Tracking Game Read online

  Cole flinched. “No, Mattie, I couldn’t. Don’t you see? I couldn’t bring it up unless I knew you wanted to talk about it. If that was the wrong choice, I apologize. But think about it, Mattie, and tell me if you wouldn’t have reacted the same way.”

  But she didn’t want to see it from his viewpoint; she wanted to get away. “My baggage is nothing you should expose your family to. You can see why I don’t want to burden you or your kids with it.”

  His distress was apparent in his expression and his voice. “I’m not afraid of it, and I’m not afraid of it harming my kids. I need you to understand something. The only way this knowledge affects me is the pain of seeing how it affects you. It hurts to see you suffer like this.”

  That’s what she’d feared most. She didn’t want the things she still dealt with—the nightmares, flashbacks, and anxiety—to bring hardship to Cole or his kids. This day had proven that they had enough of their own family problems without taking on hers. “You’ll get tired of having to deal with me and my issues.”

  “Never.” He reached for her, and she longed to let him hold her again, but she shrugged off his hands and retreated until she felt the security of her Explorer against her back. All she wanted now was to get away, to go to the safety of her own home where she didn’t have to deal with Cole or this conversation.

  Cole moved forward as if unwilling to let her go. “Mattie, there’s only one thing I’m afraid of. I couldn’t bear it if you let Harold Cobb drive us apart.”

  But she could already feel herself pulling away. “Maybe not, but his actions are still a part of me.”

  “You were just an innocent child.” Cole sounded like his heart was breaking, too.

  “I know that.” She knew all that stuff about perpetrators and victims, but at times like this, it didn’t help. The way the two of them had been raised was light years apart. Cole wouldn’t understand. “It’s late. I need to go home so we can both get some sleep.”

  “The last thing I want to do is sleep,” he said, sounding desperate. “Mattie, stay. Stay so we can talk about this.”

  “I’m exhausted, Cole. I need time to think this through.” She called Robo and went to load him into the back of her unit.

  Cole waited for her at her car door, blocking the handle. She couldn’t see his eyes in the darkness, but she could feel their intensity. “I’m sorry I’ve upset you, Mattie, but I had to tell you. I didn’t want there to be secrets between us any more than you did. You can trust me to be honest and to never hurt you on purpose. If there’s one thing you take away from here tonight, let that be it.”

  Honesty? She knew he wouldn’t try to hurt her, but he’d kept this secret for weeks. She felt so tired she couldn’t think, and she didn’t know what else to say. All she wanted was escape. She reached for the door handle.

  He opened the door so she could climb in. Even before she could settle into her seat, he leaned forward so their faces were inches apart. “I’m falling in love with you. And I hope like crazy that you won’t hold this against me.”

  Mattie started the engine. “I’ve got to go.”

  Her overhead light revealed his anguish. He touched her cheek tenderly, backed away, and closed the door. He stood in the glow of her headlights as they swept over him, shoulders slumped and thumbs tucked inside his jeans pockets. Looking dejected, he raised one hand in farewell as she pulled away.

  She supposed the whole team at the station had been in on that conversation. Had it changed their opinion of her? How could she show her face at work again? An icy coldness filled her chest, making her shiver, and she thought her heart might break. How could she ever survive this betrayal?

  SIXTEEN

  Monday morning

  Exhausted from a night with very little sleep, Mattie sipped coffee while she drove through dawn’s first light toward Wilson Nichol’s crime scene. She’d spent her early hours in bed tossing, turning, and thinking about Cole’s words until she’d finally dozed. Nightmares filled with twisted images of fire and the sensation of running through the forest awakened her at four, her legs thrashing the covers, tossing them off to the floor.

  She had dressed in running gear and taken Robo outside to jog along the lanes of Timber Creek. With her dog beside her, she’d passed from one island of light under streetlamps to another, staying on the move while she tried to work through her feelings. Running had served her well in the past when she needed to ease her anxiety, and it was something she turned to still whenever that growing tightness threatened to take over her chest.

