Chapter 31

THIRTY-ONE

CROOKED CREEK

Saturday, November 28

Ellie fought against the frigid water, kicking and using her arms to swim to the surface. Her limbs were weighted, her vision a blurry fog of gray, her lungs straining for air. The water was sucking her down into the darkness.

Shadows danced and crawled around her, but she remembered seeing the girls by the falls and had to get to them. Pushing herself, she pumped her arms and kicked, then noticed a shadow near the falls.

A man?

She tried to swim to the edge, fought the underpull, but the shadow flitted away.

Ellie gasped for air as her eyes flew open, the sheets tangled around her. Sweat trickled down the side of her face as she jerked herself to a sitting position. She rubbed her eyes to clear her vision and scanned her bedroom expecting to see bones floating around her, then realized she'd been deep in the throes of a nightmare.

Throwing her feet over the edge of the bed, she padded to the bathroom, closed her eyes and splashed cold water on her face. Her breathing still unsteady, she stared into the mirror. But for a brief second, the image of the dead girls replaced her own.

She leaned against the sink, her mind racing.

What if the girls' killer had been at the falls? If she'd only been faster, she could have caught him.

A chill cut through her, and she yanked on her robe and walked to the kitchen for coffee. Frustration clouded her brain, and she cradled her coffee and sipped it as she stared into the snowy mountains behind her house.

But as the coffee warmed her, her determination kicked in. Her meeting at the morgue with Laney was scheduled for ten. She also needed to follow up on forensics from the hunting knife Cord had found.

But first she'd run by the office and do some more digging on Modelle.