Dead on Arrival, page 1
Cree dashed for the epicenter of the flames.
The hairs on his forearms singed as the blaze closed in. Heat burned down his throat. It was getting harder to breathe, but he wouldn’t stop. Not until he found her.
“Alma!” She was out here. She was alive. He had to believe that. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He was going to find her. The fire raged as though feeding off the desperation boiling over inside him.
Coughing reached his ears from the left. “Cree?”
Every cell in his body homed in on his name. He’d heard her. It wasn’t his mind playing tricks on him. “Tell me where you are!”
“Here.” Another round of coughing broke through the howl of the inferno. Then he saw movement. A hand stretched toward him through the surface of the murky water.
“Alma.” He hauled himself through the marsh and swam out to meet her. She was soaked head to foot, and Cree pulled her against his chest as the fire raged around them. “I’ve got you.”
DEAD ON ARRIVAL
Nichole Severn
Nichole Severn writes explosive romantic suspense with strong heroines, heroes who dare challenge them and a hell of a lot of guns. She resides with her very supportive and patient husband, as well as her demon spawn, in Utah. When she’s not writing, she’s constantly injuring herself running, rock climbing, practicing yoga and snowboarding. She loves hearing from readers through her website, www.nicholesevern.com, and on Facebook, @nicholesevern.
Books by Nichole Severn
Harlequin Intrigue
Defenders of Battle Mountain
Grave Danger
Dead Giveaway
Dead on Arrival
A Marshal Law Novel
The Fugitive
The Witness
The Prosecutor
The Suspect
Blackhawk Security
Rules in Blackmail
Rules in Rescue
Rules in Deceit
Rules in Defiance
Caught in the Crossfire
The Line of Duty
Midnight Abduction
Profiling a Killer
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Alma Majors—She might be Battle Mountain’s newest reserve officer, but discovering a body strapped with explosives at the bottom of a gulch throws her into a puzzle she never anticipated. And she can’t solve it alone.
Cree Gregson—He lives with more than a few scars—mental and physical. But when his compelling, defensive next-door neighbor needs his help analyzing the bomb that nearly killed her, he’s there.
Weston Ford—The only concern of Battle Mountain’s police chief is keeping his town safe. No matter the cost.
Easton Ford—Weston’s older brother will do whatever it takes to protect his fellow officers.
Battle Mountain—Rocky Mountain mining town comprised of 2,800 residents.
I dedicate this book to all the readers who let me kill them in my books.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Excerpt from Montana Wilderness Pursuit by Danica Winters
Chapter One
This was not why she’d joined the Battle Mountain Police Department.
Reserve Officer Alma Majors leveraged her heel into the dirt, trying not to fall flat on her face down into the gulch. She clutched her flashlight in one hand and tried to balance her weight with the other extended. Dirt collapsed under her, and the world tilted on its axis.
She couldn’t hold back the scream lodged in her chest. Pain ricocheted around her skull as stars blurred into white lines over and over. She hit the bottom of the gulch. Air sawed through her chest. Her official first day on the job, and she’d already made a fool out of herself. Sounded about right. “Damn it.”
Aches stabbed through her joints as she fought against the weight of her Kevlar vest to sit up. Dirt coated the inside of her mouth and dove deep into her lungs. Hand over her mouth, she coughed the worst of it up. Her flashlight had ended up a few feet from her. The beam cut through the darkness and cast shadows across rocks and boulders. Craning her neck over her shoulder, she gauged she’d fallen about fifty feet down a near straight incline. She rocked onto her sore hip and stretched for the flashlight.
What the hell was she doing out here? A year ago, she’d been happily married, with dozens of stamps in her passport, dirt under her fingernails and a career on the verge of surpassing the queen of Mexican archaeology herself. Alma brushed dirt from her uniform. Now what did she have? A one-bedroom apartment, a part-time job as the world’s smallest town’s rookie cop and no idea what she was doing with her life. “Well, at least I got the dirt part down.”
The call about suspicious activity at the gulch had come in thirty minutes before, but from as far as she could see, there was nothing down here but broken bottles—evidence humans had yet to figure out where their garbage should be disposed—and what looked like a photo album that had been stabbed through with a kitchen knife. She shoved to her feet, stretching her neck to ease the pain.
Her radio crackled from her vest. “How you doing out there, Majors? Find anything?”
Weston Ford, Battle Mountain’s police chief and her boss for the foreseeable future. The sleepy town of less than a thousand residents didn’t have much in the way of a police department, but the work Chief Ford had done this past year had made national news. He and his brother, the town’s second reserve officer, had brought down not one but two serial killers in a span of months. When her world had ended, the former mining town had seemed like the safest place on earth. Until she’d decided to join the department.
Making her way around the boulders, she kicked into something ceramic and jarred the lid free. Dust burst from the container. She’d seen enough of them from her work as an archaeologist uncovering once-lost burial grounds within the Templo Mayor excavation site. Alma pinched the push-to-talk button between her thumb and index finger. “You mean apart from the urn I just found? Which looks to be full of someone’s ashes.”