  One thing came clear to her while she ran: she would not allow herself to become Harold Cobb’s victim. Though love might feel complicated at times, she knew Cole was the man she wanted, and she wouldn’t let a scumbag like Harold Cobb cheat her out of leading a happy life.

  By the time she returned home, she’d decided it wasn’t Cole’s fault that Sheriff McCoy had brought up details from her childhood during an investigative team meeting. What bothered her most was that he’d never said anything about it to her. Not until after she’d wrestled with herself for weeks, working up the courage to broach the subject.

  And yet … he’d had a point when he’d said he couldn’t discuss her past unless he knew she wanted to. If she were to be completely honest, she’d have to admit that’s probably the way she would have handled the situation, too.

  Cole had said she could trust him—and that was the crux of her problem. He had no way of knowing the extent of her trust issues and how hard she struggled with them. She dealt with the subject with a trauma therapist in Denver, but she’d only touched on it lightly with Cole. She’d been coping well lately and working toward improving her mental health—keeping a journal, learning yoga and breath training. These things all helped, but she’d been surprised by her body’s response when Cole shared what he knew, bombarding her with such a painful feeling of betrayal.

  It was like a column of ice had surrounded her. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. She’d needed to run away, and she’d barely been able to manage that.

  Fight or flight. Both Mattie’s work and personal life made her more than familiar with the bursts of adrenaline associated with this phenomenon. But rarely had they left her immobile, like last night. Now that she’d had time to separate and think about it analytically, she realized how large this trust issue loomed for her, especially as it related to someone she loved.

  And she did love Cole. But could she trust him enough to give him her heart? Could she open herself to the possibility of being hurt by him?

  By the time she reached Wilson Nichol’s crime scene, sunrise lit the eastern horizon with shades of vermillion and orange. Members of the sheriff’s posse stood guard around the crime scene tape while thirty feet away others huddled near the campfire, its smoke billowing up and drifting off on the breeze.

  Mattie shelved her thoughts for later and exited her SUV. The high-altitude morning air combined with exhaustion made her shiver, so she grabbed her jacket and slipped it on.

  Sheriff McCoy and Brody pulled up behind her in McCoy’s Jeep. The sheriff unfolded his tall frame from the driver’s seat and got out, shutting the door as he shrugged on a jacket. Brody stepped out on the passenger side.

  Abraham McCoy, one of the few Black men in the Timber Creek community, was built like a tree trunk and had a deep voice that Mattie had seen soothe even the most rattled of victims. She’d experienced it herself as a six-year-old child when, as a young deputy, he’d answered her 911 call the night Harold Cobb tried to kill her mother. When he’d picked her up in his strong arms, she’d never felt so safe.

  But now, she felt confused about how much he’d known about her childhood suffering, and yet … he’d done nothing to address it. She’d gone straight into foster care, bounced from home to home for years until she’d found a place with Mama T, and he’d never referred her for the services she needed as a child to work through her pain. Maybe that was putting too much responsibility on his broad s
houlders, but she believed that’s what she would have done if she’d been in his shoes.

  She decided to act as though nothing had changed. Work always served her well when she needed to escape the reality of her personal life. She straightened her spine as she approached the Jeep and didn’t waver when she looked him in the eye. “Welcome back, Sheriff. This is a heck of a thing to come home to.”

  Her breath hung in the cold air before dissipating.

  “It certainly is. I hear you and Robo have been hard at work.”

  Business as usual felt like the way to go. “We’ll see if we can find some evidence as soon as the sun rises enough to help us out.”

  McCoy nodded and glanced toward the fire as the cook called out a greeting. “Looks like they’ve got a pot of coffee going. Let’s warm up and see how the night went while we wait for daylight.”

