CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Thursday, June 22
7:17 p.m.
Maggie woke up to the sound of activity. She didn’t know how else to term it. There were more footsteps in the hallway than she’d heard up to this point, and there were voices that weren’t quite raised but managed to convey urgency despite that. She lay there for a full five minutes, which was long enough for the sounds to die down, but curiosity had gotten the better of her.
That and the need to use the bathroom.
Once she’d taken care of the latter, she padded to her door and peeked out. A pair of women spoke in quiet tones at the nurses’ station twenty feet down the hallway, but there was nothing else to see. That didn’t stop her, though. She was up—she might as well take a little walk. At least they gave me a pair of pants to wear so I’m not bare-assed. She walked toward the nurses’ station, trying to look casual.
She failed miserably.
The older nurse saw her first. She had enough wrinkles to convey that she was past middle age, but her body wasn’t frail by any definition of the word. She looked like she could bench-press Maggie if she put her mind to it. Her brows dropped, though her tone was polite enough. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“I heard sounds.” She realized how silly that sounded and forced a laugh. “I guess I’m being nosy, but I was kind of restless.”
The nurse—Jamie, according to her name tag—pressed her lips together, but the younger one, Nicole, smiled. “I can understand. You’re the park ranger, right? Must be hard to hold still for so long.”
“It is.” Sensing a sympathetic soul, she smiled. “I’m not used to being laid up.”
“I don’t blame you.” Nicole leaned forward and lowered her voice. “They just brought in two girls from Glacier. I think they said something about being missing hikers.”
“Nicole!” Jamie propped her hands on her hips.
“What? If she’s a park ranger, she knows when there are missing hikers, and the fact that she has an injury from an arrow means that she’s involved.” Nicole waved a hand down the hall, presumably in the direction of the girls. “It’s not like this hospital can keep a secret to save its life. Besides, their families have already been notified.”
Maggie listened with half an ear as they argued, but her mind was already on the case. She didn’t realize that she hadn’t actually expected to find any of the missing hikers alive. “Do you know how they were found?”
Jamie answered. “The EMTs who brought them in said they lit a signal fire up on Kootenai Peak.”
Kootenai Peak. She and Vic had been so close to them yesterday. Kootenai Peak overlooked Bench Lake. It was a pretty intense hike to get to the top from that direction, but it was more than doable.
She closed her eyes, trying to picture the area. Depending on where they had set up the fire, the light would be visible for miles. While that didn’t mean a damn thing in the grand scheme, it should have been visible from Bench Lake, which was the area the unsub had been in just hours previous.
If the unsub was close enough to see the fire, how the hell did those girls get rescued before he could get to them?
Because one of them is the unsub.
Maggie turned for her room. Every instinct she had was screaming that some shit was about to go down, and she wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it while dressed in scrubs and a hospital gown. Ava had stopped by and brought her clothing earlier—and yelled at her again for almost getting herself killed.
Back in her room, she stripped, all too aware of the way every single move pulled at her back. It wouldn’t take much to rip open the stitches. She didn’t think she’d be in danger of bleeding out, but the thought of ripping the stitches was enough to turn her stomach. She wasn’t even close to 100 percent at this point.
She’d just buttoned her jeans—with difficulty—when her door opened. “One second.”
“Maggie.”
Just like that, her entire world stood still. She turned to Vic, torn between smiling just from seeing him and demanding to know why he hadn’t called her and told her about the girls being found. But his gray eyes were fastened to her chest when she faced him, which made her acutely aware that she hadn’t made it as far as a shirt yet. Her tank top covered everything, but that didn’t change the fact that she felt stripped bare without a bra on.
Even injured and tired, her body responded to that look.
He took a sharp breath, as if he knew, and made an obvious effort to drag his gaze north to her face. “I have news.”
“Madison and Ashleigh were found.” Alive. It was more than she had dared hope for, even if she hadn’t been able to admit it to herself.
