Blood on Copperhead Trail Read online

  “Your sister and Missy Adderly weren’t shot with a rifle,” he murmured.

  “Doesn’t mean it’s a different killer.”

  “I think it does,” he disagreed.

  “What about the photo we found at the trail shelter?”

  “It’s not exactly the same, is it?” he countered. “We found the photo of Janelle and the Adderly girls under Janelle, not in the trail log.”

  “Maybe Janelle found the photo right before she was shot. The guy with the rifle started shooting at us not long after we found the photo.”

  “True.”

  “But serial killers do seem to be creatures of habit,” she conceded. “Would it be likely he’d change weapons that way if he didn’t have to?”

  “When we get back to civilization, we’ll let forensics take a look at the photo.” He patted the pocket of his jacket. “They can probably tell us if it came from the same make of camera, or if the photo paper is the same.”

  They fell silent again for a long time. Laney didn’t know what was occupying Doyle’s thoughts, but all she could think about was that string of cans in the entrance of the cave, and how long it would be before they’d hear them rattle.

  He touched her lightly on the arm before he spoke again. “How do you know about this cave? Was this some sort of hillbilly make-out spot?” He softened the slight dig with a smile in his voice.

  “Some people may have used it that way, I suppose.”

  “But not you?”

  She shook her head, her forehead brushing against his jaw. The rough bristle of his beard was pleasantly prickly against her skin. “No, my friends and I came here to plan our futures.”

  His hand on her upper arm squeezed gently. “Plotting world domination?”

  “Something like that.” She grinned at the thought. She and the other Dreamers, as they’d secretly called themselves, had been a motley crew, bonded not so much by their common interests as by their determination not to let the poverty and hopelessness of their surroundings stop them from believing they could make something out of their lives.

  Not all of them had lived their dreams, but most of them had made it out of Bitterwood more or less unscathed. Tommy Alvin was a chiropractor in Cookeville. Gerald Braddock was in Nashville, singing backup in clubs and bars, still trying to sell his songs. Tracie Phelps got her master’s and was teaching in a charter school in Georgia. And she herself had gotten her law degree and, while she wasn’t exactly on the fast track for the Supreme Court, she was working a job she enjoyed, one that enabled her to give back to her mother and help take care of her sister.

  “Was your childhood good?”

  She could tell from the tone of his voice that he knew what life was like for so many people here in Appalachia. “Better than many,” she answered. “I had parents who loved each other and were good to each other and to us kids. We weren’t rich by any means, but we didn’t starve and we had the things we really needed.”

  “You lost your father and your brother when you were in college, you said.”

  A familiar sadness ached in the back of her throat. “Yes. But we managed to get by. Dad had bought a cancer policy years before he got sick. Between that and his life insurance, my mother and sister were able to get through the worst of things. I think the secret is that my mom never, ever let any of us lose hope, no matter how bad a situation looked, that things would always get better eventually.”

  “It’s a good attitude,” he said approvingly.

  “What about you?” she asked after a few minutes of silence. “What was your childhood like?”

  “Idyllic,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Sugar-white beaches as far as the eye could see, swamps to play in, no worries other than dodging the lazy old gators you might run into now and then. My dad was an Alabama state trooper. Mom stayed home with us kids—she was born for motherhood.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” she whispered.

  “It was.” A hint of melancholy in his voice touched a dark chord still lingering from her own memories of loss.

  “Until?”

  He was silent a moment, and she could almost feel the pain vibrating through him where their bodies touched. “Until my parents died in a car accident when I was twenty.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Yeah.” He released a soft sigh. “My sister, Dana, and I were both in college by then, and our brother, David, had just graduated high school. It was the first chance my parents had had in forever to go on vacation by themselves.” He laughed quietly, though with little real mirth. “When they told us where they were going, we were surprised.”

  “Where were they going?” she asked.

  “Right here,” he answered. “Right here to Ridge County.”

  She could understand why he and his siblings had been surprised. “Nobody comes to Ridge County on purpose.”

  “I suppose I could have understood Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge or somewhere like that. Or even if they’d told me they’d decided to hike the Appalachian Trail now that the kids had all flown the coop. But Ridge County was this tiny little nowhere spot on the Tennessee map, and my parents had enough money saved up that they could have gone to Hawaii or Paris or, hell, Australia if they’d wanted to.”

  “They had their accident on the way here?”

  “No, the accident happened here. Their car ran off the road into a river gorge. The police said they must have missed the bridge in the dark and gone over the edge.”

  “Purgatory Bridge,” she murmured. It was the only bridge over a gorge in the county.

  “That’s right.”

  “I think I remember that wreck,” she said. “Nobody could figure out how they could have missed the bridge. It’s not that dark there, because of the lights of the tavern just down the road.” She didn’t add that most people thought the driver must have been drunk.

  “It was a mystery. My parents didn’t drink and the coroner’s report confirmed there were no drugs or alcohol in their systems. I guess maybe my dad fell asleep at the wheel.” He shrugged, his body moving with delicious friction against hers.

