it was cold again, and the silt was blowing snow, and she could see Chief Bill Moran coming, looming, the grim news carried in his posture and stride…Disconcerted, Muirinn again shook away the haunting images.

This place had an eerie way of slamming present and past together, and Muirinn realized that that was exactly why Gus had come here. And why she was here now, too.

Approaching the old headframe building, the .22 clutched a little too tightly in her hand, her eyes tracked over the dry ground, trying to see where the old photos might have been taken, where some accomplice might have stood vigil on a cold morning twenty years ago as a killer trekked deep underground.

A sudden soft whoosh of breeze rustled through the alders, leaves clapping like little hands, an invisible audience watching, waiting, cheering. She glanced nervously back at the main gate. It suddenly seemed so far. Her hand touched her belly.

Maybe she shouldn’t have come out here alone, but she honestly didn’t know who she could turn to right now, apart from Jett. And that definitely wasn’t going to happen.

Making sure her cell phone was easily accessible in her pocket, Muirinn pushed open the old door. It released an inhuman groan of protest, rusted metal grinding against the hinge.

Her heart hammered.

It was stifling inside, rank. She shivered again. Her gaze skimmed around the interior, settling on the heavy-looking grate covering the man-way as the last words in Gus’s notes sifted into Muirinn’s mind.

Did bomber use Sodwana shaft to access D-shaft where bomb was planted? Did accomplice stand guard at headframe?

Was that why he dragged the grate back and climbed down into that black hole?

Maybe he’d wanted to see if it was actually possible to access the bomb site underground from this shaft, and how long it might take.

No, that was pure insanity.

Her grandfather might have been eccentric, but he would never have gone down that shaft alone, not at his age, not with his heart condition. Not without telling anyone where he was going.

She propped her rifle against the wall, bent down to tug the grate off the man-way. It was heavy iron, virtually immovable. She tried to imagine Gus doing this. Sweat prickled over her body as she hefted it a few inches, then a few more, metal grating across metal until she managed to pull the grate right off. Her hands burned, smelled of rust. She’d never have gotten this off if it hadn’t been removed and replaced recently.

Dank air from deep in the bowels of the earth reached up, cold, crawling right into her. Peering cautiously down into the black abyss, Muirinn was suddenly 100 percent convinced that Gus wouldn’t have taken hold of the decaying old ladder rungs and climbed into that black maw alone.

But as she bent down to replace the cover, a powerful crack resounded through the quiet hills, and a slug slammed into
metal just near her shoulder. A cloud of birds scattered from a clump of alders.

It took a nanosecond for Muirinn to grasp what had just happened.

Gunshot!

She crouched down, mind racing.
Must be a hunter. And I just happen to be in the line of fire,
she thought, peeking up carefully through the slatted boards just as another explosive sound boomed through the valley. A slug hammered into the opposite wall, splitting a support beam into shrapnel. A piece stabbed into her shoulder.

Muirinn gasped, clamping her hand over the wound. Blood started to well between her fingers, dribbling down her arm. The report echoed down through the valley, fading into the distant stillness.

She could hardly breathe.

That was no simple rifle. That was the distinctive explosive sound of a point three-effing-oh-three, with enough firepower to fell a moose at full charge!

Almost immediately, another shot walloped through the wall. She dived to her knees, slamming down onto her side into the dirt. Her phone clattered out of her pocket and skittered across the floor.

Grouse fluttered outside.

Someone was shooting at this shack!

She lay dead still, heart jackhammering, skin drenched with sweat. And blood.

Then came another report—this one clunking off the ironwork outside.

Her stomach started to cramp.
My baby
. Oh, Lord, she shouldn’t have come here alone. Muirinn inched along the dirt on her side, reaching for her rifle. Gripping it in her hands,
she wriggled over to a second window that had been boarded over. She edged up, inserted the barrel of her .22 through a large crack. She scanned the mountainside with her scopes, trying to locate the shooter.

She caught a movement in the brush, a slight glint of sunlight against metal. Someone was hiding in the bush, dressed in camo gear and hunting cap, aiming at the shed.

With shaking hands she snugged her cheek against the stock, aimed to the right of the sniper and slowly squeezed off a round.

Almost instantly the sniper returned fire, blasting the boards clear from the window. Muirinn screamed, dropping her rifle as she scrambled for cover. Shattered wood blew clear across the room, a piece glancing across her temple.

Panic and pain tore through her body.

Her weapon was no match for that kind of firepower.

Muirinn tried to crawl over to her phone. But the sniper could now see in through the window with his powerful scope, and a slug
thwoked
into the dirt just in front of her cell, shooting sand into her face.

She lurched back with a whimper, crawled into a far corner and cowered there, blood now running down her face from the wound on her temple as more slugs slammed through the shack.

The only reason she wasn’t dead already was because the heavy metal boxcar outside was preventing bullets from coming through the wall. But that meant she couldn’t move. She couldn’t call for help.

Tears of frustration burned into her eyes. She held her stomach, feeling small cramps sparking across her abdomen.

Oh, please, I don’t want to die like this. I don’t want to lose my baby.

Then she heard a slug thunk into her truck outside, and the powerful odor of gas fumes reached her nostrils. Another
well-aimed shot ignited the fuel with an explosive
whoosh
that filled the air with a rush. She heard the hot crackle of flames, saw black smoke rising outside the far window. Someone out there was determined to kill her.

If the shack caught fire, she’d be burned alive.

If she tried to flee, she’d be shot.

She was trapped.

Jett’s truck bounced over ruts in the road as he raced north, a cone of silt roiling out behind him. His gun lay on the seat beside him. He had no idea what Muirinn was up to, but a cold instinct told him trouble awaited.

Nearing the Tolkin perimeter, he saw a plume of black smoke twisting up into the wind.

Jett slammed down on the gas and blew his truck right through the closed mine gate, smashing it back with a violent crash and scrape of metal. Spinning his tires in the fine dry dirt, he swerved and sped along the perimeter fence, aiming for the source of the smoke.

As he approached, he realized it was Gus’s red truck burning.

Jett drove even faster. But suddenly a cloud of dirt spat sharply up in front of his tires. Then another. Then something thudded into the bed of his truck.

With raw, gut-slamming shock, Jett realized that someone up in the hills was shooting at
him,
trying to stop him from reaching the shed. And judging by the burning wreck of the truck and the state of the shed, Muirinn was holed up in there like prey.

Or worse.

She could already be dead.