“Tucker and I are going to talk to them as soon as the doctor gives the okay. It looks like Ashleigh was shot with an arrow on that first night, and the wound has become infected, but no one is worried that there will be permanent damage.”
“Not that anyone can see.” Her being shot answered the question of why the girls had fled deeper into the forest instead of back toward the campsite that first night. It was the only question answered so far.
He nodded. “Not that anyone can see.”
Being chased through the woods for days on end, living in a state of terror the entire time, left a mark on a person. If the girls were strong enough to keep going, they’d be okay, but it wouldn’t be easy. Their lives were forever changed, and it made Maggie sad to think about.
What was she thinking? One of those girls was, in all probability, the person responsible for all those deaths. Feeling sorry for them didn’t change that, and she’d do well to remember it.
She made an effort to set her feelings aside. “Can you help me get into this shirt?” Ava had thought ahead enough to bring a button-up, but Maggie didn’t relish the thought of wrestling with it, especially now that Vic was witnessing her weakness.
He grabbed it and helped her shrug into it. “I’d feel better if you weren’t in this hospital while they’re here—especially on the same damn floor.”
“Because we think the same thing—that one of those girls is the unsub.” It warmed her that he wanted her protected, but she’d never been content to live her life in a bubble. Even when she was reeling from life knocking her down, she kept fighting. This situation wouldn’t be any different.
“Yes, we do.” He went to one knee in front of her, carefully buttoning her shirt up as if it were the most important thing in the world. His fingers brushed her stomach, the thin cotton the only barrier between them. The room seemed to heat a good ten degrees, and Maggie had a hard time drawing a full breath as he finished up. “You’re checking yourself out of the hospital.”
“Yes.” She might not be worth much when it came to the investigation, but she couldn’t lie in that bed another hour, let alone while there was so much going on here on the same floor. “I’ll stay out of the way.”
“Did you get much sleep today?”
It was such an odd question that she took a step back so she could see his face better. “I napped. Why?”
Vic smiled, a playful look coming into his eyes. “Because Britton co-opted you for the remainder of this investigation.”
“What? When?”
“As soon as he landed, apparently. Wyatt wasn’t having it, but he promised that it’d be a glorified desk job and that Tucker would sit on you if you tried to exert yourself too much.”
She shook her head, still trying to catch up. Of all the things she’d expected him to say, that didn’t even make the list. And then the timing dawned on her. “That bastard. He already knew that this had been approved when he came to see me.” It put their conversation in an entirely new light. He’d been feeling her out to see if she’d be interested.
Vic’s smile faded. “If you’re tired or think it’s too much, you don’t have to do it. Wyatt would probably be relieved if you turned it down.”
“Hell, no, I’m not turning it down.” She moved carefully, gauging her range of motion. Not great, but it would have to be good enough.
“We’re going to interview the girls, and then I’ll be back.” He brushed a quick kiss across her lips and walked away before she could do something stupid like drag him to bed. The case was winding down, for better or worse, and it would be over soon. She might not be certain of anything else, but she was certain of that.
It was just a matter of figuring out what the unsub’s next move was.
Thursday, June 22
8:23 p.m.
Vic met Tucker outside the girls’ room. He jerked a chin at the door. “They both in there?”
“Yeah.” Tucker had none of the easygoing swagger that he was known for. He looked tense and worried. “They tried to separate them, but Ashleigh freaked the fuck out. She kept saying, ‘It’s not over,’ which is creepy on a whole different level.”
“She’s not wrong.” No matter which way Vic turned the situation, it didn’t fit. Ashleigh had an arrow wound, which indicated they had had a run-in with the unsub, but aside from that, the girls were about as well off as if they’d been lost only a few days. Following the logical line of their investigation, one of those girls was responsible for killing six people. But if they were together the whole time . . .
They were missing something—something important.
Could be that the girls are partners . . .
