Murder at Sunrise Lake

Vienna waved her hand in the air, eyes closed. “I would have lied my ass off and said you knew everything. If I’m going down, so are you. We may as well have fun in jail together.”

Stella burst out laughing. “I suppose.”

“We’d bail you out,” Zahra promised.

“Thanks.” Stella blew her a kiss. “Are the boulders on a map somewhere?”

“If they are, I don’t know about it. A climbing buddy of mine showed it to me. He was head of Search and Rescue before me, but he left Knightly, saying he needed to go somewhere else, where he could broaden his dating field.”

“Sheesh, Vienna. What did he think was wrong with you?” Harlow asked. “You were right there in front of him.”

“I said no.”

“That would be the reason he left, then,” Raine said. “I’ll Google Earth the boulders and see if I can find them, Stella. The more directions we get for you, the better. Do you have a plan?”

“Yes. It’s solid. We don’t want the killer to know we’re onto him. Sam and I will go out to the boulders as if we’re going to spend the day climbing, and we’ll outlast him.”

“Sam can pull it off,” Raine said. “But you don’t exactly have a poker face, Stella. The killer will know something’s off, especially if it’s someone you know.”

“Maybe we should all go out there,” Zahra suggested.

“Not on your life,” Stella objected instantly. “If you think I’d give it away, the more of us there, the more likely one of us will trip up. No, we’ll stick with the plan. Sam and I will go. It makes sense that he’d take me out to the middle of nowhere to practice belaying with him when I don’t want anyone to witness my freak-outs. This is the right time of year for me to climb since I just closed the resort.”

“Will you be able to keep from warning the victim, since he’s a friend?” Harlow asked.

Stella pushed a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. I just hope we can find the place. I want to find out how the killer intends to get away with the murder, making it look like an accident. That piece should come to me tonight. Sam and I will get up first thing and go out there. I’ll text all of you tomorrow and let you know what happens and who we believe it is.”

She looked around the room at her friends. “You really are the best. I don’t know what I’d ever do without all of you.”

STELLA SAT UP in the middle of the night, heart pounding, eyes meeting Sam’s. “He’s belaying him. All friendly. The victim has been working this project for months. The killer lets him fall and then removes all trace of being there. He secures a top rope so it appears as if the victim was working on his project alone and fell. He hummed while he wiped footprints from the dirt and collected gear.”

Her stomach lurched while she told Sam. “I couldn’t exactly hear the humming, more like it was a sound buried in the wind and I knew what he was doing. He was meticulous with every detail. I even saw him casually break the victim’s finger. Just his hand reached into the lens of the camera and grasped the victim’s finger. It was sickening to hear the crunch.”

“Did you see any part of the killer?”

“I only saw his shadow on the rock. He spent so much time working to stage the scene, to make certain it looked as if his victim had been there completely alone. He knew no one was going to come out there to disturb him.” She tried to keep the bitterness from her voice. “He felt so much elation, Sam. This triumph. Feelings of superiority and even euphoria. He isn’t going to stop. He likes it too much.”

“Unfortunately, that was the kind of thing I witnessed when I was investigating the deaths of the soldiers being killed. Once I was certain I had the killer in my sights and I started shadowing him, I could pick up those little nuances as he stalked his victim. The flushed face. The elevated breathing. Sometimes he’d stalk the victim over and over just to prolong that euphoria, the feeling of power, of holding life and death in his hands.”

She leveled her gaze on him. “You had to take lives, Sam. Did you ever get that feeling?”

He frowned. “In the beginning, I always felt a little sick. I never hesitated, but there was always revulsion in the pit of my stomach. Eventually that went away and I was numb. At night, when I was alone, I wouldn’t be numb, but then that went away too.” He lifted his lashes and looked into her eyes. Steadily. “I decided it was time to get out, Satine. I wasn’t taking any chances. I served my country and I did my best to serve with honor. I took chances that maybe I shouldn’t have because I was a dumb kid who felt I had to pay for the sins of my father and the blood running through my veins.”