A Snow Covered Nightmare: Refuge Series Book Two by Debbie Zello (1)

Chapter One

Her heart was beating so fast it seemed one beat couldn’t finish before the next was halfway through. Her breathing shallow, so as not to be heard by him. She stood stock-still, afraid that any movement would alert him to her presence. The cold sweat of fear stung her eyes as it trickled down her forehead, then cheek, joining her tears as they dripped on her shirt.

Through the thin opening of the closet door, Briah could see Dan’s desk. Dan was sitting on the corner, seemingly oblivious to the gun pointed at him. His cool demeanor masked his fear well. “You don’t want to do this. Cops may not be geniuses, but they’re not completely stupid. Forensics and DNA have come a long way in the last few years. You shed skin and hair every minute of every day. You’ve probably left several thousand pieces of you behind already.” He spoke with an unruffled, clear voice.

“Nice try. They need a sample to match it to, asshole. I don’t have one. I’m not on anyone’s radar. The first time you do this is a freebee. You just can’t do it again,” he chuckled. Briah wondered how anyone could find amusement in this situation.

“I haven’t seen your wife in over a month. It’s over between us. I swear; I didn’t know she was married. Once I found out, I ended it. I was deceived, just the same as you were.”

“The difference is I’m married to her. With you gone, no one will know what she did. Offing you is my insurance that it doesn’t happen again. She’ll know what I did to you and that I won’t hesitate to do it again. So, this is for my wife and marriage,” he said, squeezing the trigger.

The loud explosion made Briah jump. The second one brought her hand to her mouth to stifle the impending scream. She closed her eyes, expecting him to open the door and shoot her as well. After a few seconds had passed with no intrusion into her hiding place, Briah opened the door a little more and peeked around.

To her utter astonishment, he was gone. All that met her was silence and Dan’s dead body. There was blood, all over his desk. Briah quickly dialed 911, putting her phone on speaker, as she desperately tried to hold her hands on his wounds, just in case it would help. She had to do something, as she felt so hobbled by doing nothing.

“911, what is your emergency?”

“My boss has been shot! I need help! I’m trying to stop the bleeding!” she screamed. It felt good to scream.

“I have the address as 1842 Summit Road. Is that correct?”

“Yes! Please hurry!”

“How did he get shot?”

“A man came in the office and shot him.”

“Is the man still there?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t see him leave, but if he was still here, he would have shot me by now.”

“Police and ambulance are en route. Stay on the phone with me. Is your boss breathing?”

“I don’t think so. He’s been shot twice. One in the face and one in his pants,” she started to shake as the adrenalin began to leave her body. Dan’s blood was seeping through her fingers, covering her hand completely. She wanted to throw up so badly. She wanted to faint and stop the memory. Instead, she just stood there.

After what seemed to her to be hours, four officers with guns drawn, slowly entered the office. They cleared every room before coming to her. One called on his radio to send in the paramedics. One felt Dan’s neck for a pulse. Feeling nothing, he shook his head at her.

Briah removed her hands from his wounds and began to wail, shuddering and sobbing. She was finally free to move, and she sank down to the carpet. One of the officers grabbed her wrist and placed a plastic bag over it, securing it closed with tape. Then he did the same to the other. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“We have to clear you as a suspect before we can believe you as a witness,” he answered finishing his task. Once the paramedic had confirmed that Dan was indeed dead, the room was cleared and Briah was taken in a police car to the station for testing and questioning.

Once they removed the bags from her hands, she got a good whiff of Dan’s blood. Her stomach lurched and she threw up. “Don’t be embarrassed. That happens all the time,” the clinician said.

It took two hours for them to finish the gathering of evidence from her body and clothes. The whole time, the blood dried on her hands causing her more distress.

Her head was pounding by the time they finished. All she wanted was a shower, a drink, and some Advil. What she got was a trip to the bathroom to wash up as best as she could with soap, water, and paper towels. This was followed by six hours of questioning.

Briah went over the entire event, giving the detectives his physical description, the clothes he was wearing, what the gun looked like, and everything else she could remember. She worked with an artist to come up with a drawing of the side of his face and his back, as that was all she had seen.

She told them she knew his voice, and would be able to identify it, if she heard it again. She told them what he had said, especially about getting a freebee. The cops smiled at that.

“What were you doing in the closet in the first place?” the detective with the bald head and potbelly asked.

“It’s a large walk-in closet. We keep many of the important files in there because the door locks. Dan had just handed me the last stack of files to put away. He went to turn to go back to his desk when this guy came in. Dan sort of kicked the door to the closet closed. He saved my life.”

