Life didn’t make any damn sense. Ryker leaned back against a tree and ignored the pounding rain. Blue and red lights swirled through the darkness as FBI techs hustled around the secured vacant land north of Salt Lake City, looking for evidence that wouldn’t be there. This killer was too good to leave evidence.
Being this close to any law personnel gave Ryker a gut ache, but he didn’t have a choice. At least his disguise wouldn’t reveal his true identity, although to the best of his knowledge, the FBI wasn’t after him. Yet.
Two guys wearing jackets emblazoned with yellow FBI letters finished setting up a tent to protect the body from the elements.
Ryker had caught a glimpse of the girl’s matted red hair but hadn’t gotten close enough to see her face yet. But he knew. Yeah. The body was Maisey Misopy, and he was too late again. The idea of some psycho hurting the innocent plunged him right back into his childhood, and he had to fight to keep in control of himself when all he wanted to do was punch the nearest tree.
Why did people with loved ones get killed while a guy like him, who for so long hadn’t had anybody, still walked the earth?
“How the hell did you get the news?” asked an irritated female voice from his left.
He turned to see Special Agent Loretta Jackson stepping gingerly over broken bottles and what appeared to be a dead possum. “Connections,” he said easily, raising his voice a few octaves to mask his normal tone.
She came to a halt, her battered brown boots sinking into newly forming mud. In her midthirties, she had deep brown eyes, very curly brown hair, and full lips that belonged on a supermodel, not a cop. “The family hired you.”
“No.” He smoothed down his nondescript paisley tie, which coordinated perfectly with his boring brown suit. Padding gave him a beer belly, and high-end costumery gave him a beard and mustache. Add brown contacts and a blond wig, and even the sharp-eyed agent wouldn’t be able to draw a true picture of him. “My agency is going to keep working this until the guy is caught, whether we’re paid or not.”
The family of the fourth victim had hired them two months ago, and they’d failed to bring her back home alive. Yet another person Ryker had let down.
Jackson looked around him, spotting his rented Taurus on the deserted county road. “You’re solo this time?”
“Yes.” Usually Heath handled the crime scenes, but he’d been getting too emotionally close to the case, so Ryker had stepped up. “Can I see the body?”
She zipped up her dark jacket. “Sure. Tell me how you knew about the body, and I’ll let you see it.”
“We have an alert out for any suspicious deaths of young females in the western states,” he said, giving her the truth and biting back his frustration. “When the hikers discovered this body and the local sheriff called you in, we were notified, and here I am.”
“There’s something not quite right about you guys, and I’ll figure it out after I catch this maniac.” She pushed wet hair away from her face. “If I insist on seeing your license for the state of Utah, you’ll say you don’t have it with you, right?”
“Yes.” He smiled beneath the fake beard. “Then we’ll send you copies of the license after I get back to the office.” They’d have no trouble once again faking credentials by copying authentic ones and backdating them in computer systems. Thank God Denver was so good with computers. “I’ll have my office send you our Utah credentials.”
“I’d appreciate that.” She looked toward the white tent, her shoulders slumping. “All right, one peek.”
He kept the surprise off his face as he followed her across the uneven ground toward the tent. Mountains rose in the distance, silent observers of man’s worst, and he fought a shiver.
As they reached the tent, he tugged up the flap and let her enter first.
The eighteen-year-old girl lay on her side, blood matting her hair to the right side of her face. In death, her pretty blue eyes were closed, but bruises marched down her face. Somebody had placed a sheet over her, and part of the potato sack she’d been dressed in peeked out the side.
The smell of death hadn’t permeated the tent yet, but it would. His stomach clenched, and he dropped to his haunches next to the body. His chest ached. “God, she was young.”
Jackson nodded and reached a gloved hand to tug the sheet down. “Just turned eighteen. Dressed in burlap, like the others, and…” Pulling farther, she revealed the knife marks in the upper chest that said MINE.
Ryker sucked in air. The gouges were deep and bloody, showing the bastard had cut her while she was alive. “Sexual assault?”
“Looks like it. We’ll know more after we get her to the coroner’s.” Jackson settled the sheet back in place, her voice sober, her hands shaking.