The chief’s laugh filtered through static and the call of crickets but didn’t ease the knot of tension in her gut. “That would be Greta’s husband. Last time I spoke with her at the diner, she told me they’d gotten into an argument, and she’d made him sleep outside. Kids must’ve picked him up. Thought it’d be fun to play hide-and-seek with her. Bring him back to the station if you can.”
“Yes, sir.” Was this what life was going to be like now? Nights filled with field trips into the bowels of Battle Mountain and something slimy stuck to her arm sleeve? As an archaeologist, she’d been an explorer, a truth finder. One of the best in her field. Only now, instead of uncovering ancient rituals, belongings and civilizations, she’d had to settle for—she picked up something vaguely familiar—whatever this was. Nausea churned in her gut at the smell, and she tossed the raccoon’s corpse as far away as she could. Nearing gagging, Alma wiped her hand down her pants. She doubled over to clear her lungs of decomposition. “That was really gross.”
There was nothing out here. Whoever had called 911 about the suspicious activity must’ve imagined it. She’d make one more pass. After that, she’d head back to the station with Greta’s husband. Alma ran her flashlight over the bottom of the gulch.
Only this time, something reflected back.
Twenty, maybe thirty, feet away, a metallic surface brightened under her beam. A small piece of jewelry? She’d seen all kinds of stuff she wouldn’t have expected, but nothing valuable. Silence descended. Thick and unknown. Her instincts warned her to run in the opposite direction—the same instincts that had braced her for her ex-husband’s violence—but the logical part of her brain said the 911 call hadn’t been a hoax. Someone had seen something, and she intended to find the truth.
Alma forced one foot in front of the other, her flashlight steady on... A locket? The shiny silver chain had been buried in the dirt, but the main component had been left exposed to the elements. The petite oval shape clouded under her touch. A clear stone had been set in the middle. A diamond. Wedging her thumbnail into the grooves along the side, she pried it open. To find a photo of an infant boy inside. No more than a few months old, if she had to guess. “Who do you belong to?”
She caught the small manufacturer stamp on the back, the kind that charged upward of a thousand dollars for an item like this. No. This wasn’t a gift picked up from the local big-box store. It was special to the owner. So what was it doing all the way down here?
A moan pierced through the night.
Alma automatically fisted the locket to grip her flashlight harder. Straightening, she tried to swallow a familiar tendril of fear charging through her. “Battle Mountain police. Is someone out here?”
No answer. No movement.
She pocketed the locket in hopes of returning it back to its rightful owner
along with Greta’s missing husband and unbuttoned the strap of her holster. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she forced herself deeper into the gulch. Her pulse thudded hard behind her ears. “Hello?”
“Please,” an unfamiliar voice said.
Alma locked onto an outstretched hand, fingernails clawed into the dirt. Every cell in her body protested as she followed the length of that hand farther up the woman’s arm, to a section of red-crusted blond hair and then to hooded eyes. She collapsed beside the victim. Air crushed from her lungs as she reached for her radio. “Ma’am, my name is Officer Majors. Hang on. I’m calling for help.”
She pinched the radio and opened the frequency. This wasn’t an accident. This woman had been left at the bottom of the gulch to die. Why? “Chief Ford, I’ve got what looks like a 217. Assault with intent to murder. Please be advised, victim is conscious and speaking but in shock. I need an ambulance sent to my location. Now.” Alma didn’t dare move her, but the urge to comfort the woman had her setting one hand against the victim’s shoulder. Blood seeped through Alma’s fingers. “Ma’am, can you tell me your name?”
In a burst of desperation, the woman shot her hand out and latched strong fingers around Alma’s arm. Hooded eyes widened as though she expected to see her attacker right in front of her. A lacerated lip split deeper as the woman pushed Alma back. “Run.”
Alma landed on her rear, and the locket slipped from her pocket. The woman’s gaze instantly homed in on the necklace, but where Alma had expected recognition, there was only peace. Acceptance even. “Ma’am, the ambulance is on its way. You’re going to be okay. Tell me about the locket. Is it yours?” She leaned forward. “Is this your baby?”
The flashlight beam registered the small tick at the corner of the woman’s mouth. Smile lines softened as she rested her head to the ground, her gaze unfocused. “Tell them I’m sorry... I wasn’t strong enough.”
The victim’s final exhale hit her as though she’d taken a punch straight to the gut. Tears burned in Alma’s eyes as she stared at the colorless face of a woman she’d never met. Alma sat straighter, her heels digging into the dirt as sirens echoed through the darkness. It was too late. She’d been too late. Her first day on the job, and she’d let someone die.
A series of beeps reached Alma’s ears. She checked her watch, but she hadn’t set an alarm apart from the one that got her up in the mornings. The beeping wasn’t coming from her. She centered her attention on the hint of a light beneath the victim’s shirt. It was coming from the victim. Alma rocketed forward. She skimmed her fingers over the woman’s stomach and tugged her blouse from her jeans.