  “Is that why you took the job here?” she asked after a long silence. “Because it’s where your parents died?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” He fell silent again, as if pondering the idea.

  Slowly, the air between them seemed to grow warm and thick with awareness. Even though she could barely see Doyle’s face in the dim light seeping into the cave from the outside, she felt an answering tension in his body as he turned toward her, his chest a hard, hot wall against her chest.

  His breath heated her cheeks as he bent his head until his forehead touched hers. “Tell me it’s not just me,” he whispered.

  She didn’t have to ask what he meant. She felt it, in the singing of desire in her blood and the languid pooling of heat at her center. “It’s not just you,” she answered, her words little more than breath against his lips.

  He shifted until his mouth touched hers, just a soft brush at first. A foretaste.

  Her fingers curled helplessly against the soft wool of his sweater, grabbing fistfuls as he lowered his mouth again for a longer, deeper exploration. She parted her lips, darting her tongue against his, delighting in his low groan of pleasure in response.

  One hand dipped downward, fingers splayed across the small of her back, tugging her closer. The pressure of his mouth on hers increased, more command than request, and she parried with a fierce response that made his body shudder against hers.

  Then, as shocking as a bucket of ice water in the face, came the loud rattle of aluminum cans from the mouth of the cave.

  Something had tripped the alarm.

  Chapter Eight

  For a moment, there was no more sound at all, except the pounding of Doyle’s pulse
in his ears. He steadied the barrel of his Kimber 1911 Pro Carry II, telling himself that the .45 ammo would stop an intruder with a minimum of rounds. The intruder would be highly visible in the light coming through the opening, while he and Laney would be dark shadows in a dark cave, hard to target.

  The lingering silence at the mouth of the cave suggested the intruder had come to the same conclusion. Either he’d retreated quietly or he was waiting in the cave entrance for them to venture out to see if he was gone.

  Doyle shielded Laney’s body behind him and waited, unwilling to make the first move. If the shooter wanted a standoff, Doyle was happy to give him one as long as he and Laney remained in the better tactical position.

  He felt more than heard Laney’s soft, rapid exhalations against the back of his neck. He didn’t know if she’d pulled her own weapon, and he couldn’t afford to turn around and check. The one thing he didn’t worry about was her firing the gun by accident. If there was anything he’d learned about Laney Hanvey over the past couple of days, it was that she was almost radically competent.

  The thunder of his pulse was nearly loud enough to drown out a distant shout coming from somewhere outside the cave. But he definitely heard the second shout, as well as the faint crunch of footsteps on the dirt-packed floor of the cave entrance. The cans didn’t rattle again, and seconds later, the footfalls had faded into silence.

  More shouts came, forming words he could make out. Someone was calling their names.

  He felt Laney give a start behind him, but he reached back quickly, holding her still. “Not yet,” he whispered.

  The shouts came closer. “Laney!”

  The female voice sounded familiar.

  “That’s Ivy,” Laney whispered. “You know she’s not the one who was shooting at us.”

  “I don’t know anything,” he whispered in response.

  “I do,” she said firmly. “Trust me on this, okay?”

  He didn’t want to lower his weapon, but now that she’d identified the voice calling outside the cave, he recognized it, as well. And from everything he’d heard about Ivy Hawkins since he’d agreed to take the job, she was one of the good guys.

  He took a deep breath and let it out in a shout. “In here!”

  He heard several voices, talking in low chatter as they came closer to the cave. Seconds later, two silhouettes filled the opening.

  Doyle didn’t drop his weapon. “Don’t move any closer.”

  Both figures stopped. The one on the left was shorter and, despite the bulky clothing, identifiably more feminine. Ivy, he thought.

  “I’m going to reach into my jacket pocket for a flashlight,” Ivy’s voice said. She moved slowly, her hand going into her pocket.

  A moment later, a flashlight came on, the beam directed not at them but at herself, illuminating her features. “Chief, are you okay?”

  “We’re fine,” Laney answered for Doyle. “Sorry for the caution. But someone was shooting at us less than an hour ago.”

  * * *

  DOYLE BRUSHED ASIDE the offer to call in paramedics to check his shrapnel wound. “It’s nothing but a splinter,” he said dismissively, looking both frustrated and a little sheepish. Laney guessed he felt embarrassed at having to be rescued by the men and women he was supposed to be leading.

  She was just glad to get off the mountain, however it had happened, and back to the hospital in Knoxville to check on her sister.

  Delilah Hammond was still there guarding Janelle’s room, though she’d clearly been in touch with her fellow detectives, for she stopped Laney for a quick postmortem of her experiences on the mountain.

  “Must have been pretty scary up there,” she said with sympathy before letting Laney enter her sister’s room.

  “Yeah, but do me a favor and don’t let Jannie or my mom know how bad it was.” She went on into the room, where her sister greeted her with a hug and a big smile. She was markedly better—more alert, more herself. She’d even put on a little makeup, looking far more put together now than Laney herself, who’d stopped at home only long enough for a hot shower and a fresh change of clothes before rushing to the hospital.