But if that was the case, there had to be a different way they’d go about it. Unless Ashleigh Marcinko was a master actress who had managed to hide her outdoors skills from every single person in her life, if she was part of this, he couldn’t help but think that these murders would’ve happened in an urban setting.
He couldn’t rule it out completely, but it seemed improbable.
“No, I don’t suppose she is.” Tucker rocked back on his heels and slid his hands into his pockets. “Ready?”
“Yeah.” It would have been better to separate them and do these interviews at the police station where they could secure both of them, but the hospital wouldn’t release them until they were seen to. It was possible that the girls being in a weakened state would make them more likely to slip up and tell the truth, but Vic didn’t think he’d get that lucky.
He knocked on the door as he opened it, earning a sharp look from one of the nurses—Jamie, he thought her name was—but this couldn’t wait any more than it already had. “Madison. Ashleigh. I’m Agent Sutherland. This is my partner, Agent Kendrick.”
The nurse glared. “You have ten minutes, tops. These girls need to get some rest.”
“Of course.”
Seemingly satisfied, she turned to the girls. “If you get too tired or need anything, just hit the ‘Call’ button and I’ll be back.” When they nodded, she left the room, shooting one last glare at Vic and Tucker.
Vic turned his attention to the girls. They’d pushed their beds close enough that it’d be a squeeze to get between them. The blonde had started out her trip thin, but now she had tipped over the edge, her cheeks hollowed out. Her eyes were a little glassy, which indicated she’d had some kind of pain meds already.
The other girl, Madison, was more alert. Her thick, dark hair was tangled and dirty, but she seemed like she’d fared better overall. Just like she would if she was the unsub. Her brown eyes were alert, her posture attentive. “You’re going to catch the person who killed that guy.” She looked away, and then back. “Where are our friends?”
Vic couldn’t decide if she was nervous or if she was intentionally trying to steer the interview. Either way, he wasn’t about to play along. “Why don’t you walk us through everything you’ve seen and done. Then we can talk about your friends.”
From the expression she gave him, she didn’t believe for one second that they were getting a happy ending, but since she was right, he ignored it. Finally, Madison sighed. “We had heard that there was a murder in the park, but no one really thought anything of it. We’d scheduled our trip months ago, and trying to get everyone’s schedules to align again was going to be nearly impossible.” She made a face.
“Take me through that first day.” It was the night that everything had gone wrong, but there might be clues in the interactions that peppered the hike up to Fifty Mountain. Plus, starting her off like this was designed to put her at ease and maximize the chance that she’d slip up.
They were so close.
Madison took a tiny sip of water and set the cup aside with shaking hands. “It was a good day. We made decent time, though the group spread out a bit as the afternoon went on.” She shot a look at Ashleigh. “Ash and Josh used to date, so there’s some unresolved issues there, and they got to sniping at each other. Ethan and I ended up a bit ahead of everyone else, but they all caught up to us once we hit the camping spot.” She looked from Vic to Tucker. “We used to hike out there all the time in high school—nearly every single weekend where the weather wasn’t terrible. I know that trail like the back of my hand, but we’re not cocky about it. The park needs to be respected, and just because something is safe one trip doesn’t mean it will be the next time.”
Maggie had said something similar. He’d gotten the impression that she had liked Madison—at least the little they’d interacted when they’d all set off together from the ranger station. It would hurt her if she had gotten this close to a serial killer and not known, but he just didn’t see how it could be anyone else.
Unless we are missing something . . .
No, that was wishful thinking. Despite twelve years in the BAU teaching him that anyone was capable of murder with the right pressure, he didn’t want this fresh-faced girl to be responsible for the horror show they’d seen over the last few days.
He nodded, because that’s what was expected of him, and Tucker had apparently decided to take a back seat in this conversation. “You set up camp at Fifty Mountain.”
