Chapter Ten

Wednesday morning, Tammy sat at her desk in the office of the Eagle Mountain Examiner , reviewing the photos she had taken the night before. She was supposed to be selecting the image from the rescue to run with the story she had already turned in. But her attention kept returning to the shots she had taken of Vince’s vandalized car. You thought I was dead, didn’t you? And that slash of a V beneath. If it was possible for a painted message to look angry, this one did.

She replayed those few seconds when the figure had run past her in the dark—slender body, long hair—and something about the way they moved had made Tammy certain it was a woman. Who would be running away from the accident, unless it was the person who had vandalized Vince’s car?

Tammy had arrived at the scene after all the rescue personnel were in place. Law enforcement was either stationed at the highway barricade or near the accident site. Could one of them have seen the same fleeing woman?

She stood and walked to the open door of Russ’s office. He was hunched over his desk, frowning at his computer monitor, but looked up at her approach. “What?” he asked.

“I’m going out to do background interviews for a story I’m working on,” she said.

“Go.” He waved her away and returned to scowling at the monitor.

She slung her handbag over one shoulder and headed on foot to the sheriff’s department. It was the kind of perfect summer day that made tourists congratulate themselves on having chosen such an idyllic spot for a vacation—sunny but not hot, with cloudless turquoise skies and blooming flowers everywhere you looked.

The atmosphere was less sunny in the lobby of the sheriff’s department. Office Manager Adelaide Kinkaid looked up from her command center at the front desk, her expression stern. “What can I do for you, Ms. Patterson?” she asked.

“I’d like to speak to the sheriff,” Tammy said.

“Sheriff Walker does not have time to speak with the press,” Adelaide said, her response to every request Tammy had ever made to speak with the sheriff.

“Then I need to speak with one of the deputies who responded to the accident at Carson Canyon last night.”

Adelaide’s eyes narrowed. “What do you need to know?”

“I need to clarify a couple of facts for the article I wrote.” Pause, and an earnest expression. “I would hate to get anything wrong.”

Adelaide’s frown tightened, but after a few seconds, she picked up the phone and asked a deputy to come to the lobby to speak with “the reporter from the Examiner .” As if everyone in town didn’t already know Tammy was the sole reporter—well, except for the high school student who covered school sports each year, and Russ, who did write his share of news stories.

Deputy Jamie Douglas smiled when she saw Tammy. Tammy returned the smile. She and Jamie were friends, and she didn’t have to worry about her friend being evasive. Jamie glanced at Adelaide. “Come on back, and we’ll talk at my desk,” she said.

As they walked down the hallway to the crowded bullpen where Jamie shared a desk with other deputies, the two friends exchanged the usual pleasantries. “How is Olivia?” Tammy asked.

“We think she’s going to start crawling any minute now,” Jamie said of her three-month old daughter. “And she’s growing like crazy. Nate says she’s going to be tall like him, but I think it’s too soon to tell.” They arrived at Jamie’s desk. “Adelaide said you had some questions about the accident last night?”

“Yes. I wanted to know who was working the barricade where they closed the highway.”

“I was.”

“Did anyone try to get past you? On foot, maybe?”

“No. You and the rescue personnel are the only people we let through.”

Maybe the woman she had seen had slipped through before the barricade went up. “Did you see anyone leaving the area?” Tammy asked. “Anyone you didn’t recognize, or who wasn’t authorized to be there?”

“No. Why?”

She explained about the running woman who had passed her as she hiked up the hill.

“I didn’t see anyone like that,” Jamie said. She looked over Tammy’s shoulder. “Dwight, come here a minute.”

Deputy Dwight Preston joined them. “Hi, Tammy.”

“Dwight, did you see anyone come or go past the barricade last night who you didn’t know? Anyone who wasn’t with search and rescue or highway patrol?”

“There was the other reporter,” he said.

“What other reporter?” Tammy asked.

“With the Junction Sentinel . She said the couple in the truck were from Junction, and she was covering the story.”

