Cold case connection, p.1
Cold Case Connection, page 1
Hunting down old leads
puts a murderer on their trail.
Convinced his sister’s death wasn’t an accident, private investigator Sergio Ross is determined to catch her killer. But with all the clues hinting at a connection to another unsolved murder, he has to join forces with Helen Pike—a woman linked to both deaths—to find the truth. Can they follow the cold evidence trail to get justice…before they become the next victims?
Roughwater Ranch Cowboys
Their car began to accelerate down the mountain.
“Slow down, Sergio,” Helen cried.
“I can’t. We have no brakes.”
Inch by inch the SUV picked up speed. The black rocks of the cliffside streaked by as the car shimmied closer and closer to the edge of control.
Sergio downshifted, but the vehicle accelerated anyhow. As the rocks flashed by on either side of the car, he fought to keep to his side of the road. Their speed increased. He pumped the brakes frantically with no response.
“Jump out, Helen, before we’re moving any faster.”
“No.”
“Listen…”
“Stop it, Sergio.” Her words snapped out like the crackle of electricity. “I’m not leaving you, not like I did to your sister.”
Sergio groaned. He’d thought everything between them was about Fiona, but now all he could hold on to was getting Helen safely out. In that moment everything vanished but the need to keep Helen safe…
Dana Mentink is a national bestselling author. She has been honored to win two Carol Awards, a HOLT Medallion and an RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award. She’s authored more than thirty novels to date for Love Inspired Suspense and Harlequin Heartwarming. Dana loves feedback from her readers. Contact her at danamentink.com.
Books by Dana Mentink
Love Inspired Suspense
Roughwater Ranch Cowboys
Danger on the Ranch
Deadly Christmas Pretense
Cold Case Connection
Gold Country Cowboys
Cowboy Christmas Guardian
Treacherous Trails
Cowboy Bodyguard
Lost Christmas Memories
Pacific Coast Private Eyes
Dangerous Tidings
Seaside Secrets
Abducted
Dangerous Testimony
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Cold Case Connection
Dana Mentink
Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
—Romans 12:19
To all the single parents who are heroes to so many.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dear Reader
Excerpt from Killer Insight by Virginia Vaughan
ONE
Helen Pike awoke with a jolt, cold sweat dappling her brow. For a shuddering moment, she thought she was back in the tunnels, a naive teen, on that terrible night that would not leave her soul. Cold stone, silence and an endless dripping echoed from the past. She rubbed her temples to massage the memories away.
That was fifteen years ago. You were a kid in high school. Are you ever going to let go of that nightmare?
For some inexplicable reason, she’d recently begun to relive the tragic event in her dreams. Five high school friends, Helen, Fiona, Trish, Gavin and Justin, had gone into the abandoned tunnels not more than two miles from the cottage where she now sat, but only four made it out alive. Trish had been murdered, her life ended on the frigid rock floor, her killer never caught.
Helen propped herself up on the musty couch and brushed her hair out of her face. The cottage, nestled on Roughwater Ranch property, was weakened by age and weather. Her stand-in parents Gus and Ginny Knightly, the ranch owners, had finally decided to have it demolished. That was fine by Helen, since it reminded her of yet another tragedy, one that she might have prevented, which hurt all the worse.
What happened with Trish was ancient history; losing one of her friends to murder should have been a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Yet three years ago, her other high school friend, Fiona Ross, had stayed in Driftwood, in this very cottage as a matter of fact, and she too had been murdered during that visit.
“An apparent hit-and-run,” the police officer had said. “The driver didn’t stop.”
Didn’t stop, and neither had the anguish that spawned in Helen that day. Two friends, two killings. She’d never thought the deaths could be related, but then she’d found the note four days ago, written in Fiona’s hand, stuffed under the desk blotter.
Trish. Proof.
Find out who still has theirs.
Trish? The name was the tip of a nail, poking in her heart. Proof? The hammer plunging it deep.
What had Fiona been looking into? Why bring up the high school murder? Those long three years since Fiona was killed felt so fresh, Helen could recall the smell of the pink funeral carnations, hear the cries of Fiona’s babies, the thin wails that reverberated over the gravestones and arrowed right to Helen’s core. The girls were toddlers now, almost three. How would they remember their mother who’d missed out on so much?
Her phone buzzed with a reminder alarm, rattling her back to the present.
Ten at night. She needed to double-check the dining hall setup while the Roughwater Lodge was quiet, the guests all gone to bed for the night. No more time to putter about in this relic, looking for answers she’d never find. Maybe demolishing it would blast away her guilt too.
Something snapped outside, and she jerked to her feet, nerves taut. Most likely a deer? A coyote? Why had she come here so late at night?
