Prologue
It was the best day of her life.
Tammy Jo Sullivan clutched the inside door of the ATV, her heart racing and her breath seizing. Being sixteen and able to date, finally, was totally sick. The best ever. She grinned and looked over at Hunter as he drove up the rocky trail of Snowblood Peak in the Northern Cascades.
He smiled back, his teeth a flash of white against his tanned face. His family had gone to Mexico for Thanksgiving break, and he said he’d spent most of the time in the pool now that football season was over and he could relax. She’d had to work at her mom’s restaurant during the time off school, but that was okay.
Now she was on a date, in a four-wheeler, with Hunter freakin’ Jackson. He was a senior and she a sophomore, and never in her life had she thought he’d like her. When he’d asked her out, to go RZR riding on Saturday before the winter really hit, she’d nearly died on the spot. Now here she was, strapped into the passenger seat, watching the scraggly pine trees fly by on either side of them. She laughed out loud.
Sandy Jones turned around in the rig in front of them and waved. She was blurry through the back plastic window and her bright red hat flopped to the side.
Tammy Jo waved back at her friend, her smile so wide it made her cheeks hurt.
“Having fun?” Hunter twisted the wheel and turned them around another corner. The trail slid from mud to ice, and the tires spun. Mud and a sprinkling of snow covered the jagged rocks on his side of the trail, which led up into more dark, winter-stripped trees.
“Yeah,” she said, holding on and not looking as the ground and trees dropped away on her side. “We’re up high.”
He brushed a little bit of mud out of his thick blond hair, mud he’d gotten while helping Tyson change a belt on his Polaris earlier. It was cool how good they were at fixing whatever went wrong. “You’re safe. I know what I’m doing.” As he spoke, the tires in front of them threw up mud with a trace of ice.
She swallowed. “Um, my dad said not to go past the snow line since we’ve had such a rainy autumn. The ground won’t be solid.”
Hunter punched the gas pedal. “We’re fine. Don’t you want to see the top?”
For the first time, her stomach cramped. “My dad said—”
“The ground looks good to me. I’ll keep a close watch on it.” Hunter reached for the beer in the middle cup holder and drank the rest down. Although it was only nine in the morning, it was his fourth beer, but he seemed okay to drive. “Get me another, would you?” He tossed the can in the back.
The drop-off to her right made her head spin. “Um, when we stop. I don’t want to take off the seatbelt right now.” She closed her eyes until the dizziness passed.
“Sure.” He reached over and placed his hand over hers.
Her eyelids shot open. Hunter was holding her hand. Be cool. She had to be cool. Even so, she turned her hand over and tangled her fingers with his. His were a lot bigger than hers, and his palm was warm. She bit her lip to keep from smiling again. Life could not get any better. Like, ever.
Several clumps of dirt and rock rained down from high above and skidded across the path. Hunter removed his hand from hers and used both on the steering wheel to drive.
The rig jumped, and Tammy Jo clasped the handle on the dash. “Um, the earth is loose. We should stop.”
“We’re fine.” Hunter drove faster, his head down, as the vehicle bumped and jumped over the rocks.
The ground turned to pine needles and snow mixed with mud. Slushy with a side of freeze.
She craned her neck to look up the mountain. “There’s a lot of snow higher up. It’s not frozen, Hunter. Just the noise from the RZRs could cause problems. Vibrations and all of that.”
He shrugged a wide shoulder. “I can handle it. Don’t worry.”
She stared over the side of the cliff, biting the inside of her cheek until it stung. Forlorn-looking spruce, pine, and alder trees peppered the embankment down at least three thousand feet to the bottom of a deep gulley.
She shivered.
The mountain roared.
She jerked her head. “What’s—”
“Hold on!” Hunter yelled.
She gasped and swiveled as far as the harness would allow, to see snow and mud break loose from the craggy mountain face above them. “No, we—”
The avalanche poured down, right into them. The force struck the driver’s side, nearly tipping them over.
“Shit!” Hunter yelled, furiously whipping the wheel to the right and turning the four-wheeler. The wall of mud and snow pushed them over the cliff, face first.
Tammy Jo slammed against her harness and pressed her hands on the dash, screaming. Terror ripped through her as they slid down the cliffside, close to a massive drop-off she hadn’t seen from above. They were going to die.
