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Once Cold

BOOKS BY BLAKE PIERCE

RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES

ONCE GONE (Book #1)

ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)

ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)

ONCE LURED (Book #4)

ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)

ONCE PINED (Book #6)

ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)

ONCE COLD (Book #8)

ONCE STALKED (Book #9)

MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES

BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)

BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)

BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)

BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)

BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)

BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)

AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES

CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)

CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)

CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)

CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)

KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES

A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)

A TRACE OF MUDER (Book #2)

A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

PROLOGUE

The man walked into the Patom Lounge and found himself surrounded by a thick haze of cigarette smoke. The lights were dim, an old heavy metal tune blared over the speakers, and already he could feel his impatience.

The place was too hot, too crowded. He flinched as beside him a short cheer arose; he turned to see a dart game being played by five drunks. Beside them there was a lively pool game going on. The sooner he got out of here, the better.

He looked around the room for only a few seconds before his eyes lighted upon a young woman sitting at the bar.

She had a cute face and a boyish haircut. She was just a little too well dressed for a dive like this.

She’ll do just fine, the man thought.

He walked over to the bar, sat on the stool beside her, and smiled.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

He realized that he couldn’t hear his own voice over the general din.

She looked at him, smiled back, pointed to her ears, and shook her head.

He repeated his question louder, moving his lips in an exaggerated manner.

She leaned close to him. Nearly yelling, she said, “Tilda. What’s yours?”

“Michael,” he said, not very loudly.

It wasn’t his real name, of course, but that probably didn’t even matter. He doubted that she could hear him. She didn’t seem to care.

He looked at her drink, which was almost empty. It looked like a margarita. He pointed to the glass and said very loudly, “Care for another?”

Still smiling, the woman named Tilda shook her head no.

But she wasn’t brushing him off. He felt sure of that. Was it time for a bold move?

He reached for a cocktail napkin and took a pen out of his shirt pocket.

He wrote on the cocktail napkin …

Care to go somewhere else?

She looked at the message. Her smile broadened. She hesitated for a moment, but he sensed that she was here looking for a thrill. And she seemed pleased to have found one.

Finally, to his delight, she nodded.

Before they left, he picked up a matchbook with the name of the bar.

He would need it later.

He helped her into her coat and they walked outside. The cool spring air and sudden quiet was startling after the noise and heat.

“Wow,” she said as she walked along with him. “I almost went deaf in there.”

“I take it you don’t hang out there a lot,” he said.

“No,” she said.

She didn’t elaborate, but he was sure that this was the first time she’d ever been to the Patom Lounge.

“Me neither,” he said. “What a dive.”

“You can say that again.”

“What a dive,” he said.

They both laughed.

“That’s my car over there,” he said, pointing. “Where would you like to go?”

She hesitated again.

Then, with an impish twinkle in her eye, she said, “Surprise me.”

Now he knew that his earlier guess was correct. She really had come here looking for a thrill.

Well, so had he.

He opened the passenger door of his car, and she climbed inside. He got behind the wheel and started to drive.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

With a smile and a wink, he replied, “You said to surprise you.”

She laughed. Her laughter sounded nervous but pleased.

“I take it you live here in Greybull,” he said.

“Born and bred,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Do you live somewhere around here?”

“Not far away,” he said.

She laughed again.

“What brings you to this boring little town?”

“Business.”

She looked at him with a curious expression. But she didn’t press the issue. Apparently she wasn’t very interested in getting to know him. That suited his purposes just fine.

He pulled into the parking lot of a dingy little motel called the Maberly Inn. He parked in front of room 34.

“I’ve already rented this room,” he said.

She said nothing.

Then, after a short silence, he asked, “Is this OK with you?”

She nodded a little nervously.

They went into the room together. She looked around. The room had a musty, disagreeable odor, and the walls were decorated with ugly paintings.

She walked to the bed and pressed her hand on the mattress, checking its firmness.

Was she displeased with the room?

He wasn’t sure.