Don’t be a ninny—you’re perfectly safe. The cottage was a short distance from the lodge which she managed for Gus and Ginny. They were like family to Helen, and she’d always affectionately called them aunt and uncle. The ranch was her home, workplace of her overprotective brother Liam, her adopted brothers Mitch Whitehorse and Chad Jaggert. Nothing could happen to her on this property.
But Fiona Ross was dead, just like Trish, and now she couldn’t ignore the notion that the two were connected. Helen’s conscience began its familiar badgering.
Why didn’t you ask Fiona where she was going that day? Why she was distracted? Worried?
It was the list of questions Fiona’s brother Sergio had flung at her the day of Fiona’s funeral. Since then, he’d rebuffed every effort she’d made to reach out to the children, to try and connect in some small way with the little girls who’d lost their mother on her watch. Her cards were returned, her phone calls unanswered. He blamed her, but not as much as she blamed herself.
Helen tiptoed to the window and looked out into a thick screen of oak and pine. The branches dripped with moisture from the brewing January storm that swept in from the ocean across the acres of ranch property. She could make out nothing sinister in the damp night, no monsters or bogeymen.
Maybe it was her imagination stoking her paranoia. Certainly that seemed to be the opinion of Mark Farraday, the police chief standing in for Danny Patron who had taken a leave of absence. Chief Farraday merely raised a skeptical eyebrow when she’d presented Fiona’s note.
Helen had begun to doubt herself. Could it be mere coincidence that Fiona had scrawled that message just before she was killed?
Snap.
Now the sound came from the rear. She gulped in a breath. Surely not, more likely it was outside, some animal looking for shelter. Still, she gripped the phone in her pocket. Should she call the police? And tell them what? She’d heard a noise?
She shook her head. Any other time she would have texted her brother Liam, but he was away with his new bride Maggie on their honeymoon. Chad? The poor guy was probably exhausted after assisting the vet all day with inoculating the herd.
Big-girl time, Helen. Go get in your car and drive away.
She’d reached for the front doorknob when a crash of breaking glass and a sudden whoosh of air rushed through the house along with a bang that shook the walls. She screamed and yanked the door open and was halfway to her car when she realized what must have happened. The mangled edge of a tree limb protruded from the shattered glass. A branch from the aged oak had come loose and crashed through the side bedroom window. It took several steadying breaths before she could laugh at her own terror.
No fancy double-paned windows here, the cottage was outdated, damaged by an earthquake that had rumbled across the region some months prior.
Teeth gritted, Helen retraced her steps. No reason to leave glass strewn everywhere. The very idea of it aggravated her need for tidiness, which Liam said bordered on obsession. She tried to flick on the lights. Nothing. The power had gone out due to the howling storm. Instead she activated her phone light and grabbed the broom and dustpan from the hall closet, bumping it closed with her hip.
Cold winter air barreled through the fractured window, chilling her fingers, snaking up her spine. She cleaned up as best she could, dumping the broken glass in a trash bin under the kitchen sink.
Holding the dustpan and broom, she went to the closet to return the items.
Fright gripped her stomach. The closet door was a few inches ajar, the door she’d closed tight not a few moments before.
Her skin pimpled with goose bumps.
The wind, it had to be. But the wind would blow against the door and close it, not open it from the inside. She tried to reason with her trembling nerves.
It just came open, that’s all. Old structure, unsettled foundation.
She blew out a breath. Did she used to be a nervous Nellie? Scared of her own shadow? With conviction, she reached out to pull it all the way open when it shot wide, the door cracking into her forehead, sending her to the floor.
* * *
Sergio chafed against the seat belt. He longed for his motorcycle, to feel the unfettered freedom of a V-twin engine and an endless stretch of open road. But motorcycles were wildly impractical for transporting a pair of almost-three-year-old girls. He still felt the stab of pain at selling his beloved bike. The used SUV that now took him down the country road was sensible, safe...completely boring. It was a humdrum ride, complete with two empty car seats at the moment, strapped snugly into the back since the girls were safely at the hotel with their nanny. At least his ride didn’t have a stick-figure-family decal on the rear window. There really was no sticker that could adequately capture the misfit family he was so desperately trying to hold together anyway, Uncle Sergio and his sister’s daughters. No, his daughters now.
Daddy. Their sole provider. Responsible for everything from trimming their toenails to encouraging their empathy. That last one was tricky, since he wasn’t sure he had any himself. Not anymore.
When the tension seized his gut, he tried to reassure himself.
Laurel and Lucy were okay, weren’t they? Mostly happy and healthy? So maybe he didn’t always know exactly how to handle it when they cried or lost their favorite snuggle toys, but he’d weathered the storms as they came and tried to keep his sister’s memory alive for them as best he could. He’d given up on telling them much about their father, the man who’d died of an aneurysm just before they were born. That had been tragic enough, but to lose their mother when they were only a few months old?
