Cold Fear (12 page)

A sudden screech made her shriek out loud and take a half-step back. Her finger wrapped around the trigger as a large tomcat dashed past her and leapt toward the other cottage.
Oh, my God
. Her heart pounded. She exhaled and lowered the gun, sagging against the railing as she turned to watch the animal run away. A cat. She’d nearly shot a damn cat.

The next moment her head was slammed into the railing and light burst behind her eyes, cascading along her nerves through her entire body as agony exploded. Aiming the Glock at the sand, she pulled the trigger as she dropped to her knees. The gunshot reverberated through the night, echoing off the water with a powerful punch. She heard a muttered curse, then the sound of running feet as she struggled to rise. Nausea rolled in her stomach, blood dripped from a scalp wound.

A few seconds later a door banged and more footsteps thumped down the wooden steps next-door.

“Dr. Campbell? Are you okay?” ASAC Frazer.

Was she ever glad to see him. He took her Glock from her fingers and she didn’t object.

Agent Randall appeared next, running out of the cottage. He was still struggling to get a t-shirt over an impressive looking chest when he arrived.

She smiled unsteadily. Not hurt enough to be unable to appreciate some six-pack abs apparently. That was a good sign. “Someone was under my house and smashed my head into the railing when I confronted them.” Her voice was a croak, but she hauled herself up the post, counting to ten to find her balance. “I got a shot off into the sand and he ran away.”

“Which way did he go?” Frazer asked, looking as if he wanted to take off after them, but was forced to stay with her.

“Toward the road. Go. I’m fine.” The sound of a small engine roaring to life filled the air—a dirt bike most likely. Randall took off running. Frazer stood staring at her like he thought she was nuts. “Exactly what happened?” he asked.

She touched her temple gingerly. Right now, she wanted to close her eyes and get the dizziness to stop. She braced both hands on her thighs, breathing through the pain, wishing she’d called the cops in the first place. Stubborn didn’t even begin to cover it. “I heard a noise down here. Decided to investigate.” She cleared her throat. “A cat ran out and I turned to watch it run away, assuming it was the culprit. I let my guard down.” She pinched her lips together, pissed. “Someone hit me from behind.”

“Did you see anything? A face?”

“White lights and tweety birds.” She didn’t bother to see if he appreciated her humor. She gritted her teeth and made herself stand upright, wobbling only slightly as her vision blurred. “I didn’t see anything that could identify someone. It was a man, but that’s all I’ve got.”

“What makes you say it was a man?”

Izzy frowned. “The size and feel of his hand on my head felt like a man. He was bigger than me and I’m not exactly petite.” She squinted. “Maybe I saw a pair of black work boots?”

Frazer flicked on his flashlight and swung it under the deck. The door to her little tool shed swung open.

“What the hell?” She went to take a step forward, but he put an arm around her shoulders, holding her in place. Maybe he knew how close to falling over she really was. “Why would anyone break into my tool shed?”

“Wait.” Frazer narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the scene. Izzy hated how conscious she was of the strength of his arm, the heat of his fingers touching her. “Can you tell me if anything has been stolen?”

She went to step forward again, but he gripped her tighter, forcing her to stay exactly where she was. She looked up. “From here?”

He nodded.

She hung onto him then, less steady on her feet than she’d realized. She turned her attention back to her tool shed and tried to blink the blurred vision out of her eyes. Lawn mower, weed whacker, hammer, shears, screwdriver. Some dried bulbs. Empty plant containers. Trowel. A half bag of soil. “Everything looks like it’s there.”

“Are you sure?”

The intensity of the question made her look again. Okay, shit.
Pay closer attention
. It all looked right… Her eyes caught on an empty wall bracket. A sense of dread sliced between her ribs and made it difficult to breathe. “The shovel. The shovel’s missing.” Izzy thought her knees might collapse, but Frazer’s hold kept her upright.

If he noticed her distress he didn’t comment. He pulled out his cell phone, one-handedly flicked through some images and then held the screen in front of her nose. “Is this your shovel?”