The gesture made him angry – furiously angry.

He didn’t know why, but something inside him snapped.

Normally he wouldn’t strike until he had her naked on the bed. But now he couldn’t help himself.

As she turned around to head for the bathroom, he blocked her way.

Her eyes widened with alarm.

Before she could react further, he pushed her backward onto the bed.

She thrashed about, but he was much stronger than she was.

She tried to scream, but before she could, he grabbed a pillow and pressed it onto her face.

Soon, he knew, it would all be over.

CHAPTER ONE

Suddenly, the lights snapped on in the lecture hall, and Agent Lucy Vargas’s eyes hurt from the glare.

The students sitting around her started murmuring softly. Lucy’s mind had been focused deeply in the exercise – to imagine a real murder from the killer’s point of view – and it was hard to snap back.

“OK, let’s talk about what you saw,” the instructor said.

The instructor was none other than Lucy’s mentor, Special Agent Riley Paige.

Lucy wasn’t actually a student in the class, which was for FBI Academy cadets. She was just sitting in today, as she did from time to time. She was still fairly new to the BAU, and she found Riley Paige to be a source of limitless inspiration and information. She took every opportunity she could to learn from her – and also to work with her.

Agent Paige had given the students details of a murder case that had gone cold some twenty-five years ago. Three young women had been killed in central Virginia. The killer had been nicknamed the “Matchbook Killer,” because he left matchbooks with the victims’ bodies. The matchbooks were from bars in a general area near Richmond. He’d also left napkins imprinted with the names of the motels where the women had been killed. Even so, investigating those places had not brought any breaks in the case.

Agent Paige had told the students to use their imaginations to recreate one of the murders.

“Let your imagination loose,” Agent Paige had said before they started. “Visualize lots of details. Don’t worry about getting the little things right. But try to get the big picture right – the atmosphere, the mood, the setting.”

Then she’d turned out the lights for ten minutes.

Now that the lights were on again, Agent Paige walked back and forth in front of the lecture hall.

She said, “First of all, tell me a little about the Patom Lounge. What was it like?”

A hand shot up in the middle of the hall. Agent Paige called on the male student.

“The place wasn’t exactly elegant, but it was trying to look more classy than it was,” he said. “Dimly lit booths along the walls. Some kind of soft upholstery everywhere – suede, maybe.”

Lucy felt puzzled. She hadn’t pictured the bar as looking anything like this at all.

Agent Paige smiled a little. She didn’t tell the student whether he was right or not.

“Anything else?” Agent Paige asked.

“There was music, playing low,” another student said. “Jazz, maybe.”

But Lucy distinctly remembered imagining the din of ’70s and ’80s hard rock tunes.

Had she gotten everything wrong?

Agent Paige asked, “What about the Maberly Inn? What was it like?”

A female student held up her hand, and Agent Paige picked her.

“Kind of quaint, and nice as motels go,” the young woman said. “And pretty old. Dating to before most of the really commercial motel chain franchises came along.”

Another student spoke up.

“That sounds right to me.”

Other students voiced their agreement.

Again, Lucy was struck by how differently she’d pictured the place.

Agent Paige smiled a little.

“How many of you share these general impressions – both of the bar and the motel?”

Most of the students raised their hands.

Lucy was starting to feel a little awkward now.

“Try to get the big picture right,” Agent Paige had told them.

Had Lucy blown the whole exercise?

Had everyone in the class gotten things right except her?

Then Agent Paige brought up some images on the screen in front of the classroom.

First came a cluster of photographs of the Patom Lounge – a night shot from outside with a neon sign glowing in the window, and several other photos from inside.

“This is the bar,” Agent Paige said. “Or at least this is how it looked back around the time of the murders. I’m not sure what it looks like now – or if it’s even there.”

Lucy felt relieved. It looked much like she had imagined it – a rundown dive with cheaply paneled walls and fake leather upholstery. It even had a couple of pool tables and a dartboard, just like she’d supposed. And even in the pictures, one could see a thick haze of cigarette smoke.

