Blood on Copperhead Trail

She looked up to find him peering at a corner of something sticking out from under the edge of the bedroll. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and grasped the corner, tugging the object free.

It was a photograph, Laney saw, partially stained by her sister’s blood. But what she could still see of the photograph sent ice rattling through her veins.

The photo showed Janelle and her two companions, lying right here in this very shelter, fast asleep.

Doyle turned the photograph over to the blank side. Only it wasn’t blank. There were three words written there in blocky marker.

Good night, princesses.

Chapter Three

Doyle hated hospitals. He’d visited his share of them over the years, both as a cop and a patient. He hated the mysterious beeps and dings, the clatter of gurney wheels rolling across scuffed linoleum floors, the antiseptic smells and the haggard faces of both the sick and the waiting.

He hated how quickly everything could go to hell.

He sat a small distance from Laney Hanvey and her mother, Alice, a woman in her late fifties who, at the moment, looked a decade older. Mrs. Hanvey looked distraught and guilty as hell.

“I shouldn’t have let her go camping. It was so stupid of me.”

Laney squeezed her mother’s hand. “You don’t want to stifle her. Not when she’s made so much progress.”

Doyle looked at her with narrowed eyes, wondering what she meant. But before he’d had a chance to form a theory, the door to the waiting room opened and a man in green surgical scrubs entered, looking serious but not particularly grim.

“Mrs. Hanvey?” he greeted Laney’s mother, who had stood at his entrance. “I’m Dr. Bedford. I’ve been taking care of Janelle in the E.R. The good news is, she’s awake and relatively alert, but she’s sustained a concussion, and given her medical history, we’re going to want to be very careful with that.”

Doyle looked from the doctor’s face to Laney’s, more curious than before.

“So the bullet didn’t enter her brain?” Laney’s question made her mother visibly flinch.

“The titanium plate deflected the path of the bullet. It made a bit of a mess in the soft tissue at the base of her skull, but it missed anything vital. We did have to shave a long patch of her hair. She wasn’t very happy to hear that,” Dr. Bedford added with a rueful smile, making Laney and her mother smile, as well.

Doyle couldn’t keep silent any longer. “Does she remember what happened to her?”

The doctor looked startled by his question. “You are—?”

“Doyle Massey. Bitterwood chief of police. The attack on Ms. Hanvey took place in my jurisdiction.”

The doctor gave him a thoughtful look. “She remembers hiking, but beyond that, everything’s pretty fuzzy.” He turned back to Laney and her mother. “She keeps asking about her two friends, but all we could tell her is that they weren’t with her when she was brought in. Just be warned, she’s in the repetitive stage of a concussion, so she may ask you that question or another several times without remembering you’ve already answered her.”

“Were you able to retrieve a bullet?” Doyle asked.

“Actually, yes,” Dr. Bedford answered. “The TBI has already put in a request for it. They’re sending a courier.”

“How soon do you think she can go home?” Mrs. Hanvey asked.

“Because of her medical history and the trauma of being shot, I’d really like to keep her here at least a couple of days. Even beyond her concussion, the path of the bullet wound is pretty extensive and we’re going to work hard to prevent infection. We’ll see how her injuries respond to treatment and make a decision from there.”

“Can we see her?”

“She’s probably on her way up to her room. Ask the nurse at the desk—she’ll tell you where you can find her.”

Doyle followed Laney and her mother out of the waiting room behind the doctor, trying to stay back enough to avoid Laney’s attention.

He should have known better.

Laney whipped around to face him as her mother walked on to the nurse’s station. “You’re not seriously following us into her room?”

“I need to talk to her about what happened on the mountain.”

“You heard the doctor. She doesn’t remember.”

“Yet.”

Laney’s lips thinned with anger. “I know it’s important to talk to her. But can’t you give us a few minutes alone with her? When we came here this morning, we weren’t sure we were ever going to see her alive again.”

Old pain nudged at Doyle’s conscience. “I know. I’m sorry and I’m very happy and relieved that the news is good.”

Laney’s eyes softened. “Thank you.”

“But there’s still a girl unaccounted for. And anything your sister can remember may be important. Including what happened before they were attacked.”

Laney glanced back at her mother, who was still talking to the desk nurse. She lowered her voice. “I don’t think we’ll find Joy Adderly alive. Do you?”

He didn’t. But he hadn’t expected to find Janelle alive, either. Not after seeing Missy Adderly’s body in the leaves off the mountain trail.

“I think we have to proceed as if she’s still alive and needs our help,” he said finally. “Don’t you?”

She looked at him, guilt in her clear blue eyes. “Yes. Of course.”

He immediately felt bad for pushing her. Her priority had to be her sister, not his case. “Look, I need to make some calls. I’ll give you and your mother some time alone with your sister if you’ll promise you’ll come get me in an hour to ask her a few questions. Just do me a favor, okay?”

“What’s that?”

“Try not to talk about what happened up on the mountain. Just talk about anything else. I don’t want to contaminate her memories before I get a chance to talk to her.”

“Okay.” She reached across the space between them, closing her hand over his forearm. “Thank you.”

He watched her walk to the elevator with her arm around her mother’s waist. As they entered and turned to face the doors, she graced him with a slight smile that made his chest tighten.

The doors closed, and he felt palpably alone.

Shaking it off, he walked back to the waiting room and called the police station first. His executive assistant was a tall reed of a woman with steel-gray hair and sharp blue eyes named Ellen Flatley. Apparently she’d been assistant to two chiefs of police before him and would probably outlast him, as well. She saw the police station as her own personal territory and had a tendency to guard it like a high-strung German shepherd.

“There are two teams of eight searchers each on the mountains, but it’s a lot of territory and slow going.” She answered his query in a tone of voice that suggested he should have known these facts already. “Plus, the sun will be going down soon, and they’ll have to stop the search. The coroner’s picked up poor Missy Adderly’s body, God rest her soul. He said he’s going to call in the state lab to handle the postmortem, like you asked.”

She didn’t sound as if she approved of that decision, either, but he couldn’t help that. Bitterwood had hired him to make those kinds of decisions. They’d hired Ellen to help him execute those decisions, not make them for him.

“Thank you, Ellen.”