Page 8 of Engaging the Deputy

Jaden looked to Tammy, who was huddled with Whitney on a large boulder beside the road. “You were with Rob when the storm hit?”

“We’d been visiting down by the water. I got scared and went to find Whit. She’d come looking for me, so we ducked into that little stone shed.”

“Rob didn’t go with you?” the deputy asked. They both shook their heads, but he caught her sneaking a look at Emery. “You stayed where you were, didn’t go looking for Rob and Tammy?” He saw Whitney and Emery share a glance, both looking suspicious. “I can tell that there is more to the story. I need the truth.”

Emery sighed. “Whit was panicked about her friend. I tried to get her to stay where it was safe, but she took off.”

“You didn’t go after her?” Jaden asked.

“I’d had so much to drink,” Emery said in his defense, “I was having a hard enough time just standing up, and then all hell broke loose.”

The deputy wasn’t through with these three, but he figured whatever they were hiding would come out eventually. He’d been waiting impatiently for news on Olivia Brooks and was becoming more anxious by the minute when his cell phone rang. He saw it was the head of the search and rescue party and quickly picked up, afraid the news wasn’t going to be good.

“We found Rob Perkins. I think you’d better come take a look. It appears his death wasn’t accidental.”

“I’ll be right there,” Jaden said, taken aback. What had been going on out here even before the tornado?

CHAPTER FOUR

Jaden shone his flashlight beam on the body crushed under the old block wall before calling for backup to secure the scene where Rob Perkins had been killed. He’d seen at once what the rescue crew had. Deep footprints in the dirt, where it appeared someone had stood—and waited?—before struggling to push a portion of the wall over his victim—who hadn’t been dead very long. The deep tracks in the soil were a dead giveaway this hadn’t been an accident.

Perkins lay on his back, his body crushed under the blocks and cement. Only his head and shoulders were free, his arms raised as if he’d been trying to ward off what was coming for him.

At the sound of a bloodcurdling scream from higher up on the hillside, Jaden felt his heart drop. Wasn’t that the area where Emery had told him Olivia had gone with Cody?

He turned to the state law-enforcement officer who’d arrived. “If you keep everyone away from here until the rest of the state Department of Criminal Investigation arrive, I’ll see to whatever that is,” he said and took off up the hill. It was hard getting around in the debris. He’d had to make a wide circle to get to the small crowd on the hillside.

As he drew closer, he saw several people standing over a hole in the ground. Behind Jaden, the sun was starting to rise over the mountains, turning the sky pink. One of the two rescue workers was attempting to climb down into the hole with the help of the other. The woman was standing off to the side. Olivia?

“What’s going on?” the deputy called to them.

“We have an injured man down in an old root cellar,” he called back as Jaden advanced on them.

As the woman turned, Jaden felt a start. Relief made his knees go weak. It was Olivia and she didn’t seem to be injured. She seemed startled to see him.

“I hadn’t heard that you were back in Montana,” he said as he glanced in the hole. He’d gotten only a glimpse of Cody Ryan lying awkwardly in the bottom of what was left of the root cellar. He appeared to be unconscious.

As he felt the ground shift under him, he quickly stepped back. Taking Olivia’s arm, he drew her away from the hole as the search and rescue team did their work.

Living in Fortune Creek to the north, he’d only recently met Cody. He was the high school sweetheart she’d told him about. After what Cody had told him about how she’d broken his heart, he hadn’t expected to hear that they’d been together out here.

“He was fine when I left him,” she kept saying now.

“He wasn’t injured in the storm?” Jaden asked.

“No, he was fine. He couldn’t climb out. I told him I would go get help, but when I came back…” She began to cry. “I don’t understand what could have happened. And…” She motioned to a spot along the wall away from Cody’s body. “We found those bones. Cody said they’re human.”

The deputy shone his light on the bones. Cody might be right, he thought. They appeared to be human bones. They’d know more once the coroner had a look at them. His mind was more on what Olivia was doing out there, of all places, with her old boyfriend. Not that it was any of his business. Not anymore.

Jaden had agreed with Cody on their chance encounter that Olivia was indeed a heartbreaker.

With a sigh, he pushed that thought away. He already had one suspicious death. Now this. “You climbed out and went for help?” He couldn’t help but wonder why it had taken her so long. “How long ago was that?”

“I don’t know. I got turned around trying to navigate this mess out here.” She sounded close to tears. The debris had made it difficult to move. Look how long it had taken him to make it up the hill. But he couldn’t wrap his mind around what Olivia was doing with Cody out here, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. If Cody had been injured after she’d left him, could it have been the same person who’d pushed a wall over on Rob Perkins? Where was Olivia when that was happening?

One member of the search and rescue team, a paramedic, confirmed that Cody’s vitals were strong. His only injury appeared to be a blow to the head.

“Deputy,” he called up. “There’s a rock down here with his blood on it. Would you like me to bag it for you?”

---