The students gaped in surprise.

“Now let’s take a look at the Maberly Inn,” Agent Paige said.

More photos appeared. The motel looked every bit as sleazy as Lucy had imagined it – not very old, but nevertheless in bad repair.

Agent Paige chuckled a little.

“Something seems to be a little off here,” she said.

The classroom laughed nervously in agreement.

“Why did you visualize the scenes like you did?” Agent Paige asked.

She called on a young woman who held up her hand.

“Well, you told us that the killer first approached the victim in a bar,” she said. “That spells ‘singles bar’ for me. Kind of cheesy, but at least trying to look classy. I just didn’t get an image of some working-class dive.”

Another student said, “Same with the motel. Wouldn’t the killer take her to a place that looked nicer, if only to trick her?”

Lucy was smiling broadly now.

Now I get it, she thought.

Agent Paige noticed her smile and smiled back.

She said, “Agent Vargas, where did so many of us go wrong?”

Lucy said, “Everybody forgot to take into account the victim’s age. Tilda Steen was just twenty years old. Women who go to singles bars are typically older, in their thirties or middle-aged, often divorced. That’s why you’ve visualized the bar wrong.”

Agent Paige nodded in agreement.

“Go on,” she said.

Lucy thought for a moment.

“You said she came from a fairly solid middle-class family in an ordinary little town. Judging from the picture you showed us earlier, she was attractive, and I doubt that she had trouble getting dates. So why did she let herself get picked up in a dive like the Patom Lounge? My guess is she was bored. She deliberately went someplace that might be a little dangerous.”

And she found more danger than she’d bargained for, Lucy thought.

But she didn’t say so aloud.

“What can we all learn from what just happened?” Agent Paige asked the class.

A male student raised his hand and said, “When you’re mentally reconstructing a crime, be sure to factor in every bit of information you’ve got. Don’t leave anything out.”

Agent Paige looked pleased.

“That’s right,” she said. “A detective has to have a vivid imagination, has to be able to get into a killer’s mind. But that’s a tricky business. Just overlooking a single detail can throw you way off. It can make the difference between solving the case and not solving it at all.”

Agent Paige paused, then added, “And this case never did get solved. Whether it ever will … well, it’s doubtful. After twenty-five years, the trail’s gone pretty cold. A man killed three young women – and there’s a good chance he’s still out there.”

Agent Paige let her words sink in for a moment.

“That’s all for today,” she finally said. “You know what you’re supposed to read for the next class.”

The students left the lecture hall. Lucy decided to stay for a few moments and chat with her mentor.

Agent Paige smiled at her and said, “You did some pretty good detective work just now.”

“Thanks,” Lucy said.

She was very pleased. The slightest bit of praise from Riley Paige meant a great deal to her.

Then Agent Paige said, “But now I want you to try something a little more advanced. Shut your eyes.”

Lucy did so. In a low, steady voice, Agent Paige gave her more details.

“After he killed Tilda Steen, the murderer buried her in a shallow grave. Can you describe for me how that happened?”

As she’d been doing during the exercise, Lucy tried to slip into the murderer’s mind.

“He left the body lying on the bed, then stepped out of the motel room door,” Lucy said aloud. “He looked carefully around. He didn’t see anybody. So he took her body out to his car and dumped it in the back seat. Then he drove to a wooded area. Some place that he knew pretty well, but not very close to the crime scene.”

“Go on,” Agent Page said.

Her eyes still closed, Lucy could feel the killer’s methodical coldness.

“He stopped the car where it wouldn’t be easy to see. Then he got a shovel out of his trunk.”

Lucy felt stumped for a moment.

It was night, so how would the killer find his way into the woods?

It wouldn’t be easy to carry a flashlight, a shovel, and a corpse.

“Was it a moonlit night?” Lucy asked.

“It was,” Agent Paige said.

Lucy felt encouraged.