  Mattie could smell the coffee’s aroma as she approached. She warmed her hands around a tin cup filled with dark, bitter brew and listened to Frank Sullivan, one of the posse members, brief them on the happenings during the night. After the coroner, local physician Dr. McGinnis, had made it to the site to pronounce the death, the ambulance had arrived, parking down below as close to the scene as it could. Members of the posse had teamed up with the EMTs to carry the body down to the ambulance on a stretcher.

  Though they’d stayed on the lookout all night, no one else had heard the cougar. Everything in the forest had gone quiet. “Too quiet,” Frank said, looking at Mattie. “It might still be out there. Hard to say.”

  Mattie nodded and sipped her coffee. Robo stayed close, as if they needed to huddle after their experience in this spot last night.

  “I think things are clear again this morning,” Frank said. “The birds are chirping.”

  He was right. As the sunlight slanted through the evergreens, the birds were warming up to greet the day.

  “How do you suggest we go about this?” McCoy asked Mattie.

  Before she could answer, Frank interjected. “After the body was removed, we kept everyone out of the area, just like you told us.”

  “That’s good.” Mattie gave him a nod of appreciation. “I’ll see if Robo picks up anything first. Then we can decide where to go from there.”

  Brody looked up at the sky. “I think it’s light enough to get started.”

  Mattie tossed the remainder of her coffee aside, glad for an excuse to get rid of it. Campfire brew had never been one of her favorites. She took Robo back to her SUV to prep him for an evidence search. She put on his blue nylon collar, snapped a leash on the dead ring, and gave him a few slurps of water.

  Yellow tape marked off a circle about thirty feet in diameter around the crime scene. Mattie ducked under it, scanning the ground for where she’d found the victim. Bloodstains marked the exact spot.

  Robo hovered at her heel, not as eager to get to work as usual. He’d once been injured in a cougar attack, and she wondered if that was the reason for his hesitation. She patted his sides, ruffled his fur, and began the chatter meant to rev up his prey drive. He raised up on his hind feet at her side, bouncing on his back paws a couple of times, his eyes pinned to hers as if to say her encouragement was working.

  “Okay, buddy. Let’s go. Seek!”

  Holding the leash in her left hand, she used her right to direct him to search a grid by sweeping it with his nose. It didn’t take long to clear the area around where Wilson’s body had lain, and at the uphill side, Robo scooted under the crime scene tape, making Mattie duck under to stay close behind him.

  It took only a moment to figure out that Robo had decided to backtrack the victim’s trail, which she agreed was a good idea. Typically she would have unclipped his leash and let him range out in front, but there was no way she was going to allow him to stumble into a cougar’s ambush. She kept him on his short leash, the six-foot spread between them close enough to set her mind at ease.

  Brody fell in behind as Robo led them upstream, staying outside the heavy vegetation along the creek bank. She could see occasional spots of blood in the grass as they went. A sharp-eyed tracker could have followed this trail, but she was glad her dog’s nose could lead her quickly up the hillside.

  “Blood,” Brody murmured, evidently seeing the same thing she had.

  The terrain underfoot grew steeper, and scuff marks on the rocky ground showed them where Nichol had fallen and then picked himself up to continue his struggle downhill to try to save himself. A knot formed in her stomach as she imagined his helplessness as blood from the exit wound in his back saturated his clothing and dripped on the rocks.

  The trail moved closer to the creek, where the ground was soft and moist. Robo’s fur bristled on the back of his neck, making the fine hair on the back of hers rise and sending prickles down her back. He sniffed the ground and looked up at her as if to say, Are you getting a whiff of this?

  She spotted several huge paw prints in the moist dirt, right beside footprints that Mattie assumed had been left by Wilson Nichol. If she hadn’t been spooked already, this would do it. “Robo, wait.”

  Robo paused and Brody drew up beside her. “What did he find?”

  “Paw prints.” Mattie pointed to the ground. “The cougar followed Nichol’s blood trail downhill.”

  Brody stared at the ground, frowning. “Damn. That’s what it looks like.”

