Cold Case Tracker, page 1
The masked man had Amy.
“Stop! Police!” Jackson shouted. “Let her go! Now!”
He ran faster, not even certain they’d heard him over the sound of the scuffle. Jackson reached for his badge, then realized he’d left it with his gun back in the truck. The masked man dropped Amy and ran. She sank to her knees. Her hand reached inside her jacket as if searching for something.
“Amy!” Jackson shouted. He dropped to the ground beside her and grabbed her by the shoulders, just trying to steady her enough to pull the bag off her head. But a fresh scream tore from her lips and she struggled against him. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you—”
But the words had barely left his lips when her right hand darted up in front of his eyes. She was holding a small black canister of bear spray. The ring was wrapped around her finger. The nozzle was pointed directly at his face.
“Hey!” He let her go. “Put that away. It’s me, Jackson—”
Amy yanked the pin and fired.
Maggie K. Black is an award-winning journalist and romantic suspense author with an insatiable love of traveling the world. She has lived in the American South, Europe and the Middle East. She now makes her home in Canada with her history-teacher husband, their two beautiful girls and a small but mighty dog. Maggie enjoys connecting with her readers at maggiekblack.com.
Books by Maggie K. Black
Love Inspired Suspense
Undercover Protection
Surviving the Wilderness
Her Forgotten Life
Cold Case Chase
Undercover Baby Rescue
Unsolved Case Files
Cold Case Tracker
Pacific Northwest K-9 Unit
Undercover Operation
Rocky Mountain K-9 Unit
Explosive Revenge
Visit the Author Profile page at LoveInspired.com for more titles.
Cold Case Tracker
Maggie K. Black
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.
—Luke 4:18
With thanks to Emily my editor for ten years for all the incredible books we did together
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
Dear Reader
Excerpt from Disappearance in Pinecraft by Lenora Worth
ONE
There was a man standing on the sidewalk across from the Clearwater Bookstore, staring at Amy Scout through the storefront window. She froze as her hands instinctively cradled the unborn child in her belly. This was the third time today she’d spotted the stranger with his imposing black and tan German shepherd outside the store, which was unsettling considering how deserted the tiny town in Northern Ontario was during the offseason. But if he was going to eyeball her then she was going to take down every single detail she could about him in return.
Amy grabbed her sketchbook and a charcoal pencil, letting her fingers find his face on the page. His beard was dark, and his jawline was handsome in an intimidating way. He had curly hair and a build that was muscular and strong. There was an intensity to his gaze, although in the gloomy light of the late afternoon she couldn’t quite make out the color of his eyes.
As if sensing her gaze, the man turned and said something to his dog. Then the pair continued down the sidewalk, leaving Amy with just the charcoal picture of his face. She studied it a moment. There was something oddly familiar about him.
Had she seen him somewhere before? Was he there to hurt her? Did he have anything to do with Gemma’s disappearance?
She had a whole lot of questions but absolutely no answers. Amy closed her eyes and prayed.
Lord, please keep me safe. Help me keep my baby safe too and bring Gemma home soon.
She had to believe her missing friend was still alive, despite that law enforcement had told her Gemma had probably drowned and her body might never be found. Two weeks ago, Gemma’s empty car had been found submerged in a dangerous river, at the bottom of a steep waterfall near the town of South River, about an hour from Clearwater. Amy had no idea where Gemma had been going when she’d left the cottage that day or what she’d even been doing in that area.
It was like her best friend had been hiding something from her. Gemma had started going into the store early in the morning and returning there late at night after dinner, but she would never give Amy a straight answer when she asked why. There’d been some big secret, something that was bothering Gemma. Whatever it was, Gemma had refused to talk about it. She kept Amy in the dark and then she disappeared.
Amy closed the blinds firmly, locked the front door and switched the hand-painted sign in the window from Open to Closed. Her unborn daughter kicked within her and a smile crossed Amy’s lips. The doctor told her this fluttering would become stronger and more frequent in the next six weeks before the child was born. To Amy the poking and prodding always felt personal, as if her child was trying to communicate with her. She liked it, and it made her feel less alone.
“Hello, Skye,” Amy said. She couldn’t remember exactly when in her pregnancy she’d named her daughter that, but it seemed to fit. The sky was immense and beautiful. It was peaceful at times, yet life-changing and powerful too.
“I’m just closing up shop now,” Amy went on. She walked over to the front counter, opened the cash register and began to count the money. “Gemma still isn’t here. But I want to make sure that everything is in tip-top shape when she gets back.”
They’d been best friends since they met in seventh grade. Amy couldn’t remember a time—day or night—when Gemma hadn’t been willing to drop everything to be there when she needed her. Vice versa too. Amy wasn’t about to let Gemma down now.
“This place is a ghost town right now,” Amy added. “Most of the stores are shut and the cottages are empty. But from the May long weekend to Labor Day, it’s going to be packed around here. The lake will be crowded with boats, and there will be tourists and vacationers everywhere. Not to mention busloads of campers.”