Tammy’s heart raced. “What did she look like?”

“About your height. Slender. She was wearing dark jeans and a dark shirt and a baseball cap. I couldn’t see her hair.”

“Did she give a name?” Jamie asked.

“No. She just said she was a reporter with the Sentinel. She had a camera and a notebook, so I let her through.”

“Were the couple in the truck from Junction?” Tammy asked.

Jamie and Dwight looked at each other. “I’ll check,” Jamie said, and turned to her computer.

“Is something wrong?” Dwight asked.

Tammy explained about the running woman. “It sounds like it could have been the same woman,” Dwight said. “Maybe she was in a hurry to get back to town and file her story.”

Jamie looked up. “The couple was from North Carolina,” she said.

Tammy thanked them and hurried back to the newspaper office. From there, she telephoned the Junction paper and asked for her friend, Tyler Frazier. “Hey, Tammy!” he greeted her. “This is a nice surprise.”

“Hey, Tyler. I’m trying to locate a reporter there at the paper. She was here in Eagle Mountain last night, covering an accident we had where a couple’s truck went off the road and over a cliff.”

“Sounds like a wild story, but I don’t think we would have sent a reporter to cover it,” he said. “That’s pretty far out of our coverage area.”

“Would you mind checking for me?”

“Okay. Hold on a second.”

He put her on Hold. A song that was popular when her parents were teenagers came on, and Tammy hummed along as she studied the photos of the vandalized truck once more. She had taken one of the red footprint, left when someone—the vandal?—had stepped in the red paint. Red like blood. She shivered at the thought.

Tyler came back on the line. “No one here went down to Eagle Mountain yesterday to cover an accident or anything else,” he said. “What did this reporter look like?”

“Female, young, slender, about my height. Maybe with long hair.” The woman who had run past her had had long hair.

“That doesn’t sound like anyone we have on staff,” Tyler said. “Sorry I can’t help you.”

She hung up. Someone had posed as a reporter in order to get past the highway barrier. Had she done so specifically to get to Vince’s truck? But why? Why target him?

The phone rang, the screen showing a familiar name. “Hello, Mitch,” she said.

“Come have lunch with me,” Mitch said.

She started to tell him she was too busy. Truthfully, she wasn’t in the mood to socialize, even with Mitch.

“Please. Elisabeth will be there, and I want you to meet her.”

“All right.” She couldn’t pass up the chance to meet the woman who had captivated her brother.

“Meet us at the Rib Shack at twelve thirty.”

When she arrived at the barbecue stand near the river, she spotted Mitch already in line. Next to him was a slender, dark-haired woman about her height, whom he introduced as Elisabeth. The woman’s smile was warm, her handshake firm. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said.

“It’s good to meet you too,” Tammy said. “And welcome to Eagle Mountain. Mitch tells me you’re new in town.”

“Yes. He’s been helping me get settled.” She gave Mitch an adoring smile, which he returned. Tammy had never seen her brother this besotted. Why was that unsettling?

“What brought you to Eagle Mountain?” Tammy asked. “We’re not exactly on the beaten path.”

“I had a friend who used to live here,” she said. “She raved about how beautiful it is, and I can’t say she was wrong.”

It was their turn to order. When they had collected their food, they carried it to a picnic table in the shade of a towering blue spruce. Elisabeth and Mitch settled across from Tammy, sitting so close their shoulders touched.

“Elisabeth, where are you from?” Tammy asked.

“Nebraska.”

“Oh, do you have family there?”

Elisabeth’s expression saddened. Something about her was familiar to Tammy, but she couldn’t place her. “Not anymore. My father passed away recently, and I’m all alone.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. You don’t have other family?”

“No one close, no.” She glanced at Mitch. “Not everyone is lucky enough to have a close sibling.”

“Are you in Eagle Mountain for long?” Tammy asked.

“I hope so.” She beamed at Mitch, and he beamed back. Why did this set Tammy’s teeth on edge? Was she jealous that Mitch was happy and she wasn’t? No. She wasn’t like that. And Elisabeth seemed perfectly nice.