“Yeah. We got the tents up first because they’re a pain to wrestle once it gets dark. Ashleigh needed a break, and I was trying to be supportive, so we hiked down a bit to where one of the huckleberry patches used to be. It’s too early in the season for them to be ripe, but it was mostly an excuse to get away for a little bit.” She hesitated, paling. “That’s where we saw the body. I think I screamed. It scared me.” She shook her head. “We calmed down a few seconds later, because obviously this guy wasn’t a danger to anyone, and he’d been dead for . . . a while.”
“He was. Quite a bit of time before your group showed up.” He watched her face. She still looked a little like she was in shock, because she was talking about finding a dead person like it’d happened to someone else. Or she’s very good at lying. “Did any of the others come to find why you were screaming?”
“No . . .” She frowned. “I don’t think it was very long from the time I screamed to when the attack came.”
He’d known there was an attack—the arrow wound in Ashleigh’s arm said as much—but he sat back and let her work her way through it. For her part, the blonde seemed content to let her friend narrate. Her eyes were barely open, and her entire body had relaxed. Vic exchanged a glance with Tucker. While Madison seemed to be coping well enough with the trauma of their experience, the same couldn’t be said for Ashleigh. Between her injury and what appeared to be a nasty case of shock, she wasn’t going to be much use tonight.
“Someone . . . someone shot Ashleigh through the arm. I think I heard the guys shouting and Lauren scream.” Madison shook her head. “We were scared, so we ran. By the time dawn came around, I wasn’t really sure where we were, and Ashleigh was pretty messed up. We found a creek and started following it, but we were moving really slow. It took us a couple days to find Bench Lake, which should have taken more than a couple hours normally.” She frowned. “At one point, we saw someone with a bow, but they didn’t see us.”
The unsub—at least theoretically. Most of the SAR people carried some kind of gun or bear spray, but no one would have a bow. Vic leaned forward, just a little. “Can you describe the person?” He asked the question because it was expected of him. The hospital was hardly secured, and if Madison was the unsub, he didn’t want to tip her off.
“Dark coat with the hood pulled up, though I couldn’t tell you the brand. Same with the pants and boots—dark with no blatant markings. The bow was expensive.”
“How do you know that?” Tucker asked.
“I grew up hunting. My dad got me into bow hunting for a little while, but I didn’t really like it. But he’s kind of a research freak when it comes to new hobbies. He had printouts and reviews of every bow he was considering. He ended up going middle-of-the-road for cost, but I still remember the Spyder. That thing was beautiful—and costs roughly a thousand dollars.”
Lot of money, but they already knew the unsub was an obsessive hunter. Only the best would do. It stood to reason that this applied to her weapon of choice. “That . . . What did you say it was called?”
“Spyder.” She gave a wistful smile. “Hoyt Archery Carbon Spyder. I couldn’t tell you the exact measurements from a distance, but I’d know that bow anywhere.”
Interesting. “Those common around here?”
“God, no. Who has that kind of money to blow on a bow?” She seemed to realize what she’d said and shuddered. “But if he was using it as a murder weapon, I guess that’s a whole different kind of hunter.”
“You said he. Did you see enough of the person to verify it was a man?”
Madison blinked, opened her mouth, and then frowned. “You know, my first instinct was that it was a man, but now that I think about it, I can’t be one hundred percent sure. Like I said, the person was far enough away that I couldn’t get a good read on height—and I was trying to keep Ashleigh and myself hidden at the time, so I wasn’t exactly standing there measuring the person.”
If she was lying, she was extremely convincing. “Try. Please.”
She blew out a breath and closed her eyes. “I really don’t know. Average height—either a little short for a man or a little tall for a woman. That’s not helpful, is it?”
“It’s very helpful.” It wasn’t, other than ruling out anyone shorter than five foot six or taller than six foot. That still left them with every one of the hikers that they’d found so far.
He glanced at the blonde. She was passed out cold, her body relaxed in sleep. They needed to talk to her when Madison wasn’t around, but it was obvious they wouldn’t get anything out of her tonight.
As if on cue, Nurse Jamie strode back into the room. “That’s enough for now.”
