Alaskan Mountain Pursuit Elizabeth Goddard (best short novels .TXT) 📖

with her brother. Reasons to keep his caring on a friend level and not allow it to go any further ran through his mind like facts on a ticker board.

The biggest one was that he wasn’t an emotional kind of guy. He kept emotions out of his work life and he’d been a good cop, the possible exception being that last case that even his chief insisted he couldn’t have seen coming. Besides that, he’d always done a good job keeping a cool head, staying logical and by the book. Letting himself get any closer to Summer might not allow him to detach the way he needed to in order to keep his focus sharp, keep his senses on alert.

Something he desperately needed to do. Because tonight he felt in his own gut the sinking feeling Noah had seemed to feel in his. Something about this ongoing menace toward Summer felt weightier, more heavy with evil than a random attack. Clay was almost sure Summer was the target of a serial killer. One who had been successful six times so far. Who would feel he’d been robbed of his seventh victim and would likely keep coming back until he could kill her too.

And it would be up to Clay to stop him.

FOUR

“Clay, you need to see this.”

Tyler’s voice.

Clay blinked his eyes open, exhaustion impossible to deny after the small amount of sleep he’d managed the night before. At least it had been more than anticipated—he’d planned to stay awake all night, but Tyler had come in around three thirty in the morning and told him he’d be awake doing lodge business and promised to wake him if anything happened. Clay had argued at first, but when Tyler insisted that Clay wouldn’t do them any good exhausted, he finally gave in.

He sat up and glanced at his watch. It was 6:03 a.m. He slid his feet back into his boots, which sat beside the couch he’d slept on. Easy access. He wanted to know he could be ready at a moment’s notice. He glanced at the other couch in the room, where Summer had fallen asleep last night, though he’d known she wouldn’t be there. Kate had come down and finally convinced her to go up to her room somewhere around 3:00.

“What is it?” Clay was up and following Tyler in seconds, as Tyler walked toward the front door. Clay’s eyes went to the stairs. “Is Summer okay?” He needed to know.

“She’s fine. Sleeping, thankfully. She doesn’t know about this yet and I’m not sure she needs to.”

Clay understood Summer’s siblings were only trying to protect her, but he disagreed with their methods. He didn’t plan to keep anything from her permanently, at least not as it related to the investigation, though he supposed he could see some value in carefully choosing the timing for revealing information to her. There were things about himself he might keep from her, but only because that was truly for her own good. It was in both of their interests that he keep his distance from her, be her friend on only the most basic level. Acquaintance, really. An acquaintance tasked with keeping her safe. And nothing more.

“Did we miss something last night?”

“I’m not sure. But look.”

Tyler pointed up at the front of the lodge. At first, Clay didn’t see anything, just the wide log beams and siding that made up the lodge. He looked toward Summer’s window.

There.

The window itself was outlined in red. Spray paint, Clay assumed, from the tint and the lack of drip pattern on the logs. Underneath the window, above the slant of the house’s roof, were the words, YOU’LL BE EVEN MORE BEAUTIFUL WHEN YOU SLEEP IN DEATH.

“What...?” Clay clenched his fists and fought the childish desire to kick at the gravel rocks at his feet.

“I know.” The anger in Tyler’s voice reminded Clay he wasn’t alone in his feelings, and that of the group of people worried for Summer’s safety, he’d known Summer for the shortest amount of time. If he cared this much about keeping her alive, her family must be stressed beyond all reason.

“And you checked on her this morning?”

“Before and after I saw this, just to be sure. Yes, she’s fine.”

Clay exhaled. That reassurance did a little to calm him, at least. He pictured Summer as she’d been last night on the couch, eyes closed. Her face had stayed tense though, as if she wasn’t able to relax, not even in sleep. Was that only because of the threat against her? he wondered. Or did it have to do with something else?

He didn’t know her well enough to ask. Never would, he reminded himself.

“This isn’t right.” Clay walked down the parking lot a little, parallel to the lodge, looking at the painted words. “He was just trying to kill her and now he’s leaving notes?” He shook his head, pulled his phone out of his pocket and called Noah. He didn’t see the man’s squad car in the parking lot so he assumed he’d already gone to work, probably hoping there’d been a break in the case or that looking at the notes with fresh eyes would help him make a break.

“Noah, someone was at the lodge last night after we were outside investigating, sometime after 2:30. Did you see his handiwork painted on the wall?”

“No. It was light when I got up but I was focused on making sure the perimeter was secure before I left, not looking at the whole place. What happened?”

Clay read the message to him.

Noah seemed to consider it. “As far as we know the serial killer in Anchorage hasn’t left notes, either before or after the victims’ deaths, so at least that’s good news.”

“You don’t think it’s him anymore?”

Noah let out a breath. “I may have been hasty to assume it was. I don’t know yet. I want security around her just as tight as though he is the threat though. I’ll be back to process the scene. Give