She moved from the cash register to restocking the bottled drinks and snacks in the mini-fridge, then started straightening the books on the shelves. The store itself was a former barn that Gemma had painted a bright turquoise. Oddly it always seemed smaller on the inside than it looked from the outside. In the main room they displayed newly released and bestselling books, along with DVDs and VHS tapes for rent since there was no cable television up here and the internet signal was weak.
A smaller room off to the side had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with mostly used books, including an entire back wall dedicated to crime, cold cases and unsolved mysteries. It was also home to the store’s resident conure parrot, Reepi Cheeps. The little bird was only a few months old. His name was a twist on a character from one of Gemma’s favorite childhood books. The green and gray conure more than lived up to his name with constant cheeping and chirping, as he bounced around the high shelves. Reepi lived in the store during the warmer months and was allowed to roam free when it was quiet.
“See, I’m not alone,” Amy told Skye, as she continued to tidy. It comforted her to talk to her daughter. “I’ve got a birdie and a baby on the way. Plus, we had a pretty good day, all things considered. We had twelve sets of customers, which isn’t bad for a Tuesday in April. One of them even bought a couple of my postcards—the ones I drew of Reepi. I think I might paint him on the side of the building when the weather gets warmer. We can make him our unofficial mascot.”
She just had to think positive, keep moving and not let herself consider that Gemma might not come home. It had been Gemma’s idea to start selling Amy’s sketches in the bookstore. When some of the customers balked at the sticker price, Gemma then started selling postcard prints of Amy’s artwork alongside the originals. There was no way Gemma was about to let anyone haggle over the price of her best friend’s art.
Gemma had always been protective. Maybe even overprotective. When Amy called her in a flood of tears to tell her that Paul—the man Amy had just eloped with—had turned out to be a liar and a conman who’d robbed her blind, Gemma had immediately driven through the night to pick Amy up and bring her back to the cottage.
That was long before Amy even realized she was pregnant with Paul’s child.
She paused with her hand on a misplaced DVD as a sudden chill ran down her spine at the memory of the man who’d ruined her life...
It was my fault for being impulsive. I always jump into things without thinking.
And then I ended up prey to an evil man...
Skye kicked again, jolting Amy back out of the dark rabbit hole of self-recriminations and regret she had almost tumbled into. It was a hard kick this time too, and Amy silently thanked God for the distraction. At her last doctor’s visit, A my was told her blood pressure was worryingly high and she needed to lower her stress level. All the more reason to focus on happy thoughts now, despite how much her memories might want to wander.
“You know, Gemma and I met up here when we were kids?” she told Skye. “She’s a year older than me. But we did everything together. I don’t know if you’ll ever have any brothers or sisters. I never did, but I always had Gemma. And she had a younger brother named Ajay.”
She was sure she’d told Skye all this before. Amy tended to repeat the same stories. It was hard to keep thinking of lighthearted things to talk about. Not that Gemma’s problems with her brother were a happy thought, but it sure was a lot better than thinking about Paul.
“Ajay was my age and he loved adventure books. But Gemma never let him hang out with us, because he was really loud and silly. He would climb on the roof of their cottage and jump out of windows. Once he set off all these fireworks. And then on my fourteenth birthday, he drove my grandma’s car into the lake, while my cake was still inside. The police came and the whole party was ruined.”
Even though she’d been really upset at the time, it was the kind of memory she laughed about now. But for some reason, Gemma never had. There was a deep-running tension between the sister and brother that Gemma never wanted to talk about. And Amy never wanted to push her to open up about it. She hadn’t even known how to contact Ajay when Gemma vanished.
Amy walked into the smaller room where Reepi was bouncing around between the bookshelves, like Amy’s own scattered mind. The green-cheeked conure was incredibly good at playing hide-and-seek. She opened the cage door with one hand and stretched out the other to make a landing platform for the bird.
“Come on, Reepi!” she called. “Playtime’s over.”
There was a flutter of green and gray feathers as the bird glided out from somewhere high above Amy’s head and landed on her palm. Dutifully, he began to hop down her arm toward the open cage door.
Suddenly the lights went out, plunging the bookstore into darkness.
Amy’s heartbeat quickened, but she took a deep breath and tried to calm it, as her eyes adjusted to the dark. She listened for any sign of trouble. Only silence filled her ears. Okay, so the store had probably blown a fuse or she’d forgotten to pay a utility bill. Gemma had taken her laptop with her when she disappeared, and Amy still hadn’t figured out where she kept her bills and files.
She felt Reepi bounce off her arm and then heard the gentle creak of the bird landing on his perch. Amy pulled out her cell phone and used the screen’s glow to double-check that Reepi was safely in his cage, then she closed the door and latched it. She put her phone back in her pocket, slid her jacket on and turned to head out the door at the back of the store.