Her eyes bugged as she recognized the scene from yesterday morning. The dunes where Helena had died. A shovel lying in the sand.
Her
shovel—identifiable from the yellow insulation tape her mother had wrapped around the handle, years ago. She hadn’t paid it any attention at the time, she’d been more concerned about the teens. But that was her shovel, and it had been used to bash Jesse over the head.

“Yes.” She swayed, a buzzing sound roaring in her ears. She must have staggered because suddenly he pulled her tight against him. Holding onto him, she laid her cheek on the smooth planes of his chest and closed her eyes, just for a moment, to try and stop the world from spinning so wildly.

He smelled like warm linen with the faint scent of aftershave.

He wrapped both arms around her, and she gripped the material of his shirt and held on tight. When was the last time she’d leaned on someone? She didn’t know. Couldn’t remember. She took a few deep breaths to make her pulse slow, to try and get herself back under control. After a moment she realized she was inhaling his scent and pressing her body flush against his from knee to chest.

Crap.

She pushed away unsteadily. “I’m okay, thanks. I need to sit down.”

“Don’t touch anything,” he warned. His blue eyes radiated cold authority rather than warm comfort, which was exactly the reminder she needed about who he was and what he did. She nodded and then slowly walked down to the beach and collapsed heavily in the dry sand. Her body shook. The man who’d killed Helena had been here tonight, underneath her house. He’d stolen
her
shovel and used it to beat Jesse. Then he’d come back—why? Was she a target? Kit? It didn’t make sense—and yet, it made a terrible kind of sense.

Every muscle in her body tensed. This couldn’t be a coincidence. He knew what she’d done and was torturing her with the knowledge.

She staggered to her feet. She should tell the FBI everything she knew, but then they’d arrest her and no way was she leaving her sister unprotected. Her hands clenched into tight fists. She could almost hear her mother’s hysterical screams reverberating around her head.

She’d do anything she had to, but she wasn’t letting this sick sonofabitch get anywhere near Kit, even if that meant lying through her teeth to the FBI, including the guy who made her insides melt every time she saw him. Worse, he made her feel safe and protected, but she knew he’d turn on her in an instant if he ever discovered the truth. She wasn’t about to let that happen.

Chapter Eight

L
INCOLN
F
RAZER WAS
pissed, and he rarely got pissed.

What had the woman been thinking, investigating alone in the dark, one night after a brutal rape and murder had been committed a few miles down the road?

Except what was she supposed to do, call the cops every time she heard a strange noise? That would get old fast. Isadora Campbell had been a soldier. She was armed. She wasn’t some simpering idiot, but he was still pissed. He wasn’t a sexist asshole. He believed everyone should be prepared to protect themselves because cops couldn’t be everywhere at once. Men and women should both learn self-defense. Kids should know how to fight back. So what the hell was his problem?

The image of Isadora Campbell wearing a toe tag was his fucking problem.

She’d refused to go to the hospital so Frazer had insisted she go to bed instead. Doctors really did make the worst patients. She’d looked tired and wrung out and he didn’t need the distraction. The fact she was becoming a distraction was another reason he was pissed off.

When she’d clung to him earlier, molding her soft curves and long limbs against his, he’d held her not to give comfort but because she’d felt good in his arms.

He flexed his fingers into fists. Other people crossed lines. He drew them.

When he’d seen her heading outside earlier tonight, he’d deliberately turned away. He’d decided she was probably letting her dog out, and hadn’t trusted himself to follow her out onto a moonlit beach.

Instead she’d walked straight into the arms of Helena Cromwell’s killer and his “feelings” could have gotten her killed. The fact the killer had been so close was both frustrating and curious. Frazer watched the CSU tech dusting the tool shed and its contents for prints. Randall had another evidence tech photographing tire impressions from whatever motorbike the unsub had used to get away.

Izzy had positively identified the shovel used in last night’s attack, which told him a couple of things.

The killer was probably local. And he’d made some sort of mistake.

Had the unsub stolen the Campbell women’s shovel simply because their house was on the edge of town, and the shed was easy to break into? Maybe the killer had known the doc was on duty at the hospital on New Year’s and wouldn’t be around. Frazer had a suspicion the unsub hadn’t meant to leave the shovel behind at the crime scene yesterday so it might yield something useful.