  “Where have you been?” Her mother looked relieved to see her.

  “I told you I was going to join a search party.”

  “All night?”

  “Mom, you’re talking to her like she’s a teenager who broke curfew,” Janelle said with a laugh.

  Alice didn’t smile back. “And look what happened the last time one of my daughters didn’t show up on time.”

  Feeling guilty, especially given her ordeal over the past twenty-four hours, Laney gave her mother a fierce hug. “Sorry. I got snowed in up near the summit of Copperhead Ridge and had to overnight in the old Vesper cabin.”

  Janelle and her mother both exclaimed over her bad luck, and Janelle asked if she’d had to share the cabin with other searchers.

  “Just one. I was with Chief Massey.”

  “Ooh,” Janelle said with a smile. “He’s cute.”

  Laney made a face at her sister, hoping she wasn’t blushing. “Enough about my night in the snow. How are you? You’re looking tons better.”

  “I’m feeling tons better,” Janelle assured her. “I was running a fever last night, so the doctor won’t sign off on letting me go. But I’m not even running a fever now.” She looked frustrated.

  “It won’t hurt you to stay another night, just to be sure,” Alice reminded her younger daughter. “Things could have been a lot worse.”

  Janelle’s frown faded into sadness. “I know. When I think about what happened to Missy and what might be happening to Joy—”

  Laney sat on the bed beside her sister, brushing away the tears falling down Janelle’s cheeks. “We’re not giving up on Joy yet. The police are back out there right now in the lower elevations, and as soon as there’s some more melt-off up near the summit, they’ll be heading back up there, too.”

  “I wish I could remember what happened. What if I saw or heard something that could help the police?”

  “You can’t worry about that right now,” Alice told her. “You worry about getting better and the police will worry about what happened to Missy and Joy.”

  “Mom’s right,” Laney said. “You concentrate on you.”

  And I, she added silently, will do everything I can to keep you safe.

  * * *

  “IT LOOKS LIKE the same photo paper to me,” Antoine Parsons told Doyle after taking a long look at the photograph of Doyle and Laney that Laney had found at the trail shelter. “I’ve sent some evidence techs up to that shelter to see if there’s anything to be found.” He didn’t sound hopeful.

  “Is there any way to be sure whether or not that photo and the photo of Janelle Hanvey and the Adderly girls came from the same camera?” Doyle asked.

  “We’ll send both photos to the crime lab in Knoxville to see what can be done about matching them.” Ivy Hawkins was the one who answered his query. She and Antoine Parsons were the only ones with Doyle in his office at the Bitterwood Police Department, selected purposefully because they were two of the three people on the force that he felt, instinctively, he could trust.

  The other person he decided he could trust was Delilah Hammond, based on the good word his old friend and former Ridley County deputy Natalie Cooper put in for the detective. Natalie’s husband, J.D., was an on-call pilot for Cooper Security, where Delilah had worked before taking the job with the Bitterwood P.D. Natalie and J.D. both spoke highly of the woman and assured Doyle she could be trusted.

  Delilah was currently in Knoxville, watching over their surviving witness. She’d called in a few minutes earlier to let him know that Laney had arrived safely to see her sister. Now all three of the Hanvey women were safely in one place and he could concentrate on his primary
job.

  “I think we go with the premise that you and Laney are targets,” Ivy said, eyeing him warily as if uncertain how he’d react.

  “Or that’s what someone wants us to think,” Doyle countered.

  “Someone shot at you right after you found the photo. It seems that might be what happened with Janelle Hanvey and the Adderly girls, too,” Antoine pointed out.

  “They were shot with a pistol.” Ballistics was still looking over the bullets retrieved from Missy’s body and Janelle’s head wound, but the technicians had already reported that the slugs had been .38s and had almost certainly come from a semiautomatic pistol. “The guy shooting at us was using a rifle.”

  “Maybe he’s flexible about his weaponry.” Antoine shrugged. “I just don’t think you can say it’s two different assailants without more evidence.”

  “Maybe we should assign someone to guard Laney and her sister full-time,” Ivy suggested. “Although we’re already shorthanded now that Craig Bolen’s been moved to chief of detectives.”

  Hiring a new detective to take Bolen’s place had been high on Doyle’s list of priorities until this murder. Maybe he needed to stop micromanaging the investigation and wrap his head around the paper-pushing end of his job.

  Natalie had warned him he might have trouble with the transition from investigator to administrator when he’d asked her advice on the job offer. “I know you, Doyle. You like to get in there and get your hands dirty. It’s not going to be like that when you’re the guy in the office making hiring and firing decisions and worrying about whether or not there’s enough paper for the copier.”

  But small-town departments were different. It was the only reason he’d decided to take the job. He could still get involved in investigations, especially ones as high profile as the murder of Missy Adderly and the apparent kidnapping of her sister. The townspeople would expect to see his face in the newspaper and hear him on the local radio shows.

  “Chief, maybe you should guard Laney Hanvey yourself,” Antoine said.