A tall masked man blocked her way. Amy screamed. His cold eyes narrowed through the holes of his ski mask.
She turned and ran toward the front door. Her fingers fumbled for the lock. There was a small canister of bear spray in a pocket inside her jacket, but she wouldn’t deploy it until she was outside, in case inhaling the toxic spray hurt Skye.
Strong hands grabbed her from behind. She struggled and kicked back hard against her attacker. He yanked a thick cloth bag over her head, blinding her vision.
“Now you’re going to stop fighting,” a coarse and heavily accented voice filled her ear, “and you’re going to help me find what I’m looking for.”
* * *
Sergeant Jackson Locke of the RCMP’s Ontario K-9 Unit opened the back door of his double-cab pickup truck and watched as his partner, Hudson, leapt inside. The German shepherd promptly lay down on top of Jackson’s coat.
“Now what am I going to do if the temperature drops?” Jackson asked. Hudson rested his head on his paws and looked up with big brown eyes. “Just be thankful I’ve decided that today is not my day. I’m too rattled to interview Amy. We should just pack it in and go find a motel before it gets dark.”
For almost three hours, they’d paced laps around the tiny town of Clearwater, as he tried to gear himself up for talking to Amy Scout about his sister’s disappearance. Jackson and Hudson had been in the Yukon on an undercover assignment and imbedded in an organized crime ring when his boss, Inspector Ethan Finnick, had slipped him the news that Gemma had gone missing and was presumed dead.
It wasn’t until Jackson had closed his Yukon case and gotten back to Ontario last night that he realized just how weak and dicey the evidence was for his sister’s disappearance. Nobody had a clue what she’d been doing in the area where her car was found, totaled and empty and submerged in a river. And no one had heard from her since. But the local cops who investigated had no idea how strong, stubborn and downright difficult his older sister could be.
In many ways, he and his sister were polar opposites. But for all their disagreements, he respected the fact that Gemma wasn’t the kind of person to give up without a fight.
While the RCMP’s Ontario K-9 Unit didn’t have official jurisdiction over the investigation into Gemma’s disappearance, Finnick had offered Jackson forty-eight hours off work to come up to Clearwater and see what he could find.
What Jackson hadn’t been expecting to find was Amy Scout.
Unbidden, Amy’s hazel eyes and long honey brown hair filled his mind. For reasons he couldn’t begin to guess, it seemed the girl Jackson had a huge crush on—for his entire childhood and well into his teens—was now all grown up, living alone in his family’s cottage, heavily pregnant and even more beautiful than he remembered. Unfortunately, his foolish heart had started beating just as fast at one glimpse of her face as it always had. He felt like a teenager again. Back when he’d known Amy, he’d gone by Ajay—short for “Arthur Jackson.” It was a nickname he’d despised but his mother had insisted on because his father was an Arthur too. He’d changed his name to Jackson when he was eighteen.
He was a new man, but he suspected Amy probably hated his guts just as much as she always had.
He hadn’t spoken to her since he’d ruined her fourteenth birthday party by hopping into her grandmother’s car and crashing it into the lake. He’d been a troubled teen, lashing out after his parents’ divorce. At the time, he’d been upset Amy hadn’t invited him to her party. And maybe he wanted someone to pay attention to how much he was hurting. He’d tried apologizing to Amy after, but that hadn’t gone well.
Jackson ran both hands over his head as if trying to get his brain in gear. He’d parked a little ways from the bookstore in a narrow alley, in the hopes that walking a couple of blocks to the bookstore would help settle his nerves.
It hadn’t.
Hudson’s shaggy eyebrows rose, as if he knew there had to be a good reason they’d spent five hours driving all the way up from Toronto and it wasn’t to just wander around for a bit and leave.
“You’re right—I’d better get this over with.” He had to go talk to her, whether she still hated him or not. For Gemma.
He wasn’t sure if Amy liked dogs—Gemma didn’t. Gemma also didn’t like cops. Just in case, he was sticking to plain clothes and leaving Hudson behind, at least for now. He rolled the window down, shut the door and then prayed as he jogged down the alley.
Lord, help me be wise. Help me find the right words to say. And help me find my sister.
The back of the bookstore came into view. The door was ajar. At first silence fell. Then he heard a faint and muffled cry. He ran faster. The door flew back on its hinges and he saw them.
A tall man in a dark ski mask had his arm around Amy. He was forcing her backward into the alley. A white cloth bag had been pulled down over Amy’s head as a blindfold. She was thrashing against him and fighting for her life. His heart leapt in his chest.
“Stop! Police!” Jackson shouted. “Let her go! Now!”
He ran faster, not even certain they’d heard him over the sound of the scuffle. Jackson reached for his badge, then realized he’d left it with his gun back in the truck. The masked man dropped Amy and ran. She sank to her knees. Her hand reached inside her jacket as if searching for something.