The guy had made a miscalculation coming back here tonight. Frazer wanted to capitalize on that error. Could one of the Campbell women be involved? They both had alibis, neither had motive and neither were strong enough to simultaneously overpower both victims.

But Kit’s new boyfriend was an unknown factor…

Frazer needed to pin down an exact timeline of Kit and Ridgeway’s activities because they’d ended up getting stoned right next door. Ridgeway might have had the means and opportunity to commit the crime. Even if Ridgeway wasn’t the killer, he or Kit might have seen something useful. They needed to talk to the kid ASAP and run thorough background checks on all three of them.

Presumably the killer had returned here because he worried someone might recognize the shovel and had come back to wipe away any potential evidence he’d left—which pointed away from Kit and Izzy. It was their shovel, their shed. No need to pretend they hadn’t touched it.

The tech stood back. “There’s blood on the railing behind you,” she noted.

Frazer glanced behind him. “Dr. Campbell’s, but you should sample it anyway.” She’d hit her head pretty hard, patched herself up with butterfly sutures and declared herself “fine.”

Stubborn.

He moved out of the CSU’s way. He still had Isadora’s Glock in his pocket. If she hadn’t been armed, there was a good chance she’d be dead. The thought of what might have happened only yards from where he sat, trying not to think about her, was beyond disturbing. This was why he didn’t get involved. It took away his focus from the killer while he worried about the prey—but wasn’t that why he did what he did in the first place? Because he worried about the prey?

“I’m finished.” The crime scene tech packed up her kit and he nodded his thanks as she headed back to her car. Hopefully she’d find something that would nail the guy. Finish this thing.

The good news was, Frazer now had a lot of information to digest to build a profile—it wasn’t an easy process and it wasn’t magic. Getting it right wasn’t about guessing correctly. He used some inductive reasoning, drawing on years of research and data. The problem with inductive profiling was it relied on the subsample of criminals who’d been caught, which immediately produced bias in the data. It also assumed behavioral consistency—that an offender behaved in the same way over a period of time even while committing different crimes—and the homology assumption—the assumption of similarity between different offenders who commit similar crimes.

Neither were proven.

But Frazer was pretty sure he could conclude that the killer’s ego would be huge. Fantasy would play a large role in how he committed and refined his murders. The killer would have average to above-average intelligence. Be sexually competent. Probably be an older or only child.

Deductive reasoning was more accurate but took much longer to build into useable information. Common sense also played a part—the offender was likely to be strong enough to hike through the dunes, wield a shovel, and ride a dirt bike, which narrowed the suspect pool a little.

Now that he’d realized Helena’s shoes were missing, he’d started running ViCAP searches to see if any links to other crimes could be found. Then he’d get Felicia Barton working on a geographical profile and the theory of distance decay—and see if they could figure out where this unsub was most likely to live.

Intuition and instinct from years of hands-on experience played a much more intangible role in his profiling methods. Frazer didn’t think this killer would be easy to catch. He had the horrible feeling this particular killer had been flying under the radar for years.

What did Ferris Denker have to do with this case? If they were compatriots, it put the age of the killer in the upper part of the range—forties to sixties—old for a serial killer who’d never been caught. But if the unsub was a disciple all bets were off, although he was likely to be younger and more easily influenced.

Frazer didn’t like guesswork. He liked facts and needed to concentrate on what he actually knew.

Frazer shoved his hand in his pocket and touched the doc’s pistol. Better give it back to her before he called it a night. He headed up the wooden steps of her deck and let himself in through the French doors. The lamp in the corner blazed. Barney came over and he gave the dog a scratch. The rustling of blankets drew his eyes to the couch as someone sat up. Isadora.

“Where’s Kit?” he asked quietly. He’d assumed the younger woman would be here too. A chaperone of sorts, a barrier.

“She was wearing earphones and didn’t wake up. I let her sleep.”

His lips tightened. The younger woman needed to understand what was happening and indulging her wasn’t going to do that. Sheltering the girl was dangerous for both of them. He’d talk to her himself tomorrow.