The relentless barrage of their needs sometimes made him long for his work, diving in bottomless oceans, alone, with nothing but the sound of his own breathing in his Scuba regulator. But getting his PI license meant he could be there for the girls, and their needs trumped his. “And don’t you worry, girls,” he muttered to himself. “Your mama’s killer is going to pay.”
A gust of wind sent leaves scuttling across his windshield and snapped him out of his reverie. He figured he might have strayed onto private property, but he had seen no sign and there hadn’t been a fence barring the way. He wasn’t there to make trouble, just to lay eyes on the place. In his rare imaginative moments, Sergio sometimes fancied himself a spider, so intricate was the web he’d spun, the feelers he’d put into place to solve the mystery of Fiona’s murder.
Those feelers had begun to vibrate when he’d learned that Helen Pike had gone to the cops with a note she’d found from Fiona.
Trish. Proof.
Find out who still has theirs.
It meant nothing to him. Was Helen making something up in her mind? Imagining a connection between what happened to Trish all those years ago and his sister? Maybe Helen’s own guilt had finally gotten the better of her. He felt no pity. She should have listened to Fiona, gone with her on whatever crazy investigation she’d hinted at in her last message to him.
Sorry I missed your call, Serg. Going to talk to Helen about something that’s bothering me. She’ll help me. Some help. Helen admitted to him that she’d put Fiona off, busy with her duties managing her fancy hotel. Helen’s tear-washed jade eyes had not cooled his ire one bit. His sister was gone, his nieces left orphaned with only a hard-bitten, desperate uncle to care for them.
He had a fleeting thought that he hadn’t reminded Laurel and Lucy to brush their teeth. Yet another thing he’d have to hope the nanny followed through on.
You’re a sad excuse for a parent, Serg.
A cottage came into view that had to be the one he sought. Parked outside was a van with Roughwater Lodge emblazoned on the side. As he opened the car door, his nose picked up the clue before his brain did.
Smoke.
A fire in the fireplace?
Yet the cottage was dark.
Not completely dark. There was a flicker of orange like a monarch flitting against the front window.
Not a monarch, his brain finally supplied.
A flame.
The cottage was burning. His leather boots hit the ground with a smack as he barreled out of the SUV and shoved through the front door.
“Hey,” he yelled. “Anybody in here?”
No answer. The curtains in the shabby front room were on fire, a lighter still lit on the floor, one of those fancy numbers that kept burning until it was switched off. The flames had not yet started to devour the rest of the room. Smoke filtered through the air, mingling with the darkness, so he did not notice at first.
As he lurched toward the curtains to pull them down and stomp out the flames, his boot impacted something soft. No, not something...someone!
TWO
Helen’s senses flooded her brain with disconnected impressions: heat, smoke, pain and the sensation of someone reaching for her, grabbing her arms. Her brother Liam? Returned early from his honeymoon to help her? No, someone else, a stranger, there in the shadows of the burning house. Her consciousness returned with a mighty rush of adrenaline. She sprang up and shoved the hands away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Easy,” said a voice through the smoke in a raspy baritone. “Just trying to help.”
Helen shimmied backward until her shoulders hit the wall. The burning curtains backlit a towering man wearing a leather jacket and boots, mussed black hair that needed a trim. There was something familiar about him, the set of his square jaw, the wide brace of shoulders, five-o’clock shadow. Smoke tickled her throat and she coughed. “What...what happened?”
“That’s my question. First thing’s first. We’ll talk outside.”
When she didn’t move, he took her arm and guided her toward the front door and out into the wind-tossed night. She stumbled on the grass made uneven by tunneling rodents, sinking to one knee. As he bent over to assist, she felt the ground vibrating. A horse and rider wheeled to a stop, sending bits of mud whirling into the air.
Chad slid off the horse, rifle at his shoulder, trained on the other man. “Get away from her or you’re dead.”
Her rescuer raised his palms. “Look, John Wayne, no need to shoot me. I’m a Good Samaritan. Cottage is burning. She needed help getting out.”
“You’re trespassing. This is private property.” Chad had not lowered the gun.
The man lifted a careless shoulder. “I missed the signs, or you need better ones.”
Helen realized her skull was pounding with pain. She fingered a bump on her forehead.
“You okay, Helen?” Chad said.
She heard the man next to her release a bitter sigh. “Helen,” he said softly. “Figures.”
“And you are?” Chad snapped.
“Sergio Ross.” There was a hard-edged challenge in his voice. “Maybe you knew my sister, Fiona. She was murdered here in your quaint little town. She stayed right in this cottage, as a matter of fact.”
Helen’s insides twisted. Sergio Ross. She flashed back to the funeral, Sergio’s face stark with pain, two little babies cradled in his arms as he bid goodbye to his sister, their mother, her best friend.