  Mattie pulled a short spike with orange flagging tape tied to it from her belt and tagged the prints so they could examine them later. “Is that game warden coming up to help us this morning?”

  Brody nodded. “She said she would. She might be down at the crime scene already.”

  “We’ll need her to take a look at this area, too.” Mattie hugged Robo close to her leg and told him to search, the command she used for tracking a person.

  He put his nose to the ground and continued to climb, winding through thorny bushes, willows, and evergreens that grew beside the creek. After about a hundred yards of rough sledding, he came to a halt and again looked over his shoulder at Mattie. Their eyes met.

  “What did you find?” Mattie scanned the area, spotting a large splash of blood on a patch of flattened grass. As Brody drew up beside her, she pointed it out to him. “I think this might be where Nichol was shot.”

  Brody knelt and surveyed the area. He gestured toward some very faint footprints. “Let’s flag these. I don’t know if they’re Nichol’s or if they belong to the person that shot him.”

  Mattie placed a spike near the prints. Moving carefully to avoid disturbing any evidence, she studied the area, looking for the bullet that had penetrated Nichol’s chest. The thick vegetation along the creek bank would hide anything that small. “I’m going to ask Robo to do an evidence search here, even though it looks impossible.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll contact the sheriff and see if the game warden is down there with him.” Brody moved away, leaving Mattie space to search.

  She decided that if she kept Robo close, it was safe to unclip his leash. She told him to seek and watched as he sniffed the grass, his head parting the tall green stuff in waves. He clearly knew what he was doing as he entered a thicket of willows too dense for Mattie to follow. She cruised along the edge, keeping him in sight so that she could call him back if he started to leave the area.

  About ten feet into the willows, Robo disappeared, and Mattie squatted to find him. His black shape materialized within the shadows, and his tawny markings gave him enough definition for her to realize that he’d sat and was looking back at her over his shoulder.

  Her pulse quickened. He’d found something.

  She edged through the willow branches to reach him. “What is it? What did you find?”

  After her eyes adjusted to the dim light, Mattie could see a pair of high-powered binoculars, lenses down in the muddy soil.

  “Good boy,” she murmured as she stroked Robo’s head. “What a good job you did.”

  By this time, Brody had moved to the edge of the bushes. “What is it?”<
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  “Binoculars,” she called to him. “I’ll photograph them before I pick them up.”

  Broken ends of willow branches poked her as she took out her cell phone and snapped shots of Robo’s find. Black field glasses lying in shadow against a background of dark mud required the use of a flash. No one would ever have seen them here within the willows.

  Had some fisherman who was angling the stream lost the binoculars? Or did they belong to Wilson, or his killer? She hoped the lab would be able to find prints.

  After taking photos, she pulled a latex glove from her pocket and put it on. From behind, Brody thrust a paper evidence bag toward her through the branches.

  When she picked up the set of binoculars, she avoided the barrels of the lenses so she wouldn’t smudge fingerprints that might have been left. She carefully placed them inside the bag and folded it closed before edging out from under the dense thicket.

  She handed the bag to Brody. “Take a look.”

  He peered into the bag. “Mud on the lenses, but otherwise in pristine condition. Haven’t been out here long.”

  She turned to praise Robo and realized he hadn’t followed her from the willows. She bent to search for him within the branches and was about to call him to come, but stopped herself when she saw him. He’d moved farther through the thicket toward the creek and now sat, looking at her as if wondering what was taking her so long. “Brody, he’s found something else.”

  After grabbing another evidence bag, she went upstream to press through the willows toward the creek side and slowly made her way down to where Robo waited. “What you got, buddy?” she murmured as she crept through roots and branches to get to him.

  Robo’s find lay beside him—a lead bullet, flattened at the tip. The binoculars had drawn Robo into the thicket, which had allowed him to find the smaller object.

  “He found the lead,” she called to Brody. “It’s short, from a handgun and not a rifle.”