Page 31 of Into the Veins

Colson stumbled across the trail straight into a tree. An explosion of pain seared down his back before he had a chance to gain his balance. He swung his fist back as hard as he could.

Bone met flesh, and a soft moan cut through the constant tick of rain.

The outline of his attacker materialized in the middle of the trail, and he raised his weapon. Thunder caught up overhead as another streak of lightning illuminated the short distance between them. Small frame, approximately five foot-six, five-foot seven, athletic in the way her waist barely exceeded the outer measurements of her ribcage. A dark ski mask hid her features and the color of her hair well as she stared up at him, but Colson had no doubt he and Blair had been right to place Evyn Garder at the center of the investigation. Same height, same outline. He straightened to his full height and rolled his shoulder forward.

She’d stabbed him with a syringe.

“I really wish you would stop trying to drug me.” He kept his gun on her as he reached around with his opposite hand and pulled the syringe from his shoulder blade. Empty. Tossing it to the ground, he slipped his finger over the trigger, but the sting of pain didn’t let up as it had the last time she’d drugged him. His heart rate kicked up a notch and his vision wavered. He inadvertently relaxed his gun arm slightly then brought it back up. “Let me guess. Ketamine?”

The poisoner eased both of her thumbs beneath the ski mask and rolled it up her face. Dark, wet hair clung to the delicate column of her throat as she leveled her attention on him. She stepped into him, a weak smile pulling at thin lips, paler than he thought possible. Sharp features carved cheekbones into a flawless complexion, and recognition flared. Not Evyn Garder. She tossed the mask as nerve-wracking pain overwhelmed his control, and the fingers of his left hand curled involuntarily into the center of his palms. He tried to keep his weapon aimed at her, but she simply disarmed him as his knees gave out. Streaking one hand through his hair, she framed his face as though she intended to kiss him. “Not this time, Colson.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“What the hell are you doing here, Sanders?” Blair stared at the message on her phone. The screen lit up the interior of her patrol vehicle and made her an easy target to anyone watching. She’d arranged to hand off the case files and all other notes from the investigation to the Violent Crimes Unit and Lawson Mitchell at the apartment of their suspected third victim. Brennan Jefferson. The files were piled together in her passenger seat. She should’ve been there already. Not sitting in the parking lot at the Wilderness Cliffs trailhead, but the text Colson had sent her before fishtailing out of the station’s lot had hooked into her stronger than any other lead they’d had during this investigation.

He’d lied to her once before, but there was only one reason she’d followed through on his tip: Evyn Garder had deleted photos of her visit to this trail from her social media platforms. It’d been easy enough to prove with screen shots of their suspect’s feed. Why those photos, why now?

A single SUV had been parked up ahead, but a cursory scan through the vehicle’s back window said Colson wasn’t inside. He’d already followed his lead into the woods. She disengaged the magazine of her weapon, double and triple-checked the fifteen bullets loaded, but her confidence waned. The last time she’d stepped into a stretch of woods, armed as she was now, she almost hadn’t walked out alive. Wouldn’t have if Colson hadn’t been there to pull her back over the edge. They weren’t dealing with a run-of-the mill serial who chose victims based off of a predicted set of variables. Appearances, geological locations around the city, routines—none of that came into play. Rachel Faulkner, Cardin Townsend, and Brennan Jefferson only had one thing in common: their social media platform. No. This was personal. Evyn Garder wanted her victims to suffer as long as possible for something they weren’t aware they’d done.

Blair shouldered out of her patrol vehicle and hit the pavement. Colson was out there. He was hunting a killer neither of them had been prepared for the first time. She wouldn’t leave him to finish this fight alone. She rounded to the back of her vehicle and pulled her vest from the trunk. Strapping in, she holstered her weapon, the weight of the Kevlar keeping her anchored in the non-stop nightmare of this case. She crossed the parking lot, but before she’d made it more than a few steps, a pair of headlights created moving shadows through the trees from behind. Rain bounced off the pavement as she turned to confront the uninvited party, and the headlights died. The dark SUV’s engine cut short, and a single driver exited the parking lot. Her heart kicked into her chest. She shook her head. Blair didn’t understand. How did she… She raised her voice above the pound of rain. “What are you doing out here?”

“What do you think I’m doing, you pain in the ass?” January jogged across the parking lot in her ridiculous brand-name pumps and fitted slacks and blazer. Her weapon, holstered at her hip, swung into view. Her once pristinely pressed button-down shirt plastered to her fair skin beneath her Kevlar vest and punctuated how out of place her sister was in the middle of the woods. “The last time you went for a hike like this, you barely made it out alive. I’m here to watch your back. You can thank me anytime.”

Blair swiped a thin sheet of rain from her face. “How did you know I was here?”

“I attached a GPS locater to the bottom of your patrol car when the EMTs were loading you onto the ambulance.” January’s already pale skin turned white under the flash of lightning from above. “The patterns I’ve put together over the course of your investigation led me to believe another victim had already been targeted, and I knew it was only a matter of time before you would try to save them yourself.”

“You put a tracking device under my car?” Frustration collided with the sense of urgency choking her. She nearly turned her back on the criminologist determined to poke and prod her at every major turn in her life. “First you tell me I go out of my way to destroy the relationships in my life, including ours, and now you’re out here to provide back up?”