“Do you think he would have killed you, too?”

“I told you he said it was a freebee. I would have been two for the price of one.”

“Do you know who it was that your boss was fooling around with?”

“No. We didn’t discuss our personal lives outside of saying we had a good weekend.”

“You’re a beautiful woman. Did he ever come on to you?”

“Well, gee, thanks. He hired me because I’m a damn good secretary, not because he wanted to bonk my ass. Not every ‘beautiful woman’ as you so eloquently put it, is out for a good time. Some of us are actually bright and useful. I take it you didn’t marry one of them?” she said dripping with sarcasm.

“She got you there, Pete. I don’t believe he meant to insult you, Miss Spencer. He’s just uncouth sometimes. We’re just trying to find a starting place. We need to figure out who he was seeing, so we can get the bad guy.

“Do you happen to know a favorite restaurant, night club, or bar? Any place that he might have taken his woman?” the younger of the two men asked.

“I know he went to Ermines Bar once because I saw that he had one of those coins they give you on his desk. He liked Hail to the Chief out on the reservation. I guess they had a venison dish he loved. I don’t know of anywhere else,” she said, with a ‘deep in thought’ look on her face.

“We’ve notified his next-of-kin. His body won’t be released to them until after the autopsy tomorrow. Can you think of anything we’ve missed in questioning you? Anything at all?”

“No. I’m exhausted and filthy. I can’t think anymore, anyway. May I please go home?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

“I’ll drive you to pick up your car at the office. Because we don’t yet know who we are dealing with, a police car will be outside your apartment until we have a suspect in custody. He is there for your protection so please don’t try to sneak out a back door to avoid him.”

“My back door leads to a balcony, six stories up. While throwing myself off it is somewhat appealing, right now, I think I’ll settle for a hot bath, some wine, and my bed.”

“Good choice, especially the wine part.”

Driving home was harder to do than she thought it would be. She was so tired the few miles felt like hundreds. Pulling into her assigned space, she spotted the police officer in his car. She walked over to him, and he rolled down his window. “Hi, I’m Briah Spencer. If you need anything, a bathroom, coffee, hemlock, I’m in 6C. It’s the back of the building with a stunning view of the dumpsters.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Spencer. I wish it was under different circumstances, but nice anyway. My name is Officer Jack Otis. If you need anything, a quick get-away, a cohort for Go Fish, or a partner for synchronized swimming, I’ll be right here.”

“No shit, you know synchronized swimming?” Briah said, completely stunned.

“Not really, but I’m a fast learner. I mean, how difficult could it be?” he smiled.

“It’s an Olympic sport. It’s probably easy!” she laughed. It felt so good to laugh after the completely shitty day she’d had. “I’m going in. I won’t be going out until maybe tomorrow. It will be very boring watching me.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

Smiling, she turned and walked away. The sun was just coming up over the horizon. She had been up a full day. Maybe she would forgo the long hot bath in favor of a shower. And the wine would have to wait until later. Drinking at six in the morning wasn’t her style. Shower, then bed.

Briah was a stunner, that much the detective had right. She was an avid skier with a yearly pass at Echo Mountain, which offered night skiing in addition to its regular daytime hours. It was only thirty miles from her house, and she went at least once a week, plus holidays.

She hated going to a gym, feeling caged in. Skiing was her refuge from the world. She could lose herself and forget any problem in the cold air and snow covered trails. She could be with hundreds of people and yet completely alone.

Briah stripped off her bloody clothes and threw them into the washer by the kitchen. Naked, she walked through the living room, to her bedroom, and then into the bathroom. The whole time, the numbness of the day, gathering strength, was beginning to overwhelm her.

She ran the water, taking her long, curly blonde hair from its tie and fingering through it. She stepped into the tub and under the flow of the water. As the water streamed down her back, she began to relax, giving way to her turbulent emotions. The tears came with a violent force. She clung to the wall of the shower to support her weakened legs.

She cried out, “I’m never going to see him again. I’ll never know what happened. Never get to ask him what his favorite restaurant is. Never hear another joke. How could you just walk into someone’s office and kill them like that?” She was grateful she hadn’t seen the killer’s eyes; for sure, she would have seen the devil in them.

Briah halfheartedly finished washing, and stepped out to dry off. After wrapping a towel around her head, she fell naked into her bed. The ham sandwich they had given her sometime after midnight had long since worn off, but she was more tired than hungry. She fell asleep with the towel still wrapped around her head.