“He picked up the shovel with one hand and slung the body over his shoulder with the other. He trudged off into the woods. He kept going until he found a faraway place where he was sure nobody ever went.”

“A faraway place?” Agent Paige asked, interrupting Lucy’s reverie.

“Definitely,” Lucy said.

“Open your eyes.”

Lucy did so. Agent Paige was packing up her briefcase to go.

She said, “Actually, the killer took the body to the woods right across the highway from the motel. He only carried Tilda’s body a few yards into the thicket. He could easily have seen car lights from the highway, and he probably used the light from a street lamp to bury Tilda. And he buried her carelessly, covering her more with rocks than earth. A passing bicyclist noticed the smell a few days later and called the cops. The body was easy to find.”

Lucy’s mouth dropped open with surprise.

“Why didn’t he go to more trouble to hide the murder?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”

Shutting her briefcase, Agent Paige frowned ruefully.

“I don’t either,” she said. “Nobody does.”

Agent Paige picked up her briefcase and left the lecture hall.

As Lucy watched her leave, she detected an attitude of bitterness and disappointment in Agent Paige’s stride.

Clearly, as detached as Agent Paige tried to seem, this cold case still was tormenting her.

CHAPTER TWO

Over dinner that evening, Riley Paige couldn’t get the “Matchbook Killer” out of her mind. She had used that cold case as an example for her class because she knew she’d be hearing about it again soon.

Riley tried to concentrate on the delicious Guatemalan stew that Gabriela had prepared for them. Their live-in housekeeper and general helper was a wonderful cook. Riley hoped that Gabriela wouldn’t notice that she was having trouble enjoying dinner tonight. But of course, the girls did notice.

“What’s the matter, Mom?” asked April, Riley’s fifteen-year-old daughter.

“Is something wrong?” asked Jilly, the thirteen-year-old girl that Riley was hoping to adopt.

From her seat on the other side of the table, Gabriela also gazed at Riley with concern.

Riley didn’t know what to say. The truth was, she knew that she was going to get a fresh reminder of the Matchbook Killer tomorrow – a phone call that she got every year. There was no point in trying to put it out of her mind.

But she didn’t like bringing her work home to the family. Sometimes, despite all her best efforts, she had even put her loved ones in terrible danger.

“It’s nothing,” she said.

The four of them ate quietly for a few moments.

Finally April said, “It’s Dad, isn’t it? It bothers you that he’s not home again this evening.”

The question took Riley a bit by surprise. Her husband’s recent absences from the household had been troubling her lately. She and Ryan had gone to a lot of effort to reconcile, even after a painful divorce. Now their progress seemed to be crumbling, and Ryan had been spending more and more time at his own house.

But Ryan hadn’t been on her mind at all right now.

What did that say about her?

Was she getting numb to her failing relationship?

Had she just given up?

Her three dinner companions were still looking at her, waiting for her to say something.

“It’s a case,” Riley said. “It always nags at me this time of year.”

Jilly’s eyes widened with excitement.

“Tell us about it!” she said.

Riley wondered how much she should tell the kids. She didn’t want to describe the murder details to her family.

“It’s a cold case,” she said. “A series of murders that neither the local police nor the FBI were able to solve. I’ve been trying to crack it for years.”

Jilly was bouncing in her chair.

“How are you going to solve it?”

The question stung Riley a little.

Of course, Jilly didn’t mean to be hurtful – quite the opposite. The younger girl was proud to have a law enforcement agent for a parent. And she still had the idea that Riley was some kind of superhero who couldn’t ever fail.

Riley held back a sigh.

Maybe it’s time to tell her that I don’t always catch the bad guys, she thought.

But Riley just said, “I don’t know.”

It was the simple, honest truth.

But there was one thing Riley did know.

The twenty-fifth anniversary of Tilda Steen’s death was coming up tomorrow, and she wouldn’t be able to get it out of her mind any time soon.

To Riley’s relief, the conversation at the table turned to Gabriela’s delicious dinner. The stout Guatemalan woman and the girls all started speaking in Spanish, and Riley had trouble following all that was said.

