Read Death at the Summit Online
Authors: Nikki Haverstock
Death at the Summit
To John Haverstock, who didn
’
t let me throw my computer off a mountain when I got frustrated.
Special thanks to Zara Keane and Zoe York who helped me put all the information into action. I owe you both hugs and endless drinks.
To my supportive family, thank you for only being slightly shocked when I said I was going to write a book.
Thank you to the Archery community—without you, I wouldn’t have a setting or any villains. Especially, Teresa Johnson who is my archery partner-in-crime and double-checks that my fictional archery world doesn’t get too out there.
Thank you to Lori, Holly, and AJ, who give me a private place to vent so I don’t make a fool of myself in public.
Thank you to my amazing cover artist and editing team: you are the ones that made the book shine.
CHAPTER ONE
I entered the conference room of the Westmound Center for Competitive Shooting Sports a few minutes before the scheduled meeting. The meeting was supposed to be for all the people working range day for the Westmound Summit, which started the next day, but I was the only person there, along with Moo, my loaner dog while I am at the center.
The room had several rows of tables with chairs that faced a wall covered in whiteboards. Along the top of the boards were paper chains made from construction paper. Our evening television watching in the unit I shared with my roommate, Mary, had been transformed into craft time. The paper chains we’d made weren’t the traditional ones of people holding hands, but long lines of bows, both recurve and compounds, and a variety of guns.
Every week when went we went to church with Liam, Mary insisted that we pick up just a few more things, and the entire center had been transformed into an explosion of Christmas and holiday decorations. Mary was obsessed with decorating.
There was a real tree in the corner that barely reached my shoulder and was straining under the weight of our handmade ornaments. It was enswathed in lace-covered, bead-studded little plastic guns and red and green army men, each with a little felt Santa hat. Moo trotted over to the tree and sniffed the glittered popcorn strands that hung on it. His fuzzy lips twitched, and he extended them toward the chain.
“Moo, get over here,” I called to him. He slowly came over to me, casting longing looks over his shoulder at the tree, as I pulled out a chair at the front table and faced the whiteboard.
The windows in the room were covered in sticky window clings proclaiming Merry Christmas. Outside, snowflakes fell slowly, completing the image of the perfect Christmas season that I had been raised to imagine by television and movies. This would be my first winter with snow, and I had already spent hours staring out the window.
I scratched behind Moo’s large ears, which were propping up a tiny Santa’s hat. He perfectly matched the harlequin Great Dane gracing my shirt, though Moo was not decorated with lights and ornaments the way the dog on my shirt was.
Jess raced into the room, her pursed lips at odds with her whimsical Christmas shirt with reindeer drinking from wine glasses. It was silly-sweater week at the Westmound Center for Competitive Shooting Sports as part of our celebration before the center closes for Christmas break.
She stomped over to the whiteboard while looking at her notebook then started writing out a list on the board. “Thank you all for coming. I’m in a rush, so please pay attention while I pass out your assignments.”
“Hey, I hate to break it to—”
Jess cut me off with a raised hand over her shoulder as she continued to write. “Not now, Di. We have a lot of things to get through, and we can’t waste everyone’s time with your jokes.”
I snorted. It was true that often I couldn’t keep myself from being a snarky goof-off, but right now was not one of those moments. In the handful of weeks I had worked at the center, the staff had become a casual family, especially those who worked on the archery side of the center. Jess and I had been friends since college. We both chose to attend an excellent Texas university with an active archery program. The members of the team were roomed together. Knowing each other for so long allowed some leniency in how we talked to each other.
“Turn around, Curly.”
Jess whipped around, her dark curling hair bouncing, with a huge gasp then looked around the empty room. “Where is everyone?”
The last event at the center, a coaches’ course, had ended in murder, and Jess had been working overtime to make sure the event was perfect. Tomorrow, the Westmound Summit started. At the yearly event, employees from Westmound and Westmound subsidiaries came together to show off their new products and talk about the Westmound brand. Normally, it was held in Salt Lake, but this year, we were hosting it in Wyoming because Westmound wanted to show off its new state-of-the-art training facility.
I shrugged at her.
“I’m exhausted,” said Jess. “This time, everything needs to go perfectly.” She checked her phone then pulled a chair around the table to sit opposite me. She sagged into her chair before grabbing a piece of paper out of her notebook. “I have something for you. This is the list of archery equipment you should get.”
She slid the piece of paper across the table to me. I had started shooting archery again with beginner equipment I was borrowing from the range. My roommate, Mary, had been joining me on the range for daily practice. We had both taken a break from shooting—her for a year and me for eight years—but now we were hitting the range daily. Jess was the elite training coach at the center and had been working with both of us. My old equipment was long gone, except for my finger tab, and Jess had offered to recommend equipment once I was back at the level where I needed it.
The list included riser length, limb length and draw weight, stabilizer lengths, as well as everything I would need for a full competition setup, but nowhere did it list what brand or model. My confusion must have shown because Jess turned the list so she could see it, too.
“This is a good starter set up that we can adjust as you figure out what you like. I modeled it on what the Koreans are shooting. That’s what we talked about, right?”