Vic stood without another word, still watching Madison. “Pretty smart thing you did, hiking up to Kootenai Peak and lighting that fire. Risky, but smart.”
“Thanks.” She gave a faint smile. “I couldn’t think of anything else.”
From all accounts, she’d kept both herself and her friend alive and out of the unsub’s sights. But that was the problem—from all accounts. “You see Josh at any point after the party split up? Or Ethan, for that matter?”
“No. Other than whoever that was with the bow, we didn’t see anyone until the helicopter showed up.”
It didn’t line up. If she was the unsub, why not just finish the job with Ashleigh and then melt away into the forest? Either they’d assume she was responsible and potentially never find her, or they’d assume she had fallen victim to Glacier and become one of its unrecoverable bodies. Lighting a signal fire and getting herself and Ashleigh brought in—potentially for questioning—didn’t fit. “How long did you have the fire going before the rescue crew showed up?”
“Agent, please.” Nurse Jamie glared. “There will be plenty of time for questions in the morning. With all due respect, get out.”
Madison shrugged. “I got it going around noon. It took us longer than I thought to get to a good spot.” She glanced at the sleeping Ashleigh and whispered. “I’m glad we got there in time.”
“Thank you. We’ll be by in the morning.” He followed Tucker into the hall. Tucker started to say something, but Vic shook his head sharply. “This way.” He headed down the hall to Maggie’s room. They found her just lacing up her boots, her face a grimace of pain that melted away the second she saw him. Vic shook his head again, this time resigned, and went to his knees in front of her. “You’re going to hurt yourself.” He finished lacing up her boots and stood.
“Uh, thanks.” She blushed and frowned. “What are you doing here? I thought you were questioning the girls.”
“We were.”
“For all the good it did.” Tucker threw himself into the spare chair with the grace of a sulky teenager. “It’s going to take a bit for Ashleigh’s shock and exhaustion to wear off, and she won’t be able to either contradict or corroborate Madison’s story until that happens. Madison doesn’t know shit. Or she’s lying. Or some combination of the two. This doesn’t make sense. Ethan Conlon couldn’t have killed Josh or shot you, because he was in Kalispell at the time. That leaves Madison and Ashleigh, but Ashleigh has an infection nasty enough to limit her ability to get around, so that really leaves Madison.”
Maggie sat on the edge of her bed. “If the unsub is one of those girls, don’t you think the other one would find it a little strange that her friend kept disappearing? Even if it were possible, Lauren and Josh were killed miles apart. The sheer amount of ground the girl—whichever one you’re looking at—would have to cover would leave the other alone for hours on end. Hard not to be suspicious.”
“There was that person that Madison saw,” Tucker mused. “If she was telling the truth. Fuck, I hate going in circles.”
“If Madison was telling the truth—something we can’t verify before we talk to Ashleigh.” That was the problem—they didn’t have a reliable witness, and every witness was a suspect. Madison had said they were together the entire time, but until they talked to Ashleigh, they couldn’t verify it. Vic rubbed his eyes. “Fuck.”
“That about sums it up.” Tucker stretched his arms over his head. “What say you, Ranger Gaines? Do you have any brilliance to add to the clusterfuck that is this case?”
Maggie pressed her lips together. She was still too pale, and the circles beneath her eyes too dark, but she was alert. “Until we—or, rather, you—can talk to Ashleigh, I don’t think there’s a lot to be done at the moment. But I think you should put a police detail on the girls’ room.”
“Already called it in.” Vic nodded. “We need to get them into separate rooms.” Just because Madison might have orchestrated this rescue didn’t mean she was finished. Putting them in different rooms would at least protect Ashleigh for the time being until they could get to the bottom of this.
“This isn’t over.” Maggie sat on the edge of her bed.
“My gut agrees with you.” Tucker scrubbed his hands over his face. “Whatever the reasoning behind the girls ending up here, the unsub isn’t through. That next move is going to be soon.”