But that was OK. April and Jilly were both studying Spanish, and April was getting to be quite fluent. Jilly was still struggling with the language, but Gabriela and April were helping her to learn it.

Riley smiled as she watched and listened.

Jilly looks well, she thought.

She was a dark-skinned, skinny girl – but hardly the desperate waif Riley had rescued from the streets of Phoenix a few months ago. She was hearty and healthy, and she seemed to be adjusting well to her new life with Riley and her family.

And April was proving to be a perfect big sister. She was recovering well from the traumas she had been through.

Sometimes when she looked at April, Riley felt that she was looking in a mirror – a mirror that showed her own teenage self from many years ago. April had Riley’s hazel eyes and dark hair, though none of Riley’s touches of gray.

Riley felt a warm glow of reassurance.

Maybe I’m doing a pretty good job as a parent, she thought.

But the glow faded quickly.

The mysterious Matchbook Killer was still lurking around the edges of her mind.

*

After dinner, Riley went up to her bedroom and office. She sat down at her computer and took a few deep breaths, trying to relax. But the task that awaited her was somehow unnerving.

It seemed ridiculous for her to feel this way. After all, she had hunted and fought dozens of dangerous killers over the years. Her own life had been threatened more times than she could count.

Just talking to my sister shouldn’t get to me like this, she thought.

But she hadn’t seen Wendy in … how many years had it been?

Not since Riley had been a little girl, anyway. Wendy had gotten back in touch after their father had died. They had talked on the phone, mulling over the possibility of getting together in person. But Wendy lived far away in Des Moines, Iowa, and they hadn’t been able to work out the details. So they’d finally agreed on this time for a video chat.

To prepare herself, Riley looked at a framed picture that was sitting on her desk. She had found it among her father’s belongings after his death. It showed Riley, Wendy, and their mother. Riley looked like she was about four, and Wendy must have been in her teens.

Both girls and their mother looked happy.

Riley couldn’t remember when or where the picture had been taken.

And she certainly couldn’t remember her family ever being happy.

Her hands cold and shaking, she typed Wendy’s video address on her keyboard.

The woman who appeared on the screen might as well have been a perfect stranger.

“Hi, Wendy,” Riley said shyly.

“Hi,” Wendy replied.

They sat staring at each other dumbly for a few awkward moments.

Riley knew that Wendy was about fifty, some ten years older than her. She seemed to wear her years pretty well. She was a bit heavyset and looked thoroughly conventional. Her hair didn’t appear to be graying like Riley’s. But Riley doubted that it was her natural color.

Riley glanced back and forth between the picture and Wendy’s face. She noticed that Wendy looked a little like their mother. Riley knew that she looked more like their father. She wasn’t especially proud of the resemblance.

“Well,” Wendy finally said to break the silence. “What have you been up to … during the last few decades?”

Riley and Wendy both laughed a little. Even their laughter felt strained and awkward.

Wendy asked, “Are you married?”

Riley sighed aloud. How could she explain what was going on between her and Ryan when she didn’t even know herself?

She said, “Well, as the kids say these days, ‘It’s complicated.’ And I do mean really complicated.”

There was a bit more nervous laughter.

“And you?” Riley asked.

Wendy seemed to be starting to relax a little.

“Loren and I are coming up on our twenty-fifth anniversary. We’re both pharmacists, and we own our own drugstore. Loren inherited it from his father. We’ve got three kids. The youngest, Barton, is away at college. Thora and Parish are both married and on their own. I guess that makes Loren and me your classic empty-nesters.”

Riley felt a strange pang of melancholy.

Wendy’s life had been nothing at all like hers. In fact, Wendy’s life had apparently been completely normal.

Just as she had with April over dinner, she again had the feeling of looking in the mirror.

Except this mirror wasn’t of her past.

It was of a future self – someone she once might have become, but now would never, ever be.

“What about you?” Wendy asked. “Any kids?”