“That’s what siblings do, Blair!” January swiped her hair back away from her face. Her perfectly applied mascara and eyeliner smeared under the onslaught of rain. Her sister stepped into her, her platinum blonde hair sticking to her face. She spit water from her mouth as she spoke. “Whether you like it or not, siblings fight. They force each other to see the ugly truths we don’t want to see, and there will be long months where they don’t even talk to or see each other because we get so mad, but we love each other anyway. You were my sister long before your parents were killed, and you’ll keep being my sister no matter how many times you push me away. Because I love you, damn it.” She pulled the hem of her blazer down as though to compose herself, but she looked more like a drowning cat than the professional FBI criminologist she’d battled to become. “So there, you’re stuck with me.”

Blair wrapped January in a tight hug. “Thank you for being my backup…and my sister. I’ll try not to think of reasons to get rid of you in the future, but right now, I have a private investigator chasing down a possible serial killer on his own.”

“Lead the way.” January pulled back and unholstered her weapon, arms straight, barrel pointed to the ground. “I’ve got your back, Sheriff Sanders. Always.”

She nodded once and headed up the trail. Mud suctioned to her boots as it had the night she’d raced into the darkness in hopes of finding this killer on Tiger Mountain. This time would be different. This time she wasn’t alone, but more importantly, fear had lost its stranglehold on her. She breathed evenly through her nose despite the harrowing incline switching back and forth along the trail. January stayed close on her heels, her shoes sloshing through the rain, but Blair only had attention for deep gouges in the trail. The same size and shape of Colson’s boots. “He was here. I’d say within the past ten minutes.”

“I’m only seeing one set of footprints.” January struggled to catch her breath. “If your killer is out here, she may have taken a different approach.”

Evyn Garder was out here. She was sure of it, but her sister had a point. Blair slowed, visually following the rain-filled divots along the trail ahead. “Or kept off the trail altogether.” Not an easy accomplishment when hauling Brennan Jefferson’s body out here. She shifted her weight into her toes as she continued up the trail. The rain was already destroying the evidence. They couldn’t stop now. She locked her back teeth against the soreness twisting the muscles down the backs of her legs. Her uniform had soaked through, adding weight, and threatened to slow her down. They’d hiked approximately twenty percent of the trail. There were any number of places their suspect could’ve gone, but her instincts said Colson was onto something. He wouldn’t have messaged her unless he’d been sure the killer had already chosen a location to dump a third body. Not after what he’d done.

The echoes of helplessness she’d battled for what’d seemed like a lifetime pinged in her chest, but a small part of her had known even then it’d had nothing to do with dropping temperatures and the danger she’d faced. Sure, getting thrown over a cliff had shifted something inside her so deeply she wasn’t sure she could respond to another call out here again, but the hollowness in her chest now… There was more to it. Something she hadn’t expected. Something January had warned her about when she’d requested Colson’s phone records.

“You were right before. When you said I’d rather destroy something that might be good for me than live with the unpredictability.” Blair stepped over a thick root, every sense on high alert. “That’s why I applied to the academy. That’s why I took the job with Seattle PD then transferred into the sheriff’s department. My career—this life we’ve chosen—comes with a set of unbreakable laws I can rely on. Even after everything that happened, my work, my investigations, that structure makes me feel like I have control, and when that control is threatened—”

“You detach. I know,” January said. “It wasn’t a secret why you went into the academy. We knew you couldn’t move on until you had the man responsible and would do whatever it took to make that happen. We supported you, even if we didn’t agree with your methods. We still do, which reminds me. Mom and Dad called. They saw the news earlier. They wanted to know if I’d talked to you, to see how you were doing, and to make sure you had lunch.”

A humorless laugh crystalized in front of her mouth as she pushed on. “I’ll be sure to call them later, detailing what I had for lunch if I make it out of here alive.” Her heart grew heavy in her chest at the thought of everything she’d worked for simply gone. Her reputation, her position as sheriff, her only source of coping with the nightmares of her past.

No. Not her only source of coping. At least, not anymore. Because the truth was, over the course of this investigation, the private investigator she’d sworn not to trust had become a much larger part of her routine than she cared to admit. The sculpting and painting had done a good job over the past few months, but the effects of losing herself in her art had started to wear thin. No matter how many mugs and soup bowls she sculpted day after day, it hadn’t come close to the comfort and distraction Colson had offered since that first night she invited him to stay in her house.

He’d manipulated his way into her life with a challenge she couldn’t seem to turn away from. His optimism and spontaneity had taken her by surprise in a life she’d carefully constructed to follow certain rules and patterns, and she’d felt…better for it. He’d made her laugh, had brought her undeniable pleasure, and eased the constant ache of missing her family. Despite his personal questions that’d convinced her to reveal more to him than she had to anyone else, he’d never taken advantage, and she loved him for it. Blair cleared her throat as the accusations concerning her time in the sheriff’s department ripped her back into the moment. Closing her eyes, she shook her head. She’d fallen in love with him. Her fingers tingled. She’d fallen in love with a private investigator determined to live off of his childhood fantasies, and now he was out here hunting a killer neither of them was strong enough to bring down. Shit.

January crossed to the other side of the trail and into her peripheral vision. She pulled back a growth of vines, weapon aimed. “How did the media find out you used department resources to arrest the suspect who murdered your parents?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Her mouth dried, and Blair refocused on the trail ahead. Colson’s deal with Rachel Faulkner’s father sat at the bottom of her priority list. Right now, her only goal was finding him alive and bringing down a violent serial offender. Her heartbeat pulsed behind her ears, and she tightened her grip on her weapon. Her shoulders ached from holding her gun upright for so long, but she wouldn’t be taken by surprise again. Colson’s boot prints were fading under the constant torrent of rain. They were losing evidence. “Anything?”

“Not yet,” January said. “Hard to see anything through this rain.”

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