“I need to hit a tree,” Hunter gritted out, his hands and feet working wildly to keep the rig pointed down so it wouldn’t roll over.
She couldn’t breathe. The harness cut into her and her butt rose slightly off the seat, while her hair hung forward.
Hunter whipped the steering wheel, and they went into a skid, crashing into two pine trees on the passenger side. Tammy Jo careened against the door, and pain burst through her shoulder. She cried out.
“Hold on.” Hunter grabbed her hand.
She blinked, tears falling down her face. Tree branches, snow, and mud smashed into the rig and went by toward the cliff, but the trees kept them in place.
“We’ll be okay!” Hunter yelled, his body tense. “Just keep still. It’ll pass.”
She gasped out air, trying not to scream.
A branch thumped on the front window and she jumped. Then she looked closer. “Is that . . . ?” It looked like an arm attached to half a hand—with broken off nails.
More mud tumbled the flesh away.
Then a leg. Then another arm.
Finally, the roar of the avalanche died down.
A round object plunked onto the window and rolled to a stop. A skull with stringy blond hair coming out of the scalp stared right at them.
Hunter screamed, high and loud, his voice sounding just like a toddler on a carnival ride.
Chapter One
Laurel Snow swiped through the calendar on her phone while waiting for the flight to DC to board. The worn airport chairs at LAX were as uncomfortable as ever, and she tried to keep her posture straight to prevent the inevitable backache. Christmas music played through the speakers, and an oddly shaped tree took up a corner, its sad-looking branches decorated with what might’ve been strung popcorn. The upcoming week was already busy, and Laurel hoped there wouldn’t be a new case. She stuck in her wireless earbuds to allow an upbeat rock playlist to pound through her ears as she rearranged a couple of meetings.
The phone dinged and she answered while continuing to organize the week. “Snow.”
“Hi, Agent Snow. How did the symposium go?” asked her boss, George McCromby.
“As expected,” she said, swiping a lunch meeting from Thursday to Friday. “I’m not a teacher, and half the time, the audience looked confused. A young woman in the front row had serious daddy issues, and a young man behind her was facing a nervous breakdown. Other than that, one guy in the last row exhibited narcissistic tendencies.”
“For Pete’s sake. We just wanted you to talk about the FBI and help with recruitment. You’re a good face,” George muttered.
Laurel tapped her phone when the Wi-Fi struggled. “My face has nothing to do with my job. I’m not skilled at recruitment or teaching.”
George sighed. “How many people have you seen today who wore red shoes?”
Yeah, she should change the computer update meeting from Tuesday to Wednesday. “Six,” she said absently. “Ten if you include maroon-colored shoes.”
George laughed. “How many people in the last month have worn yellow hats around you?”
“Just eight,” she said.
George warmed to the subject. “Right now, where you are in the airport and without looking, who’s the biggest threat?”
If she changed one more meeting, she could fit in a manicure on Friday. “Guy waiting in the adjacent area for a plane to Dallas. He’s five nine, wiry, and has cauliflower ears. Moves with grace.” Yes. She could fit in a manicure. “Another man to the north by the magazine rack in the bookstore is built like a logger and could throw a decent punch.” Would there be time for a pedicure? Probably not.
“Why aren’t you the biggest threat?” George asked.
She paused. “Because I’m currently performing parlor tricks for the deputy director of the FBI.” She looked up to check her boarding time.
“I have a call on the other line. We’ll talk about this when you get back.” George clicked off.
Laurel didn’t have anything else to say on the matter. Her phone buzzed and she glanced at the screen before answering the call. “Hi, Mom. Yes, I’m still returning home for Christmas.” It had been three years, and her mother’s patience had ended. “I promise. In two weeks, I’ll be there.”
“Laurel, I need you now,” Deidre said, her voice pitched high.
Laurel froze. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s your uncle Carl. The sheriff wants to arrest him for murder.” Panic lifted Deidre’s voice even higher. “You’re in the FBI. They’re saying he’s a serial killer. You have to come help.”
Uncle Carl was odd but not a killer. “Serial killer? How many bodies have been found?”
“I don’t know,” Deidre cried out.
Okay. Her mother never became this flustered. “Is the Seattle FBI involved?” Laurel asked.
“I don’t know. The local sheriff is the one who’s harassing Carl. Please come help. Please.” Her mother never asked for anything.