Again, Riley felt tempted to say …

“It’s complicated.”

Instead, she said, “Two. I’ve got a fifteen-year-old, April. And I’m in the process of adopting another – Jilly, who’s thirteen.”

“Adoption! More people should do that. Good for you.”

Riley didn’t feel like she deserved to be congratulated at the moment. She might feel better if she could be sure that Jilly would grow up in a two-parent family. Right now, that issue was in doubt. But Riley decided not to go into all that with Wendy.

Instead, there was some business she needed to discuss with her sister.

And she was afraid it might be awkward.

“Wendy, you know that Daddy left me his cabin in his will,” she said.

Wendy nodded.

“I know,” she said. “You sent me some pictures. It looks like a nice place.”

The words were a bit jarring …

“… a nice place.”

Riley had been there a few times – most recently after her father died. But her memories of it were far from pleasant. Her father had bought it when he retired as a US Marine colonel. Riley remembered it as the home of a lonely, mean old man who hated just about everybody – and a man that just about everybody hated in return. The last time Riley had seen him alive, they had actually come to blows.

“I think it was a mistake,” she said.

“What was?”

“Leaving the cabin to me. It was wrong for him to do that. It should have gone to you.”

Wendy looked genuinely surprised.

“Why?” she asked.

Riley felt all kinds of ugly emotions welling up inside her. She cleared her throat.

“Because you were with him at the end, when he was in hospice. You took care of him. You even took care of everything afterwards – his funeral and all the legal stuff. I wasn’t there. I – ”

She almost choked on her next words.

“I don’t think I could have done that. Things weren’t good between us.”

Wendy smiled sadly.

“Things weren’t good between him and me either.”

Riley knew it was true. Poor Wendy – Daddy had beaten her regularly until at last she ran away for good at the age of fifteen. And yet Wendy had shown the decency to take care of Daddy at the end.

Riley had done no such thing, and she couldn’t help feeling guilty about it.

Riley said, “I don’t know what the cabin is worth. It must be worth something. I want you to have it.”

Wendy’s eyes widened. She looked alarmed.

“No,” she said.

The bluntness of her reply startled Riley.

“Why not?” Riley asked.

“I just can’t. I don’t want it. I want to forget all about him.”

Riley knew just how she felt. She felt the same way.

Wendy added, “You should just sell it. Keep the money. I want you to.”

Riley didn’t know what to say.

Fortunately, Wendy changed the subject.

“Before he died, Dad told me you were a BAU agent. How long have you been doing that kind of work?”

“About twenty years,” Riley said.

“Well. I think Dad was proud of you.”

A bitter chuckle rose up in Riley’s throat.

“No, he wasn’t,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Oh, he let me know. He had his own way of communicating things like that.”

Wendy sighed.

“I suppose he did,” Wendy said.

An awkward silence fell. Riley wondered what they should talk about. After all, they’d barely spoken for many years. Should they try again to figure out how to get together in person? Riley couldn’t imagine traveling to Des Moines just to see this stranger named Wendy. And she was sure Wendy felt the same way about coming to Fredericksburg.

After all, what could they possibly have in common?

At that moment, Riley’s desk phone rang. She was grateful for the interruption.

“I’d better get that,” Riley said.

“I understand,” Wendy said. “Thanks for getting in touch.”

“Thank you,” Riley said.

They ended the call and Riley answered her phone. Riley said hello, then heard a confused-sounding woman’s voice.

“Hello … who’s speaking?”

“Who’s calling?” Riley asked.

A silence fell.

“Is … is Ryan at home?” the woman asked.

Her words sounded slurred now. Riley felt pretty sure the woman was drunk.

“No,” Riley said. She hesitated for a moment. After all, she told herself, it could be a client of Ryan’s. But she knew it wasn’t. The situation was all too familiar.

Riley said, “Don’t call this number again.”

She hung up.

She bristled with anger.

It’s starting all over again, she thought.

She dialed up Ryan’s home phone number.