“Mitch tells me you’re a reporter,” Elisabeth said, her attention on Tammy once more. “That must be such interesting work.”

“It is.”

“What are some of the stories you’ve covered?” She propped her chin on her hand, eyes laser-focused on Tammy.

Tammy shifted, uncomfortable under that intense gaze. “Last night I covered an accident. A truck went off the road and plunged over a cliff, but it was caught halfway down on a boulder. Search and rescue had to make a dangerous climb down to stabilize the truck and retrieve the accident victims.”

“That certainly sounds dramatic,” Elisabeth said.

“It was.” She studied the other woman more closely. “You weren’t up there near the accident scene last night, were you?”

“Who, me?” Elisabeth looked amused. “Why would you think that?”

“I thought I saw you up there.” Tammy couldn’t be sure, but Elisabeth might have been the figure who ran by her.

Elisabeth chuckled. “It wasn’t me.” She leaned into Mitch. “I was otherwise occupied.”

“Elisabeth was with me last night,” Mitch said. He put his arm around her shoulders.

“It must have been someone else, then.” Tammy focused on her lunch, though she scarcely tasted the spicy barbecue.

“You wrote that article about the little girl who disappeared, didn’t you?” Elisabeth said.

“Yes.”

Elisabeth glanced at Mitch. “I read it when I first got to town. It’s hard to believe anyone could just vanish that way.”

“It happens more often than you would think,” Mitch said. “There’s a lot of hazardous country. It’s easy to get lost or have an accident.”

“I would think parents of a child would keep a closer eye on them.” Elisabeth popped a french fry into her mouth.

“Apparently, Valerie slipped out of the tent early in the morning, before the rest of the family was awake,” Tammy said.

“Well, the parents would say that if they wanted to cover up their own guilt, wouldn’t they?”

Before Tammy could question this odd assertion, another local real estate agent stopped by their table to say hello. Mitch introduced Elisabeth, who smiled warmly and leaned closer to Mitch.

When the other man left, Tammy gathered up the remains of her lunch. “I’d better get back to work,” she said. “It was nice meeting you, Elisabeth.”

“You too.” Elisabeth linked her arm with Mitch’s. “I’m sure we’re going to be seeing a lot more of each other.”

Tammy took the longest route back to the newspaper office, trying to walk off her mixed emotions about her brother’s newest girlfriend. Was it the swiftness with which the relationship had progressed that unsettled her? She clearly wasn’t the woman who had impersonated a reporter from Junction last night, or the person who had run past Tammy and maybe vandalized Vince’s car. Tammy hadn’t dared press for more details, but her brother’s smug expression seemed to imply that he and Elisabeth had spent the entire night together.

Back at the office, she got to work on an article summarizing the most recent town council meeting and rewriting a press release from a local charitable organization.

Hours later, she was gathering her things to leave when the receptionist, Micki, a high school student who worked from one to six most afternoons, came over to her desk. “Someone just put this through the mail slot,” she said. “It’s addressed to you.”

Tammy accepted the envelope and stared at her name in crooked block print across the front. The printing looked familiar. She worked her thumb beneath the flap and teased it open. The message inside was typed.

Dear Tammy

As a reporter, I’m sure you’re interested in the truth. I read the article you wrote about the disappearance of Valerie Shepherd and feel the need to set a few things straight.

Despite what the Shepherds have told everyone for years, Valerie did not simply wander off. Her parents—and her brother, Vince—deliberately left her in those mountains to die. That was the whole reason they even went into the mountains that weekend. The family had other things to do that weekend, but Mr. Shepherd insisted they had to go. He couldn’t wait to get rid of the difficult child in the family. I guess he thought life would be easier with only Vince, his perfect son, to contend with. If not for the kindness of a stranger who found her, Valerie would have perished. The truth is, her family didn’t want her anymore. Fortunately, she ended up with someone who did want her.

This is the truth you need to let the public know about.

V.