Laurel would have to change flights—and ask for a favor. “I’ll text you my flight information, and I can rent a car at Sea-Tac.” Murderers existed everywhere but Uncle Carl wasn’t one of them.
“No. I’ll make sure you’re picked up. Just text me what time you land.” Her mother didn’t drive or like to be inside vehicles.
“Okay. I have to run.” Laurel clicked off and dialed George’s private number with her left hand while reaching in her bag for a printout of her schedule. Being ambidextrous came in handy sometimes. Though she didn’t have many friends at the FBI, for some reason, George had become a mentor and was usually patient. Sometimes. Plus, she had just closed a serial killer case in Texas, and she had some juice, as George would say. For now. In her experience, juice dried up quickly.
The phone rang several times before George picked up. “I said we’d talk about it in DC.”
“I need a favor,” Laurel said. Her gaze caught on a younger man escorting an elderly woman through the terminal, both looking up at the flight information boards. “I don’t have much information, but it appears there are at least a few suspicious deaths in Genesis Valley up in Washington State. I need to investigate the situation.” There was something off about the guy with the older lady. He reached into the slouchy beige-colored purse slung over the woman’s shoulder and drew out a billfold, which he slipped into his backpack.
“Wait a minute. I’ll make a call and find out what’s going on,” George said.
“Thank you.” Laurel stood and strode toward the couple, reaching them quickly. “Is everything okay?”
The woman squinted up at her, cataracts visible in her cloudy blue eyes. “Oh my. Yes, I think so. This kind young man is showing me to my plane.”
“Is that right?” Laurel tilted her head.
The man had to be in his early twenties with sharp brown eyes and thick blond hair. His smile showed too many teeth. “Yes. I’m Fred. Just helping Eleanor here out. She was a little lost.”
Eleanor clutched a plane ticket in one gnarled hand. Her white hair was tightly curled and her face powdered. “I was visiting my sister in Burbank and got confused after security in the airport.”
Irritation ticked down Laurel’s neck. “Return her wallet to her.”
Eleanor gasped. “What?”
Fred shoved Eleanor and turned to run.
Laurel grabbed him by the backpack, kicked him in the popliteal fossa, and dropped him to the floor on his butt, where he fell flat. She set the square heel of her boot on the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve in his upper thigh. “You know, Fred? There’s a nerve right here that can make a person . . . bark like a dog.” She pressed down.
Fred yelped.
An airport police officer ran up, his hand on his harnessed weapon.
Laurel pulled her ID out of her jacket pocket and flipped it open. “FBI. I think this guy has a few wallets that might not be his.” She shook out the backpack. Several billfolds, bottles of pills, and necklaces bounced off the tile floor.
“Hey.” Eleanor leaned down and fetched her billfold and one container of pills. “You jerk.” She swatted Fred with her purse.
He ducked and pushed the bag away. “Let me up, lady.”
“Make him bark like a dog again,” Eleanor burst out.
“Sure.” Laurel pressed down on the nerve.
Fred groaned and pushed at her foot, pain wiping the color from his face. “Stop it.”
The officer stuffed all of the contraband back in the bag and then pulled Fred to his feet once Laurel moved her boot. He quickly cuffed Fred. “Thanks for this. I’ve got it from here.” They moved away.
Laurel reached for Eleanor’s ticket. “Let’s see where you’re supposed to be.” A quick glance at the ticket showed that the woman was going to Indiana. “Your flight is over here at gate twenty-one. Let me grab my belongings and I’ll take you there.” She retrieved her over-sized laptop bag and rolling carry-on before returning to slide her arm through Eleanor’s. “The gate is just on the other side of those restaurants.”
“Excuse me?” George barked through the earbuds. “Assistant Director of the FBI here with information for you.”
“Please hold on another minute, sir,” Laurel said, twisting through the throng while keeping Eleanor safe.
Eleanor looked up, leaning on Laurel. “How do you know my gate number? You didn’t even look at the information board.”
“I looked at it earlier,” Laurel said, helping the elderly woman avoid three young boys dragging Disney-themed carry-ons.
Eleanor blinked. “You memorized all of the flight information with one look?”
“I’m still here,” George groused.
Laurel took Eleanor up to the counter, where a handsome man in his thirties typed into the computer. “This is Eleanor, and this is her plane. She’s going to sit right over here, and she needs extra time to board.” Without waiting for a reply, she helped Eleanor to the nearest seat. “Here you go. You should be boarding in just a few minutes.”