Red light haloed around her as she exposed the source, and she froze. “No. No, no, no, no.”
Twenty. Nineteen. The timer on the clock ticked off second by second.
The tendril of fear she’d carried all night contorted into outright fear. Alma shoved to her feet, the locket still in hand, and pumped her legs as hard as she could. Boulders and small rocks threatened to block her escape, but she couldn’t stop. Cold air burned down her throat, pressure building in her chest. She’d lost count of how many seconds had passed. Too few. The urn she’d nearly tripped over mere minutes ago stood stark against the uneven landscape, and she scooped it up as fast as she could. Slamming her hand over the lid, she tried to keep Greta’s husband inside as she raced up the incline.
Her boots lost grip in the loose dirt. She cascaded back down a few feet, and a sob escaped without her permission. She hadn’t survived her husband to die here. Not like this. Not tonight.
The explosion reverberated through the ground a split second before the blast knocked her forward. The urn slipped from her arms as she face-planted in the dirt. Heat and pain seared along her spine, and the world caught fire.
* * *
HIS ENTIRE APARTMENT SHOOK.
Cree Gregson shot upright in bed. The nightstand lamp hit the floor as he threw back the damp sheets. Single blast of an aftershock. Not an earthquake. Sirens punctured through the hard thud of his heartbeat behind his right ear. Shoving to his feet, he collected his jeans and boots from the end of the bed and dressed as fast as his grogginess allowed. Reality chased back nightmares of fire and pain bit by bit. “That was an explosion.”
He was still in Battle Mountain, a small former mining town, with nothing more to lose. A thousand residents, limited resources and charm coming out of every brick down Main Street. Cree parted the bedroom sliding glass door curtains overlooking a small patio facing Henson Street. Thick trees, family-owned businesses and pristine mountain ranges attracted all kinds of people keen on hiding from the world. It was the perfect place to escape the past...as long as it hadn’t followed him from Loveland.
A Battle Mountain PD patrol car raced in front of his building, emergency strobes flaring. Hell, it was close to midnight. Something had happened, and his gut said it had to do with whatever had shaken his house. Cree grabbed his keys from the top of his dresser in the corner and charged straight through the one-bedroom apartment and down the hall until he reached the front door. He slammed it behind him in a hurry.
“Cree, is that you? What’s going on?” The elderly woman in the apartment across the outdoor corridor peeked her head through the crack in her door. Confident she hadn’t mistaken him for an intruder, she stepped out into the halo of her lit, front-door sconce. The frayed edges of her floral nightgown swayed under the burst of a breeze as she clutched her equally old and equally well-fed Siamese. Stark white hair kept in rollers brightened under the addition of his apartment lights. “Was that an earthquake?”
“Go back to bed, Mrs. Faris. I’ll check it out. Okay?” His gaze wandered to the apartment on the other side of his, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of distress from the woman he’d run into a handful of times the past few weeks. Alma. He didn’t know much about her. In fact, he knew less about her than he did about Mrs. Faris in the same amount of time, but there was an old compulsion he hadn’t been able to ignore that urged him to learn the source of the storm in Alma’s eyes.
A compulsion he wouldn’t follow.
“You be careful. Don’t be sticking your nose in something dangerous, you got me?” Mrs. Faris secured her door behind her.
In seconds, his knees protested his rapid descent down the stairs to the first floor and into the parking lot. He hit the unlock button on the key fob and hauled himself behind the wheel of the pickup that had become more than a way to get from point A to point B over the past few months. He threw day-old fast-food bags into the back seat as the engine growled to life under his touch.
He wasn’t law enforcement anymore. While he was still technically considered one of Larimer County’s bomb techs, he’d left that life and his need to get to the truth behind when his last assignment had blown up in his face. Literally. He had no jurisdiction and no business getting involved, but here he was ripping out of the parking lot and barreling toward the sirens.
Darkness encroached along the single-lane road leading to the east side of town. Grip tight on the steering wheel, he considered any number of possibilities for an aftershock like the one he’d felt. Gas explosion, a gasoline eruption after a fatal vehicle accident, a bombing. The police would have everything under control. So why was he still racing toward the other side of town?
The answer—no matter how many times he tried to drown it—knotted tight in his gut. Because it wasn’t a gas explosion. It wasn’t the aftermath of a fatal car crash. Every cell in his body had become all too familiar with that kind of physical discharge, even from a distance.
A bomb.
Town stores pierced his peripheral vision and failed to hide the massive rise of cliffs just outside of the city limits. From what he’d learned from the visitors’ center, Battle Mountain had once been a rising star in the world of coal and energy, but when the mining companies had bled every last resource from the mines, it had become nothing more than a dying limb. Most of the police force had become resigned to finding work elsewhere. Town residents lost jobs, lost their retirement and their dreams. All in the span of months. The only thing left going for a place like this was acting as a pit stop to better pastures on the other side of Ten Mile Range. That, and the newly constructed veteran rehabilitation center out at Whispering Pines Ranch.