I nodded. The Korea Women’s recurve team was a dominant force in competitive archery and if it was good enough for them, then it was good enough for me. “But there aren’t any brands or model names on the list.”
She slumped back in her chair, scrubbing her hand through her hair a few times before rubbing her eyes. “I have a suggestion for that, but don’t feel any pressure. I was going to recommend that you stick to Westmound products. They’re the best in the world, and you do work for them, so…”
“Yes, totally. I’d love to do that.” In the short time I had worked for them, they had taken great care of me. After finding a body last month, the center owner, Elizabeth, had personally arranged for me to meet with a local counselor and called once or twice to ask if I liked my job, if I needed anything, or had suggestions to improve technology at the center since that was my job.
“Westmound products are amazing. I want you to ask Liam what he recommends.” Liam’s job description was the rather vague-sounding title of equipment guy. Many people in the industry called him Lumberjack, but after he confided that he preferred his real name, my friends and I had switched to Liam.
Jess checked her watch one more time then pulled out her phone. “I’m going to call everyone and see why they aren’t here.”
I grabbed Moo, who was wiggling around on the ground to scratch his back, and slipped through the door with the list. Maybe Liam was in the equipment room, and I could get him a copy of the list. I had barely seen him since Mary, Liam, and I had attended church last Sunday. Usually, we would share a meal with some friends at the center cafeteria a few days a week or have a variety of conversations in the hallway, but he had been busy preparing for the summit late into the night then sleeping in. I knew because I not-so-casually asked whenever I encountered one of the firearms guys he hung out with.
Moo darted ahead then ran back and leaned up against me as I walked. After repeating this three times, I stopped and grabbed his face. His head was just above my waist, and I only had to lean over a little to look him in the eyes. “You’re going to knock me over one of these days.” I couldn’t help but pepper the top of his head with kisses.
I released him, and he bounded and bounced all over the hallway with his tongue hanging out and the corners of his mouth pulled up into a grin.
On my first day of work, Moo had moved into my office to get away from the sound of gunfire on the other side of the horseshoe-shaped center that I worked in. We had become fast friends, and I thought of him as my dog even though he belonged to Liam, who fed him and gave him a place to sleep at night.
I rounded the corner and approached the room marked Equipment.
Moo hopped into the room, but I hung back at the door to observe Liam for the time it took him to turn. He was the epitome of the strong, silent type. Mary said he had a reputation for not talking, but I didn’t find that to be true, as we often chatted. He was taller than I was, with a full beard that he confessed he only trimmed in winter when he started zipping it into his jacket. His hair was short on the sides and longer on top, somewhere between a Mohawk and a military flattop. He had light eyes somewhere between green and blue. Maybe one day I would be able to get close enough to discern which.
I watched his hands deftly assemble a gun on the counter until Moo shoved his head between Liam and the counter. Liam looked around, and when we locked eyes, he gave me a quick smile and waved me into the room.
He turned back to finish his task. “Hey, on the corner of the table is a book for you.”
A large worktable dominated the center of the room, and on the corner was a book that Mary and I had discussed last Sunday. I had mentioned wanting to read it. The cover of the paperback clung tight to the inner pages, and the spine was smooth. It appeared to be a brand-new copy. If he’d bought a copy just to loan it to me, then that was one of the sweetest things ever, but I shouldn’t assume. Maybe he never read his copy or wanted a copy for himself. “Thank you. I’ll return it when I am done.”
Liam shrugged without turning around. The back of his neck was a little red. “No worries. I wish I could chat more, but I have a ton of work to do before tomorrow.” He took the gun he had finished, put it into a case, then added it to a growing stack of cases on the far side of the table.
I folded the list, feeling a bit silly for interrupting him. I could wait until I returned from Christmas break. Moo returned to my side. “I totally understand. I’ll catch you later.” I turned to leave, a little embarrassed, my hand with the list at my side. Moo snatched the list from my hand and bounded across the room, banging into the back of Liam’s knee.
He reached down to Moo’s mouth and gave him a firm command. “Drop it.” He looked over the list, and his eyes lit up. “Were you going to ask about equipment? I can squeeze in three minutes for that.”
Three minutes of talking was better than nothing. “Jess says I am ready to order equipment and I should talk to you. I want to go with all Westmound equipment.”
He looked back at me. “Are you sure you want to do that? You don’t have to just because you work here.”
“I want to.”
He pocketed the list and gave me a smile. Then he leaned back on the table. “How is shooting going?”
“Awesome! I’m so glad to be shooting again. Mary has started shooting again, too. Mostly, I have been focusing on basic form and building strength. I’m so excited to get my own setup and really start training.”
Liam nodded along then watched me for a few second before replying, “How serious are you?”
I was passionate about archery, and I wanted to train hard and shoot well, but I hesitated. My instinct was to say something offhand like “We’ll see,” or “It depends,” but I knew that wasn’t true. I hadn’t expressed to anyone how badly I wanted to test myself and see what I was capable of. Maybe it was a need to prove myself after the divorce, some deep-seated urge to prove that I wasn’t too old or perhaps to cash in on all the potential I’d had while on the college archery team. I started to step closer to him but caught myself and stood still.