Eleanor patted her hand. “You’re a good girl.”
Laurel crouched down. “Do you have anybody meeting you at the airport?”
Eleanor nodded. “Yes. My son is meeting me right outside baggage claim. Don’t you worry.” She pressed both gnarled hands against Laurel’s face. “You’re a special one, aren’t you?”
“Damn it, Snow,” George bellowed through the earbuds.
Laurel winced. “I am happy to help.”
Eleanor tightened her grip. “You have such lovely eyes. How lucky are you.”
Lucky? Laurel had rarely felt lucky to have heterochromia. “You’re very kind.”
“You’re beautiful. Such stunning colors and so distinct. I’ve never seen such a green light in anyone’s eye, and your other eye is a beautiful dark shade of blue.” Eleanor squinted and leaned in closer. “You have a little green flare in the blue eye, don’t you?”
Laurel smiled and removed the woman’s hands from her face, careful of the arthritic bumps on her knuckles. “Yes. I have a heterochromia in the middle of heterochromatic eyes. It’s an adventure.”
Eleanor laughed. “You’re a pip, you are. God speed to you.”
Laurel stood. “Have a nice trip, Eleanor.” She turned to head back to her gate, her mind returning to her trip to Genesis Valley. She’d have to move all of her appointments in DC to the first week in January, so her brain automatically flipped dates. If she juggled a Monday meeting that week, she would have time for a pedicure. Maybe she could skip her Wednesday lunch with the forensic accountants to discuss the recently developed tactical reasoning software. The accountants rarely escaped the computer lab, and when they did, they always talked for too long. “Sorry about that, sir. What did you find out?”
George’s sigh was long suffering. “Multiple body parts, including three skulls, were found this morning by kids four-wheeling on a mountain called . . .” Papers rustled. “Snowblood Peak.”
Laurel switched directions, her heart rate kicking up. “Just this morning? It’s a little early to be narrowing in on a suspect.” She’d spent some time snowmobiling that mountain as a child with her uncles before leaving for college at the age of eleven. “Could be an old graveyard or something like that. Might not be a case.”
“I know, and this is a local case and not federal, I think.”
She paused. “Actually, it depends where the bodies were found. The valley below Snowblood Peak is half owned by the federal government and half by the state. It’s beautiful country.”
“Huh. Well, okay. We could have jurisdiction if you feel like fighting with the state and the locals.” George didn’t sound encouraging.
She never felt like fighting. “Don’t we have an office in Seattle?”
“Yes, but it’s in flux right now. We were in the midst of creating a special unit out of there called the Pacific Northwest Violent Crimes Unit, but there was a political shakeup, a shooting, and a bunch of transfers. The office is restructuring now, and currently in place I have two agents dealing with a drug cartel.” Papers shuffled across the line.
“So I’m on my own with this case, if it turns out to be anything.” Which was normal for her, actually. A flight from LAX to Seattle had been scheduled to depart out of gate thirteen, and a flight from LAX to Everett had been listed as gate seventeen. “Has my flight been changed?”
More papers rustled. “Jackie?” George bellowed. “Does Snow have a new flight?”
Laurel grimaced at the sudden pain in her ear.
George returned. “You’ve been switched to Flight 234, leaving in ten minutes. They’re holding the door open for you, but we could only get you a middle seat.”
At least the gate was close to her current location, and she’d be flying into Everett, which was a quicker drive to Genesis Valley than the drive from Sea-Tac. She loped into a jog, pulling her wheeled carry-on behind her. “I only have a weekend bag and my agency-issued Glock.” She hadn’t brought her personal weapon.
“I’m not expecting this to be anything. I’ll give you forty-eight hours to see if it’s a case we want or not, and don’t forget, you called in a favor,” George said.
Her temples ached. “Even so, you don’t want me being the face of the FBI. I don’t relate well to students or prospects.” At least two people had actually left during her presentation.
“Get good with people,” George countered.
She reached the gate and flashed her ID to the impatient-looking gate agent. The woman kept tapping her heel. “I’m boarding. If you get any more information on the skulls, please send it to my tablet so I’m not going in blind.” Her stomach cramped with instinct as well as from her knowledge of statistical probabilities. Three different skulls found on the peak?
There was a murderer close to her hometown.
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